She found the old medical examiner performing an autopsy. It had taken Maria a long time to watch this part of the investigative process with ease, but the eight years that she worked in the homicide department had cured her of all apprehensions. She shared some of the details of the case with Dr. Erwin.
The doctor finally finished the autopsy. She kept quiet while he finished writing up the report and giving instructions to his assistants to take the cadaver to the freezer.
“So, Maria, what can I do for you?”
“Well, two things. First I need you to look at this forensic report and tell me if there’s any possibility that this man could’ve been killed instead of dying in an accident.”
Erwin took off his gloves, washed his hands, and wiped the sweat from his forehead with a paper towel. He was always sweating despite the cold temperature in the morgue. He was a stocky man with chubby fingers that somehow treated the bodies with astonishing delicacy. He then took the papers that Maria held in her hands and read them for two minutes before declaring:
“Yes…”
“Yes?”
“Yes, it could’ve been a murder. See, he had water in his lungs which tells us that he was still alive when he crashed into the water. You can only see a small portion of the window open in the photo. It’s strange because if he were conscious the logical thing to do would’ve been to open the window more. Additionally, the autopsy says that he had sustained trauma to the head. They attributed it to the impact of the accident, and that could be, but it also could’ve been that someone hit him, leaving him unconscious, and then pushed the car into the canal. Now what was your other question?”
“This man wasn’t actually who his driver’s license or death certificate said he was. What do you think would be the best way to go about identifying him?”
“Certainly you’re not thinking about exhuming the body.”
“No, not at this time.”
“Do you have anything to extract DNA from?”
“The clothing that he was wearing is in a sealed bag.”
“Better yet, see if the family kept anything of his, maybe a hair brush.”
“It’s been twenty-three years.”
“You of all people shouldn’t be surprised by the things people save from their dead relatives.”
She called Gladys Elena to make sure that she would be home and went directly to Hialeah. This time Gladys was alone and she opened the door herself.
“Come in, come in… Excuse me a minute, I was just making coffee,” and she ran off into the kitchen.
Unlike the previous visit, Maria took the opportunity to look at family photos. It struck her that the girl that she had met last time, who had a striking similarity to the sketch of the missing baby depicted as young woman now, looked like her father and not Gladys while the boy looked like her and like another young man in one of the photos.
“That’s my brother, Raulito,” Gladys said when she saw Maria looking at the pictures.
She didn’t comment on the similarities. After all, it was very subjective.
“When did you remarry?” she asked in a friendly tone just before sipping her coffee.
“Well, here’s how it all happened… Mauricio was the boyfriend that I had left in Cuba, and he came here two years later. Slowly we fell in love again and a year later, in ’95, we got married. Little Elena was born on December 19 of ’96. It’s incredible that she looks just like her sister… I mean, according to the sketch they did of her sister.”
When they finished their coffee and sat face to face, Maria turned on the tape recorder, took out her notebook and pen, and began questioning her:
“Where did you, Lazo, and your daughter live before the accident?”
“In Little Havana. Let’s see, here’s almost all of the information.”
She handed Maria a sheet with the address of where they lived in 1992, her mother’s address, the address where Lazo worked, names and phone numbers of neighbors and contact lists of their respective coworkers that they were still in touch with.
“You’re making my work easy.”
“It’s taken years…”
“Just two or three more questions… What do you know of your late husband’s past?”
“About Ray? Well, very little. He told me that he came on the Mariel Boatlift, that he was from Cardenas, and that he didn’t have any family here. But when he died, a long-lost uncle of his showed up and was very generous. He paid all the funeral costs even though the wake just amounted to a few of his friends from work. Ray was a good man. He always told me: This is the land of second chances and you’ve been mine. And he’d also go around saying: Fidel didn’t create the ‘new man’; you performed that miracle.
“Do you know why he said that, if he had been married before, if he had left kids behind in Cuba, if he had enemies…?”
“He talked about a girlfriend that he had in Cuba. He was so overjoyed when the baby came along that I can’t imagine that he had any children before. I don’t believe he had any enemies either. Why would a poor electrician have any?”
“Your mother didn’t live anywhere near the accident. Do you know what your husband was doing in that part of town?”
“I’ve asked myself that a thousand times and never found an answer. I think that maybe he went to help out one of his friends… In those days, everyone had problems.”
“Anything else? Did you save anything of his?”
The lady hesitated:
“If you give it to me, I promise to get it back to you,” Maria added.
“Just a minute.”
It took her a few minutes to return and she brought out a small suitcase, the kind that no one uses anymore, rectangular, without wheels, and faded black.
“Here are all of his belongings. I have a box with our daughter’s things in it as well if you want it, but…”
“Did you ever ask to have your daughter’s DNA tested?”
“No, they’re too expensive, and they never found her so I didn’t think it was necessary.”
“True. We can wait. We’ll go ahead and test Ray’s. One last question. I noticed you never dropped the last name Lazo.”
