The Wrong Family(60)

Juno had finally poked the sore spot; Terry Russel began to cry. She could hear the muffled quality of it at first, and then she really let loose, gasping and sobbing into the receiver like it was her best friend’s shoulder.

“I’m so sorry,” Terry said after a minute, sniffing. Her voice lacked some of its refinement now that she had a stuffy nose. “You never stop grieving, but I suppose you know that, don’t you?”

She knew all too well that no matter how fresh the day was, the rot of the grief permeated through it. No day was safe, no hour, no minute; grief came and went as it pleased.

“No, but you find new things to be hopeful about as you move forward. Terry...” she said, switching to the woman’s first name without permission, “may I have your email address? I have something I want to share with you.”





      26


JUNO

After hanging up with Terry, Juno bustled straight to the computer. Her mouth was puckered into a little bud as she sat down and swiveled toward the keyboard. As she touched the mouse gingerly, her mind was still going over the conversation she’d had with Josalyn Russel’s estranged mother.

Terry had been vague about the details of Josalyn’s death, but Juno was a stranger. She’d been surprised that Terry had told her as much as she had. So why had it felt like snide gossip? This time, Juno typed in “missing teen Lima/Seattle dead” and found three pages of results. The first that she opened was enough: a short clip from the Seattle Times.

An unidentified female had been found in a landfill next to an incinerator in Tacoma, Washington, on February 10, 2008. She was between sixteen and twenty-five years old, 5'6" and 114 pounds, with faded dyed hair. She wore black bikini panties and a single ring, worn on her right hand. She had good muscle tone and, at one point in her life, had taken good care of her teeth. The victim had likely died on February 8.

Josalyn Rose Russel had been reported missing from her home in Lima, Ohio, in 2005, when she’d run away from her family home after an argument; that’s what Juno gleaned online. According to an acquaintance, Josalyn had hitched a ride to California, after which she was not seen or heard from again.

Juno sat back, her mind tussling with this new information. So Josalyn had fled Ohio and, a year later, in 2006, ended up in Washington, a teen runaway under the care of Winnie Crouch. In 2007 she’d had a baby, and in 2008 she had been found dead. Winnie, she was sure, had had maternal feelings toward the girl. But why had Josalyn run away in the first place? Juno thought of the cold aloofness she’d heard in Terry Russel’s voice. The denial mothers, that’s what she’d called them in her therapist years; women who dragged their sullen, druggie kids into the office for her to fix. They didn’t want anything to do with the actual therapy; there was a strong aversion to the truth.

“The denial is strong with that one,” she’d say to her secretary, Naveen, who would take the outstretched file with a sad, knowing smile. But even if Terry had been a denial mother, she had every right to know that she had a grandson. And he has every right to know about her, Juno thought decidedly.

Josalyn had described Winnie to Terry as a friend. That meant the girl had trusted Winnie. Social workers often felt like friends to their patients, and it was easy for lines to become blurred. Fifteen years ago, Winnie would have been fresh out of grad school, young and energetic. The pictures were in every room and on every wall, Winnie posing with various landmarks and accomplishments: high school graduation, college graduation, engagement, wedding, grad school graduation...and then, Juno imagined, it was time for a baby. Winnie liked things to be orderly, and Juno supposed that at some point, she’d decided it was time and approached Nigel about it. But—plot twist—she couldn’t get pregnant. Entitled, spoiled Winnie—it must have irked the hell out of her when she found out Josalyn the teenage homeless girl was pregnant and didn’t even want to be when Winnie herself couldn’t conceive. Juno felt a surge of disgust for Winnie—for Nigel, too, who’d known and who’d helped Winnie get what she wanted out of Josalyn.

Juno created a new Gmail account; it took her a minute to think of something suitable. She settled on [email protected] and clicked to open a new message.

“Like riding a bike,” she said to no one. All those years when she actually had a computer: one at home, one at work and one always in her bag, a sleek silver laptop. It made her laugh and feel sick at the same time.

Dear Terry, she typed. We had a conversation on the phone today. Thank you for speaking with me. I know that must have taken a tremendous toll on you emotionally. When I called to inquire about Josalyn and you told me that she claimed she had a baby in late 2007, I did some digging and stumbled upon a police report filed by a homeless woman in December of 2007, claiming her infant had been kidnapped.

Juno had not done some digging; she’d found both xeroxed police reports in Winnie’s lockbox, along with the bloody scraps of cloth. One report had been made by an unnamed homeless woman in December 2007, claiming that her infant had been kidnapped. The report, filed by a Sergeant Morales, indicated that the woman had seemed under the influence of alcohol or drugs, perhaps both. And the other report concerned the body of a young woman found in February 2008. Neither the woman in the report nor the homeless woman who filed it were named. But one thing Juno knew firsthand was that the homeless were largely nameless to the general public, described in terms of their drug addiction and crimes instead of their names and personalities. And this was Josalyn, she knew it. One report was Josalyn claiming that her infant had been kidnapped, and the other one was Josalyn found dead. Had Winnie had something to do with Josalyn’s death, too? Did that explain the bloody cloth in the lockbox?