Childless: A Novel (30 page)

Julia snuggled
in close to caress her husband’s chest while enjoying the gentle movement of his fingertips up and down her bare shoulder. Exactly what she needed after a long, eventful day. She had connected the dots between her sister’s mysterious suitor and Tyler Cain’s elusive suspect, helped orchestrate a seductive bait and switch where Maria was the bait, and then tried to calm her kid sister’s nerves while driving away from the scene. Maria had finally gone home with Jared after a very late dinner that included giving Troy a play-by-play description of the whole fiasco.

“Are you sure she’ll be OK?” Troy asked while staring up at the ceiling. “This Matthew guy won’t come after her, will he?”

“She’ll be fine,” Julia said. “Tyler told me he decided to follow the car home to keep an eye on the house until the police arrive. But he wasn’t concerned. He said the guy was no real danger to anyone but himself.”

“Good.”

A moment of tender silence passed.

“Kevin called this afternoon.”

“He did?” Julia said while sitting up to wrap herself in the disheveled sheet. The day’s adventure had dominated all conversation to the point that she had neglected to ask about Troy’s day.

“He told me to tell you he liked your first feature and that he’s eager to see the second.”

“Does he think they might help?”

“Can’t hurt.”

She waited for more. Nothing came. “Has he heard any more from Franklin?” she asked.

“He has. It seems the whole Dimitri thing blew over. Anderson said they managed to convince him I wasn’t behind whatever made him so mad.”

Julia remembered Brent Anderson’s earlier threat, “Back off with Dimitri.”

“If they don’t think it was you or Kevin, who do they think
was
behind it?”

“No clue. Doesn’t matter. They’ve moved on to the next potential scandal and we’re back on their ‘useful’ list.”

Julia sighed. “Doesn’t it bother you?”

“Doesn’t what bother me?”

“The whole game. You know. They consider Kevin an asset one day and a liability the next. They call you a brilliant player on Monday but try to distance themselves from you on Friday. It’s not fair. It’s not right.”

Troy leaned on his side to mirror Julia’s posture. “No, it’s not right. But it is what it is. Neither Kevin nor I expected politics to smell pretty. Cleaning up a mess sometimes means working around garbage. But it’s part of the price you pay when trying to do something significant.”

“I’d call it a pretty big price.”

One shoulder gave a half shrug. “Maybe. But someone needs to be a voice for the weak and vulnerable. Might as well be us.”

“I guess. I just wish…” She stopped when she noticed Troy fiddling with the edge of the silk sheet she had turned into a toga. He lifted the edge, pretending to steal an indiscreet peek. Julia slapped his hand playfully. Then she smiled. “Again?”

“Aren’t you ovulating?” he asked with a wink. “How ’bout doubling our odds?”

Julia’s smile melted as the grief her sister’s adventure had interrupted mounted another invasion.

“What do ya say?” Troy began moving his lips toward hers.

Julia’s head slid slightly back before she could overrule the motion. Hoping he hadn’t noticed, she willed her arms around his torso to hold him tightly. But it was no good. She knew that he sensed something was wrong. She sat up again, revealing a single tear disobediently falling onto her cheek.

His finger touched the moist insurgent. “Hey there now. What’s this about?”

The sweet, clueless tone of Troy’s voice opened another breach in the dam. A second tear fell, then two more. She knew that if she spoke a river of sorrow would drown her explanation in a flood of misunderstood emotion.

Julia wanted to tell her husband how much she loved him, that she wished with all her heart a second round of intimacy could double their chances. But she knew what she couldn’t say. That their union would never conceive the blessing of a child. Never give Troy what he wanted more than anything in the world.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” she finally managed. She kissed him gratefully, then inhaled a breath of composure. “I’m just tired. Do you mind waiting until morning?”

He appeared to believe her. “Of course,” he answered while grabbing a tissue to wipe final remnants of wetness from her face. “Let’s wait until morning.”

Troy kissed her forehead before rolling onto his side of the mattress.

