The Wrong Family

by Tarryn Fisher

  “Please, please help my son! Please!” she screamed, even as they yelled at her to get down. Winnie looked back at the house as police officers swarmed around and past her, through her open front door. Would they find her brother inside or had he run out before her?

  Everything that followed was a blur of voices and faces until the medics tried to load her into an ambulance. She screamed Samuel’s name until one of the paramedics, a Black woman with close-cropped white hair, spoke so firmly to Winnie she stopped struggling.

  “You can’t be anyone’s mother if you’re dead. Are you hearing me right now?”

  Winnie stilled to watch the woman attach a blood pressure cuff to her arm. “Good, you’re listening. You have a concussion, and we’re taking you to the hospital so none of that slapping. You got me in the face and that made me angry because I’m trying to help you.”

  “My son...”

  “Yes, Samuel, I know, you’ve been screaming his name for the last ten minutes. The police are looking for him. Maybe he left. All we can do right now is take care of his mother. Lie back.”

  Winnie did as she was told, thinking of the open door. Yes, maybe he’d gotten out, had run before Dakota could catch him. And that was the last thing she remembered.

  * * *

  When she woke up again she was in the hospital, attached to what seemed like a thousand wires. Right away, she knew. There was no moment of not remembering this time, though she would have preferred that. Her eyes looked for someone to tell her about her son, but the room was empty.

  “He—ey,” she said. “Hey... I’m here.”

  A nurse came in a moment later, and she smiled at Winnie before hitting a button on the wall. “Paging Dr. Willis, the patient is awake.”

  The patient, Winnie thought. That was her; and the nurse didn’t even have to say her name or room number. The fear of what that meant made Winnie close her eyes.

  The nurse carried over a plastic cup and inserted the straw between Winnie’s lips.

  “Just a little, I know your throat must be a mess.”

  Winnie drank a few sips and then opened her mouth to start her barrage of questions, but the nurse cut her off.

  “Dr. Willis will be here in a moment. Save your throat and ask them when he gets here.” She didn’t say it unkindly, and Winnie thought she was probably right; even the attempt at speaking had left a burning in her throat. Dr. Willis came in a few minutes later; he was youngish, with ginger hair and an aww-shucks air about him.

  “Mrs. Crouch,” he said, coming to stand by the bed. “We’re very happy to see you awake. You had a pretty serious concussion.”

  Winnie gathered his words and sorted them in her mind, her eyes closed. Everything was taking too long to understand.

  “How long...?”

  “Eleven days.” He tilted his head to the side when he said it, and for some reason that made Winnie cry.

  “Where is my son? Where is my son?” She started coughing after that, and it took several minutes for her body to calm down enough to hear Dr. Willis speak.

  “He’s fine. He’s with your sister.”

  The relief rode through her body with such force that she tried to sit up. The wires yanked, the machine beeped and the nurse was at her side, pushing her back down gently as the doctor watched.

  “Police found him in Greenlake Park a few hours after you were taken to the hospital. He had no idea what was happening at home, and his intention had been to run away.” He paused, and the weight of that hit Winnie in the gut. He knew now, dear God, he knew his father had been murdered by his uncle. Dr. Willis, seeing the look on Winnie’s face, gave her a moment to process. “There is a detective here that would like to talk to you. You don’t need to if you don’t feel up to it, but they’ve been haunting the halls and annoying my nurses. Do you want to talk to them, Mrs. Crouch?” Winnie didn’t hesitate before nodding. She very much wanted to talk to them and get more details about Samuel.

  The police detective introduced himself as Detective Rey Abbot. He pulled a chair up to Winnie’s bed and looked at her with genuinely sympathetic eyes when he asked her how she was.

  “I’m worried about my son. I’m confused about what happened.” He nodded like he understood all of this and offered Winnie the box of tissues when she started to cry.

  “Your sister-in-law, Amanda Straub, said that your brother Dakota and your husband had issues for some time.” He paused, and Winnie shook her head in confusion.

  “Issues? My husband wasn’t overly fond of my brother. Dakota is—erratic, but Nigel also let him move into our house when his wife kicked him out.”

  “Mrs. Crouch, we have reason to believe that it was a little more serious than that. That their relationship may have declined over recent months.”

  “I don’t understand why you’re saying any of this. Nigel is dead and Dakota killed him. I saw it with my own eyes.”

  “Your brother and Nigel argued a short distance away from the house, just across the street at the park. An eyewitness says they saw a man run across the street in the direction of your house, and then another followed behind shortly after. Your brother stabbed Nigel here...” he pointed to a spot on his own chest and Winnie remembered the flow of blood she’d tried to stop by pressing down...the blood had slipped through her fingers regardless. She was lost in that moment, the memory of the blood on her hands, as the detective discussed her husband’s murder in his quiet, matter-of-fact tone.

