The Baby Squad

by Andrew Neiderman

  “This is different, Natalie. Your life isn’t at risk.”

  “No? What would my life be if the truth about me was revealed, Preston? Would you have married me? I like to believe you would have, but maybe you should tell me.”

  “Maybe you should have given me that opportunity years ago, Natalie,” he countered.

  She nodded. “Maybe I should have. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry,” he muttered.

  “I want to have the baby, Preston. The child is really going to be our child, fully and completely our own, and not some laboratory creation with a few transferred chromosomes to give him or her some resemblances. We still have some heritage, bloodlines to pass on. You can’t tell me parents who give birth to their own children don’t have closer ties with them, Preston. You know it in your heart, just as I do. We’ve spoken about this from time to time.”

  He looked up sharply. “Yes, but that was always in the abstract or as a result of one of your romance novels. I never dreamed…”

  He shook his head.

  “God, Natalie, I work for a firm that argues before the Parental Review Board. I pass judgments and accept or reject couples who seek to have children. They just made me a partner and gave me full control of that division of the company’s business. Can you imagine what would happen if this was known?”

  “We can keep it from being known, Preston. You know how to do it, and you can get it done. I know you can, and you know you can,” she countered with a frantic urgency. “I’m willing to do anything, go anywhere, for this child,” she emphasized, and placed her palm over her abdomen.

  Preston stared at her hand.

  “This is your baby, Preston. He or she is you, entirely you and me, no genetics added, no element of our identities removed. You told me there were wealthy, powerful couples who have done just that.”

  “There are stories, but…”

  “None of the husbands could be smarter or more capable than you are, Preston. Don’t you want this, too? Deep down inside you, don’t you? I think I love you more just knowing that you do,” she said.

  He looked up at her sharply.

  “We’re different, Preston. We’ve been different from the beginning, falling in love the old-fashioned way, really enjoying passion in our marriage. You know I’m right. Let’s do something from the heart, totally from the heart and soul, Preston.”

  “But we’d have to…”

  “What?”

  “You would have to go away soon, Natalie, and then afterward.”

  “If it’s a boy, Preston, there’s nothing to do afterward except get hold of the vaccines.” She smiled. “If men weren’t in control of the government, would they have been exempt from the sterilization process as they still are? I often wonder if abortion would have been outlawed if men were capable of becoming pregnant. All the burden is still on the women in this society, regardless of the magnificent technological advances,” she added.

  He glanced at her and then stood up and went to the window. For a long moment, he just stood there gazing out.

  “I’ll do whatever you want me to do, Preston, but I want you to know I love you very much, and I look at this child inside me as the greatest possible expression of that love. That’s not something from one of my romance novels, either,” she said. “It’s something from my heart, the heart of my very being.”

  He turned slowly and looked at her. “I love you very much, too, Nat. You know I do.”

  She smiled. “I live with that hope every day of my life, Preston, especially now.”

  He nodded. “Let me think about it all, how to do it.”

  “But you want to do it, don’t you?” she asked quickly, and rose. “You see why it is so important and why you will love this child more than any other the state can create for us. You see that. I know you do, Preston.”

  He nodded again. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll figure something out.”

  She moved quickly into his arms and held on to him tightly. “Oh, I just knew you would say that, Preston. I just knew it.” She pulled back and looked into his eyes. “I’m not afraid for us, Preston. I believe in you and in how smart you are and what you can do.”

  “I hope you’re right,” he said.

  “I know I’m right.”

  They kissed. For her, it was like the sealing of a promise.

  He grew thoughtful again, his eyes swirling with worry and concern.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You didn’t know or have any contact with this teenage girl, did you, Nat? The one who was murdered?”

  She shook her head. Should she tell him about the pills? She wasn’t positive they were missing. Why add such a complication now when she had him wanting to go through with this? Why chance losing his support?

  “No. I don’t even know the parents, do you?”

  “Yes, of course. He’s our insurance agent. He’s been in this house, Nat. You met him.”

  “Oh, right. But not the girl. He never brought her along, did he?”

  “No, but I just want to be very sure of all that. There’s a CID man on the case, and he’ll be scrutinizing every possible linkage to anyone or anything.”

  She shrugged. “It can’t have anything to do with us,” she assured him.

  “Okay. How long have you been pregnant?”

  “Five, nearly six months,” she said.

  “Six months!”

  “My mother didn’t show until she was nearly in the middle of her sixth month, and after that, she wore these girdles that kept her looking svelte for at least another month before she went away to have me,” she quickly added.

  “So all this business about being bloated, too much salt, all that was part of the deception,” he concluded.

  “I don’t like to think of it as deception, Preston. For a while, I wasn’t sure what we should do.”

  “Seems to me you made up your mind when you let it go this far, Natalie.”

  She was quiet.

  He walked slowly toward the door. There, he paused and turned to her. “I assume no one else knows about this in Sandburg, Nat, not even Judy, correct?”

  “No one else in Sandburg knows.”

  “What about your mother?” he followed.

