The Baby Squad

by Andrew Neiderman

  Butch looked at Ryan, who was back at the bike. Then he opened his truck and started to take out his tools. He wanted to get this over with quickly and get the hell away from here. Probably for good, considering what would come to mind every time he turned toward this place.

  Henry joined Ryan a moment later. He was kneeling at the bike again. After a moment, he looked up.

  “No one hit her while she was on it,” Ryan said. “This bike was laid down softly. Not a scratch on it, not the tiniest of dents.” He stood up and looked at Lois Marlowe’s body. “She definitely came here to meet someone, most probably a female.”

  “How can you tell that?”

  “Look at the footprint next to the body.” He pointed it out with his steel extender. “Whoever it was knelt beside her after she had been knocked down. When people squat, they put more pressure on the balls of their feet. You can see that here. The foot size would suggest either a small boy or a woman, and I just don’t think this is the work of a small boy,” he added, nodding at Lois’s battered skull. “The victim is at least five seven, five seven and a half. The angle of these wounds suggests someone at least that height, if not a bit taller. There’s a definite downward motion,” he continued, using his steel rod again to point to ripped tissue and exposed bone.

  Henry’s eyes widened. “If you told me the killer was pregnant, too, I’d think you were some sort of magician.”

  Ryan didn’t smile. “She’s not light of foot,” he said. “Look at the depth of the prints.”

  He opened his bag and aimed what looked like a small flashlight at the shoeprint indentations. It flashed a pulsating laser beam, and then Ryan turned the instrument and read some information off the small glass screen.

  “Imitation-leather soles, chemical description pinpoints it to those primarily used for sneakers, because of the synthetics used, isolated to Rockers, a very popular brand.”

  He reached into his bag and produced a handheld computer with a small microphone in its base.

  “Sandburg, New York. Soft shoes, Rockers,” he dictated.

  Seconds later, words scrolled on the screen.

  “Krupps Shoe Palace, Monticello Pavilion Mall, East Broadway, is the closest dealer. According to the description here, it’s marketed primarily to teenagers but not solely. Apparently, it’s their most recent style of sneaker.”

  “You think it might have been a pregnant teenage girl?”

  “It’s certainly in the realm of possibility,” Ryan replied dryly. He gazed around.

  “But…how would a pregnant teenage girl go on the black market for prenatal vitamins?” Henry asked. “She would have to have her parents’ cooperation,” he thought aloud. “That would center us on any Abnormal with a child. Why would they do it, though? Why would they take such a risk? Eventually, they would be discovered. It doesn’t make sense to me,” McCalester decided, shaking his head. “How about you?”

  Ryan stared at him a moment. “I’m not saying it’s a teenager. Lots of women buy these so-called young miss styles. The worst thing we could do is jump to any premature conclusions. Remember, a journey of five thousand miles begins with a single step,” he replied.

  “Huh?”

  “You’ve got to make the small steps first before you get all your questions answered, Chief McCalester. All we want to do at the moment is decide the direction,” Ryan added, and turned back to the corpse.

  “How do you decide that?” McCalester asked.

  “She’ll tell us,” Ryan said, nodding at Lois Marlowe.

  “She’ll tell us?”

  “The dead talk,” Ryan said. “We’ve just got to listen. For now, take me to the hotel. I want to get settled in, make some calls, connect with my forensic center, and coordinate with the local ME after he makes his on-site examination. I have him down as Dr. Gordon Howard, correct?”

  “Yes. He should be here in ten minutes, if you want to wait.”

  “No, no need to look over his shoulder. I have what I need at the moment.”

  “There are a number of television and newspaper people already hovering about. Just warning you,” McCalester added when Ryan raised his eyebrows.

  “Field officers from the CID never speak to the press. It’s SOP they call the public relations officer at our central offices. I don’t go through any local public relations office, either. You are aware of that, I’m sure. Tell whoever is worried that I’m a descendant of the Sphinx.”

