The Switch (37 page)

"What about the police?" Candace asked. "Shouldn't we call them? Notify the FBI?"

"Good idea, but I'd do it from another location. Agent Tobias is—"

"From Washington? We know him," Tony said. "He questioned us once."

"You'd recognize him, then?"

"Sure. Handsome guy."

"Good." He gave them a condensed version of what happened at Melina's house that morning.

"Tony?" Candace clutched her husband's arm in fear.

But he was already convinced. He moved to a desk across the room and scribbled something on a Post-It, then tore it
from the pad and handed it to Chief. "My cell phone number. Only Candace knows it. Wherever we are, we'll have it with us. Keep us informed."

He gripped Chief's hand to shake it, but he was looking at Melina as he said, "If you find out anything about our son, whatever it is and no matter how bad, we want to know."

"You have my word."

Once they were in the car and under way, Chief said, "Thank God they trusted us enough to get the hell out of Dodge. I liked them."

"So did I. Very much. I liked Linda Croft, too. Why didn't we warn her of potential danger?" She covered her face with her hands and sobbed, "Oh, God, Chief. We got her killed."

"We didn't kill her, Melina. Not me. Not you." He reached across the front seat of the car and gripped her knee. "I feel as badly as you do about it, but we didn't kill her any more than we killed Gillian. Somebody else went into her house and hit her with a hammer."

"Our FBI imposters?"

"They'd be my first guess."

Thinking of how helpless and afraid Linda Croft would have been against the two men, she lost it and began to wail. "She was so sweet and guileless. That's what makes this all so confounding," she cried out in frustration. "It's innocent women and children who are the victims of these crimes. My sister. Slaughtered while she was sleeping, when she was most defenseless. The Andersons' little boy snatched like an... an apple from the street market. Who could do that? What kind of monster could deliberately cause so much heartache?" She clenched her hands into fists and pounded them on her thighs.

"Melina—"

"Those poor people. Those poor, beautiful, young, healthy people are miserable! And it isn't as if they're being punished for some terrible wrong. Their only sin was wanting a baby," she cried, her voice tearing.

"Melina, stop this!"

"I can't, I can't," she sobbed.

"Yes, you can. You can."

Whether it was the calm strength of his voice or the tight, almost painful pressure he applied to her knee, she gradually came to her senses. The hysteria and wild fury abated, and after several deep breaths, she looked across at him and nodded to let him know that she was once again in control.

"Okay now?" he asked.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be," he said, smiling crookedly. "If it's any comfort to you, I feel like pitching a billy fit, too."

But he hadn't, and she had, and that's probably why he flew rockets and she had no desire to command a crew of astronauts. Candace Anderson's story had brought her emotions to the surface. Learning of Linda Croft's murder had inflamed them. Never had she experienced such a roiling combination of rage and despair, heightened by her own sense of uselessness. She only wished she knew to what or to whom to direct this all-consuming anger.

She scrubbed her face with her hands in an attempt to eliminate any vestiges of her uncharacteristic outburst. She smoothed back her hair. Fully composed, she said, "Chief, I want to know why this happened to Gillian. I want to know why the Andersons' baby was taken. I want to know who is behind it."

"The clinic."

"To what end? Their service is based on helping women and making babies. Besides, Tobias told me that not all the clinics connected to the crimes are part of the Waters chain. The commonality seems to be the patients, not the institutions."

"The commonality is artificial insemination."

"Like Gillian."

"Like Gillian."

The name fell like a curtain between them. She wondered if the mention of Gillian's name had anything to do with his removing his hand from her knee. Not that she could dwell on that now. She had much more important things to think about.

Using her cell phone, she placed a call. It was answered midway into the second ring. "Tobias."

"Melina Lloyd."

CHAPTER 26

The search warrant had been served at the Waters Clinic shortly before closing time. The staff on duty had been requested to stay. Individually they were being questioned by police, Tobias, and Patterson. All seemed to be concerned professionals and law-abiding citizens, including the four doctors on staff and the andrologist who'd been hired the day before to take Dale Gordon's place.

The nationwide chain of clinics was headquartered in Atlanta. The corporate top brass were flying to Dallas that evening. A search of your premises by a law enforcement agency was a PR problem for any business. When your business was creating human life, the stakes rose dramatically.

Tobias was overseeing the search when Melina's call came through. He demanded to know where she was.

"Is Detective Lawson with you?" she asked.

"Why?"

"Is he?"

"Yes."

"Tell him he should look into the homicide on McCommas Street."

"What homicide?"

"He'll know Or somebody in his division will. It's already been on the news. The victim's name was Linda Croft. She was an employee of the Waters Clinic. I spoke with her today." "Jesus," Tobias muttered. "Hold on. Don't hang up." He cupped the mouthpiece and called out to Lawson, who joined

him from another room of the clinic. "Know anything about a homicide on McCommas Street?"

"Heard about it."

"The victim worked here. Melina Lloyd talked to her today."

He didn't have to spell it out for the detective. "I'll get on it," he said, then did an about-face and left the room.

Tobias returned to his phone call. "Lawson's on it. Where are you, Ms. Lloyd? Is Colonel Hart still with you?"

"Take down this address." She reeled off a house number. "Hold on. What is it?"

"The home address for Tony and Candace Anderson. Remember them? They remember you."

"The couple whose baby was kidnapped. I questioned them."

"But you failed to ask if they'd had any unusual visitors at the hospital."

