The Baby Squad

by Andrew Neiderman

  “Not even to get ahead?”

  “I’m not going anywhere else, except to a retirement community where I can perfect my golf.”

  “That’s still somewhere,” Ryan told him.

  He looked at the plane. The door was opening. A moment later, Hilton Sacks emerged and hurried down the steps to the tarmac. The six-feet-four-inch, two-hundred-twenty-pound, blond, blue-eyed first class detective was a prime example of what genetic engineering and the natal laboratory could produce. Not only was he physically impressive, but his IQ went off the charts, and he had that Superman arrogance Ryan detested. The confident, condescending smirk was already on his face the moment he touched ground and set eyes on him. It was written all over Hilton’s face: he was here to save the day and fix the political mess Ryan had made.

  “Henry McCalester,” McCalester said, stepping forward to extend his hand.

  Sacks considered it as if he wanted to be sure it was clean enough to touch. The short pause brought some redness to McCalester’s face. Sacks seized his hand and shook it firmly. Then he turned to Ryan. “Hello, Ryan,” he said. “In a bit over your head?”

  “If you’re speaking of bullshit, yes,” Ryan responded.

  Sacks laughed and then shut the laugh off the way someone might shut down a television set by pulling its plug. “Where are your data to date?” he demanded, seeing Ryan carried nothing.

  “In my vehicle,” Ryan said. “I thought we’d take some time to review my findings.”

  “You mean in my vehicle, don’t you, Detective Lee?” he asked with that infuriating smile. “If you’re going to return on the agency plane, Ryan, you have only about twenty minutes. So we had better make it fast.”

  Someone’s in quite a hurry to get me out of here, Ryan thought.

  Sacks turned to Henry. “McCalester, where can someone get a halfway decent cup of coffee around here?”

  “It’s late,” McCalester said. “Just about everything’s closed in town. If you don’t eat here, you’ll have to go to the hotel snack bar.”

  Sacks shook his head. “I hate these jobs in the boonies. Probably can’t even get a decent vodka martini anywhere. You owe me one, Ryan.”

  “I’m sure you won’t be here long, Hilton,” Ryan said as they walked to the parking lot.

  “Not a minute longer than I have to be.”

  The three stopped at Ryan’s vehicle. Ryan reached in for the folder containing all his printouts and handed it to Sacks.

  “Okay,” Sacks said. “Let’s hear what you have. As I said, we don’t have that much time.”

  “It should be worth all the time it needs,” Ryan said.

  “Some of us can grasp the important things faster than others,” Sacks replied.

  Ryan glanced at McCalester, who looked at Sacks with an expression of disgust and then turned to Ryan with an expression that said, I’m better off with you.

  “A teenage girl, Lois Marlowe, was killed with two blows to the cranium, the second blow shattering her skull,” Ryan began. “The ME concluded she expired almost instantly. The murder occurred just outside the village near a lake and a deserted old hotel called the Lakehouse.”

  “This is the girl the baby squad had questioned and had insisted be examined for pregnancy?” Sacks asked, looking more to McCalester, who nodded.

  “Yes.”

  “And as I understand it, she was going to reveal the source of the pills the following day.”

  “I think we pretty much confirmed that she acquired the prenatal vitamins from another teenager, one Stocker Robinson. We questioned the girl, and she claimed she traded a pornographic VRG movie instead, but I never believed that,” Ryan said.

  “Because?”

  “Stocker Robinson’s mother cleans and cares for the home of Mr. and Mrs. Preston Ross, an attorney of some standing…great standing, apparently,” Ryan corrected. “I followed Stocker one night and observed her fetching a secreted spare key to the Rosses’ residence. She entered the garage and planted the weapon that killed Lois Marlowe. The bloodhound confirms that. You can read the results on the report in the folder.

  “With great difficulty,” Ryan continued, shifting his eyes to McCalester and back to Sacks, “I acquired a warrant to search the garage. Mr. Ross consented to my searching the house itself after he saw the bloodhound’s report.”

