Shit, shit, shit. She turns on the water, shoves the letters under the sink.
“I’m in here, Mom. Don’t worry, I’m just taking a shower.”
“I got you a decadent tub of Dutch chocolate pudding. It’s ready when you finish your shower.”
“Thanks, I’ll be out in a minute.”
Mindy holds her breath. Her mom will hear her if she unlocks the door, wonder why it was locked in the first place. Lauren doesn’t like locked doors. It’s a thing with her. Closed is fine, and she always knocks, but locked is out of the question.
But her mom leaves, and Mindy sighs in relief. She can’t return the letters, though, which is not good, but she will try later. After she’s read them all. There are many more in the stack. Several years’ worth of missives.
She wraps her leg in a bag and steps under the water to wash off the grime of the hospital, thinking, Who are these girls?
32
DENVER, COLORADO
Before Juliet can start her search, Cameron shows up at her door. He’s carrying a pizza, a bunch of files, and is buzzing with suppressed energy.
“The dead doctor, Castillo? There’s more to the story. Way more. She got fired back in 2000, and she committed suicide not long after.”
“Come in. Suicide? What’s the story? Why did they fire her?”
“Apparently, she was taking money under the table. Probably for illegal adoptions, like your sister’s.”
This makes Juliet’s heart race. She shuts the door behind him carefully. “Illegal? Not closed?”
“Any time you have the transfer of a child, there has to be paperwork. It’s illegal to give your kid away for money otherwise. Apparently, one of the services the doctor was providing was finding homes for her indigent patients’ babies. She took money from the family who was adopting the child, erased the bills for the hospital records for the birth mothers, and pocketed the rest. The hospital found out and booted her. Thing is, she’d managed to place a bunch of kids.”
“Wow. On one hand, I guess you could say she was doing people a service. Those babies might not have stood a chance being brought into the world by indigent teen moms. On the other hand...”
“Yeah. Baby farming. Not cool.”
“Any way to find out who she worked with?”
“The files identified a couple of young women, but the majority just disappeared. But catch this. One of the women identified was named Graciela Flores. She had a baby girl and gave her up for adoption, the works.”
“My God. That could be our girl.”
“Except...”
“Of course it’s too good to be true. Except?”
“The kid she gave up would be eighteen now, not seventeen. And you said that you saw Mindy when she was an infant—I hardly think you’d mistake an infant for a toddler.”
“No, I wouldn’t. Maybe she had another kid right afterward? Or they got the dates wrong.”
“I don’t know, Juliet. Something about this feels weird. There’s more.”
“What’s that?”
“Castillo was fired in June 2000. Mindy was born in August.”
“So she did the work behind the fence after they let her go.”
“Maybe.”
“Come on, a full-blown OB/GYN who’d just lost her license, and some off the path kids having babies? She’d be the ultimate midwife. She probably had a few ready to pop when she was fired, and just let them know where she’d be when their time was nigh.”
He runs a hand through his silver hair, looking doubtful. “You may want to ask your sister for some more details, is all I’m saying.”
“Well, I can’t do that right now. They’re telling Mindy the truth about her parentage as we speak. We should try to find this Graciela woman, see if she remembers Lauren at all, and see if she’d be willing to take a test. Maybe the files were wrong. We can only hope, right?” She rubs her hand across her face.
“Absolutely.” He parks himself at her desk. “You have any beer to go with that pizza? Since I’m playing hooky...”
“I do. Be right back. Want a cold glass?”
“No, I can rough it.”
She grabs a bottle of Yuengling, makes herself a cup of tea. Throws some pretzels into a bowl. Brings everything back to the office to find Cameron scrolling through his phone.
“What are you doing, swiping right?” Her smirk is unmistakable, but Cameron has stopped scrolling and is staring at her.
“What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“We have a match.”
Her pulse kicks up. “In CODIS? Let me see.”
“Just hold on a second. I need your computer.”
“Sure. Of course.” She gestures toward the desktop. He opens Google, speaks quietly.
“There’s a cold case, out of Nashville, Tennessee. I saw a case study of it a few years back. The man’s name is Zachary Armstrong. His child was kidnapped.”
“Wait, that’s the same name Lauren was looking up. Jasper asked me to look into him.”
He types Zachary Armstrong baby kidnapped into the search bar. “Look.”
There are pages of hits. Her heart leaps to her throat.
“No. No, no, no. There’s no way. What are you saying, that Lauren somehow bought a baby that had been stolen from a couple in Tennessee, and has raised her as her own this whole time?”
“It’s so much worse than that, Juliet.”
He clicks open the first of the stories. There is a photograph of a young Army officer and his very pretty wife, and at the headline, Juliet sags, her knees turning to jelly.
Fort Campbell Soldier’s Baby Kidnapped,
Wife Murdered
PART TWO
33
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE
AUGUST 2000
The metal of the casket is the same color as the sky, murky gray with touches of glinting silver as the sun passes behind the clouds. The sound of sobbing, the cries of the justified, the flailing of my heart. Why did I choose such a big casket? She doesn’t fit. It’s the smallest adult coffin they have, but it’s still too large. She is lost inside. They should have handled this. The padding needed to be expanded so her body doesn’t jostle.
The body. Her body.
The words I’ve heard in the past few days are ones I never expected—new, untried, untested. Casket. Body. Funeral. Viewing. Embalming. Autopsy. Severed. Seven-inch non-corrosive steel blade.
Homicide.
The first responders were called in for my family. They came quickly. Only took them three minutes to arrive at the house. But it was already too late.
They were both gone.
I’ve forgotten where my life ends and the evening news begins. The story of my family’s demise plays over and over again. The city is shocked, horrified, on red alert. Everyone is looking for my daughter. For my wife’s murderer.
The sun is completely hidden now, the rain beginning to mist in the hazy air. The people in attendance, the crowd overladen with cops, look at me sympathetically, eyes hooded, shadowed. I know what they see. A tall man, dark hair cut high and tight, ribs still bandaged from a month-old gunshot wound sustained in a double-cross in Afghanistan, eyes angry and sad. A man alone. This is my second funeral this week. In the past few days, I’ve lost my mother, my wife, and my child.
I can’t look at the casket anymore. She’s wearing the blue dress I know she loves, the dark sapphire silk nearly the same color as her eyes. I had to bring her makeup bag to the funeral home intact; I didn’t know what color lipstick she would want. The mascara I had down pat; I always loved to watch her put it on. It came in a red tube, and she’d get so close to the mirror, leaning until she nearly touched her reflection, swooping the black onto her lashes again and again until they fringed her perfect violet eyes in soot. But the lipstick—she wore a different color every day. I let them make the choice. It was better that way.
Umbrellas start to pop open. The priest nods and smiles sadly, a comfort to the bereaved. Arms on mine now, gentle squeezes, hugs. I don’t know who anyone is. They are assigned to protect me. To keep me safe. They couldn’t save my family, but by God, they will not let me die.