Page 56 of Born for Starlight

Matthew looked at me for a long moment. Something was working behind his eyes, and it didn't look like a man checking whether a hospital visit would fit the schedule.

"I'll find her," he said.

I believed him. I sat back. It was a simple promise. So why had it sounded like a vow?

Chapter Eighteen

I woke at ten past two and knew more sleep wasn’t coming.

Angelica didn't stir when I slid out from under her arm. She slept hard, face mashed into the pillow, one hand curled in the warm spot where my chest had been. I stood there a second longer than a security consultant should. Then I picked up the tablet from the dresser, eased the bedroom door shut behind me, and walked out to the living room.

The marble floor was cold under my feet, and I didn’t bother with a light.

The last time I'd done this, sat up alone with a tablet full of bad news, I'd been in a Tennessee motel with cigarette burns in the carpet. Now I had marble, fresh flowers, and a woman asleep twenty feet away. The atmosphere and company had definitely been upgraded. If there was a God, hopefully the news would be upgraded as well.

I sat down and went to work.

Luzia and the São Marcos hospital first. That was where it all fell to shit. First, she wasn’t there. Second, her records had been falsified. What Sister Beatriz had been told wasn’t true. Luzia’s lung infection had cleared with antibiotics soon after she arrived. And third, she wasn’t there! She’d been whisked away with two other little girls by some asshole, and the hospital administrators had let it happen.

I shut my eyes and tried to keep the headache from forming. Then I focused on what I could do to contain this nightmare, and I made a call.

A friend of a friend from my years down here, a man I'd trusted on two jobs, gave me the name of a cop. Someone he vouched for. I didn't take that lightly. The cop's name was Dantas, and when possible, he played it straight. When it came to kids, he was straight as an arrow.

My contact had called ahead, so Dantas was expecting me. His voice sounded rough, like he hadn't been to bed.

"You want to know why I'm awake at three in the morning talking to a stranger?" he said. His Portuguese was fast and tired. "I'll tell you. The bus station. Girls come in from the interior every week, alone, with a bag and an address on a piece of paper. Some of them never make it out the front doors. Nobody reports it, because nobody is waiting for them. Fifteen years I've watched that, and I can't touch it."

"That's not new," I said. “Hell, that goes on in the States.”

"Really? No. Never mind. This is new. A month ago, the welfare office took two sisters out of a bad home. Eight and nine years old. They placed them with a foster family." He laughed, and it was ugly. "I went to the address. It's a tire shop."

"Who signed off on the placement?"

"Somebody generous. There's always somebody generous." I heard a lighter click and missed cigarettes all over again. "Then a nurse at São Marcos calls me. So yes, my friend. I'm awake."

He was digging into São Marcos on his own time because what happened there pissed him off. Dantas had photographed Luzia's chart, and he sent me a text with it. I read it twice to be sure my Portuguese wasn't slipping. It wasn't. Low-grade fever the first two days. Nothing after that. No oxygen. No IV antibiotics past day three. A kid that healthy gets sent home in four days, five if the doctor is careful. They'd kept her for ten, then discharged her.

They hadn't been treating her. They'd been storing her.

He sent me a photo.

There'd been a little party on the ward. Balloons taped to the walls, a sheet cake, paper hats. Sick kids sat around a table in hospital gowns, thin arms, tubes, big grins, because cake is cake when you're eight.

Three girls in that photo weren't sick. Pink-cheeked. Clear-eyed.

They stood out like they'd been cut from a different picture. Party dresses. Hair done up with ribbons. All three about seven or eight years old, scrubbed, healthy, presented. Two of them had cake all over their faces. They laughed with the sick kids, happy as any little girls wearing pretty dresses at any party anywhere.

The third girl stood at the back. She was wearing the dress and had the pink cheeks of health, but her eyes were watchful. Same eyes from the video. I'd recognize her anywhere.

Luzia.

Once again she looked into the camera like she could see the audience staring back. It was the same look she'd had in the video, the one Angelica couldn't stop seeing.

Dantas had found the paperwork. A benefactor had checked all three girls out of São Marcos. That was the word they used. Benefactor. A generous man who wished to give three unfortunate girls a better life. A benefactor named João Silva. Basically John Smith.

I'd have bet money there was a João Silva on the welfare office file, too.

The two happy girls had come into the hospital from the favelas, no parents anybody could find. Luzia came from the orphanage. The sisters thought she was still in a hospital bed. The hospital's own records said she'd been signed out three days before our plane ever touched Brazil.