Forbidden Birth

by William Rubin

  This time Mayor Blumenthal tried to bring the tension down a notch, “Governor, Greg, we all share your concerns. And we realize with Newdern owning The Daily and a slew of magazines and other publications, how messy things can get. But we can’t jeopardize the investigation by making a premature arrest. Without sufficient proof, the charges will be dropped, putting—”

  “—then get the proof—TODAY!” Spatick said in a rage.

  “It’s not that easy, sir,” Commissioner Kelly interjected, his hands balled up in tight, white-knuckled fists. “For one thing, we’re still waiting on search warrants—”

  “—I’ll take care of that,” Spatick said belligerently. “Who’s the judge? You’ll have the warrants in an hour.” Spatick rose from the table and smoothed his gray, double-breasted suit. He pointed at Kelly, Blumenthal, and me in succession, his usually vacant eyes emblazoned with passion. “I will not be undermined by any of you. Contact my publicist and schedule the press conference for 9:00 a.m. tomorrow. You’ve got till then to get your evidence on Dietz—or heads will roll.”

  The governor, of course, has no authority to fire any of us. But between his political clout, his connections with the FBI, and his ability to set policy and budget for New York State as a whole, he could all but reign over us.

  Blumenthal, Kelly, and I looked at each other in stunned silence as Spatick stormed out of the conference room and slammed the door. King was supposedly in charge of this investigation. Why the hell wasn’t he here getting chewed out?

  Our perplexing, frustrating case had taken another turn for the worse—courtesy of our asinine governor and his reckless interference.

  Chapter 58

  I oversaw a team of FBI Agents and NYPD detectives. We had overrun Dietz’s lab thirty-five minutes earlier, just after receiving the warrant from Judge Hasslo. RJ King, who had been utterly useless so far on this case, was leading the team at Dietz’s home, while Kennedy was ransacking Dietz’s private office. A fourth team had his pied à terre covered.

  I was anxious to find out if anything was turning up so I started by giving King a call. “What have you got for me,” I said with impatience despite the fact that King, not I, was in charge of the investigation.

  “I got shit, boy, that’s what I got! The Pope’s quarters should be as squeaky clean, good ole All-American as Dietz’s home. The closest Dietz comes to anything out a line here is an old National Geographic with a topless African spear chucker. This whole thing’s as much a Goddamn waste of time as tits on a bull! If I don’t find anything in the next few minutes, I’m gonna wrap it up and head downtown to try and talk some sense into Spatick!”

  That’s the first intelligent thing he’s said, I thought. “Call me when there’s an update."

  “Roger that, Yankee. I’m over and out.”

  Our men were crawling over every inch of Dietz’s lab. Simco and Samuels, the least senior of the agents on the scene, were interviewing everybody who worked at the lab other than Dietz. Collins and Masket, two tightly wound Mid-westerners, who followed FBI protocol to the nth degree, were looking through the notebooks tracking every experiment being carried out in the lab. There were two computer experts from the FBI helping out, as well. Jason Stippler examined the computers in Dietz’s private office. Ted Munson did the same for the terminals scattered throughout the lab. I was overseeing it all, making sure information was gathered according to strict police protocols. We couldn’t afford to have anything we found tossed out on a technicality.

  “Chris, it’s for you,” Collins yelled as he held a black phone towards me. “It’s Kennedy.”

  I walked over to Collins and faced the corner of the room as I spoke in a quiet voice into the phone’s mouthpiece. I didn’t want any of Dietz’s staff to hear me; I sure as hell didn’t want them to know how much, or how little, we knew about Dietz. “What’s up, Kev? You crack the case yet?” I said with equal amounts of sarcasm and hope.

  “I wish. Nothing earthshaking or new here—except I did find more judgmental language in a few charts.”

  “Anything helpful?” I said with more excitement than I felt.

  “Don’t get too worked up, Chris. The entries are all nasty stuff, but they don’t prove he killed anybody, just that he’s an a-hole. What’d you turn up?”

  “Not much yet, I’m afraid,…” I said. I spotted Dietz out of the corner of my eye and turned away from him, more towards the corner, and spoke in an even softer tone. “Dietz has copies of every one of the hospital’s Institutional Review Board approval letters. All of the experiments being conducted here are above board, with the hospital equivalent of the freakin’ Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.”

  “What about the stem cell lines? All that stuff coming from kosher sources?” Kennedy said inquisitively.

  “Far as we can tell. This is turning out to be a wild goose chase. RJ hasn’t come up with anything, either. Not only that, but Spatick’s latest great idea has tipped our hand to Dietz. No way he’s going to take a step out of line now. We’ve got no chance of catching our lead suspect if he’s our killer. How the hell are we going to solve this frigging case now?” I said with obvious frustration. “We’re—”

  “—Hey, Detective Ravello. I got something you’re going to want to see,” Agent Stippler yelled, his head sticking out from Dietz’s office.

  I told Kennedy I’d get back to him and hustled into the office.

  “What have you got, Stippler?”

  “For want of a better term, I’d call it simply ‘the mother lode.’” Stippler backed away from the computer he’d been working on and extended an open palmed hand towards the monitor. “Here, take a look.”

  I sat down and looked over the irrefutable evidence he had just uncovered on Dietz, evidence that just saved my ass.

  Chapter 59

  “Holy shit! Stip, how’d you find this?” I said with admiration and awe, eyes still riveted to the screen.

  “Well, I had to hack through some pretty intensely cloaked files within the Physof software. This information was in a folder called ‘Musings,’” Stippler said with obvious pride.

  “It’s all here, man. Who he killed, how he found and tracked his victims, how he used the stem cells he retrieved to carry out sick experiments on human cloning. We’ve got everything on him!” I looked smugly at Stippler. “You secure these files. I’ve got an arrest to make.”

