Mark had gone very still at the mention of his dad. Ironically, he’d talked to Lucy a lot about him as he kept a vigil at her side, not sure if she could hear but driven to try and reach her. And as he talked, he eventually admitted what he hadn’t been able to face before. That in seeking justice for Kelly, he might also be tracking his father’s killer.
“… However, Melanie Collins’s suicide means we will never know for certain what happened between her and Kelly on that day.” Earl looked over at Dan. “Sheriff Evans will now outline the reason Kelly, and possibly Dr. Cam Roper, were killed.”
Dan reflexively looked toward the end of the table where Chaz remained motionless, face calm, eyes steady.
Mark couldn’t tell for sure, but Chaz seemed to give Dan a nod to proceed.
Dan nevertheless took a few seconds to scan some notes that he had in front of him. “I’ve spent the last week taking statements from the bankers, family solicitors, and tax accountants who have managed the Braden fortune for years. It seems they would rather testify under oath than be considered in cahoots with Braden Senior. I also took statements from families whose babies he delivered in his Saratoga maternity center. And have contacted at least twenty orphanages. It soon became abundantly clear that Charles Braden III did what he did for money, pure and simple.” He stopped and took a sip from a bottle of water he’d brought with him.
Mark could tell he was nervous.
“In the midfifties, stock market reversals and heavy inheritance taxes on Charles Braden’s various properties put him in a precarious financial position. I won’t go into the details of how he reversed this situation, but in short, he exchanged healthy babies for deformed ones at twenty-thousand dollars a child, for a total of three and a half million, tax free, over twenty years. In most cases only the fathers knew, and the only crime committed by them had been to forge the mothers’ names placing the babies for adoption. So far I’ve managed to turn up records of 171 children with congenital defects that Braden placed in orphanages throughout the state during that period, and I still have several more institutions to check.” He paused, and slid Mark a glance this time. “There were no smotherings. I think he created that rumor himself, to make any accusations against him seem over the top and therefore unbelievable. But as Dr. Roper will now explain, there were bodies.”
Mark jumped right in. “Some of these infants were bound to die in transport. Not many, but more than the mortality rate for healthy newborns at the time. While it would be possible to explain live deformed infants to state authorities with incomplete documents, dead ones were another matter. Those, I believe, he did bury on the grounds of the home, probably no more than three or four. Sheriff Evans found a few locals who remember him finally finishing off the lawn after shutting the place down, replacing a few truckloads of topsoil and bringing in a complete order of sod, something he never managed to do while the place was in business.”
He cast his stare the length of the table at Chaz. “So why did Charles Braden III kill in 1974? Even if his baby racket were found out, he wouldn’t have been guilty of murder at that point. And if manslaughter charges were laid against him for the few infants who perished, I doubt any court would have convicted him since those newborns might not have survived anyway. But he most certainly would have been ruined, professionally and financially, and probably gone to jail – income tax evasion figuring prominently in the charges. For that reason, he murdered Kelly, and, most likely, my father.”
The room had fallen silent.
Chaz didn’t avert his gaze, but looked desolate, as if his mind were in some private wasteland.
Mark, feeling a sudden urge to move, pushed out of his chair and started to pace. “After closing both the maternity center and the home, Charles Braden III confined himself to legitimate medicine and research, carving out a distinguished career over several decades. He also prospered in the business world. The Manhattan corporate elite who were beholden to him for healthy offspring rewarded him with appointments to their boards of directors and offered him stock options, further increasing his wealth and prestige.
“Charles realized, however, that he was still vulnerable, that his baby swapping and tax evasion could still catch up with him through something as simple as incidental blood work prior to a surgical procedure on any of the substituted children. Some of the fathers Braden conspired with have come forward and given us valuable testimony about the measures he took to prevent that from happening. Like the family accountants Sheriff Evans mentioned before, these men didn’t know they’d been in league with a murderer and were just as eager to distance themselves from him by coming clean. ‘Charles warned me that should the daughter he’d given us ever require an operation and undergo blood typing, an alert doctor with access to the rest of our family’s medical files might spot that she couldn’t be progeny of me or my wife,’ one of these men told me. ‘So he instructed me that should any serious health issue arise requiring a possible transfusion, I should let him recommend a specialist who had never cared for me or the rest of my family.’ I heard this story over and over.
“Obviously, the issue could be managed easily while these individuals were young and, odds were, healthy enough that they wouldn’t fall sick with a serious illness anyway. Once they grew old enough to leave the nest, those who moved away were no longer a problem, their medical files now far from those of siblings and parents.
“For the ones who stayed in Manhattan, Braden, under the guise of providing the best care, referred them only to doctors who had contracts with labs that were part of the Braden business empire. Why? Another of these dads explained, ‘As early as the late eighties, when DNA testing first began to have forensic and commercial applications, Charles anticipated that sooner or later genetic screening for abnormal genes might become a routine part of medicine. When that happened, he wanted to be in a position to flag and intercept any test results that reported my son wasn’t our biological offspring.’ Others told a variation of the same story, all of them painting a picture of Charles Braden being smug in the certainty that he’d taken account of all eventualities.
