Page 75 of Tear Me Apart
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.”
