The Clone's Mother (11 page)

“I still haven’t found out the meds Nichole Trent was on. The chart seems to be missing. But I think you were onto something there. The combination of certain types of drugs might have had something to do with maintaining the pregnancy, to protecting the cell division. I really need to find out what the exact drugs were.”

His words pulled me out of my peaceful solitude.

“I thought Carl set you straight on that, that you realized it was a misunderstanding.”

“
He
thought he set me straight. I just stopped arguing.”

“So you still believe Nikki’s baby is a clone?”

“I know that she is.”

“How can you know?”

“I did some checking. I know Carl’s office nurse. Nichole Trent was in Carl’s office before she was pregnant. If she were already pregnant, like he claims, she would have had at least a ten-month pregnancy. Do you remember the baby’s gestational age?”

“She was a couple weeks off.”

“Late?”

“No…early.”

“So not anywhere near forty-four weeks gestation. Not that anyone would let her go that long.”

“She definitely wasn’t overdue.” I sat dumbstruck. “So Carl
is
a schmuck. He lies, he manipulates, he uses people.”

“You’re making harsh judgments here. I’ll admit he’s a bit arrogant, and has a temper. But he’s an amazing scientist. He just can’t seem to face his mistakes. I don’t know why he is so bent on denying anything happened.”

“Maybe he’s afraid of a lawsuit,” I said.
Or he’s a jerk.
I didn’t say that out loud. Mack seemed to have trouble calling a spade a spade. Or a schmuck a schmuck.

Mack harrumphed.

“What about the cloning?” I asked.

He stared at me. His phone rang. He took the very convenient out and ignored my question to answer the call.

While he listened, his face tightened, his brow furrowed. He didn’t do much talking, just occasional
uh-huhs
or
uh-uhs
, then he shut it off and put it away.

“I have to go,” he said. “Sorry. I have to take care of something. Can you catch a cab home?”

My sarcastic “Why not?” popped out before I could stop it. What a way to start over.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “Really. But it can’t be helped.” He threw some cash on the table linen and dashed away before I had a chance to pout enough to let him know how hurt I was. I don’t think he had a clue.

While I brooded over my abandonment and contemplated my confused emotions, the food arrived. Hot wet steam swirled intense spicy aromas right up my nostrils. That did it.

Just as the server said
Enjoy
, my hand flew over my mouth and I fled the premises. The speedy getaway and the crisp evening air averted disaster temporarily and I was able to get home with my gorge still down. But it wasn’t without tremendous effort. I knew a night at work wasn’t going to happen with this flu bug still tormenting me. I’d be dry heaving in the john most of the night. I’d have to call and tell them I couldn’t come in after all.

I had no idea the jolt I was about to get.

Chapter 20

When I talked to Charge Sarge, she told me I had been suspended for an unspecified length of time and was required to turn in my badge.

“I’m sorry, Johnston,” she said, “but I couldn’t get a good explanation. Everyone was tight-lipped.” She said someone would be calling me, or I could request a formal meeting after the weekend.

I didn’t even notice when I said good-bye or hung up the phone. I racked my brain but nothing surfaced that could explain my suspension. There were plenty of sick days left in my PTO bank. And it’s not like anyone had died on my shift. We hardly ever, almost never had a death in Labor and Delivery. I couldn’t fathom what had happened.

So I chewed up a Tums and suppressed all my worry.

Denying it gave me the chance to watch a movie. I’d cut up all but one of my credit cards, and that one was for emergencies only. And RedBox, of course. They didn’t take cash. I couldn’t give up movies. There was a RedBox only two blocks away, so I made it there and back without puking. Part way through the film, I stopped it and took a break to make toast and drink a soda. The TV blared. Willie the Nerd was on, sounding very severe and affected with his Tom Brokaw voice. In between the
Ohs
and
My-mys
of his platinum sidekick, he related the story of another kidnapping which had just taken place. The camera cut away to the home of the latest victim with their On-the-Spot Reporter, Live-at-the-Scene.

The camera panned the distraught parents cowering on their front porch talking to police. Their names, Ernest and Joyce Bennett, were plastered across the bottom of the screen. When Investigative Reporter Neil Parker shoved his microphone into their faces, a cop told him to back off while Ernest collected Joyce into his embrace and hurried her back inside where she’d be safe from the news crew.