  “And?”

  “We didn’t find the weapon in the house, but I believe…”

  “Stick only to the evidence, Ryan. I don’t want to hear any more theories. This Stocker Robinson committed suicide today, correct?”

  “That’s not conclusive. I have good reason to question it, and I think the ME will have as well, if he bothers looking. The ME should not treat this as a fait accompli, Hilton.”

  “All right, I’ll speak with him.”

  “How did you know it was a he?” Ryan asked quickly.

  Sacks smiled. “I took a wild stab at it. What the hell’s the difference, Ryan? Are you having some kind of a breakdown under all this responsibility for the first time? You can’t trust anybody?”

  “There’s more to do here, Hilton,” Ryan insisted. “I was about to be permitted to question Mrs. Ross when your expertise was suddenly and quickly required,” he added coldly.

  “That’s it?”

  Ryan nodded. It was all he wanted to reveal. There was enough in the reports to give an agent of Sacks’s expertise reason to continue the investigation anyway.

  “This Stocker Robinson ran away from school today, is that correct?” Sacks asked in the tone of a prosecutor.

  “Yes,” McCalester volunteered.

  “Well, after you track her, was this girl ever checked for pregnancy?” Sacks asked Ryan.

  “No, but…”

  Sacks shrugged. “You don’t have to be too brilliant to figure this out, Ryan. Even you could do it. This other girl found out about her, got the prenatal vitamins from her, blackmailed her, and she killed her,” Sacks said. “How’s that for a theory, since you’re hot on theories?”

  “I don’t think that’s all that’s happened here,” Ryan said. “And I don’t think you will, either.”

  Sacks turned to McCalester.

  “She should have been brought in, interrogated, examined. We wouldn’t have this mess!” Sacks cried, his hands up.

  McCalester started to shake his head.

  “I’m not blaming you. You’re just the local law, but my colleague here should have done so.”

  “There’s more to this, Hilton,” Ryan insisted.

  “If there is, Ryan, I think I’m capable of discovering that.”

  Ryan stared, pondering whether he should bother continuing. “Why would Stocker Robinson try to implicate the Rosses in the murder of Lois Marlowe?” Ryan posed. “She would have to have some reason. Know something that would make the Rosses suspects in the murder of Lois Marlowe, perhaps.”

  “Like what?”

  Ryan glanced at McCalester. “Maybe Stocker Robinson stole the prenatal vitamins from Mrs. Ross and traded them with Lois Marlowe, and maybe Lois Marlowe knew where she had gotten them or Stocker would say she did.”

  “Oh, so the Ross woman is the pregnant one? That’s who you suspect would have killed her and made it look like a suicide, is that it?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “And all this is possible in your mind because she hid the weapon in their garage, which was available to her because she knew how to get in safely.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe she was just looking for a place to hide the weapon in question away from her own home and thought of that,” Sacks said. “You might be reading too much into it, ascribing any other motive, Ryan. You had a kid in a panic. She did a bad thing. You paid her a visit. She was afraid you’d be coming around any moment to arrest her and everything would be revealed. She couldn’t live with it, so, being high strung and all, she did herself in. That’s all.”

  “She could have simply thrown the thing into th
e lake,” Ryan said dryly but firmly.

  “But she didn’t, and she panicked.”

  “I thought you were only interested in evidence, Hilton. That sounds like a manufactured theory created to end all these questions quickly and conveniently. If you really read my reports and findings there, you won’t be so quick to make that sort of judgment.”

  Sacks stared at him and then turned to McCalester. “Lead the way, will you? I’m hungry enough even to eat something in a boondocks hotel snack shop. The keys in the car, Ryan?”

  Ryan handed them to him, and Sacks got in.

  “Your bag, doctor,” he said, handing Ryan his device bag. “And your suitcase.”

  Ryan took it out.

  “Lucky you,” Hilton Sacks said before he closed the door. “They’ve got some milk run for you when you get back.”