  “—he then tied up both you and a woman named Terry Russel. Mrs. Russel was found tied up, dead from a gunshot wound to her head...in the apartment in your home. When police arrived at the scene, you were running out of the house. Records from the alarm company confirmed that someone disarmed the alarm from inside the house shortly before we arrived.”

  He watched her face carefully. Winnie was unable to hide what she was feeling.

  “My brother must have disarmed it before he ran out. The door was wide open. He must have cut me free, too.” She couldn’t breathe, the memories were fresh pain. She clawed at her neck, searching the detective’s face for help. What was happening? Had Dakota changed his mind about killing her at the last minute? Or maybe he never intended to hurt her or Sam, only Nigel.

  “Get out.” The nurse took one look at Winnie, casting a disdainful look at Detective Abbot. He started to say something but clearly thought better of it, glancing at Winnie before heading out of the room. Winnie reached for the nurse, unable to catch her breath, her hands grabbing at air.

  “She’s having a panic attack,” she heard someone say. And then there were more people, and then there was nothing. When Winnie woke, her sister was sitting in the chair the detective had occupied.

  “Shelly,” she said, struggling to sit up. “How’s Samuel?”

  Shelly looked ten years older than the last time Winnie had seen her. Her mouth was curved in an ugly line, and the rest of her looked almost loose at the seams.

  “He’s worried about you, but other than that, he’s doing as well as you can expect.”

  Winnie relaxed back into her pillow. There were a dozen questions cueing up in her brain and she was too foggy to organize them. “Dakota...” she said.

  Shelly’s pinched features twitched and then her mouth sagged open to release the rest of the story. Winnie tried to piece it together between her sister’s sobs.

  “Wait... Shelly...are you saying they haven’t caught him?” Winnie felt like her stomach was about to pay a visit to her throat.

  “N-n-no...” Shelly was dry-heaving now. “He killed that woman and then, and then he...ran.”

  “Ran where...? Did he cut me free?” Winnie was starting to cry now. “He killed Nigel. Where is he, Shelly?”

  Shelly stood up and came to sit on the edge of the bed, taking Winnie’s hands in her own. They cried together for a few minutes, just holding
hands, before her sister said, “They don’t know, Pooh Bear. When the police arrived, he was already gone, the front door was wide open like he ran out pretty fast...”

  “But the neighbors... Mr. Nevins must have seen him...”

  “Your neighbor—” Winnie could hear the distaste in Shelly’s voice when she said those two words “—heard the gunshots, the ones that killed Nigel and the Russel woman. Initially he thought it was fireworks from kids in the park. He called the police and I guess he made a noise complaint to them about it. Then he went about his business.”

  To Winnie that sounded exactly like Mr. Nevins; the nosy, self-righteous busybody. Shelly was put off by the fact that he didn’t follow the first call with an investigation. That’s what she would have done.

  “Apparently, he heard the sound again, another shot, around twenty minutes later. Only then did he decide to investigate. He walked out of his house and toward the park, where he claims to have stood for a good five minutes before turning around to go home.” As an afterthought Shelly added, “And that’s when he saw your front door open and called the police for the second time.”

  “What other shot?” Winnie said. But Shelly was shaking her head.

  “They don’t know. There’s something else, Winnie.” She wasn’t meeting Winnie’s eyes this time. “There were footprints in the blood.” Shelly wiped her nose with the back of her hand and looked down at the sheet. “They weren’t yours or Nigel’s or that woman’s.” She shot Winnie a look. “They were small.”

  “A child’s? What do you mean?”

  “They weren’t Sam’s. And he had no trace of blood on his person or clothes,” Shelly said quickly. “But that’s why that detective was here wanting to talk to you.”

  “About footprints?” She was so confused. She had no idea what these footprints were about, but how long until they made the connection between her and Josalyn Russel?

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying, Shelly.”

  “Look, I don’t know, either. They’ve questioned the Russel woman’s family, and they have no idea what she was doing in Washington. She was from Ohio, Winnie.” Shelly leaned closer, her eyes so bloodshot Winnie flinched. “Why was she at your house?”

  Winnie could smell the coffee on her sister’s breath. She suddenly felt the lack of air creeping up on her and closed her eyes. Her son was safe, her son was safe.

  When she opened her eyes, Shelly was staring at her intently. Winnie found this incredibly annoying. Whatever lecture there was she didn’t want to hear it; her twin brother had murdered her husband and was on the loose somewhere. Winnie braced herself for a fight. She wasn’t going to lose Samuel, not for some nutjob like Terry Russel.

  “The Russel woman had a bunch of stuff in her bag...papers, an email. There was even a police report about a Jane Doe...” Shelly glanced toward the door and Winnie wanted to scream her impatience. “The email is what I have to tell you about. Someone was writing to this woman and telling her things about Sam.” Winnie felt light-headed. She gripped the rail of the bed and stared hard at her sister. She didn’t have the energy to respond in the way that Shelly wanted. “What things...?”