“So for twenty-seven years he believed that he had successfully covered up his crimes and gotten away with murder. I can only speculate as to his thoughts at the time we discovered Kelly’s body. As you may have guessed, Charles himself isn’t telling us anything. But his initial actions suggested a willingness to let the current investigation run its course. Probably he expected it would come to a dead end, exactly as it had twenty-seven years ago. My poking around evoked little more on his part than a few subtle attempts to misdirect suspicion toward Kelly’s mother, Samantha McShane, and organizing a break-in at my house – his henchmen gave statements that he’d demanded they place the tap on my phone and get copies of my father’s file on Kelly.
“Even when Charles saw those papers, including a letter from Kelly that implied she’d been having an affair, his plan of action appeared limited to finding a fall guy on whom he could pin the murder. According to those same henchmen, their only instructions at the time involved monitoring my calls and keeping an eye on me in the hope I’d discover the identity of Kelly’s lover. Again, a careful, shrewd approach, calling for subterfuge rather than violence. And as soon as he rooted out the secret behind the mortality-morbidity reports, he had an even better scapegoat at hand in Melanie Collins. So why would a man supposedly intent on a nuanced, sophisticated strategy to conceal the truth once more resort to the clumsy art of murder?”
He glanced toward the woman sitting beside Dan. “Talk of killing, Braden’s thugs told us, came only after Charles listened in on the last phone conversation I had with Victor Feldt.” For those who didn’t know, Mark quickly outlined the events leading up to Victor’s firing and followed them through to the fateful call. “Victor couldn’t unravel all the corporate layers that we now know were Charles Braden’s doing to keep his role as CEO from becoming public knowledge. And what Victor thought he’d found – hiring an
d firing irregularities at companies where the executive health plans subjected employees to genetic screening – had nothing directly to do with Braden. It was Victor’s interest in the few dozen New York physicians who used the lab for their private patients that meant trouble for him. For here Victor drew perilously close to the very pieces of evidence that Braden knew would reach back over twenty-seven years and point at his baby-swapping business.
“So when Victor later left me a message, stating that he’d hacked into the computer where the results sent to those New York doctors were stored and found something peculiar, well…”
He had to stop and compose himself. “Tragically, I didn’t realize the danger he’d put himself in until it was too late. But thanks to a very special friend and colleague of Victor’s, who came forward with the files he’d entrusted to her, I finally pulled everything together.”
Dan’s dark-haired companion flushed deeply.
Mark opened a briefcase at his feet and pulled out three folders. From each he took out several lab reports that included graphs with numbered vertical spikes of varying heights along a horizontal line. “For those of you who are interested, these are the results Victor found.” He stood and spread them over the table.
Roy and a few others picked them up, studying them with puzzled expressions.
“You’re looking at genetic screening on three pairs of sisters, all with a positive family history for breast cancer. To a trained eye, differences in the DNA reveal that none of them are biological siblings – Braden’s prediction that the coming age of genomic medicine would mean a whole new level of headache for him made manifest. And over time, as more of the individuals he’d substituted underwent screening for one reason or another, there’d be increasing disclosures of nonsiblings, all involving so-called offspring whom Charles had supposedly delivered. Obviously, he couldn’t allow that to happen.”
“Were these other doctors in cahoots with his cover-up?” Roy asked, laying aside the graph he’d been studying.
“No, they were unwitting dupes.”
“Didn’t they miss the reports Braden intercepted?”
“Oh, they got a report. Braden’s flagging these results was part of a program where the computer would then generate simple typewritten responses stating whether the genes that had been tested for were present or not, then eliminate the graphs. We checked the other labs he owned and found similar systems in place. The doctors weren’t aware they’d missed anything. Most only want the final answer of a test anyway – less paper.”
“Why did they all use his labs in the first place?”
“As one of them said to me, ‘We didn’t know they were owned by Braden. Representatives approached us offering first-rate, competent service at a special price, then delivered – an offer too good to refuse.’ ”
Mark waited for more questions. No one had any. He glanced once more toward the end of the table. Chaz retained the quiet equilibrium Mark had noticed at the start of the meeting. Maybe witnessing a public dissection of his father’s crimes would help him get out from under the weight of the old man’s legacy. In fact, maybe it had already started to happen, and that’s what seemed different about him.
Mark knew that he should now state for the record the events leading to Victor’s death: That Charles Braden III, having learned Victor gave Lucy O’Connor a tour of the genetic-screening facility, must have seen her as a special threat. That Charles knew she already suspected he had something to hide about the home for unwed mothers because of all the records he’d so conveniently lost in a fire there. That finding her nosing around the laboratory, he probably jumped to conclusions. Assumed that she’d somehow found out about the screening results. Mistakenly concluded that she knew they would unmask his secret and had set out to get her hands on them.
So Charles cut off her access to the place by having Victor fired.