  “Something tells me you’ll wrap things up here and be back before me,” Ryan retorted.

  Sacks laughed. “Probably,” he said. “It’s about the ratio of achievement time between a Natal and a Natural these days.”

  He closed the door and started the car.

  McCalester looked at Ryan, and from the expression on his face, Ryan thought it was possible he didn’t know.

  “For what it’s worth,” McCalester said, crossing to his own vehicle, “it was interesting working with you. Good luck with your career.”

  Ryan watched him get into his car and start off. Sacks shot a slick grin at him and followed McCalester. The two cars exited the airport parking lot. For a moment, he stood there in their wake, watching their taillights grow smaller and disappear in the darkness. Then he turned toward the airport.

  The pilot and the copilot of the agency jet were standing near the stairway. They turned as he approached.

  “Ready, detective?”

  Ryan stood there. It was as if he could see his whole life projected before him. Would he ever get an opportunity like this again? Would he always be burdened by his birth and never rise above being someone else’s assistant? Eventually, he would be relegated to a desk job, probably. In the twentieth century, women complained about hitting the glass ceiling. It was nothing like the glass ceiling he would find hovering above him forever and ever, he thought.

  “Detective Lee?”

  “Oh. No. There’s been a change. That’s what I was coming out here to tell you,” Ryan told the pilot.

  “Change?”

  “I’m not going back with you. You’re free to take off any time you like.”

  Surprised, the pilot looked from the copilot to him. “But…we received no message from the central office.”

  “I did directly,” Ryan said. “Nothing to concern yourselves about. Thanks,” he added, and left them.

  He went directly to the charter counter and hired a flight to Rochester.

  Less than an hour later, he was in a rental vehicle and following the GPS system to a place he knew only as the Rescue Foundation. He wasn’t sure what he would find, but he was sure that whatever it was, it was important to this case and maybe more important to his career, to the rest of his life.

  It was especially important to his opportunity to wipe that self-satisfied grin off Hilton Sacks’s arrogant face.

  Sometime during the night, Natalie woke and realized someone really was crying through the walls. It was not her imagination. It was not part of some dream, some nightmare. She lay there with her eyes open, staring at the wall across from her and listening. This last sleep session had left her feeling a little better. Her legs still ached a bit, but at least when she sat up slowly, she didn’t lose her equilibrium. The room did not spin. Her breathing was less labored, too. For a few moments, she sat there thinking about the visit she had with this new doctor and the wild things that he and Mrs. Jerome had said. She shook her head as if to rid her memory of it all and then stood up. She was still doing fine.

  She remembered seeing her clothing hanging in the closet. When she opened it, it was all there this time. No illusion, no dream. As quickly as she could, she took off the hospital gown and got into her own clothes. Just doing that made her feel much better.

  I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to speak with Preston, she thought, and tell him this is the wrong place. These people can’t help us.

  She went to the door and opened it slowly. It was nearly ten-thirty. The hall was lit, but all the illumination was reduced so that it had an ethereal, unreal look. The walls looked as if they were undulating, the floor buckling. She started toward the stairway, but when she reached it, she heard the sobbing again. She stood there and listened, drawn by the sounds as much as by the sight of the stairway before her.

  Who was crying? It was definitely a female. Why was she crying? Was it Mrs. Jerome?

  She went to the door and leaned against it, placing her ear to it. The sobs sounded like small chokes.

  “Hello?” she called. “Are you all right in there?”

  The sobbing stopped. And then, after a moment, it started again.

  Natalie looked back at the stairway. No one else was in the hall, nor did she hear anyone below. She contemplated the door knob and then turned it and heard the small click. The door began to open.

  “Hello?” she said, and looked into the room. It was dark, but the moonlight bathed the bed and revealed a figure on her stomach, her head submerged in the pillow, her long, reddish-brown hair spread over her shoulders and down her back. Like a mane, she remembered. Those had been Preston’s words. Like a horse’s mane, rich, thick, flowing.

  The woman wore a hospital gown exactly like the one Natalie had been wearing.

