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“What was that man’s name?” Louis asked.
“Wolfgang Outen. He was below her status and station in life in every possible way, but shewouldhave him, and there was nothing we could do,” Leigh said.
“I have a copy of their wedding certificate and a copy of the marriage license. Can you please verify those for me?”
Leigh glanced at them and then shoved them away. “Yes, they belonged to them.”
“I see you and your husband were witnesses on the marriage certificate. Can you verify those signatures as your own?”
“Yes, they are our signatures,” Leigh said.
The next thing he laid out was the baby’s birth certificate.
“Who’s birth certificate is this?” he asked.
“The one given to the baby my daughter bore. It was born dead and deformed.”
“There’s no name on the birth certificate other than Baby Girl Outen. Why is that?”
Leigh shuddered. “It was just a lump of flesh and hair. It wasn’t a person.”
“But surely your daughter had a name picked out?” Louis asked.
“Our daughter suffered an aneurysm during birthing. She never saw the thing she gave birth to. She went into a coma. She was dying. We made decisions for her.”
“Where was Mr. Outen during this time? Why was he not part of these decisions?”
Leigh looked him straight in the face. “He was in a foreign country working in some Saudi oil field. He wasn’t there when she needed him. He arrived less than an hour before she passed.”
“Where was their baby?” Louis asked.
“It had been cremated. It was the humane thing to do. Like burying roadkill.”
Louis hid his shock and pulled out a death certificate. “This is the baby’s death certificate. Can you please verify that for me, as well?”
Leigh glanced. “Yes. We have a copy of it, too.”
Then Louis pulled out another picture. It was the first photo in Amalie Lincoln’s case file. “Do you recognize this baby?” he asked.
Leigh glanced down. “No, I do not.”
Louis spoke. “For the record, I just showed Mrs. Bullock a photo taken of a baby girl found abandoned in an alley in Hot Springs, Arkansas, six days after the birth and purported death of her own granddaughter.” Then he pulled out the photo of Wolf and Amalie taken only weeks before.
“Do you recognize the people in this photo?” Louis asked.
Leigh barely glanced, and shrugged. “It’s another photo of my daughter and her husband.”
“No, ma’am, it is not. This is a photo of Wolfgang Outen and the daughter he found through Ancestry.com. Her name is Amalie Lincoln. She was found abandoned as a baby in an alley in Hot Springs, Arkansas, approximately six days after her estimated date of birth.”
Leigh gasped, then slapped both hands over her mouth to keep from screaming.
Louis pulled the copy of the note found with the baby.
“Do you recognize the handwriting on this note?” he asked.
Leigh was trembling. “Uh…no. No, I do not.”
“According to our handwriting expert, this note was written by the same man who signed your daughter’s marriage certificate. Now I’m going to ask you again, do you know who wrote this note?”
