Shock (28 page)

"Let me know if it happens again," Kurt said. "And let me know if you have any more interaction with Georgina Marks, or her friend for that matter. And it goes without saying that you're to keep this conversation just between you and me. Do I make myself clear?"

Randy nodded immediately.

Kurt stood up and without another word walked out of Randy's cubicle.

DEBORAH GAVE UP TRYING TO WORK WITH HER MIND churning, it was impossible to concentrate, and since she and Joanna would soon be departing the scene, it was a sham anyway. She'd been waiting over an hour for Joanna's call to say that her nosy cubicle neighbor was gone, clearing the way for them to access the donor file, but it had never come. Apparently the neighbor wasn't going anyplace soon.

Deborah drummed her fingers on the counter top. She'd never been particularly patient and this unnecessary waiting was pushing her beyond her limit.

"Screw it,' she said suddenly under her breath. She pushed back from the microscope, grabbed her purse, and headed for the door. She'd kowtowed to Joanna's apprehensions and paranoia about her neighbor long enough. After all, what did it matter? As soon as they got the information, they were out of there. Besides, as Deborah had suggested, she could block the screen with her body so the neighbor couldn't see anyway.

Avoiding looking in the direction of the few lab people she'd met, Deborah headed out into the hall once again as if she were on her way to the ladies' room. A few minutes later she slipped into Joanna's cubicle. Joanna was dutifully working.

Without sound Deborah mouthed the question, "Which direction is Gale Overlook?"

Joanna pointed to the partition to the right.

Deborah stepped over to it and looked over. It was a cubicle the mirror image of Joanna's. Interestingly enough it was not occupied.

"There's no one here!" Deborah reported.

Adopting a questioning expression, Joanna looked as well. "Well, I'll be darn," she said. "She was here two minutes ago."

"How convenient," Deborah said. She rubbed her palms together excitedly. "How about doing your sorcery right this minute. Let's get the information about our progeny and fly the coop."

Joanna stepped over to the opening of her cubicle and looked in both directions. Satisfied, she came back and sat down at her keyboard. Hesitantly she looked up at Deborah.

"I'll keep a lookout," Deborah assured her. Then she added, "And after all this effort, this better be good."

With a few rapid keystrokes and clicks of the mouse Joanna pulled up the first page of the directory for the donor file. There amongst other names at the beginning of the alphabet was Deborah Cochrane.

"Let's do you first," Joanna said.

"Fine by me," Deborah said.

Joanna clicked on Deborah's name and her file popped up. Both women read over the material which included background and baseline medical information. At the bottom of the page was an underlined, boldfaced notation that she'd adamantly insisted on local anesthesia for the retrieval.

"They certainly took that anesthesia question seriously," Deborah said.

"Have you finished with this page?" Joanna questioned.

"Yeah, let's get on to the good stuff!"

Joanna clicked to the next and what turned out to be the final page. At the top was the notation NUMBER OF EGGS RETRIEVED. Next to it was a zero.

"What the hell?" Deborah questioned. "This suggests they didn't get any eggs from me at all."

"But they told you they had," Joanna said.

"Of course they did," Deborah said.

"This is strange," Joanna said. "Let's check my file." She returned to the directory and scrolled through until she got to the M's. Finding her name, she clicked on it. For the next thirty seconds they read through the material, which was similar to what they'd read for Deborah on her first page. But on the next page they were in for a larger surprise than the one caused by Deborah's zero eggs. In Joanna's file it said that 378 had been retrieved.

"I don't know what to make of this," Joanna said. "They told me they'd gotten five or six, not hundreds."

"What's after each egg?" Deborah asked. The type was too small to read.

Joanna enlarged the view. After each egg was a client's name along with the date of an embryo transfer. After that was Paul Saunders's name, followed by a brief description of the outcome.

"According to this, each one of your eggs went to a different recipient," Deborah said. "Even that's strange. I thought each patient would get multiple eggs, if they were available, to maximize the chances of implantation."

