by R. L. King
Her head snapped up. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
Stone took a quick glance at her aura, but he didn’t need to. It wasn’t at all hard to see her suspicion ramping up to red-alert level. “Perhaps nothing. I know it was a long time ago, but do you remember anything about the clinic you used?”
“Why?”
“If you could just humor me, please. It might be relevant to the case.”
She continued looking at him for several more seconds, as if trying to decide his motivations. “I guess it’s not a secret. It was a place called New Beginnings. In Menlo Park, I think. They came highly recommended from some friends of ours when we were…having problems. But what’s this got to do with Ty’s kidnapping?” Her eyes narrowed. “Are you saying this man might have some connection to them?”
“Right now, I’m just examining several different lines of investigation.”
“Why do you even care?” Now she was glaring. “We hired Mr. Thayer to find Ty when we thought he’d run away. When the retainer we paid him ran out, we told him we no longer needed his services because the police had taken over. Why is one of his consultants still pursuing this?”
Stone shrugged. “I’m not just Mr. Thayer’s consultant. I have a personal interest in cases like this, and it’s something I do on the side. I’m very interested in helping the police track this man down, because I have reason to believe he’s done this before—and might do it again.”
Sylvia Ellerman paled. “My God—you think Ty might be in danger?”
“No, no.” He shook his head. “I’m nearly certain he isn’t. My current hypothesis is that the man was looking for something, and whatever it is, Ty didn’t have it. I don’t believe he’s of any further interest to our man.”
“But you think other kids might be?” She raised her glass to drink, but held it halfway between the table and her mouth. “You think…he might be after other kids conceived at New Beginnings?”
“I don’t know. I doubt it, but I’m examining some odd angles, just in case. Do you remember anything about the doctor you worked with at the clinic?”
She sipped her water and lowered the glass. “He wasn’t that man, if that’s what you mean. I told you, I’ve never seen the man in the sketch before.”
“There was a primary doctor on your case?”
“Yeah. I don’t remember his name. It was thirteen years ago, and to be honest, once Ty was born, we kind of wanted to put that whole thing behind us. It was hell, going through that. We tried for two years before we finally found New Beginnings.”
“You tried with a different facility?”
“Yeah, a place we found through our insurance. We got nowhere with them. New Beginnings didn’t normally take our insurance, but…” she drew a sharp breath. “…they were trying a new technique, one that had only recently been approved, and they said we fit the profile perfectly for what they were looking for. They agreed to help us for a significantly lower fee. Even then it was expensive, but it was worth it. Oh, God, Dr. Stone—do you think this has something to do with—”
“I’ve got no idea. I wouldn’t worry about it. Ty is obviously a strong, healthy boy, so obviously whatever techniques they used worked. But please try to remember—are you certain the doctor, or anyone else you encountered at the clinic, didn’t resemble the sketch?” He pulled out his phone, called up the photo he’d taken of it, and showed it to her.
She looked at it for a while, but then shook her head. “I’m sorry, but no. The only people we dealt with there were the doctor, a couple of female nurses, and the receptionist. They kept everything very private.”
“Do you remember what the doctor did look like? Do you remember his name?”
“Why can’t you just check with New Beginnings yourself? Or have the police do it?”
“We tried, but they’ve been out of business for a number of years.”
She looked startled. “How long?”
“Since a couple of years after your son was conceived.”
Her aura flared fear. “Is that important? You don’t think they were some kind of…shady organization, do you? We didn’t even check. I’m not sure we would have cared. We were so desperate for a baby back then—”
“No. I don’t think they were. Believe me, I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about. But can you tell me about the doctor?”
She stared into her glass of Thai iced tea. “He…uh…wow, I can’t even remember his name anymore. I can check for you, though. I’m sure I’ve got it somewhere at home. He was…in his fifties at the time, I think. Tall, a little chubby. He had a kind face, and a gentle manner. That’s what really appealed to me about him—some of the other specialists we’d gone to were so…clinical.” She shivered. “Like they were talking about some kind of scientific experiment instead of a baby.”
“Do you remember what color hair he had?”
“Uh…not really. Light brown, maybe, or dark blond?” She met his gaze. “Isn’t it amazing how someone can be so important to your life, and then the years pass and you can’t even picture them in your head anymore?”
“Is there anything else you can remember about him? Anything that might help us find him?”
“Uh…no, not really. He wasn’t a very memorable man, honestly. Kind of an ‘everyman’ type.” She picked at her salad and then started, jerking her fork up. “Oh, wait! I do remember his name! It was Dr. Summer. I remember thinking it was funny—maybe a good omen—that we were beginning the treatments in the summer, and that was his name.”
Stone wrote that in his notebook. “All right, Ms. Ellerman. Thank you.” He wrote his cell number on the back of one of his business cards and offered it to her. “Please, if you think of anything else, give me a call.”
“I will.”
Stone wasn’t sure she actually would. But then again, she might—from the look of her aura, she couldn’t decide whether to refuse to talk to him or consider asking him out for drinks. He hated to use that to his advantage, but they needed every trick they could get to track down the kidnapper. Even if it wasn’t the mysterious Dr. Summer, he suspected the two of them knew each other.
