Tavia and Lieutenant Acosta and I had decided to work different angles. Acosta was going to plumb the federal police intelligence files for any mention of Favela Justice. We returned to the idea that the Wise girls, who’d been in Brazil under assumed identities, must have been spotted by someone who knew them by sight. Unless the girls had told someone who they were.
When we’d asked the twins, who were both doing much better, about it again, they had once more strongly denied that they’d revealed their identities. We wanted to talk to them some more, but both of them were tired and Cherie told us to come back in the morning. They were all going to sleep the night away.
We left them, realizing that if an individual had taken a particular interest in the girls, somebody at one of the three charities they’d volunteered for might know about it. We couldn’t try the sanitation project or the NGO because they were closed.
But the third charity, the orphanage, was a different story.
We heard a television playing and children laughing when Tavia pulled the cord on the bell at the front gate. A man came to the entrance and looked at us suspiciously until we showed him our identification and asked to see Mariana Lopes.
“She’s not here,” he said.
“We called the clinic, and they said she was here,” Tavia said.
“It’s late,” the guard said. “She’s tired. Come back tomorrow.”
“It won’t wait,” Tavia said. “Could you tell her Octavia Reynaldo and Jack Morgan are here and that it is very important?”
He had a scowl on his face and spit out something in Portuguese as he walked away.
“I didn’t catch that.”
“He said, ‘They never leave that poor woman alone.’”
Five minutes later the gate opened. We walked into a walled area surrounding a large, rambling, three-story building painted in a riot of pastel colors. In front of it was a playground with all kinds of toys strewn about.
Mariana Lopes shut the gate behind us and smiled, though we could see she’d been under strain and hadn’t slept.
“We’re sorry to bother you, Mariana,” Tavia said.
“You said it was important, so it’s not a bother. Do you want tea? There’s some in the kitchen.”
“Tea would be fine,” Tavia said.
Lopes led us through a maze of hallways, past bunk rooms and common areas and lavatories and a laundry, to a cramped but well-equipped industrial kitchen that was spotless.
“You did all this yourself?” I asked. “The clinic and the orphanage?”
“I had help,” she said. “Lots of it.”
“But you were the guiding light,” Tavia said. “It was all your idea.”
“I picked from a lot of good ideas,” Lopes said.
“How many kids?” I asked as we sat down at a table.
“At any one time the census is somewhere between sixty-five and seventy-five. Is that why you’re here? If you wanted a tour, I could have arranged it for—”
“Do you remember these girls?” Tavia asked, showing Lopes a photo of the Wise sisters on her cell phone.
The orphanage director put on her reading glasses, looked closer. “Of course,” she said. “The Warrens. Why? Are they the girls who were kidnapped?”
“And returned for ransom,” I said.
“Oh my God,” Lopes said, her hand at her mouth. “I never put it together.”
“We never told you who the girls were,” Tavia said. “Tell us about them?”
Lopes shrugged. “We have many volunteers like the Warrens who come through here, usually four, five at a time, so they tend to blur a bit, but I remember those two well. They had a rough go of it at first, but they turned out to be wonderful girls. If I could get those kinds of volunteers all the time, the children would be the better for it. Oh, this is awful. Are they all right?”
“They’re going to be fine,” Tavia said. “But you said they had a rough go of it. In what way?”
“Well, they came here straight off the plane. First stop. I think they might have believed they’d go to Copacabana or something, but that didn’t happen.”
Chapter 54
A SECURITY GUARD came into the kitchen. Mariana Lopes went over and spoke to him for a few moments, then returned to us, pushing back a wayward strand of hair as she sat down.
“You were saying that when the twins came here, they thought they were going to Copacabana?” Tavia said.
“I’m saying they were shocked by the poverty,” Lopes said. “You could tell it really bothered them. They were well aware that there were poor people in the world, but this was clearly the first time they’d seen it in person. They kept getting tears in their eyes, and on the second or third day, I overheard one of them, I can’t remember which, telling the other that she didn’t know if she could take it, seeing kids suffering when they’d been given so much.”
“But they got through the shock?” Tavia said.
Lopes nodded. “I walked over and told them that this was the point of volunteering. They were giving back because of all that they’d been given. That seemed to change their attitude. And they’d both studied Portuguese before they came, so they could talk with the kids. They befriended many of the children and staff in their time here. I wish my daughter, Amelia, were here to tell you. She had more interaction with them.”