Whitewater (Rachel Hatch #6)(6)

Hatch consumed the last bite of her torta de tamal. She wiped the crumby remnants of the soft bolillo roll from her lips before washing the chicken filled tamale down with the black coffee. The nutty scent wafted into her nostrils and battled the overwhelming odor of human waste. Only one more hour until the clothing store opened. As strange as it was, at that moment, Hatch longed for her morning run. She felt off. New environments always made more sense to her after a run.

Exhaust from a passing bus swirled its noxious fumes as sunlight crept its way out from behind a building across the street. Daybreak spread across Nogales. Within seconds, Hatch felt the temperature rise, and with it, the smell of her own filth solidified her reason for remaining in her current location a little longer. A change of clothes was warranted before she presented herself at the Police Department.

Vacant eyes of the homeless wandering the alley passed over Hatch with little interest. An older man staggered along rattling a tin cup along the broken stucco of the graffiti covered alley wall. The sad tune of the thin metal against the wall's rough edges stopped abruptly. The old man's ambled gait quickened. Hatch followed the beggar with her eyes, watching him as he hurried toward the street. A rush of movement filled her view as others appeared out of nowhere. They were all drawn to a light blue ambulance pulling to a stop near the alley's opening.

As the ambulance driver exited, Hatch was surprised to see he was not wearing a paramedic's uniform. Instead, he was in a powder blue button-up, rolled to the elbow, and tight-fitting jeans. His potbelly protruded just slightly over the belt line, but his frame was thin, making him look like a half-used tube of toothpaste. She guessed him to be in his early to mid-sixties. Standing nearly six feet high, he towered over the crowd. Sun bounced off the top of his bald head giving his walnut skin an orange hue. He rubbed his neatly groomed beard, yawned, and then stretched his arms high into the air before closing the door and making his way toward the rear of his vehicle.

As the crowd clustered around him, he worked like a politician on the campaign trail, hugging and shaking hands with nearly every one of them. Hatch remained seated on her prickly perch and watched from a distance while she continued to wait for the store's opening.

About a half hour later, most of the crowd had gone, and those who lingered behind clustered in small groups. But the ambulance idled in the same spot. She had watched the man who'd driven there dispense basic necessities, toiletries, water, diapers, and clothes. A young mother walked away with a package of diapers and a box of formula balanced in one arm while her infant child clung to the other. He closed the rear doors to the ambulance, passing a worried glance in Hatch's direction as he did.

She dipped her head and rolled her shoulders forward. Hatch wanted to obscure her face and height from the approaching ambulance man, hoping to dismiss any good-natured attempt to help her. The people she was hunting were likely to have eyes everywhere. Coupled with a recent critical misread of character in Arizona that nearly left her dead, Hatch had no intention of letting her guard down again any time soon.

Her subterfuge did nothing to stop his approach. If anything, it worked to broaden the smile cresting his face as he stopped in front of her. The toes of his worn sneakers nearly touched her boots.

"Estas bien, querida?"

She understood enough Spanish to know he was asking if she was okay. Hatch could've likely inferred it from his body language. Although she was fluent in three languages, Spanish was not one of them. She did, however, have a passable knowledge for conversational Spanish, but was by no means fluent.

"Please leave me alone," she said back in his native tongue, but poorly delivered and without the proper inflection. Hatch saw the expression on his face and knew immediately her ruse failed.

His knees cracked as he squatted, putting his face in front of hers. She peered out from beneath the dirty tendrils of greasy hair splayed across her face. She met his brown eyes and registered their surprise.

"You're an American?" His English was good. Hatch picked up on a slight drawl. Texas or maybe Arizona.

"I'm fine."

"You look miserable. Can I call somebody for you? Maybe I can take you back to your hotel?"

"I don't have a hotel." He looked even more confused now. Looking down at Hatch as she no longer tried to hide her face. She pulled back her hair and sat up. The kind-eyed man stepped back, taking her in.

She looked at the man and then over at his ambulance. "You a medic?"

"No." A permanent smile was stamped into his beaming face. "I am a certified EMT—well—at least I was when I lived in Chihuahua. Retired now."

"The ambulance?"

"Bought it, fixed it up, and put it to good use." He waved a hand in the direction of the ambulance where the crowd had been. "I help the homeless whose numbers grow daily. Many are desperate for asylum and find themselves lost and cast away."

"You do what, exactly?"

"I provide basic needs. Food, water, hygiene, and medicines like Tylenol and cough syrup."

"Are you government funded?"

He laughed. "No. I started this on my own and been doing it that way ever since. I like it that way."

"That's a big load to shoulder."

"Depends. I try to keep things in perspective." The perma-smile dimmed but did not recede altogether. "I was born in an alley much like the one you're sitting in."