"That was my understanding as well,' Joanna said. "I don't know what to make of all this. I mean, not only are there too many eggs, but none of them was successful." With her finger she ran down the long list where there was either a notation about implantation failure or a miscarriage date.

"Wait! There's one that was successful," Deborah said. She reached out and pointed. It was egg thirty-seven. A birth date of September 14, 2000, was indicated. It was followed by the name of the mother, an address, a telephone number, and the notation it was a healthy male.

"Well, at least there was one," Joanna said with relief.

"Here's another one," Deborah said. "Egg forty-eight with a birth date October 1, 2000. It was also a healthy male."

"Okay, two," Joanna said. She was encouraged until both she and Deborah had gone through the entire list. Out of the 378, there were only two other positives, egg 220 and egg 241 both having been implanted that January. Each of these was followed by the notation that the pregnancies were progressing normally.

"How could they have implanted this so recently?" Joanna asked.

"I suppose it means they're using frozen eggs," Deborah said.

Joanna leaned back and looked up at Deborah. "This is hardly what I expected."

"You can say that again," Deborah responded.

"If this is correct, that's a success rate around one in a hundred. That doesn't speak well for my eggs."

"There's no way they got almost four hundred eggs from you. This has to be some kind of research fabrication for God knows what reason. Almost four hundred eggs is about as many as you'll produce during your whole life!"

"You think this is all made up?"

"That would have to be my guess," Deborah said. "Weird things are going on here, as we both know. In that light, a bit of data falsification wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. Hell, it happens in the best of institutions much less in an isolated place like this. But I'll tell you: Now that we're confronted with this mishmash, I'm even more disappointed we can't get into their research files."

Joanna turned around to the keyboard and started typing.

"What are you doing now?" Deborah questioned.

"I'm going to print the file out," Joanna said. "Then we're going to take it and leave. I'm crushed with these results."

"You're crushed!" Deborah said. "They have me down for no eggs whatsoever. At least they thought enough of you to attribute some live kids."

Joanna glanced up at Deborah. As she suspected, her roommate was smiling. Joanna had to give her credit. Thanks to her mischievous personality, she could find humor in most any circumstance. For her part, Joanna was not amused at all.

"One thing I do notice,' Deborah said. "With each egg entry of yours, the sperm donor is not mentioned."

"I would assume it was the woman's husband," Joanna said. She finished setting up the printing command and clicked on the Print button. "Now that's going to take a few minutes with the size of the file. If there's anything you want to do, do it now, because once we have the file, I want to leave."

"I'm ready now," Deborah said.

"WHAT A DAY," RANDY LAMENTED. HE WAS THANKFUL TO have gotten rid of Kurt Hermann but disgruntled he'd had to have such a weird conversation in the first place. The man was like a caged tiger with his quiet demeanor and the slow way he moved and spoke. Randy shook himself as if having had a wave of nausea just remembering talking with him.

Randy was on his way back from fixing the workstation in accounting which he'd had to put on hold when he'd been called to have the chat with the security chief. It was going on two in the afternoon, and he was looking forward to getting back to his cubicle. Putting up with Kurt hadn't been the worst part of the day: that was reserved for having lost to SCREAMER, and Randy was aching for a rematch.

Arriving in his cubicle, Randy went through his usual trick to see if Christine was around. He was glad to see she wasn't, which was typical for that time in the afternoon when she had her department-head meetings. That meant he could allow a little more sound. Sitting down, he pulled his joystick from behind the monitor. Next he typed in his password to unlock his keyboard. The moment he did so, he saw the same pesky prompt flashing in the lower right-hand corner of his computer desktop that had been responsible for his death that morning. Somebody had been in the server room again!

With angry strokes, Randy brought up the appropriate window. Sure enough, the door had been opened at 12:02 P.M. and left open until 12:28 P.M., which meant that whoever had gone in there had remained for twenty-six minutes. Randy knew that a visit of twenty-six minutes was not like someone popping in for a peek, and it bothered him considerably. In twenty-six minutes someone could cause a lot of trouble indeed.