  “Huh?”

  “No one’s ever gotten it to reveal a thing. Don’t you know what I’m talking about?” Ryan asked with a small smile of incredulity when McCalester registered total confusion.

  “Yes, of course,” McCalester said, a little crimson with indignation. “All I’m doing is giving you some head’s up,” McCalester added, almost in a tone of whining.

  “Thanks,” Ryan said, but not with any real sincerity.

  Henry looked at Carl Osterman, who shook his head with concern.

  It was written on McCalester’s face: this wasn’t looking good. Possibly a pregnant teenage girl whose parents were part of the conspiracy to have a Natural, and here, under his watch. No, this wasn’t looking good. It wasn’t looking good for this community at all.

  Wherever Natalie and Judy went, the chatter was about the murder of Lois Marlowe. The moment a sales girl or anyone heard or saw they were from Sandburg, it was brought up. For the first time since she had heard of the killing, Natalie considered the possibility that someone else was pregnant in Sandburg. The word out was that it could even be a teenage girl who might have committed the crime. Maybe it had nothing whatsoever to do with her missing pills. Maybe it was as she had considered: she simply had miscounted.

  Very quickly, this became a hope, even though it made her feel guilty to have it, to wish for it to be so. Another pregnancy in the town would take all attention from her problem, she thought. It would serve as a good diversion for her as well. She needed that. She had to stop thinking about this, even for a few hours.

  She and Judy went to Saks, bought the gift for Preston, and then went their separate ways to prepare for the celebration dinner. Bob had made reservations at Soy-Hoy, a fun Chinese restaurant in South Fallsburg that had private rooms with beaded portals. It was so authentic one could easily imagine entering a virtual reality travel machine and choosing Peking or Shanghai. Like most good restaurants these days, ambiance was almost as important as the food. It was a complete experience, with the restaurant running like a show. Customers felt as if they had stepped into a movie, complete with Suzie Wongs and Charlie Chans. They even had the Dragon Lady at the front desk, along with Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee look-alike waiters and an evening’s performance of Chinese folk dancers.

  Natalie thought all of this would provide wonderful distraction and keep her thinking about her problem for a while, but only for a while. Her D-day was coming, or should she call it her B-day, for birthing? She had to face the fact that she would either have to find an excuse to leave Preston for a few days and get the abortion which she abhorred or tell him the truth and see if he wanted this baby as much as she did. She was still confident he might, despite the danger and the risk to his career. They could surely pull it off if he wanted to do it. He had access to the paper trail they needed to leave in their wake, and they could easily forge a Natal.

  On the way home, she checked her voice mail and heard Preston’s message, reading the annoyance and irritation in his tone. She had forgotten to turn on her cellular. With what weighed heavy on her mind, she wasn’t surprised. Who knew what else she had forgotten to do today?

  Rose answered with as cheerful a voice as Natalie had ever heard Preston’s secretary have.

  “Oh, Mrs. Ross, congratulations to you, too. We’re all so happy for Mr. Ross,” she said.

  “Thank you, Rose. Is he in?”

  “Yes. One moment, please.”

  Natalie turned off Sandburg’s Main Street onto Birch Place toward their two-story home at the center
of the cul-de-sac. The sprinklers were going, sending up a pulsating fountain of man-made rain. Their irrigation system worked like a charm. She was proud of the way the bushes lined the walk and the driveway, proud of their flower bed at the crest of the lawn and the two tall hickories that flourished on each side of their frontage.

  The house itself had a fieldstone cladding, a very large living-room picture window, and a large dining-room window, both of which provided a bright, airy feeling in the daytime. The dining-room window looked out on the undeveloped forest with trees still low enough to permit a clear view of the mountain range and the night sky. Very cozy, very romantic dinners for her and Preston had been held here.

