Ripped Apart

by Miriam Minger

  “I reported it later. Hospital security escorted him out. I haven’t heard from him or seen him since. Hope it stays that way.”

  Irene nodded and looked down at her lap a moment, absently twirling the diamond ring around her finger.

  Her husband had left her a few months ago, and Clare knew she was lonely, but Irene was so attractive it wouldn’t take her long to find some male company once she was ready. Irene had been there for Clare during her divorce and now that things looked brighter for Tyler, Clare was determined to do what she could to help Irene through a tough time.

  “Hey, you doing okay?” she asked.

  Irene looked up and threw Clare an apologetic smile. “Course. Life’s a picnic. You know that better than me. Now if that guy would turn the TV down so we could hear ourselves talk.”

  Clare followed Irene’s glance to an older man with a bad comb over who punched a button on the remote and turned up the volume even louder.

  “This is Mark Adams reporting live for Channel 4 Eyewitness News from the McAlister-Lorenzo Funeral Home on the north side. Coming up after the break, the latest update on the macabre events last night that authorities are still attempting to unravel.”

  “Oh, Lord, those poor people,” said a frumpy-looking woman sitting on a sofa across from Clare, in an aside to her teenaged daughter.

  The girl looked up from her magazine. “What people?”

  “The couple that lost their son in a bus accident two days ago. Garza, I think was their name. Some time around midnight the boy’s coffin disappeared from the funeral home. I heard about it on the news earlier this morning. A security guard was pistol-whipped from behind and didn’t see or hear a thing. Sounded like something out of a horror movie.”

  “Gross, Mom.”

  “Yeah, but it gets worse. They said there was a mix-up at the hospital—this hospital, if you can believe it. The Garzas identified the wrong kid as their son. Both boys injured in that bus accident were pretty messed up. It makes you sick just hearing about it—”

  “So shut up and maybe we can all hear about it,” said the man with the remote as the broadcast cut from a commercial back to the news.

  “Mark Adams here with an update on the incredible story we’ve been following. Prominent San Antonio attorneys Victor and Rebecca Garza refuse any comment while police investigate the case of mistaken identity involving their son, Ramon, and another young victim from the same tragic bus accident, Daniel Salinas. A spokesperson for Camp Travis provided information that Mr. and Mrs. Salinas listed their residence as Panama City, Panama, but little else is known about them at this time. Stay tuned to Channel 4 for a full update at noon.”

  “Friggin’ reporters.” The man with the remote switched to another TV station. “They tease you and make you wait, and then leave you hanging. Happens every time.”

  “I heard on another station that the two kids looked a lot alike,” announced another woman to everyone in the waiting room. “And they were best friends at the camp. The bus was on its way back from a field trip to the Alamo.”

  “It’s horrible,” Clare said more to herself than anyone, stunned from everything she’d heard.

  “Yeah, you’re not kidding,” interjected Irene, shaking her head. “The Garzas’ son Ramon was still right here. They said a guy claiming to be Mr. Salinas came to Universal Hospital yesterday afternoon, looking for his son, and they suspect he might have something to do with what happened at the funeral home. That’s what led the police to have the Garzas take a look at the kid in the morgue, and they realized their mistake. The real kicker is the Garzas had their son’s organs donated, well, who they thought was their son—Clare?“

  She had risen from her chair, feeling suddenly sick. She wished Irene would think before she spoke. “Please, no more—”

  “Oh, Clare, I’m sorry. Me and my big mouth. It didn’t even occur to me—well, Tyler and all.”

  “The transplant surgeon told me the donor heart came from a young accident victim, nothing more,” Clare said so low that only Irene could hear. Her voice shook. “That’s the way these things work. We’re not supposed to know unless the donor’s next of kin decides to get in touch—”

  “The donor could have been from anywhere, Clare, not just Texas—and we’re not going to think about it anymore, okay? All that matters is Tyler is getting better.”