Willie came back on the screen and announced that this time there was a witness who gave a description of the kidnapper to the police. He was described as a white man with long hair that was wavy, light brown, and pulled back in a loose ponytail. He’d had a bushy full beard. They showed a composite drawing.

Alarm bells went off in my head. All at once, I could see him again. It was the murderer who had whacked Howard in the head before he slammed into me. It had to be.

I started yelling at the TV, telling the screen that it was him, the guy who had killed Howard.

Ollie wanted me to quiet down so he could listen. In spite of my tirade, Willie went on. “The witness saw him running from the back door of the house.”

I raced to my basket of junk and dug through it till I came up with the card Lieutenant Fosdick had given me. I had to punch in the numbers three times to get it right.

With my speed redial, I called over and over, but I kept getting his voicemail.

Since the lieutenant had been called to investigate the assault on Howard, I wondered if he was at this most recent crime scene too. I would go find him.

I turned to the Bs in the white pages and looked up Bennett. There they were, Ernest and Joyce Bennett, only two miles from Howard’s office. I bet that was Fosdick’s turf and it would be easy to track him down. I’d just look for the flashing lights and hang a right.

I hopped into a cab and told the driver to make a beeline to the address. At the Bennett’s, several cop cars and two news vans were scattered on the street in front of the house, all parked at haphazard angles. Plastic yellow tape tied several towering trees together across the front yard. It barely held back the curious gapers and persistent reporters.

I pushed my way to the front of the crowd and yelled out to a police officer on the other side of the yellow tape, asking if Lieutenant Fosdick was around. He waved his arms toward the whole crowd and told us we had to move back. I tried again to be heard over the crowd.

“I need Lieutenant Fosdick,” I hollered above the commotion. “Is Lieutenant Fosdick here?”

Finally, the cop heard enough of what I said to lift the yellow tape and signal me under it. When we got a distance from the crowd, he asked me again what I wanted.

I told him who I was and he said he thought he recognized me. He had been at Howard’s the night he was killed. He said Fosdick was inside and he’d take me in to talk to him.

When we walked into the front room of the crowded brownstone, the cop escorting me signaled Fosdick to come over. He reminded Fosdick that I was the witness at the Kensler murder and I had something to tell him.

“I saw the news,” I told Fosdick in a rush. “And the police sketch. It was the same man. It has to be. The one who bumped into me at my Uncle Howard’s.”

We talked for a bit, until the mother who had just lost her baby interrupted us. She was a tiny thing, and so tranquil. She said, “Please excuse me for interrupting, but I saw you at the funeral and didn’t get the chance. I wanted to give you my condolences for your uncle. He was a kind man.”

“You knew him?”

“Oh, yes. He recently helped us with little Emma. We got her just last week. He was helping with her adoption. We’re foster parents and she was going to go to her new home next week. I’m truly sorry about your uncle.”

Amazing. This kind woman had just been through this awful ordeal and she was taking the trouble to comfort me in my loss.

I thanked her, finished up with Fosdick, who ended our conversation by offering me a stick of Wrigley’s, which I took to try to ease my nausea, and I headed back home.

On the way, I couldn’t get Joyce Bennett off my mind. Something about her, or what she’d said, kept pulling my thoughts back to our short conversation. Finally, it hit me.

Both babies that were kidnapped were adoption babies. Joyce Bennett knew Howard. If the other baby’s adoption attorney had been Howard, there was a connection. And if there was a connection, Anna and Joe’s baby could be in danger.

Once back at my apartment building, I flew up the stairs and banged through the door. Ollie abruptly awoke from his nap and jumped onto his tiptoes and hissed at me, but I ignored him and sprang on the sofa to dig behind it and find the newspaper I’d dumped there before.

The story on the kidnapping gave the parents’ names. Once again, I flipped open the phone book, but they weren’t listed. Great. Now what?

I’d have to be creative.

I called my hospital unit and asked for Sandi with a fake southern accent. When Sandi answered, I dropped the disguise and asked her to do something for me. I explained that my dead Uncle Howard was friends with the family whose kid had been kidnapped and left at the hospital, and I wanted to get in touch with them in case they didn’t know about Howard.

She wondered if this wasn’t a weird time to be worrying about that, with it almost one in the morning. I told her I couldn’t sleep and wanted to get the information while I was thinking about it. She said, sure, she’d help, so I explained that the family wasn’t listed in the phone directory and I wanted her to check the hospital files for their address.

