Tear Me Apart

by J. T. Ellison

  “Gorman, he had no form, looked like a pile of sticks doing cartwheels, but the rush of flying down that hill satisfied the adrenaline junkie in him. We could barely get him off the slopes that first day. And ever since, any chance he got... He was obsessed. You know how some men watch golf on the weekends? He watched skiing. Even got an upgrade on the satellite plan so he could watch the European races. He was all FIS, all the time.”

  “FIS?”

  “International Ski Federation. They sponsor all the World Cup events.”

  “Ah. And Gorman was a fan of Mindy Wright?”

  “Devoted. I asked him once what the attraction was—outside of her being adorable in all the right places, of course. He said she was a huge talent, but I sometimes wondered if it was more.”

  “More?”

  “I don’t know. It wasn’t like him to get so attached to a stranger, you know?”

  “Did he ever meet her?”

  She nods. “The weekend he...we went to Beaver Creek to see her ski. She won the race. He got her autograph. Shook her hand. I have a picture here somewhere, probably on the camera. I... I haven’t looked at the photos.”

  “Let me do it. You don’t need to.”

  “No,” she says, voice full of steel. “It’s high time I did. Come with me.”

  The camera is downstairs in the kitchen, shoved into the back of the junk drawer. She smiles apologetically as she moves screwdrivers and masking tape out of the way. The drawer is incongruous with the rest of the house, and it makes Parks happy to see Andrea Austin Gorman isn’t utterly perfect.

  The camera’s battery is dead, but she has the right cord, and within minutes, it is charged enough to start looking through the photos. Outside of paling, and a few excessively loud swallows, Andrea holds it together long enough to find the shots of Gorman and his skiing celebrity crush.

  She holds out the camera, and Parks looks closely.

  Gorman, grinning ear-to-ear, one hand with fingers up and spread in a rock and roll sign, the other around a teenage girl with long, dark hair and dark eyes.

  Parks feels his jaw drop.

  “What is it?”

  “Can I take this?”

  “Um... I...”

  “Oh hell, Andi, these are your last pictures of him. Never mind. Tell you what, can I load the pictures onto my computer?”

  “That would be fine. Actually, I can dump them onto a thumb drive. Hang tight.” There is a laptop on the counter, and she expertly offloads the photos and hands over the drive.

  “Thank you.”

  “Can I ask?”

  Ever the cop’s wife, discretion is always paramount.

  Parks gives her a long look, then gestures to the computer. “May I?”

  “Sure.”

  He opens Google and types for a moment. A few seconds later, he turns the laptop around.

  “Does she look familiar?”

  “That’s Mindy Wright.”

  He clicks again, and a photo of a young couple loads onto the screen. Side by side, the photos take his breath away.

  Andi looks at the screen for a good three seconds before saying, “My God. Do you think—”

  “That Gorman may have found Vivian and Zack Armstrong’s kidnapped daughter? Yes. I do.”

  And left unsaid are the words they both think.

  And it was the last thing he ever did.

  * * *

  Parks keeps his cool on the drive back to the office. He doesn’t make any calls or set off any alarms. He has a long way to go to figure out what is going on, but his instincts have paid off.

  Mindy Wright isn’t a dead ringer for Vivian Armstrong. She is taller, her face leaner. But she has her father’s eyes and her mother’s chin. So much similarity that Parks is sure if he shows a photo of the girl to Zack Armstrong, he’ll be on the first plane out of Nashville to find her.

  They have to step carefully. If Gorman suspected the same and went out to Colorado to casually check things out, and something happened to him that wasn’t an accident...

  Parks is grasping at straws, he knows, but it all feels so strange and wrong, and he’s been a cop long enough to know there is no sense ignoring a hunch.

  And he has a hunch Gorman found a trail.

  38

  DENVER, COLORADO

  Fueled by beer and pretzels, and around 2:00 a.m., delivery Chinese, Juliet and Cameron work all night, running and re-running DNA tables while researching the Armstrong murder/kidnapping. She loves Mindy heart and soul and will do anything to keep her from getting hurt. But she is becoming more and more convinced Mindy is the lost child from Nashville. The photographs of Vivian and Zack Armstrong are telling—Mindy resembles them both, especially Armstrong himself.

  As horrible as the case and the situation, there is, of course, a significant upside to this discovery. Zack Armstrong, or his immediate family, might be a match for Mindy’s stem cell needs.

  Juliet longs for a pipette of his blood. Blood she understands. It is simple, straightforward. Hemoglobin, plasma, water. Potassium, chloride, phosphorus, sodium. Oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen. It is beautiful—balanced, the perfect nutrient to keep the body moving. Until it decides to betray its host in some way, as it has Mindy.

  The more she learns about the case, the stranger this all feels. She is trying to stay rational and focused but is having a hard time. She is family; these are her people. She is involved. It gives her a new appreciation for the crime victims she works with, albeit anonymously, behind the scenes.

  Around four in the morning, they have the DNA profiles lined up, and Juliet goes to work. She runs the sequence one more time, bottom lip between her teeth, a pencil stuck in her hair pulling it back from her face, Cameron looking over her shoulder.