Julia slipped into the bathroom to wash her face and find an oversized T-shirt to wear. That’s when she noticed a woman she barely recognized staring back at her from the mirror. Was this the same woman who had once celebrated the drop in global fertility? The girl who had disregarded marriage as an outdated institution and motherhood as the valley of the inept? The journalist who’d fed a mountain of myths to nine million approving readers? “The fewer carbon footprints polluting the planet the better!” she’d once scoffed. Now she would give anything to conceive, deliver, and nurture one into a son or daughter of her own. Troy would have wanted a boy. Or would he have? He loved hanging out with Tommy. But he seemed smitten with Joy and Leah. He might want a girl after all.

Julia let her imagination carry her into an alternate future. She envisioned dressing her toddler in frilly dresses. She saw herself shopping for a new outfit with a preteen daughter eager to look pretty when Daddy took her to the symphony or father-daughter dance. She pictured a cute, precocious girl as she had been herself during adolescence. Sort of like Amanda, Austin Tozer’s half sister. She and Julia had seemed to hit it off the way she might have with her own child.

Another tear began to form at the thought of what a wonderful daddy Troy would have made. Unlike her own father, Troy would never have abandoned his family. He would have modeled loving strength and heroic sacrifice. He would have shown their little girl what a man could be. What a man should be.

But that day would never come. Troy couldn’t produce a child of his own. And the prospect of finding a baby to adopt was, at best, remote.

Julia wiped away the tear while turning off the bathroom light. She walked back to the bed and slid gently under the covers. Then she leaned in close to Troy’s ear. “Good night, darling,” she whispered.

His undecipherable grunt told her he was asleep. She smiled, patting his back while settling onto the billowy comfort of her pillow.

That’s when it struck her. Amanda! She sat up with a start.

If Troy could be such a wonderful adoptive uncle to the Tolbert kids, why couldn’t he be a wonderful adoptive father to a girl with no parents of her own, a girl who hated living with her self-centered half brother and embryo-selling wife?

“Troy,” Julia said, shaking her husband awake.

“What? What?” he said in dazed confusion while his hands felt around the bed as if swatting bugs.

Julia clicked on the lamp, causing Troy’s eyelids to scrunch tightly together at the sudden, blinding brightness. She bolstered her courage by lifting his hand to her lips for a reinforcing kiss.

“Troy, honey, we need to talk.”

A sudden
surge of fear forced Rebecca Santiago awake. When had she dozed off? She looked at the bedroom television screen. Credits were rolling from the movie she had hoped would help keep her awake until her husband got home. She looked at the clock. Half past midnight! Three hours earlier Victor had promised he should be home soon.

She felt herself breathing faster. It was the start of a panic attack like the one she had endured during the blizzard of 2037 when Victor decided to drive home instead of stay at the office as she’d asked him to. “The roads are too slick,” she had said. “You’ll slide into a ditch and freeze to death.” It took him more than an hour, but he made it home safe and sound. Her panic was for naught then. She tried to believe it was equally pointless now.

She got out of bed, clicked off the television, and found her gown before moving to the window to open the blinds. The police car was still parked out front. She squinted for a better look. It appeared the officer’s head was leaning against the glass in sound sleep. Not much comfort.

Rebecca opened the bedroom door and moved into the kitchen, where she hoped to find Victor sitting in front of a bowl of cereal enjoying a late-night snack after a longer-than-expected day in his chambers. But the room was dark. She rushed to the back door to check for Victor’s car in the garage. Empty!

She told herself to stay calm, that he was probably in his office sipping a cup of cold coffee while tweeking a written opinion on that big case. He had said it needed to be finished by morning. It wouldn’t be the first time he had burned the midnight oil to hit a deadline.

But he had never done so while a death threat hung over his head!

She tapped her husband’s image on the phone, then heard his recorded voice.

“Hi, Rebecca. There’s two things I want to do at this moment. First, answer your call. Second…”

“No!” she shouted at the phone.

She dialed again. The same result.

The phone fell to the floor as Rebecca raced toward the front door. Seconds later she was sitting in the passenger side of the police car pleading with an officer whose name she couldn’t recall to drive to the courthouse as fast as possible.