  Clare nodded and tried to block out the image of Victor and Rebecca Garza she’d seen flashed on the screen, their heads down as they tried to escape from the TV cameras and the microphones shoved in their faces. Their son was dead and now they had this terrible mix-up to face, while Tyler had been given a miraculous second chance at life. She didn’t even want to think about what had happened at the funeral home—oh, God, it was so awful.

  “I think I should get back to Tyler,” she said to Irene. “I’ll call you later.”

  “Do you want me to check on anything at the house?” Irene asked, following her from the waiting room.

  Clare waved her hand no and hurried down the hall.

  She would be eternally grateful to whoever had been the donor, yet she’d hated to hear of such suffering by the Garza and the Salinas families. Had it been one of them whose son had given Tyler the heart now beating in his chest? Or had it been someone else, like Irene had suggested?

  Clare wondered if she would ever know.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico

  “Did my wife say anything else to you?” Eduardo asked Sofia, the housekeeper, as they stopped in front of Maria’s bedroom door.

  “No, Mr. Ruiz, just that she wanted to see you. I tried to coax her to eat but she threw the breakfast tray onto the floor. She screamed at the maid and the doctor for them to find you. She screamed at all of us to find you and bring you to her at once.”

  “Thank you, Sofia. Prepare her another tray.”

  The plump housekeeper sighed heavily and walked away, shaking her head.

  A loud crash came from the bedroom. Eduardo opened the door in time to see his wife’s doctor duck to avoid being struck in the head by a tumbler. The crystal glass shattered against an opposite wall where a water decanter lay splintered. Maria’s frustrated weeping filled the air and her voice rose to a screech.

  “Why won’t anyone listen to me? I told you to call for my husband! Where is he? Where is Eduardo?”

  “I’m here, Maria.” Eduardo wasn’t surprised that his wife’s weeping ceased, her jet black eyes following him as he crossed the room to her bed. He gestured for the private physician he’d hired to attend her upon their return from San Antonio nearly two weeks before to leave them. He waited until the door had closed behind the man before speaking again. “It’s good to see you sitting up—”

  “I want my son.”

  Eduardo’s breath stopped. His insides twisted in pain.

  Maria had been comatose with grief since Daniel had been interred in the family crypt, and she’d either slept the days away or stared unblinking for hours at the ceiling. Even Magdalena Castillo’s daily visits, Maria’s mother, had failed to rouse her, or so Eduardo had been told. He hadn’t spent much time at their house. Now Maria appeared fully awake and stared at him as if she could see right through him. Her eyes were lit with an intensity Eduardo would swear bordered on madness.

  “I want him, too, Maria, but he’s gone. Daniel is dead.”

  “No!” Maria’s scream echoed in the high-ceilinged room. She began to rock in bed, her red satin nightgown twisted around her crossed legs. “Daniel is not dead. Daniel is not dead!”

  Eduardo heard a soft rap at the door, but he ignored it. He knew the physician waiting outside was wondering if a sedative might be needed. “Lie down, Maria, and try to sleep.”

  “No, no more sleep! No food! You will bring me my son, Eduardo. You will bring Daniel back to me!”

  She began to weep so piteously that Eduardo sank onto the bed and attempted to gather her into his arms, but she pulled away f
rom him and scrambled off the mattress. In seconds, she’d flown across the room to crouch amid the broken glass, a dozen small cuts on the sides of her feet beginning to bleed.

  “You will hear me, Eduardo, or my brother Manuel will hear me if you will not listen!”

  Eduardo rose from the bed to move toward her, but he stopped when Maria suddenly swept up the jagged base of the tumbler and held it in front of her like a dagger.

  “Maria.”

  “No, listen to me!”

  Eduardo stood stock still, his hands at his sides. Maria rose shakily to her feet, her long ebony hair tangled in knots around her flushed face.

  “I know that you’ve been cheating Manuel behind his back and stealing from him for years. He will know your deceit, too, I swear it, unless you bring me my son.“`

  “Daniel is dead! You held his body in your arms on the plane!” As Maria shook her head wildly, Eduardo edged closer. She had threatened him before during their marriage, usually about his mistresses, but she had never leveled such a charge against him. And damn the bitch, she was right.

