Missings, The by Peg Brantley Page A

at her friend. “She’s dead.”
    “Doesn’t matter. Still need a warrant. We have really picky attorneys.”
    Crap. Fatigue and frustration were wearing away Chase’s patience. “Let’s see what your attorneys think when the hospital is named as complicit in both previous and subsequent deaths related to our investigation,” Chase said.
    For the first time frigid air fogged the camaraderie. The humorous repartee was history.
    “What are you saying, Detective?” Leslie James asked.
    “I’m saying that someone should contact us first thing in the morning. We have a minimum of three deaths, possibly more, that could be linked to this hospital. I’m sure the public would appreciate a cooperative position as opposed to one that implies a cover-up.”
    “Detective Waters, I have no doubt you’ll hear from someone tomorrow morning.”
    Out in the parking lot Terri squared her shoulders. “Did you have to be such a prick?”
    “Look Terri, sometimes it takes a prick to shake up the waters, excuse the pun. The more the good guys know what we’re looking for, the harder it is for the bad guys to hide.”
    “I just don’t want my relationships jeopardized. I’ll need them again, you know.”
    “I do know.”
    “You’re planning on going public?”
    “Not for as long as I can help it. Get a warrant. I want to see those records.”

Chapter Twenty-Four
    The Madrigal Home
    Friday, September 21
    Efraín set the book next to him on his bed. The shot the physician’s assistant had given him yesterday at the hospital had worked wonders for his flu symptoms. He’d be able to work tomorrow and get back to his classes on Monday.
    Efraín’s parents were in the kitchen, and he could picture their ritual after-dinner coffee cups on the old scarred table. The dishes from his family’s dinner would have been long since washed, dried and put away. The paper-thin walls of the small home made it seem as if Efraín sat at the table with them.
    “ Dios! How are we going to pay for the truck repairs, Armando?” His mother insisted they speak in English but she sometimes slipped into Spanish when something upset her. And money always upset her.
    “We will find a way,” his father said.
    His father always said that. And somehow, for as long as Efraín could remember, they always had found a way. He had never been hungry. Never not had a roof over his head. That was way more than he could say for a lot of other people.
    At sixteen he understood fully the things that separated him from everyone else in this small town, in this country , and the things that would forever make him different. It didn’t matter that he placed in the top five percent of his class at Aspen Falls. It didn’t matter that he had become a trusted and valued employee at Cobalt Mountain Books even though he had only worked part-time there for four months. It didn’t matter that he had a dream—to be a writer. Nothing mattered in the end—except for where he came from.
    His parents had tried desperately to get across the border from Mexico when his mother was pregnant with him. They’d been turned back—or scared back—three times before they finally found a way into the US. But they never made it to a hospital where he could get a legitimate birth certificate.
    Efraín Tomás Hanks Madrigal met this world in a cattle shelter in the middle of nowhere. His parents told him he was a “legitimate American,” but with no paper to prove it, he’d always been just another wetback from Mexico. His three siblings, two more boys and a girl to wrap things up, had all been born in Aspen Falls Memorial. They were legal-legal .
    His name fit. The Spanish form of the Hebrew name Efrayim, Efraín meant “double-land” or “twin-land.”
    He didn’t belong anywhere.
    “Maybe we won’t find a way this time, mi esposo .” His mother’s voice shook. “With your hours not being regular right now and my Aspen winter ladies still in their summer homes, we can