Rebecca felt both overwrought and foolish standing outside the courthouse. She hadn’t thought to grab the latest entry code. Victor always left it for her in an envelope sitting in his sock drawer. She rarely used it, relying on Jennifer or a guard to open the door whenever she came to meet Victor for lunch or surprise him with a fresh-baked afternoon snack. Of course, neither his assistant nor security was in the building at such a late hour. And since her telephone lay on the floor back home she couldn’t call Jennifer for help. It took nearly fifteen minutes for the officer to track down someone who could help him gain access to the judge’s private chambers. The delay was agony for Rebecca, who spent every second imagining one awful scenario after another. The patient young officer tried comforting her by suggesting it would be even more difficult for a potential assassin to reach the judge than it had proven for them. That didn’t make her feel any better.

As soon as they reached the third-floor office wing Rebecca noticed the outer door was slightly ajar. Would Jennifer have left without locking the door behind her? No, not when Victor remained inside working. She was almost as protective of Victor as Rebecca. Something was wrong.

“Please, ma’am, let me go in first,” the officer insisted.

Rebecca ignored the suggestion, rushing through the door, past Jennifer’s desk, and into Victor’s now-dark office.

The light came on in reaction to the motion. She looked toward the chair where she had imagined finding Victor slumped over his desk in a pool of blood. It was empty. She rushed past a row of bookshelves to peer into his conference room, where she had imagined her husband dangling by the neck from a noose suspended from the ceiling. But the room was empty.

Rebecca heard the sound of the officer’s footsteps finally catching up with her frantic search.

“He’s not here!” she shouted while grasping both of the officer’s arms. “Where could he be? Dear God, where is my Victor?”

The officer gave her a blank gaze. “Perhaps he left before we arrived. He might be at the house looking for you right now.”

But she knew better. She knew they would find Victor’s car parked in his private space. And she knew something dreadful had happened to her husband.

“No. He must be here somewhere,” she insisted while running back out the front office door. “Victor!” she shouted to her left, then to her right. “Where are you, sweetheart?”

She heard the officer’s voice utter a muffled obscenity, drawing her back into Victor’s chambers.

She entered the office again. No sign of anyone. A moment of dread passed before she saw the open door of Victor’s private bathroom.

The officer stepped toward her without a word.

“What?” Rebecca asked urgently.

“Ms. Santiago, please, stay right where you are.”

“Why? What is it?”

He lowered his head like a rookie trying to recall the official protocol for nightmares.

“The judge.”

“You found him?” she asked, rushing past his protective blockade.

“Please, ma’am…”

It was too late. She saw what the officer had cursed. Victor, lying on the floor with eyes wide open as if staring at her from the realm of the dead. No blood or hangman’s rope. Just her husband’s empty form.

She fell onto his lifeless body, then tried lifting him to her breast. His corpse spurned the effort like a steadfast bag of sand. It was the first show of affection he hadn’t returned in three decades. And the last, Rebecca suddenly realized, that she would ever attempt.

As soon
as Tyler entered the detective wing of headquarters he came face-to-face with the last person he wanted to see.

“Cain,” Kory Sanders said with a solemn nod that carried a hint of derision. Tyler’s old rival clutched a mug of java while leaning against the wall beside a pretty young detective Tyler didn’t recognize. She added her own nod, then gave the once-over to the fumbling private investigator who had failed to prevent Judge Santiago’s assassination.

“Sanders,” Tyler responded flatly. “Seen Smitty this morning?”

Sanders tilted his head toward a hallway without a word before resuming whispered speculations about how badly Cain had botched the job or how dumb it had been for Smitty to assign such a big case to a washed-up former detective.

“Thanks,” Tyler said, lowering his eyes. If only they knew the whole embarrassing truth. He had actually found the suspect, had confronted him and followed him home. But rather than have Matthew Adams arrested Tyler pitied the guy and handed him the name of a defense attorney. Maybe the chief had been right in promoting Sanders instead of Tyler after all. Had Sanders ever made such a fatal miscalculation? Had anyone?

Tyler walked toward the conference room where he knew Smitty would be waiting.

As he approached the row of glass-walled offices Tyler spotted Jennifer McKay, who had already arrived. Of course she had. She must have been up much of the night trying to console a grief-stricken Rebecca Santiago. She looked even more exhausted than Tyler despite his aching back and stiff neck, compliments of the sofa. His only consolation was that Renee had felt bad after he told her about Smitty’s call.

“Oh no!” she had said. “When did it happen?”