  Behind the three-car-garage, she had her writing office. Preston had his own home office on the opposite end of the nearly seventy-five-hundred-square-foot residence. There was a game room and two guest bedrooms as well, one of which she was hoping would become the nursery in a matter of months. They had a pool and a tennis court in the rear, with more gardens, walkways, and beautiful red maple trees. It was her dream home.

  “Nat, where the hell have you been?”

  “I forgot to turn on my cellular,” she quickly explained. “I was with Judy. We went to the Cliff House for lunch to celebrate your promotion and then to do some shopping. Sorry. What’s happening now?”

  “Did you hear about the Marlowe girl?”

  “That’s all anyone’s talking about around here,” she replied.

  “Bertram just received a call from McCalester. The CID is on the scene, and a preliminary investigation is confirming that the killer was female and very possibly pregnant,” Preston practically whispered.

  “Oh.”

  “It’s not good. The Times-Herald has a reporter in Sandburg camped out at Benny’s Deli. We just heard the television stations are sending out remotes, and there are calls coming in from New York City. We could be on the national broadcasts in a matter of hours!”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, as if it really was all her fault.

  “I’m coming home early,” he said. “We need to talk.”

  “Why?”

  “I’d rather wait until I’m home,” he added. “Where are you now?”

  “Just pulling into the driveway.”

  “Stay there,” he ordered, and hung up.

  She stared at the garage door opening as soon as the laser eye read her car ID. For a moment, she didn’t move forward. It was almost as if she wanted to back out, turn, and drive away, maybe forever and ever.

  What was Preston rushing home to tell her? Did he know? Had she slipped up somewhere?

  After she pulled in and entered her home, she prepared herself a glass of ice water. For hours now, she had felt as if she had a fever. Her stomach had churned all through lunch, and her nerves were like firecrackers. She had no reason to be this way, she told herself. She and Preston were as tight and as devoted to each other as any modern couple possibly could be. Everything in this house reinforced that belief.

  The fireplace mantel in the living room, the piano, and the shelves all had beautifully framed photographs of her and Preston at various important affairs, on vacations, or just having a casual good time at a restaurant dinner. In all of them, they held each other closely, lovingly, his eyes on her telling anyone who looked at the pictures that he absolutely adored her. What was it Judy said about A Summer Place? The passion was palpable? Well, that was the way it looked in all their pictures, too: their passion was palpable.

  When she entered her bedroom, she thought about all their lovemaking, their expressions of love, his wonderful reference to the Bible, telling her, “If you should die, I will hate all womankind.” This was just their bedroom; it was their magic room because they touched each other so deeply and fully it felt like something beyond reality, something special. Sometimes they acted like two people with a big state secret, the secret being how much they were in love and how wonderful that made them feel. Neither of them was really superstitious, but they both knew what envy meant and how their affection toward each other could make less affectionate, less loving couples feel inferior and uncomfortable enough to cast an evil eye their way, to wish them bad luck.

  “Sometimes when we’re out, I feel like a man in chains,” Preston had told her, and just recently, too. “I want to devour you, hold you, kiss you, but I know I’ve got to have self-control, and I hate it.”

  She laughed. How good he made her feel.

  Just thinking about all this stimulated her creative juices. She wanted to get back to her novel. She would write a love scene that would sing on the page, bring a flush to the face of her reader, and fill her life with everything that was missing, even if it was only a vicarious experience.

  That was where Preston found her when he returned home. She didn’t even hear him come into the house.

  “Hey,” he said.

  She turned from the Wordsmith.

  “Hi. I just had to get back to this scene, but it’s all right. I’ve got down what I needed to,” she said, rising to go to him.

  He stood in the office doorway. She hugged him, but she felt the stiffness in his body.

  “What’s wrong, Preston?” she asked, stepping back, her heart pounding.

  “The Abnormal, the possible murderer…”

  “Yes?”