He called Jason on the way back to the car, filling him in on the new information.
“Can you have Gina dig deeper into New Beginnings, focusing specifically on Dr. Summer? See if she can find out his history, where he went to school, and if he had any black marks on his record?”
“Yeah, sure, I’ll pass that on.”
“If she finds anything about him, have her check the other clinics too, and see if he worked at any of those as well, either under that name or another one.”
“Got it.” Jason chuckled. “Come on, Al—we know our job. Let us hold up our end, and you do…whatever you do.”
“Did Gina get anything on any unexplained miscarriages or deaths?”
“Yeah. She couldn’t get access to any of the clinics’ records—since they’re out of business, they might be lost or only in hardcopy—but she did manage to track a few of the clients. Don’t ask me how she did it. I’m not sure I want to know. There were a few miscarriages. But she said not to put too much on that, since miscarriages aren’t uncommon even with normal pregnancies.”
“Just another potential data point, then. Let me know as soon as you find out anything about Dr. Summer.”
“You got it.”
For lack of anything else to do, Stone drove back to the Encantada house. He couldn’t make much more progress with his portal until more of the substance he was looking for turned up, and unfortunately that could be a long time. The stuff was extremely rare: hard to find, since it occurred naturally in only a few highly magical parts of the world, hard to cultivate once discovered, and volatile if mishandled. It was by far the most expensive component for a portal, and the rest of them weren’t cheap. If his source had people out looking for it, they could find it next week—or next year. Or not at all.
He sighed. Another frustrat
ion to add to a series of them, both personal and connected to this case. Maybe if he called Oyunaa in Mongolia back, she might agree to pass his information along to the buyer, so they could make a deal. If the other party wasn’t in as much of a hurry to complete their portal as he was, maybe it was possible. Or maybe Madame Huan would turn up again.
He didn’t have high hopes of either of those things happening, though.
As he drove up the tree-lined street toward the gates to his home, he noticed a white Ford parked next to them. Tensing, he slowed the BMW. He didn’t recognize the car, and didn’t think Jason had traded in his boring gray agency car for a boring white one.
He shifted to magical sight. The car had a single occupant. He couldn’t make out much from this distance, but the driver’s aura was medium blue, with a few small flares indicating a heightened sense of watchfulness.
Was the person waiting for him?
He thought about driving on by, finding something else to do for a while and coming back later. That thought didn’t last long, though. This was absurd. He was on his home ground, the house’s wards were strong, and if anybody did mean him harm, this was the safest place for him to be.
He hit the button on the visor to open the gates, then drove through. He deliberately didn’t close them behind him. If whoever was in the car wanted to talk to him, they could bloody well step into his metaphorical parlor.
As he expected, the white Ford’s door opened as soon as he was through, revealing a man in a serviceable but unremarkable gray suit. The man didn’t come through the gates, but stood outside, waiting.
Stone pulled the car into the detached garage and strode back out. “Something I can do for you?” he called.
“Dr. Alastair Stone?”
“Yes…but I suspect you already know that. Who are you?”
He indicated the gate. “Okay if I come on in?”
“Yes, but don’t expect me to invite you inside until I know more about you.”
“That’s fine. We can talk out here.”
Stone waited, studying the man as he approached. He was in his forties, with a healthy tan and the build of someone who spent a fair bit of time exercising. He had the same no-nonsense demeanor as Leo Blum, but wore a blank, pleasant expression that revealed nothing about his thoughts.
His aura did, though. He wasn’t nervous, exactly, but definitely watchful. Like a confident hunter approaching potentially dangerous prey.
“Mind telling me who you are, and why you were waiting outside my gates? If you know who I am, my phone number isn’t that hard to find.”
The man didn’t seem ruffled by Stone’s words. “I thought it might be better to talk in person.” He reached toward his jacket pocket.
Stone tensed, raising an invisible magical shield. After what had happened in Indiana, he wasn’t embarrassed that his sense of self-preservation was on higher alert than usual.
The man must have noticed the tension, if not the shield. “Don’t worry—just getting my ID out.” He withdrew a black leather wallet and flipped it open, revealing an identification card Stone couldn’t read from where he stood.
The badge, however, was all too easy to make out.
“My name’s Glenn Turman,” the man said. “I’m with the FBI.”
Stone had been ready to drop the shield, but now he kept it going, confident Glenn Turman couldn’t see it. “Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Turman. Or should I call you Agent Turman?”
“I am an agent, but Glenn’s fine.”
“Ah. So this is just a social call. Just dropping by for tea. You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe that.”
Turman chuckled. “No, it’s not a social call. But if you’re worried you’re in trouble about something, you’re not. I just wanted to ask you a few questions.”
“Questions about what?” Stone was sure he already knew, but he wanted to hear it from the man.
“About the Tyler Ellerman case.”
“I thought that might be it. I suppose you might as well come in.”
“Up to you. I’m fine with being out here. It’s a nice day.”
