Maria remembered the island as close to the Antioch Bridge, so he and Shauf worked slowly away from the bridge, island to island. They circled several and returned a third time to one. Shauf dropped him at a rotting dock and Marquez climbed up to a levee road where he found a fishing rod and a tin bucket with anchovies, but no fisherman. He walked the road looking down to his left at the island and watching on the other side in the trees and brush near the water for the fisherman. He figured it was someone was looking for catfish in the tules.
On the island side of the levee was an ancient apple orchard and falling-down sheds with corrugated metal siding. Even from here he could see someone had walked through the dry rye grass between the trees in the orchard to one of the sheds, and momentarily he considered hiking down, but they’d already been on the river four and a half hours and Shauf was ready to call it an afternoon. She needed to get the boat back. He studied the sheds out across the orchard, and then walked back to the rotted dock and Shauf’s DBEEP boat.
On the way home he called Hosfleter and gave her the coordinates of three islands. Then he made another call and a stop in the town of El Cerrito where Alicia Guayas and her son, James, lived in an apartment just off the freeway. Maybe he stopped today because he felt the past returning. Alicia handed him a mug of rich Mexican hot chocolate with canela and frothed milk. A Telenova soap opera played on TV. She turned that off and their conversation turned first, as it always did, to family.
Alicia named James after his father, Jim Osiers, and he was like any other American kid that had grown up here. He sounded and acted like a typical American teenager, and Alicia expressed her worry that she was still illegal and that everything could come crashing down for James. Years ago, Marquez wrote letters for her to try to help her get legal status, but he didn’t think she ever did anything with them. She was either afraid of being deported or blew it off.
On his last trip to Loreto in 1990 Marquez discovered that Alicia had gone north with the baby and crossed the border. It took him two more years to track her down in California and longer to get her to understand he didn’t mean her any harm. He helped her out financially and she paid him back. She always insisted on paying him back. She worked two jobs and had never remarried. Her focus now was on James going to community college next year.
Beautiful Loreto with its sand and Sea of Cortez was just a tourism poster on her kitchen wall now. Sitting at her kitchen table he could hear the trucks going by on the freeway. The hot chocolate mug vibrated on the table when he set it down and stood to leave. He had asked new questions about Jim Osiers and after walking him to the door she said, ‘For me, I just want to be here with my son. For you, the past is still alive, isn’t it?’
When he got back on the road Katherine called and reported factually, but sounded very disturbed as she said, ‘We got broken into today. When I got home the slider to the deck was open.’
‘Where are you now?’
‘In my car waiting for the police to get here. I didn’t go in. Where are you?’
‘Leaving El Cerrito. I stopped to talk to Alicia Guayas and I’m stuck in traffic now. It’s going to take me forty minutes.’
‘Here come the police.’
‘Call me after you walk through.’
Katherine walked through with two police officers and couldn’t find anything missing except a photo of Maria. The photo had been stripped from its frame and the frame dropped on the hardwood floor.
‘Why would anybody do that? Who would do this? It can’t be about getting her picture. They can get that from Facebook. So who is it, John? Who would do that?’