  “Miss?” Natalie said. “Are you all right?”

  She stopped sobbing and started to turn. Natalie drew closer. When she was nearly to the bed, she saw her face and stopped, her whole body freezing over, all the blood draining to her feet. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t swallow. She couldn’t move.

  The woman in the bed was an exact replica of her.

  She stared at the ceiling as if Natalie weren’t nearby.

  “They took my baby,” she said. “They took it from me, and then they came to me and told me my pregnancy was all in my imagination. They took my baby.”

  Natalie finally had the strength to back up. The woman continued to chant: “They took my baby.”

  She reached back for the door knob and, instead, found her hand in someone else’s hand.

  Spinning, she turned to face Mrs. Jerome.

  “Why, Mrs. Ross, why are you up and dressed? Where are you going at this hour of the night?”

  She flicked on the light.

  “Who is that in the bed?” Natalie screamed at her.

  Mrs. Jerome’s soft smile didn’t change, but her eyebrows dipped with the deepening of the folds in her forehead.

  “Who is who in what bed?” she asked.

  “That!” Natalie cried, and turned, pointing at the bed.

  Her hand seemed to evaporate in midair. She stared in disbelief.

  There was no one in the bed. All that was there was the hospital gown she had been wearing.

  She gazed slowly around the room.

  It was the room she had been in. She had merely returned to it.

  “Please, Mrs. Ross, let me help you back into bed. You’re just a little confused. It will be all right. Everything will be fine.”

  She took her arm. Natalie shook her off.

  “No,” she said, the horrific realization soaking into her brain like blood into a sponge. She turned to her slowly. “You took my baby. That’s what you did. That’s why Hattie Scranton was here. You took my baby. You lied to me. You’re all lying to me. You and that doctor. I’m not having any false pregnancy. You lied.”

  “Mrs. Ross, really. This sort of paranoia is becoming tiresome, even though Dr. Stanley explained it was part of your condition. You must make an effort. We can’t help you if you don’t make an effort, my dear,” she warned. “You don’t want to have to stay here any longer than necessary
, now, do you? And if we can’t help you here, we have to transfer you to a place for people who are having difficulty readjusting. Some of them are there for years and years, and some of them are there forever, my dear. You don’t want that, now, do you? Come along,” she said, reaching for Natalie’s arm again. “Let me help you get out of your clothes and back to bed. I’ll give you something to help you sleep, and in the morning, your husband will be here, and you’ll be on your way to a fine recovery. Doesn’t that sound wonderful?”

  Natalie let herself be turned and guided toward the bed.

  “That’s a good girl. We’re all going to be fine. Everything is going to be as wonderful as it was. You’ll see. As wonderful as it was.”

  She began to slip the light-blue leather jacket off Natalie’s shoulders.

  Natalie gazed at the bed.

  She could see herself again, see herself looking up at the ceiling.

  She could hear the chant: They took my baby. My baby is gone. They took my baby.

  The jacket was nearly down her upper arm when she spun around and caught Mrs. Jerome on the bridge of her nose with her right elbow. The blow was surprising enough and sharp enough to stun her. She stumbled back a step.

  “You took my baby!” Natalie screamed at her, and hit her again, this time with the base of the palm of her left hand, just the way she had been taught in a self-defense class. She struck her on the right cheekbone, and the collision sent a vibrating shock down her arm, through her elbow, and into her shoulder. Mrs. Jerome’s head whipped to the right. She lost balance, put her left foot over her right to catch herself, and tripped, falling forward, stunned and nearly unconscious.

  Natalie fled the room but ran directly into Hattie Scranton, who stood so hard and firm it was like running into a wall. She actually bounced back. Hattie barely winced. The sight of her put enough fear into Natalie’s heart to weaken her legs. She gasped and tottered.

  “Where do you think you’re going, Mrs. Ross?” Hattie asked.

  Mrs. Jerome came to the doorway, her right hand over her bruised face, a small trickle of blood coming from both her nostrils.