Chapter Fifteen

The U.S./Mexico border city of Nogales, Arizona, is about one hundred and eighty miles south of Desert Investigations, and as luck would have it, there’d been an accident between three semis on I-19, so we had to crawl down one lane at about forty-five miles per hour all the way from Arivaca Junction to Rio Rico. After that, the pace picked up to a nifty sixty, and Juliana and I rolled into the desert-surrounded town almost four and a half hours after we left Scottsdale.

Although divided in half by the ugly border wall, Nogales is a pretty city. Its lush green hills harken back to the days when Americans, Mexicans, and the Tohono O’odham and Yaqui Indians could walk back and forth down International Street from one country to another without being stopped and frisked. These days, because of the border wall, the city was becoming best known for its infuriatingly long traffic backups at the crossing into Nogales, Mexico. Fortunately, we didn’t have to head that way, just into the half-empty parking lot at 3030 Grand Avenue, where the Department of Public Safety was located.

Lieutenant Jaffrey, the DPS trooper who’d called in the sighting, had already gone home for the day—he’d spotted the kids’ vehicle parked at an all-night McDonald’s while working the graveyard shift—but Sergeant Gonzales said that if we wished, he could give him a call.

“Not that he’d be any help, because by the time he got turned around, they’d already left. He never spotted them again, but that’s the way it goes, doesn’t it?” A gray-haired man obviously nearing retirement, he exuded serenity and was soft-spoken to a fault.

Juliana wasn’t. “Which McDonald’s?” she snapped.

He hunt-and-pecked a few keys on his computer, making her huff with impatience. Leaning closer, he squinted through his bifocals and read, “The one on Mariposa Road. Not the Super Center.”

“Where’s that? Mariposa Road?” She was almost shouting.

I tugged at her sleeve. “Calm down. The Jeep’s got GPS, remember?”

“I don’t trust those things!” she snarled.

Behind her, Gonzales rolled his eyes, but when she turned back to him, his face had resumed its serene expression. “Well, turn left out of the parking lot…”

If you’ve seen one McDonald’s, you’ve seen them all, but at the Mariposa Road McDonald’s, there were more people enjoying Sausage McMuffins than at any Scottsdale McDonald’s. In Scottsdale, late-day noshes tended towards breakfast burritos with plenty of hot sauce. After we made it through the serving line, the Yaqui woman behind the counter—her name tag said LILY—told me the shift manager who talked to the DPS trooper last night wouldn’t be in until eight that evening, so we’d have to come back then.

“Do you know who waited on the kids?” I asked.

“Jeff. He’s not here now, but he was talking to me earlier about how many yogurt parfaits they ordered. They must’ve had a cooler with them.”

Lily started to add something, then noticed Juliana hovering behind me. “Hey, aren’t you that woman’s running for Senate?”

Oh, great. Juliana wasn’t exactly running on the Vlad the Impaler ticket, but close, which is why I’d told her to stay on the down-low in this Indian-friendly place.

Ignoring my warning, she said, “Yes, I am. And my daughter’s missing and I’m scared to death for her. She may have been here with her boyfriend last night.”

To which Lily said, “I’m a skeet shooter myself, and I’m tellin’ you, you shoulda taken the Gold. The Silver, at the very least.”

Her comment wasn’t as odd as it seemed. While still in college, Juliana had been on the Olympic Skeet Shooting Team, and had returned home with a Bronze Medal. All these years later, she still enjoyed a loyal following of skeet shooting fans.

Juliana forced a smile. “Thank you. I tried hard for the Gold, but…” She shrugged her elegant shoulders. “You know how it is. Some days you’re not your best when it counts the most.”

“Don’t I know it.” Lily looked around, leaned forward over the counter, and whispered, “Try our night manager Maralita Simmons-Naquin. She works part-time at PreLoved, the resale shop next door. She’s there right now.”

Maralita Simmons-Naquin was not only at work, but when we showed her Ali’s and Kyle’s pictures, she remembered them. A sixty-something woman whose figure hinted at the enjoyment of too many Big Macs and Sausage McMuffins, her shoulder-length, silver hair was glorious enough to grace the cover of American Salon.

“I have grandkids about their age, and I would never allow them to be roaming around that late on a school night,” Maralita said, explaining why she’d noticed the two. “We had a new cook working the shift, and he was having problems with the range, or I’d have paid more attention to them, maybe even called the police. They didn’t stay long, just ate fast—Big Mac Meals for the both of them—ordered ten yogurt parfaits to go, and then took off. But as to which way they were headed, I couldn’t tell you. Maybe the Border, not that they’d ever get across by themselves, being that young.”

Therein lay another flaw in the kids’ plans. With the tightened security at the Border, there was no way the guards would let two obvious runaways without parents or passports to cross into Mexico to fulfill their dream of buying a beachfront adobe hacienda complete with horses. Especially if the runaways didn’t even have driver’s licenses. Teenagers being teenagers, they hadn’t thought that far ahead.

“Did they look okay?” I asked. “Healthy?”

“Oh, they looked fine. More than fine. You don’t see kids that beautiful every day.”

Her use of the word “beautiful” didn’t make me as happy as it should have, because sex traffickers are always on the lookout for good-looking young teens. Before Juliana could think the same thing, I quickly asked another question. “Are there any camping grounds nearby?”

“You mean other than the parking lot at Walmart? Yeah, we’ve got a ton of them. Why? You think the kids are camping out?”

“It’s a possibility.”

The list she rattled off was lengthy, including Kino Springs, Patagonia Lake State Park, and the entirety of the Coronado National Forest. Searching for them would take more manpower than we had, and more bearish equipment than my tricked-out Jeep. At times like this I hated Arizonans’ predilection for white cars. If the kids had been driving something purple or florescent green, they’d be more easily spotted by helicopter. As it was, from the air they’d be just one more white car amidst thousands.

After learning nothing else, we thanked her and left. We spent the next few hours talking to various local and state police officials, then cruising the streets of Nogales ourselves, but once the sun set and darkness crept across the lovely hills, we had to admit defeat. I needed to be at Desert Investigations first thing in the morning, and Juliana was scheduled to speak at another prayer breakfast. As soon as everyone said “Amen,” though, she would return to Nogales on her own.

We were both quiet during the long drive back to Scottsdale, but as we passed another teepee-bedecked souvenir stand, she said, “You know, if I had been stricter with her, this would never have happened.”