“Last night,” Tyler explained while hurriedly zipping his pants and buttoning his shirt. “The judge’s wife and a cop found the body around one o’clock this morning.”

“That’s seven hours ago. Why didn’t they call sooner?” she asked.

Tyler was still asking himself the same question. Shouldn’t Smitty have had someone phone him immediately? No one knew more about the suspect. But then, Tyler reminded himself, he was no longer part of the force. Gathering evidence after an assassination was the domain of public officials, not private investigators who ranked one step above anonymous tipsters. Besides, obtaining an arrest warrant in the middle of the night and tracking down Matthew Adams would have been Smitty’s all-consuming priority.

As he approached the closed door Tyler noticed a third person in the room with Smitty and Jennifer, probably the officer who had been with Mrs. Santiago when they found the judge’s body. He looked even more spent than Jennifer.

Smitty waved Tyler in eagerly, as if he had been impatiently waiting to take an important next step in the process.

“Sorry it took so long to get here,” Tyler said. Of course he had come faster than anyone should have expected, his crumpled shirt and morning breath offering sufficient evidence of a mad rush. “I just got the call twenty minutes ago.”

“Close the door,” Smitty ordered.

Tyler obeyed. “Any trail yet?”

Smitty seemed confused by the question. “Trail?”

“On Matthew Adams’s location.”

Smitty looked at the other two, who must have already known what Tyler didn’t. “Didn’t they tell you on the phone?”

Tell him what? All Tyler knew was that Judge Santiago had been killed and that Smitty had wanted him in the conference room as soon as possible. He had assumed Smitty wanted help tracking down the fugitive. Not because Tyler was the best man for the job, but because he had been the last person to see Matthew Adams before letting him roam free for a midnight murder.

“We found Mr. Adams right where your message said he would be. He was at the home of an elderly gentleman named Hugh Gale. Of course, he claims to know nothing about the killing.”

“You questioned him already?” Tyler asked in stunned surprise. “Wait. You found him sitting at the house?”

“Yep. Not too bright, I gather. I mean, who commits murder and then returns to the same address he just gave to a guy investigating death threat letters?”

Tyler felt the rebuke. “Look, Smitty, I’m really sorry about—”

Smitty raised his hand to silence Tyler. “Not now.”

“I parked outside his house for several hours after—”

“I said not now.”

Tyler’s gut tightened at the realization he had let Smitty down. But his apology would need to wait. “So what was Matthew doing when you picked him up?”

“He told my guys he had been sitting in the front room reading most of the night.”

“Reading? Reading what?”

“An old Bible,” Smitty said. “Claims he was trying to find something to calm his nerves after meeting with you.”

“He told you we met?”

“He did. Said you suggested he wait at the house and expect our arrival. He seemed pretty calm until the officer said he was under arrest for the murder of Judge Victor Santiago. That’s when the guy went into a meltdown, claimed he knew nothing about any murder and that he never intended to hurt anyone. You know the litany.”

Tyler said nothing. Something didn’t fit. Why would a killer wait for the police to arrive, knowing a mountain of evidence existed to pinpoint him as the murderer? He had seen the letters. He had even confessed to writing most of them.

“Did you get much out of him?” Tyler asked.

“Not since he made his one phone call.”

“Defense lawyer?”

“Yep. Clammed up after that. I’m getting ready to go in and try again. I need more. All we have is circumstantial evidence right now. I’m hoping he’ll slip up and say something we can use in court. I need you to listen for anything that might feed the right line of questioning.”

“Certainly.”

“I’m especially interested in these,” Smitty said, handing Tyler two clear plastic bags. “We found them stuffed in a trash container just outside the judge’s chambers.”

Tyler examined the first bag. It contained a needle and a catheter about two feet long. The second held one of those clear bags hospitals use to hold IV fluids. It was empty except for small traces of a yellow liquid. The label read “PotassiPass.”

“I know this chemical,” Tyler said, remembering the brand name from the summary he had read of the Santos wrongful death case. “It’s the chemical NEXT Transition Services uses with clients.”

Smitty and Jennifer eyed one another as if the comment had confirmed their hunch.

“Who could get that for him?” Smitty asked.

“Who couldn’t?” the other officer said. “All you would need to do is find a transition clinic employee willing to swipe a bag for you.”