“Let’s walk, then.” He indicated the wild, overgrown yard. The Encantada house was on an acre of land surrounded by a tall wrought-iron fence; a landscape crew visited once a month to keep the worst of it under control, but Stone preferred the chaos of a mostly unplanned space to a carefully sculpted one. It reminded him of his manor house back in Surrey. One of his few concessions to order was to have the landscapers add a few paths, and it was one of these he now headed for.
Turman hesitated only a second, then fell into step next to him. “Nice place you’ve got here.”
“Thank you. It’s definitely an improvement over renting in downtown Palo Alto.” He glanced at the agent. “Suppose you get started with your questions. You did say this wasn’t a social call, which is good because I’m rubbish with small talk.”
“Okay, then. I’m the agent who’s been working with Sylvia Ellerman. And I just got a very interesting call not long ago.”
“Oh?” Once again, Stone was fairly sure he knew what this was about. If he was right, he supposed it wouldn’t surprise him.
“She mentioned you wanted to chat with her about one of the doctors she consulted for fertility treatments, back before Tyler was born.”
“I did, yes.” He also supposed he didn’t have a right to be annoyed at Sylvia Ellerman for haring off to the FBI about their meeting, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t. He pictured her pulling out her phone and calling Turman as soon as he was out the door.
“Why is that, Dr. Stone? I know who you are—I know you teach Occult Studies at Stanford, I know you claim to be psychic, and I know you occasionally consult with Jason Thayer on some of his cases. But what I don’t know is why you have any interest in Mrs. Ellerman’s fertility specialist.”
Stone paused before answering. He had to be careful—he was sure FBI agents were trained to read subtle cues in their subjects’ expressions and body posture, which in the hands of a skilled mundane, could be almost as telling as examining an aura. “Why does it matter? I’m just an amateur who likes dabbling in puzzles like this.”
Turman shook his head, his expression changing to one more at home on a parent who’d just caught their teenager in a lie. “We both know that’s not true. You’ve been involved in some pretty high-profile situations over the years.” He pulled out a notebook similar to Stone’s and flipped through it. “An incident in Ojai that led to multiple murders of a highly unusual nature, including one you were briefly a suspect in. Another one in West Virginia, involving a mysterious explosion. An incident of mass hysteria leading to several murders in Brunderville, connected with that ghost-hunting show you were consulting on. The disaster at Burning Man a few years back. You seem to be a magnet for that sort of thing, Dr. Stone. If I were a suspicious man, I’d start wondering at the fact that the only thing all these incidents seem to have in common is you.”
Stone forced himself not to slow his pace, even though his thoughts were reeling. This wasn’t the first time someone had put two and two together about his activities, and there was no way a mundane, even one with the resources of an FBI agent, could solve the puzzle without the crucial piece—the existence of magic in the world.
But that didn’t mean the man couldn’t make life difficult for him if he kept up his investigations.
“Sounds like you’ve been doing quite a lot of digging into my past,” he said evenly. “Especially given that I’m not, as you say, ‘in trouble’ for anything.”
“You’re not. The strangest thing is, even though you were in the area for all these incidents, there’s no way to connect you with any of them. And everywhere I look to try to find out more about you from local law enforcement, to a man they all speak highly of you. Leo Blum, for example. You’ve consulted with him before, for the San Francisco PD. He has nothing but praise for you, Dr. Stone. He says you’re smart, you know when to stay out of the way, and you�
�ve had some fairly amazing insights about things. Peter Casner in Ojai says the same thing, and so do Mark Flores in San Jose and Stan Lopez in Ventura.”
“You have been thorough.” Frighteningly thorough, in fact. “But I suppose all of that’s true.” Stone kept walking, fixing his gaze ahead. They were moving around to the back part of the house now, where the majority of the land was located. He continued along a gravel path past a series of shaggy bushes.
“So, that said, I’m wondering if this fertility-doctor thing is another of these amazing insights.”
He shrugged. “It might be. I tend to have leaps of deduction that either pan out spectacularly or leave me flat on my face. I’ve got no desire to waste law enforcement’s time until I know which one this one is.”
“And you don’t know yet?”
Stone paused, trying to decide if revealing his knowledge to Turman would put his investigation at risk. The FBI had a lot of resources, and they could hunt down information he doubted even Gina could get hold of. Did it really matter who caught the kidnapper, as long as he was caught? Stone still didn’t think mundanes would have a chance at tracking him down, but if they could scare him into putting his plans on hold for a while, that would give Stone and his magical crew more time to dig up the kind of data only they could find.
“I don’t know yet,” he said at last. “But I do know one thing, which you might or might not believe.”
“And what’s that?”
“There’ve been other kidnappings with the same motive.”
Turman blinked. “Oh? No, I wasn’t aware of that.” He pulled out his notebook again. “How do you know this?”
“More…psychic flashes, that led me to ask Jason and his computer whiz to investigate for me.” He stopped and fixed his gaze on Turman. “If I tell you what we’ve found, though, I’d like to ask you something in return.”
Turman looked suspicious. “What’s that?”
“I know this is a bit unorthodox, but if you find the information I give you to be useful—if it’s data you don’t already have—I ask that you keep me informed as much as you’re allowed about anything else you discover from it.”