"Unusual?"

"Other than the expected family members and close friends, guess who came to the birthing room to see them, bearing gifts and taking pictures of mother and child? Dale Gordon."

Tobias ran a hand over his close-cropped hair. He couldn't remember if he'd specifically asked the distraught couple about their visitors. Strangers, yes.
Have you seen anyone lurking
in the hallway? Or outside your room? Has anyone threatened you recently?

At the time, he hadn't been looking at Gordon or anyone affiliated with the clinic. He'd been trying to establish a pattern in the outbreak of newborn kidnappings, believing the culprits to be part of a baby-selling ring.

"The Andersons won't be at home," Melina Lloyd told him.

"They've run for cover, just as I've done, as I should have advised Linda Croft to do, since the authorities seem incapable of protecting the good guys from the bad."

He let her have that shot for free.

"However," she continued, "if you dispatch someone to the Andersons' address, you might catch the men who came to my house this morning and the ones who, more than likely, killed Linda Croft. Just a suggestion, of course. I wouldn't presume to tell you how to do your job, Agent Tobias. But your office called me last night, and this morning I'm running for my life. I talked to Linda Croft, and within hours she gets bludgeoned to death. If this course continues, Tony and Candace Anderson will be next on your list of casualties."

Tobias didn't let pride stand in his way. He jotted down the address, confirmed it with her, then passed it to a police officer with instructions to send a patrol car over there ASAP.

"Where are you, Tobias?" Melina Lloyd asked.

He told her. "We're searching the place, although we can't get into the medical records without a court order, and that's going to take a while. Hopefully tomorrow."

"What are you looking for specifically?"

"We're searching the lab."

"Gordon's area."

"That's right."

"What did he do there? Besides some sneak photography through a hole in the wall."

He hesitated before reluctantly answering, "He prepared the frozen sperm specimens."

"For insemination."

"And in vitro. I've asked the doctors to suspend all inseminations using frozen sperm until we can conduct a more thorough investigation."

"What kind of more thorough investigation?"

"This particular Waters is a full-service facility. Besides receiving specimens from other sperm banks, they have their own. I want to interrogate every donor."

"Won't they perceive that as an invasion of privacy?"

"Probably. But I want to match each specimen catalogued and stored here against a specimen that's obtained in a controlled environment and DNA-tested immediately."

During the ensuing pause, he knew she was reasoning it through. Finally she said, "In order to determine if every specimen in the bank actually came from the donor specified on the label."

Evasively he replied, "I can't move this investigation forward until I know what we're dealing with here."

"In other words, you need to test each specimen to see if sperm labeled Donor XYZ actually came from Donor XYZ and not Donor ABC."

She was too smart for her own good. Certainly she was too smart for
his
good, because she'd nailed it on the first try. He had a bad feeling about Dale Gordon, especially after seeing the photographs found hidden in the man's apartment. Since when did a lab technician take such a personal interest in patients? Was he just a pervert who sneaked pictures of naked women? Or did it go beyond that?

Tobias feared the latter. At least that was the supposition he was acting on until it was proved false. If donor sperm was being switched or substituted at the time of artificial insemination, the unthinkable implications were far-reaching. The possibility of such an atrocity being visited on an unsuspecting woman or couple was horrendous.

As though reading his thoughts, Melina Lloyd said, "You think the sperm was being switched, don't you?"

Not wishing to start a public panic, he said, "I don't know" "But it's possible."

"It's happened before," he admitted reluctantly. "A few years ago a gynecologist—"

"Populated a whole county with his offspring. He used his sperm in place of partner or donor sperm. I remember. And you think Dale Gordon was doing the same thing?"

"His is the first we'll test.""From the residue on the pajamas."

"Yes. We'll test that against the specimens stored here."

"He was in a position to make the substitutions," she observed quietly. "Without anyone knowing or suspecting."

"Please don't jump to conclusions, Ms. Lloyd. Let me point out that Gordon doesn't fit the profile of an egomaniac who would do such a thing. Just the opposite, in fact. His colleagues here claim that he was a meticulous scientist. Kept excellent records. Resented any intrusion that distracted him from his work.

"The andrologist who was hired to take over for him says she's never seen a lab so well maintained. According to everyone here, he appeared to be a dedicated scientist who took pride in his work and felt he was edifying humankind by performing such a life-giving service."

"So did Dr. Frankenstein."

"This is only one theory I'm playing with," Tobias stressed. "I could be way off base. I admit to being wrong before."

"But I don't think you are. This exemplary, society-edifying scientist killed my sister, and I am going to know why."

The statement made him extremely uncomfortable. "Ms. Lloyd, where are you? You're a material witness to several crimes. If you don't come forward with information that could help solve these crimes, you could be charged with obstruction of justice."

"Yes, someone mentioned that to me."

"Then you'll— Shit!" he swore. He was talking into a dead phone.

Melina repeated to Chief the half of the conversation that he hadn't overheard. Her voice quavered when she told him about Gordon. "Jesus. He was switching out sperm?"

"Tobias hypothesizes several variations of that theme, but basically that's the crux of it."

"Does that mean that Gillian... Could she have got..."

Burying her face in her hands, Melina groaned, "Oh, God!" "Are you all right?"

She shook her head violently and signaled for him to pull over. The car wasn't even at a complete stop before she shoved open the door and stumbled out. By the time he got out on the driver's side and came around, she was vomiting.