  He might have underestimated the beautiful yet emotionally unstable woman he’d wed out of sheer ambition twelve years before. He’d never thought her stupid, just disinterested in his business dealings—or so she had always appeared. Perhaps it was her crazed grief that made her threaten him, and she really knew nothing that might incriminate him.

  “Come and lie down, Maria. You’re hurt.”

  “What? So you can slit my throat?”

  “Enough of that talk! I love you.“

  “No, you only loved Daniel, just as I…”

  As Maria faltered, fresh tears overwhelming her, Eduardo seized the opportunity to move toward her. He knew that charge was also true. He didn’t love her, but he’d given his wife everything a woman could want, a sumptuous home, designer clothes, a king’s fortune in diamonds, and vacations in Europe’s finest cities—

  “Stop! Don’t come any closer! Not until you swear to me you’ll bring me my son.”

  “You’ve gone mad, woman!“

  “And you’re mad if you doubt me! I know you, Eduardo. I know how you think and I’ve learned your ways. If any harm comes to me, Manuel will still discover the truth. I’ve written everything to him in a letter and he’ll know where to find it. Maybe if you’d not spent every night screwing your whore Luisa, you would have seen that I’d not spent every moment in this bed!”

  Eduardo felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. The hatred shining in Maria’s eyes convinced him that her threat was real.

  “You allowed Daniel to go to that camp in Texas and now you will bring him home to me. You and I both know his heart still beats. I can hear it even now, Eduardo! Can’t you hear it? He’s calling to me. He lives! Swear you’ll bring him home and never let anyone take him away from us again. Damn you to hell, swear it!”

  As Eduardo watched Maria sink to her knees, overcome with weeping, he knew she was losing her grip on sanity. The glass shard slipped from her hand. He went to her and swept her into his arms, then carried her back to the bed. She was crying so inconsolably, he doubted she had any strength left to fight him and he thought about pressing a pillow against her face.

  To smother the life out of her would be so easy, the madness done. Yet he could not risk that Manuel might discover Eduardo had indeed been stealing from him by secretly making his own lucrative deals in drugs and small arms.

  In time, Maria’s threat wouldn’t matter. Money was power, and one day Eduardo would have enough millions to wrest control of the Castillo organization from Manuel’s cold dead fingers. But until that moment when he planned to personally put a bullet through his brother-in-law’s brain…

  Eduardo bent down and pressed his lips to her ear. “You win, Maria. I swear.”

  * * *

  “Good. That didn’t take you long.” Eduardo leaned back in his leather chair and forced himself to relax as the American at the other end of the phone call remained silent.

  These encounters always made Eduardo tense. He despised the man who had just returned his call for his cool demeanor and air of condescension as much as Eduardo needed him, and the feelings were no doubt mutual. A deep wariness of each other and unabashed greed had fueled their covert association for seven years, and things had worked perfectly until now. With Maria’s threat ringing fresh in Eduardo’s mind, he shifted impatiently while the American said nothing.

  “You’re at a place where we can speak?” Eduardo finally said to break the uncomfortable silence.

  “I wouldn’t have returned your call otherwise. How may I be of assistance to you, Mr. Ruiz?”

  The man’s formality grating on him as usual, Eduardo leaned forward in his chair. “I need some information. Fast.”

  The loud roar of a jet coming through the phone muffled any response, the American clearly calling him from somewhere near an airport.

  “I said I need information—”

  “I heard you. Give me the details.”

  Irritated that he’d been cut off, Eduardo tightened his hand into a fist around the cell phone. “You know my son Daniel died two weeks ago. He was misidentified as another boy, a Ramon Garza, at Universal Hospital in San Antonio and the parents had his organs donated. I want the name of the heart recipient—immediate family, addresses, anything on them you can find.”

  “A simple matter. Anything else?”

  Eduardo wasn’t surprised at the lack of condolence or that the American he’d nicknamed the Facilitator for his consummate skill at getting things done efficiently didn’t press for more details. Their collaboration had always been strictly a matter of business, few questions asked, and had made them extremely wealthy men. Eduardo had no doubt they shared an intense desire to keep things that way, and with his brother-in-law Manuel Castillo remaining none the wiser. “No.”