  “Bertram is worried she’s someone who belongs to a family of some stature in the community and not just some known Abnormal,” he said. “He’s very concerned about it and the impact it’s going to have on all of us.”

  For a moment, she felt as if her heart had simply turned into a block of ice. Was he telling her he knew?

  “What makes him come to such a conclusion?”

  “You know Bertram…he’s always paranoid, always looking on the darkest possible side of things. I know he can be quite a nervous Nelly warning us about real estate values and all that. The man is skeptical of everything. It comes with the territory, maybe even with being an attorney, but…”

  “He’s not wrong,” she blurted.

  “What?”

  “Bertram’s not wrong about someone of standing in our community being pregnant.”

  “You sound pretty sure of yourself, Nat,” he said with a smile. He nodded after studying her face a moment. “I was coming here to tell you Bertram wanted us to be extra careful about whom we associate with these days and…”

  “It’s too late,” she said.

  “Too late? Why?”

  “We’re already associating with her, but she’s not the murderer.”

  His smile faded quickly. He looked at the small settee across from her desk as if he were wondering if he could make it before he collapsed.

  “I had that feeling, Nat,” he said. “I know you’ll laugh, but I had this feeling deep down in my gut that it was someone close to us.”

  He started for the settee and turned when he reached it to look up at her.

  “It’s Judy, isn’t it? There’s always been something about Judy that made me think of her as different. When did she tell you? How long have you known?” he asked. “I’m actually a little disappointed you never told me after she told you, Nat.”

  “She never told me.”

  He started to nod. “How did you find out, then?”

  “It’s not Judy,” she said.

  He started to sit back and then straightened up slowly, his face filling with renewed concern.

  “What do you mean? Who is it?”

  “It’s me, Preston. I’m pregnant,” she said.

  Six

  Preston just stared. It was as if time had stopped, the hands of every clock frozen. Even the wind was halted in midair. His expression moved from incredulity to a silly smile, the smile of someone who thought he had heard something so ridiculous he had to laugh. The next words out of his mouth would be You can’t imagine what I thought you just said, Natalie. It’s so off the wall, I don’t even know how to tell you.

  He would laugh, shake his head, and ju
st go on as though none of that had occurred.

  Natalie went to the antique French chair she had recently had refurbished and sat, her eyes down, her hands in her lap, waiting like someone in the eye of a storm, anticipating the worst was yet to come. It was a fool’s respite, a beguiling stillness that would give her the courage to venture forth and then be carried off in the jaws of a hurricane.

  “What are you saying?” Preston finally asked. He needed it repeated.

  “I wasn’t an NL1. My mother refused to go through the sterilization process, and eventually she became pregnant. Personal information about people wasn’t as easily available when she was my age, as you know. They managed to keep her pregnancy a secret.”

  She paused, took a deep breath, and continued.

  “Of course, my mother knew what this would mean for me. In those days, it was much easier to forge an NL1 certificate. There was that network of underground medical services that provided the old-fashioned methods of inoculations and treatments before the crackdown in the 2030s. When I was twelve, I went to the Underground Naturals classes, the training to help me and others survive in a world that considered us abnormal, learning how to cover up, deceive, survive.”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me the truth?” Preston asked, nearly breathless.

  “In the beginning, I was afraid you wouldn’t want me.”

  “But afterward, after we had gotten married, for Christ’s sake…”

  “I didn’t want to burden you with it, and I loved you, still love you too much to risk losing you, Preston. There are many women out there who are like me and who have managed to keep the truth about themselves hidden, even from their husbands and families.”

  “So you’ve been buying contraband drugs from black market sources all this time?”

  She nodded.

  “That alone is a crime, you know.”

  “I know, but I didn’t have a choice. It’s like those poor women in 2010, when all abortions, for any reason, were outlawed. Thousands went underground, hundreds died in unsanitary conditions and at the hands of butchers, but many were going to die anyway, and who could blame a woman victimized by a rape or involved in something incestuous?”