  “That Sam was her dead daughter’s son. And that you had stolen him from her.”

  Winnie didn’t have to feign shock; the look of panic on her face made Shelly squirm in her seat. “Police think she was trying to kidnap Sam.”

  Winnie tried to sort through her questions before someone came in. Her head wasn’t right; she needed to remember this later. “Who sent the email?” Winnie asked.

  Shelly shook her head, but for a moment Winnie saw doubt in her sister’s eyes. “I just know what Mike tells me.” Winnie didn’t particularly like her brother-in-law Mike Stallwart, but he didn’t know that. She’d asked him for a few favors over the years, and he’d been nice enough to never mention it to anyone in the family. This time it involved more than just Winnie so of course Mike was telling them everything.

  Winnie ignored the question. “Was she married...? What about the husband?”

  “She was. He told the police that she’d been depressed on and off since her daughter’s death and had even contacted a medium...” Shelly paused to let that sink in. “Her daughter was homeless, and last she heard from her she was in Seattle and pregnant in early 2007.”

  Winnie nodded slowly but her hands were shaking even as they were locked in an embrace. “So why would she think Sam was her daughter’s kid? Sam was born in 2008.”

  Shelly shrugged. “Terry obviously didn’t know that when she showed up.”

  “So Samuel knows I’m his mom, right?”

  “Of course,” Shelly said. “They’re saying it was a terrible coincidence that Terry came on the same night Dakota...” Winnie shook her head vigorously. She didn’t want to hear any more about Dakota.

  “Anyway,” Shelly said quietly. “They’re investigating. I’m sure they’ll do what police do.”

  Winnie didn’t want to know what that meant. Whoever that person was, they’d known enough to get Terry Russel involved. She shifted the subject to Manda, wanting to think more on that later. Shelly’s face soured at the mention of Dakota’s wife.

  “She’s angry. She’s blaming us—all of us,” she added, glancing at Winnie. “She says he’s always been mentally ill and we knew it and enabled him.” Shelly spat this out with laughter in her voice, and Winnie felt herself get so hot under the thin hospital sheet she had to close her eyes to keep from yelling. “Dakota was normal until he met her. She’s the one who—”

  “My God, stop it. I was there, Shelly. What Manda is saying is true. It may not be solely our fault, but we ignored what was right in front of our faces. I bought pot from him, for God’s sake.”

  Shelly’s head jerked up at that. “Marijuana doesn’t make someone a murderer,” she said tightly.

  “No, it doesn’t, but the fact that he hid everything from his wife and children, the fact that he shot Nigel and tried to kill me—I think that all points to the fucking fact that he was sick!”

  “Stop,” she hissed, glancing around nervously. “They’ll find him. But when they do, your brother is going to prison for life. Do you understand that? Your twin brother, Winnie.”

  All she could do was gape at her sister. Was Shelly asking her to feel bad for Dakota in this moment, excuse him?

  “I understand that he deserves to go to prison for killing my husband.”

  Her sister rose from her seat with the sort of lofty air Winnie had always respected, but now made her rageful.

  “He’s family. Excuse me if I can’t hate my brother.”

  “You’d hate him if it were you. Go home, Shelly. I want to be alone.”

  “You’ve always been the biggest hypocrite in the family,” she said, moving toward the door. “Sam told us that Nigel hid liquor bottles from you. So I wouldn’t be so quick to point fingers.”

  Winnie blinked at her sister with something like revulsion on her face. Was she really comparing a bottle of Jack Daniel’s to murder? Winnie wouldn’t even dignify that with a response. Shelly went for one more blow before she left. “Mom is brokenhearted. First her husband dies, and now her son is gone.”

  * * *

  Winnie was released from the hospital three days later. Nigel’s mother, Nancy, picked her and Sam up and took them to her town house, where they would stay until they found something else. Sam—he’d firmly asked to be called Sam—was glued to her side. Nigel’s mother already had him in therapy, and Winnie was glad of it. She wasn’t sure how to make decisions for them yet, so they burrowed down in her mother-in-law’s spare room for the time being. Detective Abbot came by every week to check on them and update her on the case. It had been six weeks, and they still hadn’t found Dakota. He’d left his truck a few blocks away, parked on the street and unlocked, his wallet inside the glove box. Winnie, who’d
always felt connected to her twin, felt nothing at all. If he was out there, what he’d done had severed any tie they had. As for Josalyn, they’d made the connection eventually and Detective Abbot had come to talk to Winnie at her mother-in-law’s town house.

  “Josalyn was your patient, so we believe Terry Russel chose to take the death of her daughter out on you. It happened very quickly on her end. She received the email and had booked a flight to Washington within an hour.”