“Well, it’s a relatively common name and the baby couldn’t know her own name because she was too young, but if she does look for me, it would be easier to find me if I kept the same last name, right? Anyway, Mauricio doesn’t ask me about that.”
As she was leaving, Maria was somewhat surprised when Gladys Elena gave her a kiss on the cheek very naturally.
“You’ll keep me up to date if there are any developments, right?”
“Of course.”
When she worked on homicides, the hardest part was always informing the family. The murder of a loved one was the worst thing that anyone could ever endure, or so she thought, but now she wasn’t so sure. Living more than twenty years looking for a lost daughter had to be an extremely heavy burden. She had seen it in the eyes of the young woman who still had traces of agony in her gaze.
Chapter 5
Day 2—Tuesday, November 3, 2015
Maria arrived at her home in El Doral eager to cook. That was often the case when she was nervous or worried, but these days—even before Patrick had gone off to college—she seldom ate at home. That’s why she had looked for other ways to alleviate her stress, like going to the gym or having a couple glasses of wine. She glanced in the refrigerator and only found a yogurt, skim milk, some whole wheat bread, turkey, cheese, and some vegetables. The choices in the freezer and pantry weren’t much better. She was about to give up, but she wound up grabbing her wallet and car keys and headed off to the nearest Publix.
A couple hours later, the aroma of sofrito flooded her house. She immediately thought of her mother and smiled, holding back the tears. Even though she knew perfectly well how to make picadillo, she s
earched for the old cookbook by Nitza Villapol. When she opened it, she found a sheet of paper with a recipe for a spinach quiche in her mother’s unmistakable handwriting.
She sautéed the onion and pepper in the olive oil, threw in a can of tomato sauce and removed it from the stove. Then, just as she was seasoning the ground beef, an uncontrollable fit of crying overcame her. It happened like that at times, coming in waves, like the ones when she used to go to the beach and the sea was rough, and they made her feel like she was drowning. Maybe that was why she didn’t cook that often anymore… The smells unlocked her memories.
She poured herself a glass of Merlot and sat down to relax before finishing the picadillo. In recent years, she had thought a lot about her mother’s life. As the daughter of a physician-professor and a housewife, Maria Cristina Fernandez Oviedo had belonged to Havana’s upper middle class. She had studied at private schools, spent her summers at Varadero, and belonged to one of the most exclusive clubs in the capital. She was fifteen years old and dreamed of becoming a physician, like her father and grandfather, when Fidel Castro took over and her life changed in an instant.
Less than two years later, her parents decided to get her out of Cuba through the Peter Pan program, by which fourteen thousand Cuban children fled the country between 1960 and 1962. When she arrived in Miami, they sent Maria Cristina to a convent in San Antonio along with other children. The Church’s protection didn’t last long because shortly thereafter she turned eighteen—the age at which the program ended. The nuns didn’t throw her out in the street right away. She lived there a few more months until she put together some savings from her work, and she and some of the other girls who were in the same situation were able to rent an apartment. Since that time—except for a few months after Maria was born and until a few months before her death—Maria’s mother had always worked. She never got the chance to study medicine as she had dreamed of doing, but she did complete her nursing degree and became head nurse at the Intensive Care Unit at Baptist Hospital.
Her mother had seldom talked about what she had left behind on the Island. Maria now regretted not having asked her more about her life back in Cuba, especially about her grandfather. Her mother had never gotten the chance to see him again. Two months after she left, he died of a massive heart attack at the age of fifty-seven. Her grandmother joined them by way of one of the Freedom Flights in 1967, when she was only one year old, and since then she had practically raised Maria while her parents studied and worked. When her grandmother passed away in 1987, her mother held her tight and said over and over:
“I’m not going to die yet, I promise… I promise.”
She hadn’t understood her mother’s anguish until now, now that she felt that same sense of desolation, that feeling of being an orphan that came from her absence.
Thank God she still had her father! He had always been her hero, her role model. In recent years, however, she had come to appreciate her mother’s inner strength, her quiet demeanor, and at the same time her tenacity to resolve everything, to forge ahead, to keep the family together, and to instill values.
The buzz of her cell phone brought her back to reality. It was a message from her colleague David, telling her that he was close by if she wanted to go out for a drink. Instead, she invited him to come by and share some picadillo with her, which he gladly accepted.
She immediately put the ground beef into the skillet along with the raisins, olives, wine, and spices over a low heat. She did the same with the rice once the water had boiled. She set the timer for twenty-five minutes and went to take a shower.
When David rang the doorbell thirty minutes later, the table was set and dinner was on the stove. Dressed very plainly, and with her hair up in a ponytail and just a touch of makeup, Maria didn’t look like she was forty-nine. When she glanced at herself in the mirror, right before she opened the door, she thought to herself: I need to lose ten pounds. This damn curse of Cuban women who have such a big ass! And she smiled as she thought about her grandmother, a Spaniard, who used that word much more often than her father would have liked.