Silence filled my phone for a few minutes, except for the clicking of a keyboard while Sandi searched the files.

“Okay. Here it is. Got a pencil ready?”

Did I have a pencil ready! “Shoot.”

She read back the address and phone number, then a baby cried in the background. “Gotta go. A baby has a feeding due.”

“Thanks Sandi. I really appreciate the help.”

“No problem. I can’t believe they suspended you. I hope whatever trouble is going on, it clears up soon.”

“Thanks. I hope so too. Goodnight.”

Of course she knew all about it. Probably more than I did, the way gossip spread through the hospital faster than a nosocomial staph infection.

It was one in the morning—my best time lately, since that seemed to be the only time I wasn’t feeling sick—and there was no way I could sleep. So I decided to go pay a visit to the first kidnapping victim. I didn’t know what I’d do once I got there, but I had a compulsion to go that I couldn’t ignore.

I took a cab there and watched their house for a few minutes once we drove up in front. The driver wasn’t the talkative type, so we just sat in silence while the meter ticked away.

Then a light came on in an upstairs room. It made sense someone with a new baby in the house would be up at all hours of the night. I asked the cabby to hang around for a minute while I went to the door.

I couldn’t believe I was doing this. What nerve. What audacity.

I rang the bell. A baby cried. Some footsteps sounded on the other side of the door, then the porch light snapped on. A voice shot through a window to the side of the door.

He demanded, with a string of profanity, to know who I was and if I had any idea that it was the middle of the night.

His voice had no hint of a welcome. But what would you expect after what they’d been through lately?

I hoped he wasn’t holding a baseball bat. Who could blame him if he pummeled me first and asked questions later? Most people would have just shot me for ringing their bell at two a.m., even if their kid hadn’t just been snatched.

“I’m Howard Kensler’s niece. I need to talk to you.” I thought the name would mean something to him. And I dreaded it.

The latch clicked and the door opened to the end of its chain. In the crack I could see a long narrow piece of a brown man with one shiny eye blinking out at me. “And this can’t wait till the god-forsaken morning?”

I think he was softening.

“I saw your light on, so I didn’t think I’d wake you up.”

“What about Howard?” he barked out at me. “I heard he’s dead.”

“You knew him then?”

“Sure I knew him. What’s this about?” He shut the door and the chain rattled on the other side. He opened it again, a little farther this time, but he didn’t invite me in or open the screen. My knees were too wobbly anyway. I don’t think I could have taken a step forward if I wanted to.

“I just have one question. Did Howard do your adoption for you?”

“What if he did?”

“I just need to know. He did my cousin’s adoption and I’m afraid the person who took your baby is trying to find hers.”

He stared at me a long while, like telling me would reveal some deep family secret. Finally, he grunted out, “Yeah, he did the work.”

My stomach knotted. I was hoping against all hope he’d say no, that he’d only heard of him through the news. Now, I had to get to Anna. If that scary, hairy man had found Howard’s client list and was searching for the babies he’d adopted out, Anna had to be on that list.

“Can I use your phone?” I asked the man standing in his pajamas at the doorway.

“Now you want to use my phone?”

“Please,” I begged.

He cursed again, but with less vitriolic words, and opened the screen with a shrug of resignation and waved me in. I turned really quick to the cab and signaled to wait for just another minute. Then I went in. He directed me to the kitchen phone. I dialed up Anna’s cell but it went right to voicemail. I tried their landline and the phone began ringing. While I stood there counting rings, the frowning man leaned against his kitchen counter with his arms crossed tightly and waited.

“Do you want a sandwich too, as long as you’re here?”

I shook my head. Though I wasn’t currently puking, my stomach wasn’t interested. I knew he didn’t mean it anyway. That bite in his voice gave it away. I was exasperating him a little.

Okay. A lot.

On the two-thousandth ring, I gave up and hung up. “No answer.”

“Imagine that. And at this time of day.”

The baby was crying again in the background. I heard a woman’s cooing through the fussing.

“I better be going.”

“So soon?”

“Thanks a lot for your help.”

“Sure thing. Any time. Why not? Want to come back tomorrow night? How about Christmas. Can you come for Christmas?”

“Thanks. I’ll let you know.”

I hustled out to the cab and gave the cabby Anna’s address. I had gone this far. I wasn’t going to stop now.