“You found Marie, but not my baby….” Lourdes started weeping, this time aloud. “If Caitlin’s not with Marie, where is she?”

Decker said, “Lourdes, I’m determined to find out what happened to your daughter. Believe me, I couldn’t be working any harder if it was my own kid.”

Lourdes sobbed bitterly.

“You’re upsetting her, man!”

Decker silenced Matty with a glare and waited for the young girl to cry it out. Time was going to move very slowly for her. Lourdes dried her eyes on the backs of her hands. “Why did they take my baby?”

“I don’t know.”

“I was thinking that maybe some stupid gringo took my baby. All these stupid old gringos want to adopt babies ’cause they can’t have their own. But they want white babies. Caitlin was Hispanic.”

“The gringos can’t find white babies, they settle on Hispanic babies,” Lopez said. “Besides, you’re not real dark.”

“I’m not a gringo.”

“You could pass for a gringo.”

“So maybe a gringo took my baby,” Lourdes said. “What do you think?”

“I wouldn’t even hazard a guess, Lourdes, until I have more information. As soon as I find out anything, I’ll tell you.”

Lourdes said, “Cindy was very nice to me. She told me she was going to try to find Marie herself.”

Decker paused, wondering what Cindy had in mind. “Well, it looks like we may have found Marie. Now we have to find your baby. I’m going to do everything I possibly can.”

“Yeah, you’ll work real hard until the TV cameras go away.”

“Matty, stop it!”

“Mr. Lopez, you can be as skeptical as you want,” Decker said. “Tell you the truth, if I were in your position, I’d probably be ripping out some walls. Not that I’m telling you to do it, just that I think you people are handling this well. Especially considering how young you are.”

Lopez made a half-smile, then a half-frown. “I got my own method of ripping up walls, man. Wanna hear?”

“Shoot.”

“Lourdes and I are going to make a statement to the press. We’re going to talk about how bad the hospital is and how the hospital’s trying to make like it’s not their fault. How they’re trying to buy us off if we sign away our rights. We’re American citizens, man! We have rights just like all you rich white gringo assholes! Unless we see some real…some real…you know…”

“Some answers?”

“Yeah, that’s it. Unless we get some answers…and some…”

“Compensation?”

“Exactly, Mr. Policeman. We want compensation! And unless we get something big, we’re going to tell every fucking paper and reporter how bad they treated us. Like we was a bunch of dumb wetbacks.”

“You’re going to make a statement, Matty?”

“Yeah, I am. You got a problem with that?”