  Her mother lived in Palm Springs, California, now. She and Natalie’s father had moved there more than ten years ago, and he had died there. California had more pockets of Naturals than any other state, and it had always been more comfortable for them, giving them a greater sense of security. Of course, Preston never knew those motivations.

  “I haven’t told her yet.”

  “Don’t. We can’t take a chance on anything slipping out, and you don’t have to burden her with the obligation of keeping it all a tight secret.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Whatever you say, Preston.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t feel much like going out with the Normans, but we don’t want to do the slightest thing that might give anyone any suspicions.”

  “It will be fun,” she promised. “Bob booked Soy-Hoy.”

  He started to nod but stopped and then shook his head with a smile. “Here I was patting myself on the back all day, telling myself how brilliant I was, and I missed one of the biggest events in my marriage, something literally right under my nose.”

  “You are brilliant,” she insisted. “I don’t want you to blame yourself for anything, Preston.”

  “No, it’s okay. This is good. It’s a good lesson for me. Arrogant people make big mistakes. I needed to be reminded of my vulnerabilities. I don’t know it all. You proved that, and to tell you the truth, Nat, I’m grateful.”

  She smiled. This was the Preston she had hoped to see and hear after she had confessed.

  “Many of these things people are doing and are forced to do today diminish their humanity, Preston. It’s good to embrace it once in a while. And that’s not just the romantic in me talking,” she quickly qualified. “It’s the woman in me, and what is maki
ng you want to do this as much as I do is the man in you. That’s really all we are, no matter what so-called miracles they accomplish in some laboratory, just a man and a woman in love.”

  He laughed. “Don’t tell me you’re not going to get this into one of your novels, Natalie Ross.”

  “I’ll dedicate it to you,” she promised.

  He stared at her, his lips tight, his eyes full of that mystery and depth she so loved. “Matter of fact,” he said, “you will soon have research to do on your next novel. It’s going to take you out of town.”

  “Take me out of town?”

  He nodded.

  She stared, thinking, and then smiled. “Oh. What a good idea. I knew you would come up with solutions, Preston. I just knew it.”

  “It’s not a solution. It’s a start,” he said.

  Then he turned and went down to his office.

  She stood there for a long moment, her heart so full of love and hope.

  She put her hand on her belly.

  “Welcome to your home, my darling. Welcome to your family,” she whispered.

  Dr. Gordon Howard’s preliminary examination held no surprises for Ryan. He spoke briefly with him over the telephone in his hotel room, where he had set up his own technical headquarters. He had to rely on wireless transmissions because the refurbished hotel was not even close to being up to date. This area of the Catskills had been a popular mid-twentieth-century resort region. In the 1970s, it began to experience heart failure and dropped into an economic coma until it was resurrected in the second decade of the twenty-first century. Small communities like Sandburg were able to attract some historic restoration, and this was the only real hotel to be a part of that recovery. Purists kept it from being like the techno-resorts prominent throughout the country.

  The medical examiner had pinpointed the time of death to nine-thirty P.M. the night before. That science had been greatly improved. The one piece of information he was able to add to Ryan’s information involved a trace of some hard plastic substance on the victim’s skull. Ryan ran the description through his own computer analysis and determined it had come from a flashlight. He even had the make and the model.

  More than likely, this was not the weapon of choice for a premeditated murder. It had been utilized in the midst of some rage. The obvious question was, why bring a flashlight to the scene? Was another exchange of some sort to take place in the darkness? Maybe it was part of what was needed to travel, either by bicycle or walking? Walking meant a closer proximity to the scene. Even biking limited the distance. Yet he still couldn’t rule out a vehicle, even though he found no recent tire tracks. The car could have been parked some distance from the actual site of the crime.

  Of course, there was also the possibility that Lois Marlowe had brought the flashlight, and it had been taken from her and used to kill her. He doubted it, because he saw no other signs of any sort of struggle. He felt confident the blows to her head came as a surprise.

  He also felt the surprise came with no less of an impact to her parents, whose home McCalester was now driving him out to visit so he could conduct the necessary interview.

  A veil of mourning had already fallen over the Marlowe family’s home. The curtains were closed tightly. There was little light, and without any vehicles in the driveway, the garage door closed, the two-story Tudor had the look of desertion about it. The inhabitants, unable to cope with their tragedy, had fled. At least, that was the way it looked to Ryan Lee.

  When he and Henry McCalester stepped out of the police vehicle, Ryan was taken with the silence. It was as though the birds were in mourning as well. The house was sufficiently off the main road to be undisturbed by the sounds of traffic. There was a true rural stillness here. The patch of woods and the long, rolling lawn were scenic, even somewhat pristine. In such an idyllic setting, misfortune and calamity seemed totally misplaced.

  This should be the home of contentment, calm, balance, and bliss, he thought. A mother and a father should not be embracing each other in sorrow, asking themselves if all this wasn’t just a horrible nightmare that would soon pass. They should be sitting at their dinner table, exchanging happy stories about their day, and talking about good things they were planning for their future, especially their child’s future.