  “It’s a match,” he says, but she shushes him and runs it again, just to be sure. Her blood is whirring in her veins, the adrenaline rush coming as the sequence lines up perfectly, again.

  “Come on, Juliet. It’s right. You know it’s right. You’ve known it all night.”

  It is. The mitochondrial DNA doesn’t lie. Mindy is Vivian Armstrong’s biological daughter.

  “Just...give me a second, okay?”

  He rubs her shoulders, and she closes her eyes, lets him soothe her. She is having a hard time grasping what this means, and at the same time, her coolly logical side is running a situational awareness report.

  Vivian Armstrong, stabbed to death. An infant daughter, stolen from the home. A doctor in Colorado, running an illegal adoption scheme.

  Her sister, taking receipt of a stolen child. No teen mother named Graciela, wanting her child to have a better life. But a child ripped from her mother, who is very, very dead.

  Lauren is going to freak out entirely when she finds out the whole truth behind Mindy’s birth.

  More importantly, how is this going to affect Mindy?

  Juliet can already see the headlines. World-Class Skier Stolen Child of Murder Victim.

  The notoriety alone will be difficult for Mindy, who only wants accolades for her hard work. She will be devastated to have her skills supplanted by what will amount to tabloid news after the initial flush.

  “Okay,” Juliet says, finally. “What are our next steps?”

  “You have to report this to Woody, obviously. And tell your sister. As for the rest?”

  She spins her chair around. “I need to get Zack Armstrong here, immediately, is what I need to do. We need to get a blood sample. He could be a match for the transplant.”

  “He could. Two-pronged approach then? Find Armstrong, bring him to Colorado, and let your people start an investigation at the same time.”

  She leans the chair back so she can see his face. “I’m worried the investigation will take precedence. That Armstrong will say no. That the whole world is going
to collapse in around us.”

  Cameron toys with the edge of an empty noodle container then shrugs. “Well, it might. But it all might work out for the best. It’s not an optimal situation, no matter how you look at it. But you have to tell. You can’t keep this a secret.”

  “I’m not my sister,” she snaps.

  “I know you’re not, J. But we’ve made a discovery that’s going to have long-term ramifications. Why don’t you fill in Woody, and Lauren, then fly to Nashville and haul Armstrong’s ass back here.”

  “I think that’s my only course of action, don’t you? And let the investigative chips fall where they may. I’m just... This is going to kill Lauren. She’s so private, so determined to let Mindy shine. Having a spotlight on her and Jasper, her actions, it’s not going to be easy on her.”

  “It’s never easy on any victim.”

  “I know. At least we’ve helped solve part of the case.”

  Juliet lines up all her ducks, and Cameron helps, and when he leaves for work, bleary-eyed and rumpled, she goes through it all again.

  She looks at the DNA profile as if the answers will rise from the page and give her the truth she needs. Everything she is seeing tells her the same story.

  Vivian and Zack Armstrong’s long-lost daughter has been found.

  But the questions this raises are daunting, and as she arranges her day, she can’t help letting them run through her mind.

  Who killed Vivian Armstrong? And how was Mindy chosen to sell to Lauren? Was Castillo involved in more than simply helping place her indigent and illegal patients’ children? Why, and how, was she trafficking in stolen babies?

  These are questions for her CBI agent compatriots to answer. Juliet has to handle her family.

  Juliet showers and cleans up the apartment. Despite what she told Cameron, she still doesn’t know what step she wants to take first. Talk to Lauren? Talk to her boss? Get on a plane to Nashville and see if Zack Armstrong will come to Denver, no questions asked?

  All of the above is the only option.

  No matter what happens, this story is about to get very public, very quickly. Everyone needs to be on board because the media is going to be all over them from the moment they hear. Everyone loves a reconciliation, especially involving missing kids.

  In the end, it is her sister’s number she dials first.

  Lauren sounds as bleary as Juliet feels.

  “I’m so sorry, did I wake you?”

  “Not exactly,” Lauren says, the yawn imminent. “You sound like you were up all night, too.”

  “I was. Listen, are you alone? We need to talk.”

  “I am. Jasper’s gone to get breakfast.”

  “Mindy didn’t take it well?”

  A ghost of a laugh. “She didn’t take it well, no. She took it with hope, and grace, and excitement, and then fear and anger. If it wasn’t her lifeline, I would have been insulted. She was practically vibrating with the idea that she was someone else’s kid, then she attacked me for holding out on her.”

  “Sounds like a perfectly normal reaction, considering the situation.”

  “She’s no dummy, Juliet. She knows a cure might be out there.”

  “And that’s what she was excited about, Lauren. She loves you and Jasper. Nothing will change that.”

  “We’ll see.” Her sister’s bitterness is surprising. Just you wait, sister.

  Juliet takes a deep breath. “I need to talk to you about Mindy’s lineage.”

  “You make her sound like a horse.”

  “Stop, okay? I think I might have found her father.”

  The silence from Lauren is deafening.

  “Are you still there?”

  Finally, “Yes. Who is it?”

  “A man named Zachary Armstrong. He’s from Nashville.”

  Her sister curses, short and mean.