  “I’ll contact you within the hour. We’ll discuss payment later.”

  There was no need for a response, their transaction done. As the line went dead, Eduardo threw the cell phone onto his desk and stared out the window of his spacious penthouse office overlooking Monterrey.

  He had every confidence that he’d receive the information he wanted and the sooner the better. Within moments of leaving Maria’s bedroom, he’d set a plan into motion. Two of his best people, Xavier Rodriguez and Francisco Ortiz, were already on a flight to San Antonio although their first order of business had nothing to do with his wife’s insane threat.

  Eduardo picked up a stiletto letter opener and twirled the cold steel between his fingers.

  He wished he had gone back to Texas to do the job himself but that was impossible. He couldn’t risk re-entering the United States right now given his last trip to San Antonio, and he felt all the more cheated out of his revenge. God, he hoped the Garzas suffered for having his son cut into pieces like meat!

  Cursing, Eduardo stabbed the letter opener to the hilt into the arm of his chair and forced his thoughts back to the Facilitator.

  The American hadn’t failed him yet. All Eduardo needed was the name of the heart recipient, and then he would know what had to be done.

  * * *

  Rebecca Garza poured hot coffee into two mugs, and added a hazelnut creamer and a packet of artificial sweetener to her husband’s mug. The kitchen was dark except for the digital clocks displaying six a.m. on the stove and the microwave oven. She fumbled in the flatware drawer for a spoon.

  It was the early morning routine she always followed, preparing coffee for herself and Victor while he showered and then Rebecca heading back upstairs to get dressed for work. Only then would she wake her son Ramon to get him dressed and ready for his day, except of course right now while he was away at summer camp she didn’t have to wake him—

  “Dear God.” Rebecca stopped stirring the coffee and leaned against the counter, wondering how she could have thought she was ready to go back to the law firm. She felt instead like she was losing her mind.

  R
amon wasn’t at camp. Ramon wouldn’t be getting ready for school or running out the front door to go play with his friends or to a Little League game. He would never do any of those things again. He was dead. They had buried him almost two weeks ago. What could she have been thinking?

  Tears burned Rebecca’s eyes and she wiped them away with her palm. The coffee was growing cold. She picked up the mugs and walked noiselessly on bare feet out of the kitchen to wend her way through the dark house.

  She would simply tell Victor that she wasn’t ready to go back to work. He had returned to his busy schedule a few days after the funeral, finding some comfort he’d told her in preparing for an upcoming trial but she could foresee no such solace for herself. The pain she felt was immeasurable, her guilt even more crushing.

  She still could not believe she hadn’t recognized that the dying child in the ER was not Ramon. Seeing the bloodied watch she’d given to him as a Christmas gift encased in a plastic bag had been enough for her, when she should have done so much more, DNA testing, anything!

  The doctors had tried to explain later that the injuries were so severe, the boy’s facial features so crushed beyond recognition, such a mistake could happen. A camp photo had confirmed that the other boy Daniel Salinas had looked eerily similar to Ramon in physical appearance, his hair color, his height and slight build—yet Rebecca doubted she would ever be able forgive herself.

  If she’d only touched the boy in the ER or looked at him more closely as she’d been asked by the police to do later at the hospital morgue, she might have guessed he wasn’t Ramon, but she’d scarcely been able to look at him at all.

  What kind of mother did that make her? She’d thought he looked like a monster but she was the monster! How could she face anyone? The story had been everywhere, on the TV news, the radio, and in the newspaper.

  The authorities still had no solid lead on why the Salinas boy had been taken from the funeral home in the middle of the night, but a witness had come forward saying he’d seen a van pull up to the back door and a coffin lifted aboard. Privately, the police detectives in charge of the investigation had suggested to Victor that the man claiming to be Mr. Salinas hadn’t been from Panama, but they weren’t any closer yet to discovering his whereabouts to be able to question him.