  The state had manufactured what was considered a nearly perfectly healthy baby girl for them. They had met all the criteria for a stable, constructive family. All the t’s were crossed, the i’s dotted. This was supposed to be a guaranteed success.

  Ironically, Ryan felt sorrier for these people than he did for his own parents, who had to suffer through the degradation that accompanied having a natural-born child. These people, the Marlowes, in a real sense had been betrayed, lied to, defrauded. They had been asked to place their trust in the new world, in the hands of scientists and politicians, a government that would make the people for the people. The new world for parents was supposed to be relatively crime-free. It was almost as if someone had been vaccinated against one of those old diseases, such as polio, and then soon afterward contracted it.

  “He’s a pretty successful insurance agent,” Henry continued, nodding at the expensive-looking home as they walked toward the front door. “She works at the Community National Bank, a loan officer. Both are in their late thirties. He was born and brought up in Ellenville, which is about fifteen miles away. She’s a local girl. They met at the state university in Albany and married when he graduated. She was still in school, so he worked there for two years. That impulsiveness almost sank them with the review committee when they went for their parental license and baby acquisition, I remember. Spontaneity is not one of their highly regarded criteria,” Henry added, lifting his right eyebrow.

  Ryan nodded but said nothing. He had permitted Henry to do all the talking, absorbing whatever he thought might have some significance. He was here to learn, after all, not to teach. Why should he be talking?

  Before they reached the front door, it opened, and Hattie Scranton and two of her women stepped out. For a moment, everyone froze, McCalester and Ryan and the women, and just stared at one another.

  “What are you doing here, Hattie?” McCalester asked with more of a curious than an angry tone.

  “We came to pay our respects, Henry,” she said. She smiled coldly. “We’re not heartless, just vigilant,” she added, and then started toward their vehicle parked in the street.

  “They can do damage to an investigation,” Ryan warned.

  “You’ll have to be the one to tell them,” McCalester replied with frankness.

  “If I have to, I will,” Ryan promised.

  Henry rang the doorbell. The short pause was uncomfortable. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and shook his head.

  “Terrible thing,” he muttered.

  Jennie Marlowe opened the door. Her eyes were bloodshot, her face pale, her shoulders slumped. She had a green knitted shawl over those shoulders. Grief had filled her body as well as the house with a dark chill.

  “Sorry to be bothering you again, Jennie, but this is Ryan Lee from the NYSCID. He’s the one authorized to investigate Lois’s death,” Henry McCalester emphasized.

  Jennie Marlowe, shaking her head back and forth slightly, turned her tired eyes toward Ryan. He didn’t smile. He simply nodded, and she backed up to let them enter the house.

  “Chester is in the living room,” she said, and led them.

  Chester Marlowe looked asleep in the oversized chair. His head lay on his right shoulder, and his eyes were closed. He didn’t move when they entered.

  “Chester,” Jennie said softly.

  He lifted his head without surprise and looked at the two policemen, his eyes redder than Jennie’s.

  “My sympathies again, Chester,” McCalester said.

  Chester just nodded. He looked like someone under heavy sedation, and for a moment, Ryan considered that to be a real possibility. Usually, the woman was the one under sedation in these circumstances, he thoug
ht, but he also knew the consequences of all this. When or if they returned to the review board to apply for another baby acquisition, their failure with Lois would weigh in like a two-ton gorilla, unless they had some very significant political help.

  “This is Ryan Lee from the NYSCID, Chester. He has some questions that might help us get to the bottom of all this,” McCalester said.

  “Bottom?”

  “Right, Chester.”

  “The bottom of all this is in a six-foot grave,” Chester said dryly, his voice in a tired monotone. “Bottom.”

  “Mr. Marlowe, Mrs. Marlowe,” Ryan began, taking over quickly, “have you any idea whom your daughter might have gone to meet at the lake?”

  “Someone from school,” Chester said. “Someone she was going to get to confess tomorrow. That’s what she told me that night, but she didn’t tell me she was going to try to get her to do it right away.”

  “How do you know for certain it was someone from the school?” Ryan asked.

  Chester raised his eyebrows. “She said she was bringing this person in to see Ted Sullivan, the principal. She also said she had traded for those damn pills. She told Jennie she traded a rock DVD. Who else would trade for a stupid rock DVD besides another student?”

  “What was the name of the DVD?” Ryan asked.

  Chester looked at Jennie. She shook her head.

  “I can’t remember if she told me the name or not.”

  “Sorry,” Chester said.

  “If it comes to you, please let us know,” Ryan said. “Do we know if that student is a male or a female?”

  The possibility of it being a male obviously hadn’t occurred to either Chester or Jennie.

  “No, but I just assumed…no,” he answered. He thought a moment. “You mean, the blows might be too powerful for a girl to have thrown?”

  “No, not necessarily. The foot imprints suggest a female at the scene, but I need to explore every possibility. I’m not yet sure they are the killer’s footprints,” Ryan said, sounding very official. “Can you tell me if you own a Radox flashlight, model number 2x5?”