“Or take one out of a clinic yourself,” Smitty suggested.

Tyler didn’t follow.

“The suspect’s mother transitioned about a year back,” Smitty explained. “I bet he stole some of the serum then.”

Plausible, Tyler had to agree. But something still didn’t seem right. Why would Matthew have stolen transition chemicals months before he even knew Judge Santiago would be assigned the case?

He followed Smitty to the next room. Jennifer and the other officer joined him as they took their seats behind a two-way mirror. On the other side sat a clearly shaken Matthew Adams, who was fidgeting with a pencil. Tyler remembered the routine. Hand the uncooperative suspect a pencil and paper as you leave the interrogation room and suggest he write down a confession “for his own good” so the judge might go easy on him. The page appeared blank.

As Smitty walked out of the room Jennifer turned toward Tyler. “I owe you an apology,” she whispered.

He turned toward her dark form. “For what? I’m the one who blew this case.”

“I should have listened to you.” Tyler sensed tears of regret in her voice. “If I had warned the judge he would still be alive.”

“And you’d have lost your job,” Tyler said generously. “You did what he ordered you to do.”

She sighed. “Still.” A pause. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” Tyler said faintly while reaching to pat her slumping shoulders. “Me too.”

They saw Smitty closing the door behind him as he entered the brightness beyond the glass.

“There’s a sick irony in all of this,” Jennifer whispered in Tyler’s direction while awaiting Smitty’s first question. “The same drug used to transition Antonio Santos ended up killing the man who was about to decide in favor of the plaintiff.”

“What?” Tyler said. “He was going to come down in favor of NEXT? I thought he was leaning the other way.”

“So did most people,” Jennifer replied. “But I proofed his draft opinion. He was going to say NEXT did nothing wrong. The boy was an adult when he transitioned regardless of what day he applied. The law doesn’t require parental approval after eighteen.”

“So NEXT is off the hook?”

“Would have been. Now the appeal will get assigned to a new trio of judges. Could be months before that happens.”

Tyler looked through the glass at the nervous suspect. A few more days and Judge Santiago would have freed up Matthew’s urgently needed inheritance money. His mother’s estate would have been released thanks to NEXT’s successful appeal.

Then Tyler thought of Jeremy Santos, who wanted the court to confirm the malevolence of a system that had caused his brother’s and mother’s deaths. NEXT should pay for what it had done to the two people Jeremy loved more than anyone on earth. Ever since watching the gruesome footage taken at the clinic on the fateful day of their deaths, Tyler had unconsciously hoped the same.

“Do you have anything else to tell me?” Smitty was asking.

Matthew sat silent while biting the end of his pencil.

Smitty took the sheet of paper from in front of the suspect. Blank. “Nothing to write?”

“I told you already,” Matthew said in exhausted desperation. “I didn’t kill anyone.”

“Well, someone did,” Smitty said. “Someone who, like you, goes by the pseudonym Manichean. Someone who, like you, wants to see NEXT win its appeal. And someone who, like you, had access to these.” Smitty tossed the plastic bags onto the table in front of Matthew. “Do you want to tell me where you got them?”

Matthew bent closer to examine the bags. He seemed to recognize the contents but appeared alarmed by their presence.

A sudden knock on the interrogation room door drew Smitty’s attention. “Sir,” a male voice called into the room, “I have the autopsy report.”

Smitty moved away from the table. Matthew seemed relieved by the momentary interruption, as if he needed time to figure out what was going on or how to spin his story.

Then Smitty reentered the room, reading what must have been a summary of key details from the autopsy. At the same moment the door to the observation room opened to receive a man holding what appeared to be an identical page.

“What’s he reading?” Jennifer asked in the man’s direction.

“Here,” he replied, handing the report to Jennifer. “Read for yourself.”

Tyler leaned toward Jennifer and squinted to make out the words.

Tyler jumped up from his chair with a start. All three pairs of eyes darted in his direction, then turned toward the sound of Smitty’s voice. “Where were you between six and eight o’clock last evening?” he was asking.

“We have the wrong man!” Tyler shouted toward the glass.

“What?” Jennifer said in unison with both officers.

“I said we have the wrong man.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I was questioning Matthew Adams near Bear Creek Lake at the time of the assassination!”