Leann Sweeney - Pushing Up Bluebonnets

The dog hovered near Shauna, eyes on her face. She said, "I'm fine, Oliver. Would you mind pouring the tea, Abby? My hands aren't obeying my commands today. Damn MS steals your life inch by inch."

Shauna—she'd insisted on the phone that's what I should call her—settled onto the leather sofa facing the wing chairs and Oliver pressed close to her legs. After I fixed us both tea and eyed the cookies hungrily without taking one, I sat across from her.

"I'm not always like this," Shauna said. "I'm in a flare-up right now."

"I—I didn't know. We could meet another time or—"

"No. It's rare for me to be on the giving end of anything these past two years. Seems all I can do is take from others now. My friend next door fixed the tea and if you don't eat her cookies, she'll be offended." Shauna smiled.

"I'll have a couple to go," I said with a smile.

Shauna said, "That's a promise." She then pointed my way. "Visit Abby, Oliver."

The dog came over and sat in front of me, head cocked, liquid brown eyes on my face.

I petted his silky soft head. "What a beautiful animal."

"Oliver has been a godsend," she said. "He's always close. Even knows how to bring me my cell or the other phone if I fall down."

My gaze fell on a photograph on the end table to Shauna's right. I was guessing the black man and the Asian woman in the picture were her parents. The man wore an HPD uniform.

Shauna caught me staring and said, "He was shot by a crackhead on the east side ten years ago. Died at the scene. My mother took her own life six months later."

I swallowed hard and managed to utter those inadequate words, "I'm so sorry."

"Don't be. They both made choices, choices they left me to live with. I'm okay with it all now. MS is good for something. It's taught me that most bad things that happen are not my fault. My father's murder and my mother's suicide? Those horrible events were out of my control. And getting MS? Not my choice, either."

Choice, control and loss. That's what this case had been all about and still was. And here was someone who knew a great deal about those things. "If you get tired," I said, "let me know. I can come back."

"Your line of work is adoption inquiries, right?" Oliver returned to her side and rested his head in her lap.

"Yes," I said with a smile. "Did you check me out after I called?"

"You don't think I'd let any old stranger walk into my house and ask me about my job?"

I should have known. Once a cop, always a cop. "You worked with CPS on several cases?" I said.

"True. Funny how a woman who never married and who never had kids would be suited to that job. Guess I didn't feel obligated to take them all home like some other officers I knew. Is this about an adoption that took place after we removed an abused child from a home?" She looked at Oliver and patted the sofa beside her. The dog jumped up beside her and lay down.

"No, this is about something else. Do you recall picking up a nine-year-old girl from the bus station over a decade ago? Apparently she'd been abandoned there."

Shauna's features changed from warm and welcoming to troubled. "How could I forget?"

Oliver raised his head, looked at Shauna and whined.

"What can you tell me about her?" I said.

Shauna licked her lips and reached for her tea with a shaky hand. "Medicine makes my mouth so dry." After she took a sip by holding the glass with both hands, she said, "God, that was an awful night—raining like hell. The child was soaked and I wondered if those blue lips came from being cold or from being sick."

"You thought she was sick?" I said.

"I did. And after I took her to medical and we stripped off those wet clothes, we saw that big scar down her chest, so I thought I was right. She sure didn't like getting a physical—cried through the whole thing, which sure brought her color back. The doc said all the crying was probably because she'd seen the inside of one too many hospitals. She'd had recent heart surgery."

"Did she talk about being sick?" I said.

"That girl wouldn't talk about anything. Someone left her alone, chilled to the bone, in that hellhole bus station, so I couldn't really blame her. At first, anyway."

"She wouldn't talk? Are you saying she had a choice?" Back to that choice thing again, I thought.

Oliver relaxed, again resting his head in Shauna's lap. "I remember thinking when I went home after that night shift, after spending hours with the child and getting nothing but a wide-eyed stare, that she knew her name, knew her parents, knew it all—and she'd been told to keep her mouth shut."

"Really?" I said. "That didn't come through in the report."

"Because I had nothing to support my conclusion. I'd questioned hundreds of kids by that point in my career and they always gave something away, but not her." She shook her head. "Not her. I heard later some shrink said she had amnesia. Bullshit, if you ask me."

"I understand no local hospital had treated her heart condition," I said.

"True. I went to every Houston-area hospital myself, carried her picture with me. Questioned doctors and nurses. That child became my mission. No one had reported her missing. No one cared that she'd be going into the system. Made me sick, to be honest."

"Did you ever get any leads?" I asked, realizing I was glad I came here. Shauna was right about face-to-face interviews. She cared about JoLynn. No police report or foster-care file could have conveyed this woman's concern.

"Leads?" Shauna said. "Well, her clothes and shoes were from Kmart, could have been bought anywhere. We sent her picture and description to every major lawenforcement agency including the FBI, and I personally checked databases for more than a year after we found her. Nothing came up. She wasn't wanted. She'd been . . . discarded. That makes me angry to this day."

"And this little girl helped erase her own past by keeping quiet," I said. "Why? Was she afraid?"

"Probably. It was so frustrating. Even the necklace was a dead end," Shauna said. "I had this gut feeling it would lead me somewhere, but I never caught a break."

"The necklace?" I said.

"I'm not sure I even mentioned it in my report. I was afraid a superior might accuse me of wasting time on an investigation that was going nowhere. She was already safe in foster care. But I did some digging around on my own, knowing how important the necklace seemed to the girl. The night I picked her up at the bus station? She wouldn't let go, kept twirling her finger in the chain. Cheap chain, but attached was a beautiful silver piece— a tiny owl sitting on an open book. I'd never seen anything like that owl. I sent the picture with her wearing it all over the place."

"Where did you send it?" I asked.

"Faxed it with the information I sent to the FBI, sent a copy to all the missing-children organizations. We're talking eleven years back, so we weren't quite as connected to the Internet then. Especially patrol officers like me."

"What about local jewelers?" I asked.

"I didn't have the time or authorization to pursue something like that, but every time I went to the mall, or to a Sam's Club or even Target, I checked the jewelry cases. I haven't looked in several years, though. I don't get to those places much anymore."

Oliver whined, rolled his head so Shauna could stroke under his chin.

"This picture of the necklace? I didn't see it in her file."

Shauna smiled. "Not the necklace alone. Her wearing the necklace. If you have any of her foster-care pictures, you've seen it. I enlarged several photos and circled the necklace when I sent off info about her."

A clue had been right there all the time and I hadn't even noticed. "Would you like to see a picture of the girl you worked so hard for? She's twenty now, uses the name JoLynn." I reached into my bag for that photo Roberta Messing placed on a missing-persons Web site a year ago.