Next Randy called up the appropriate folder to see who it had been. He was shocked to find that once again it had been Dr. Spencer Wingate! Randy sat back and stared at the founder's name while trying to decide what to do. He'd told Kurt about the first incident, but the security chief had hardly seemed impressed although he had asked to be informed if it happened again.

Randy tipped forward again. He decided he'd call the security chief but only after seeing if he could find anything in the system that had been changed. What first came to mind was a change in user levels. With rapid strokes and movement of the mouse, he accessed his Active Directory. After only a few minutes he had the answer. Dr. Wingate had added Prudence Heatherly to the access list for the Donor folder in the server's data drive.

Randy tipped back in his seat again. He asked himself why the founder of the clinic would add the name of a new employee to a secure file that even Dr. Wingate didn't have access to. It didn't make a lot of sense unless Prudence Heatherly was working for him in some undercover capacity.

"This is unreal," Randy said. In a way, he was enjoying himself. It was something like a computer game where he was trying to figure out his opponent's strategy. It wasn't as exciting as Unreal Tournament, but then again, little was. He sat and pondered for a number of minutes.

Without coming up with a plausible explanation, Randy reached for the phone. He wasn't looking forward to talking with Kurt again, but at least it was by phone, not in person. He also decided to tell the man just the facts and none of his supposition. While he dialed the extension he noted the time. It was two o'clock on the button.

FOURTEEN

MAY 10, 2001 2:OO  P.M.

JOANNA TRIED TO ACT NORMALLY despite a creepy feeling she was being watched as she descended the steps at the Wingate Clinic's entrance and started down the walkway toward the Chevy Malibu. Deborah was already in the car, and Joanna could see her head silhouetted in the driver's seat. Since the workday was hardly over, they had decided that it would attract less attention if they left separately than if they walked out together. So far it seemed to have worked. Deborah had apparently made it safely and no one had confronted Joanna. Joanna had her purse over her right shoulder. In her left hand she was carrying a thick envelope containing the bulky printout of the donor file. As she walked she had to fight against the urge to run. Once again she felt like a thief making her getaway, only this time she was carrying the stolen goods.

She got to the car without incident and went around to the passenger side. As quickly as she could she climbed in.

"Let's get the hell out of here!" Joanna proclaimed.

"Wouldn't this be a good time for the car not to start?" Deborah joked as she reached for the ignition.

Joanna swatted her playfully, giving vent to the tension she felt. "Don't even suggest it, you teasel Move it!"

Deborah leaned away from Joanna's slap, got the car going, and backed out of the parking space.

"Well, we did it, for whatever it was worth," Deborah said as she maneuvered the car to begin the descent of the long, curving drive. "I guess we should give ourselves credit for that, even if the payoff was a big disappointment."

"We didn't do it until we get out of the gate safely," Joanna said.

"I suppose that's technically true," Deborah said. She pulled up to the gate, stopping at the indicated white line.

Joanna held her breath during the short interval before the gate began its long, slow swing open.

A moment later Deborah powered the car through the tunnel beneath the gatehouse and into the clear beyond.

Joanna visibly relaxed, and Deborah noticed.

"Were you really worried there?" Deborah asked.

"I've been worried all day," Joanna admitted. She opened the envelope and extracted the heavy printout.

Deborah glanced at Joanna as she made the right turn onto Pierce Street to head into Bookford. "What are you going to do, a little pleasure reading on the way home?"

"Actually, I had an idea," Joanna said. "And a pretty good one as I'm sure you'll agree." She began shuffling through the pages, looking for two in particular while being careful to keep them all in order. It took her several minutes.

"Are you going to clue me in, or is this great idea of yours a secret?" Deborah asked finally. She was mildly miffed at Joanna's continuing silence.

Joanna inwardly smiled. She realized by not completing her thought she'd unconsciously subjected Deborah to the same irritating speech foible Deborah was forever pulling on her. Enjoying her revenge, Joanna didn't answer until she'd isolated the proper pages and put the rest of the file on the backseat.