David and Maria had started their careers at the same time in the Miami-Dade County Police Department. At one time, they had worked together as a team. In other times, like now, they were at separate stations. Both had been married and divorced. David had two sons, more or less the same age as Patrick. In all the ups and downs of their respective lives, their friendship had never wavered one bit. It was easy for them to talk because they had so much in common. Although David’s father was American, he felt more kinship with his mother’s side and saw himself, like her, as a Cuban American.
“This is the tastiest picadillo I’ve ever eaten in my life. And these plantains!”
“I can’t take any credit for the plantains. They’re from Goya and come frozen.” Maria was pathologically honest.
They chatted for quite some time, she seated on the sofa and David in the armchair. Before long, he got up and sat down beside her. There is something about the body language between a man and a woman that sends a signal. Maria knew that David wanted to make love. She had always denied it, fearing that a romantic relationship might hurt their friendship. He seemed to read her mind:
“The two of us are very alone… We’re very much wedded to our work… Nothing is going to alter our friendship.”
She felt very vulnerable. She knew that they weren’t in love and that it was unwise professionally speaking, but she also knew that David would never hurt her.
When she felt that tingle between her legs that marked the onset of desire, she knew she couldn’t resist any longer, and she let herself be gently pushed toward the adjoining bedroom.
Day 3—Wednesday, November 4, 2015
She was happy that David hadn’t wanted to sleep over. It was one thing to sleep with a man and another to spend the night with him. She couldn’t explain why, but it was different, and she wasn’t ready yet for that next step.
She got dressed quickly and made herself a shake with yogurt, strawberries, and protein powder. She stopped along the way to get her coffee and was at the office before nine in the morning.
She began to go over the list of contacts that Gladys Elena had given her and she decided to begin by calling her mother. The phone rang a few times before a woman’s voice answered, a voice that seemed to belong to someone younger than she had imagined. Maria identified herself and asked when she might be able to meet with her.
“My daughter told me that I could count on you calling me. Look, I’m driving right now. I still work… It would have to be some evening or on a weekend… Does tomorrow after eight o’clock suit you?”
Maria would have preferred to see her that very day but she jotted down the address and assured her that she would be there the next evening.
It took her longer to find the one who had been Raimundo Lazo’s boss, but, once she got a hold of him, he immediately told her that she could see him anytime except between two and four when he took his siesta. She didn’t waste a minute and took off to meet with Joaquin del Roble who lived in The Palace, an assisted living community for the elderly. There were several in the city. Don Joaquin—which is how his name appeared on the list that Gladys had given her—lived in The Palace Royale, located on 1135 SW 84th Street, in the Kendall area. It took Maria twenty-five minutes to get there. She found several tall buildings surrounded by immaculately manicured gardens. The clock showed eleven in the morning when she made her way into the lobby. It was quite beautiful and would have seemed like a luxurious hotel if not for the abundance of the elderly. Some were seated and chatting in groups while others were by themselves, reading or simply sitting idly. A few others were coming and going in all different directions of The Palace Royale, which offered them all types of amenities: a hair salon and barbershop, a business center, an art studio, a theater, a bar, and a wonderful dining room that punctually offered them three meals a da
y. The ideal way to spend your old age, Maria thought to herself with a certain skepticism since it all seemed a bit depressing despite being clean and somewhat ostentatious.
Don Joaquin was waiting for her to arrive and came up to her before she had barely gotten in the door. He was a man of small stature and, despite the fragility of his advanced years, one could tell that at one time he had been strong and tough. An abundant head of gray hair crowned his ample forehead. His eyes were bright although they’d lost their sparkle. His thin lips formed a smile when he greeted her:
“Detective Duquesne? Joaquin del Roble, a pleasure to meet you,” and he kissed her hand with such elegance that it moved Maria.
“If you’ll follow me, I think we’ll be more comfortable in the library. Almost no one goes there… People don’t read like they used to.”
He walked slowly but with a sure step. She quietly followed him, thinking of her father and how she would never want him to live in a place like this, which besides must cost a fortune.
They sat down in two comfortable armchairs and, just as Don Joaquin had predicted, the room was rather empty.
“So tell me, how can I help you?”
“Well, we’ve recently reopened the case of the accident involving Raimundo Alberto Lazo and his missing daughter, whose body was never found. Her mother believes that she saw her recently and is positive she’s still alive. It’s my understanding that he used to work for you. I know it was years ago, but anything you could possibly remember, no matter how small the detail, might help me. Look, I’ve got a picture of him here and another of the two of you together, in case that helps jog your memory.”
Don Joaquin took a brief glance at the photos. He shut his eyes, as if he wanted to delve deep into his memory and bring his recollections back to life.
The Miracle of Saint Lazarus Page 3