Then Victor found the reports, and paid with his life.
But looking at Lucy’s frail face, Mark hadn’t the heart to make her hear those words.
Wednesday, December 5, 4:00 P.M.
Hampton Junction
Mark turned left at the end of his driveway and settled into an easy stride. He hadn’t had a decent run since Lucy went into hospital. The air in Manhattan saw to that.
Dusk hung over the hills, the sun already behind them, and the late-afternoon light had a blue quality to it, typical for the end of day during the weeks leading up to winter’s longest night. In the distance toward town he saw tiny clusters of reds, greens, and amber where people had already hung their outside decorations. He smiled, having just dug out of the basement tree lights and ornaments that he hadn’t bothered with since Aunt Margaret died. The boxes lay stacked in the living room, ready for the weekend. That’s when Lucy would be discharged from hospital, an early release into his care.
His house would soon be a busy place. Lucy’s parents and brothers were coming for the holidays. It had been impossible to reach any of them until she’d recovered enough to provide e-mail addresses. They’d literally been scattered all over the globe, and all were ready to run to her side the instant he reached them, but Lucy insisted they hold off until the holidays, “Now that the worst is over.”
Mark turned west onto the uphill portion of his route. Traces of wood-smoke wafted through the twilight.
Lucy and he had discussed other plans as well. Again he smiled. As things stood, she would join him in Hampton Junction when her residency ended in June.
“Wonderful,” Janet Graceton had said when, as they made their good-byes after the meeting yesterday.
Earl had asked, “So what are you two going to do?” and Lucy told him. He couldn’t have looked happier for them, or congratulated them more enthusiastically.
Janet had chuckled. “Two doctors living under one roof? Believe me, it’s a hoot making that work.” She gave Lucy a hug. “If you need any advice, call me.”
He increased his speed, making his calves burn.
This morning he’d visited Nell in Saratoga General, the first time he’d seen her since that terrible night.
She’d been off the respirator for over a week, and her skin, though it had blistered here and there, confirming his initial impression of first- and second-degree burns, bore none of the deeper, third-degree damage that he’d hoped she would be spared. Most important, she escaped the need for painful skin grafts entirely.
Even with the upper side of her body still swathed in protective dressings, she’d managed to look indignant when he showed up, giving a haughty sniff. “Look at me. I’m done up like some a damned mummy.”
“Not for long, Nell. The nurses tell me you’ll be out of here in another week and a half – off to stay with your daughter in Florida.”
“Christmas in Florida! There’s no snow!” she’d huffed, and tried to stay annoyed, but couldn’t hide an upward flicker at the unbandaged corner of her mouth.
“I guess you’ve read and seen on TV all that happened.”
“Some.”
“Tell me, Nell, when you said you had come up with some other tidbits and a name related to Kelly’s murder, was that just a come-on to get me out to your place?”
Her icy silence had told him he’d hit the truth.
“You want to hear the inside stuff the media didn’t get?” he’d asked, trying to warm things up between them again.
The flicker at the side of her mouth had shot north for a second, and her eyes showed interest, but she just as quickly continued to look cross. “Don’t think tempting me with that sort of thing makes us even. I’m still mad at you.”
“For saving your life?”
“For putting that tube into me.”
“Same thing.”
She glared at him. “You think you’re so smart.”
“Well, if you don’t want me to tell you the good stuff, or about what’s happening with Lucy and me-”
“What about Lucy and you?”
He’d told her. All about Lu
cy. Including where she’d been born.
She’d studied him in silence almost a full minute when he finished.
“And you say the mother registered under a false name, but had a red file?”
“That’s right. And the year would be 1969, the date, March 7.”
She’d studied him some more.
“You think I might be able to figure out who it is?”
He’d nodded.
From the way her gaze had suddenly intensified, he could tell the wheels were already turning. “Perhaps it would help if you saw her. There might be a physical resemblance,” he added.
That had evoked a completely unchecked smile of delight.
He passed the place in the highway where he’d rammed Braden’s killers. Minutes later he put the gate to the home behind him. The landmarks had made him tense up inside.
Up ahead stretched open road, steeper, but unencumbered with any bad memories. He picked up the pace and felt himself relax. He got into the familiar rhythm of his body adapting to the change in grade and let it carry him along.
Time would expunge the hold that place had on him. Just as other memories would no longer encumber him. He felt certain of that.
Mark started to sprint, and soon found himself thinking of the wonderful things that lay in store rather than the past. His feet seemed to glide over the gray pavement, and a full moon peeked up over the horizon. Running straight at it, he headed for the summit, grinning all the way.
Acknowledgments
My thanks to Dr. Brian Connolly and Dr. Jennifer Frank for their consults on the clinical story line.
To Dr. DeWolfe Miller for his tutoring on the darkness and techniques of deep mountain lake dives.
To Dr. Yasmine Ayroud for her advice on the state of a body after it spent twenty-seven years in the mud of a deep mountain lake.
Mortal Remains Page 42