  “Wow, Lauren. Language.”

  “Where did you hear that name?”

  Juliet senses this is important. That she must tread carefully. She doesn’t want to start another fight between Jasper and Lauren. But she also doesn’t want to tell Lauren she ran the DNA without permission, so she risks the other half of the truth.

  “Jasper mentioned you’d looked him up. How do you know him, Lauren?”

  “I don’t know him.”

  “But you were looking him up the other night.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “Jasper said—”

  “I wasn’t looking him up personally. There’s an old case—it’s Castillo. I started wondering about her. I haven’t thought about all of this in years, Juliet. I never thought it would come up.”

  “You already know Mindy is his daughter?”

  “What? No. Of course not.”

  “But you know about the case?”

  “I remembered something, that’s all. About a child who was stolen. We used to live in Nashville. I look at the news from there sometimes.”

  “Well, when you looked, did you find him? Because I did. And Mindy is a dead ringer for him and his wife.”

  A little gasp of air.

  Juliet tries again. “I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be confrontational. But you’re not telling me everything. How do you know this man? How do you know about his missing child?”

  “I told you, I don’t know him. Of course I don’t. And I don’t know anything about the case. Like I said, I was thinking about Dr. Castillo, wondering if what she did wasn’t as aboveboard as she claimed. I couldn’t sleep, and I thought I’d look for missing children from the year Mindy was born, and I saw that Armstrong case. It caught my eye because of the Nashville connection. I didn’t remember hearing about it. I clicked on the story, then Jasper interrupted me. I haven’t even had time to look at it again.” Silence. “You think Mindy is their child?”

  “I know she is. After I saw the case was unsolved, I had legal leeway. I ran the DNA. It’s a match. Your Dr. Castillo was in a darker business than you ever knew.”

  “Oh, my God. Juliet. I can’t...what do we do?”

  “I have to approach this Armstrong guy. I can only imagine he’s gotten his hopes up a lot over the years, and this will be a huge thing for him to take in. Plus, we need to think about the long-term effects of this. Especially on Mindy’s mental health. The media—”

  “Go. Do it. Oh my God, Juliet, if you’ve found Mindy’s parents, you have to tell them, and get them here, right now. We’ll deal with the fallout later. Mindy is getting sicker by the day. We need a cure.”

  “The wife is dead.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. How terrible. But if the father is alive—”

  “You didn’t read the whole story?”

  “I told you, I’d only just started looking when Jasper interrupted me.”

  “The wife was murdered, and the daughter was taken from their home.”

  A full-blown gasp this time.

  “You aren’t serious.”

  “I am. Whoever took their baby stabbed the wife. The husband was out of town. When he got home, his wife was dead, and his baby was missing.”

  “My God, Juliet. That is horrible.” She pauses, and the whole tenor of her voice changes. “And wonderful. This is wonderful! I don’t mean to be selfish, and I am very sorry about the situation, but if there’s a chance this man can help us save Mindy’s life? There’s no time to lose. He might have more children. He might be a match himself.”

  The joy in her sister’s voice puts some of Juliet’s worries to rest. “I agree. I wanted to get your permission to contact him.”

  “You have it.” Lauren goes quiet again. “That poor woman, murdered.”

  “It’s tragic. I’ll be in touch. Hang in there, Lauren. We’ll get this sorted out. You guys have to be prepared, though. As soon as people know Mindy is the lost Armstrong baby,
it’s going to be national news in an instant.”

  Lauren sighs heavily. “Let’s cross that bridge when we get there, okay?”

  39

  NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE

  The logistics are easy enough. There is a direct flight to Nashville leaving at 9:35 a.m. Juliet books the flight online, cringing at the last-minute full-fare price, then tosses a couple of things in a bag—toothbrush, change of clothes, brush, laptop—and opens her Uber app and orders a car. They make it to the airport in record time.

  She doesn’t call Woody. Not yet.

  She knows it’s dumb, and that she’ll probably get taken to task, but there is something inside her that says, Wait, talk to the man first, break the news gently. Get him to Colorado, and then you can tell Woody.

  Her mind is racing, but she puts the thoughts aside and takes advantage of the flight to catch some shut-eye. She is exhausted and falls asleep quickly, her head pillowed on her jacket against the hull of the plane. She wakes as they land in Nashville, the wheels screeching onto the tarmac, jolting her upright.

  She has all of Armstrong’s contact information, which has been easy to find with a quick database search. Climbing in another car, she tells the driver, a young woman this time, to head to Vanderbilt University.

  “School’s on break, so traffic is light. We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “Wait, they’re on break?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then take me to this address instead. I might need you to stick around for a few if my meeting is canceled.” She curses herself for not checking these things first. All she had thought about was getting to Armstrong immediately, assuming, because he is a professor, he could be found on campus. You’re a hell of an investigator, Juliet. This is why they keep you in the lab.

  They chat a bit, driving through the city, which is covered in cranes; there seems to be construction on every corner. Before she knows it, the driver is winding up a leafy green hill and pulling up in front of a starkly modern house, a glass rectangle perched on the side of the hill. There is a black four-door Jeep Wrangler in the driveway.