  I marched with confidence out of the office and scanned the lab until my eyes came to rest on Dietz. Strolling up to him I bellowed with sarcasm, “My, my, Carl. You are proud of what you’ve done, aren’t you?” I grabbed the stout German, spun him around, and thrust his face down onto the countertop, almost shattering a flask and some pipettes in the process.

  “What the hell?!…” a surprised Dietz yelled.

  “You’re under arrest for the murders of April Cassidy, Rakel Ingi, Tracey Lin, Heather Collins, and Joan Gellar.” I grabbed cuffs and slapped them hard and tight on his wrists. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law…”

  Chapter 60

  Dietz squirmed around in the holding cell like a man who had taken one too many espressos with his meal. He had plenty of reason to be jumpy. During interrogation, Dietz changed his alibis for the nights of the murders, now claiming he was alone in his lab doing research those evenings. Changing alibis was a God-awful move on his part. It was easy for us to confirm Dietz was not where he said he was. His access card, required to enter the research building before 8:00 a.m. or after 6:00 p.m., was never used those evenings. So unless he scaled the outside of the building and let himself in through a third floor window, Dietz could not have been in his lab when the murders occurred.

  The net we had cast around Dietz and our other suspects now only held him. His desperate flopping and squirming and lying during the interrogation just further entangled and trapped him.

  The files Stippler uncovered were slam-dunk proof of Dietz’s
guilt and his sick ambitions. Dietz had hacked into the main Physof servers in Palo Alto, California. There he planted a program that, in a matter of days, had insinuated itself into every desktop that ran the web-based medical records program. The program sent an e-mail to Dietz every time a new potential victim that met his specifications cropped up in the tri-state area. With the help of additional research, Dietz narrowed and refined the victim list before hunting down his prey.

  Ultimately, Dietz used stem cells from the babies he killed to fuel research into human cloning. The research was quite advanced. Not only had he mastered creating individual human organs, including a heart, lungs, pancreas, and even a brain, but Dietz had also succeeded in cloning entire human beings as well. The files provided us the who, what, where, when, and how of the inappropriate abortions and murders. All we lacked was the why. I didn’t think we’d ever find that out. Who’s to say what motivates such a sick, twisted genius as Dietz. Fame? Money? Some crazed, delusional God complex?

  Only Dietz knew the answer for sure, and after his lawyer arrived at the interrogation, he hadn’t been in much of a mood to share with us anymore. That was fine with me. For the first time since the investigation began, the pressure was off—Dietz had already given us all the proof we needed to lock him up and throw away the key.

  Chapter 61

  The press conference at City Hall was a madhouse. A sea of local, national, and international reporters lined the conference room seats, filling the room to the brim of its stated maximum occupancy of 225 people. The loud buzz emanating from the crowd made it difficult to talk to Commissioner Kelly and Mayor Blumenthal, seated to my right and left, respectively, at the long table in the front of the room.

  On the other side of the podium was another long table where Agent King and longtime Manhattan DA Morgan Jackman were seated with other local officials. King smiled, his face filled with both pride and amusement at how large the turnout was. King had been with the Bureau for twenty years, the last eight as a SAC, but he had never worked as high profile and disturbing a case as this one.

  Jackman had a stern look on his face as he spoke into the ear of the senior ADA, Kiernan Byrne. Byrne was an ambitious man with a 94 percent conviction rate in his time as an ADA. He had been instrumental in expediting the warrants on Dietz and was licking his chops in anticipation of having a go at him. Byrne would prosecute Dietz with the same fervor and flamboyance the flame-haired ADA had displayed in his eleven years of working for the Manhattan DA’s office. When Byrne was done with Dietz, the lone question that would remain would be how quickly Dietz should be executed by the state. Byrne lived for his job. He and his stylish, Italian, handcrafted suits loved being center stage at high profile trials. Byrne also loved to see the notches on his belt receive their just punishment. He would, I’m sure, push the lethal cocktail into Dietz’s vein himself if they let him.

  Spatick strode with confidence into the room and up to the podium. The roar in the room died down to a whisper and then to silence as Spatick spoke into the tangle of microphones assembled before him.

  “Good morning, everyone. Glad you all could make it on this historic day. As you know, today is the culmination of weeks of brilliant work and cooperation between NYPD, the FBI, and my own brainchild, the New York State Division of Medical Crimes. These entities, as with all work done under the current administration, demonstrated how local, state, and federal agencies can work in concert to achieve a common objective; in this case the apprehension of a most dangerous and demented serial killer.”

  Spatick paused long enough to milk the moment for all it was worth.

  Commissioner Kelly leaned in towards me. “Is this a press conference on the Dietz arrest or an announcement of dickhead’s candidacy for the Presidency of the United States?”

  I nodded my acknowledgment to Kelly. “Could be either. Spatick doesn’t miss an opportunity for good PR.”

  After a few more minutes of pedantic, self-laudatory congratulations, Spatick opened the floor to questions.

  Larry Samuels, a veteran reporter from The Weekly, was the first to speak. “Congratulations on the arrest, Governor. Just one question, though; why did it take so long to catch Dietz?”

  “Well, Larry, without getting into specifics, which would jeopardize the investigation and prosecution of Doctor Dietz, let’s just say we were dealing with a very cunning sociopath. If not for the exceptional police work of my Chief Detective on the Division of Medical Crimes, I don’t think we would have ever caught Dietz.” Spatick made eye contact. “Detective Ravello, please stand up.” Then he started to applaud.

  I hesitated, embarrassed by the whole spectacle.

  “Come on, Chris, you deserve as big a hand as anyone,” Spatick said with enthusiasm while he continued to clap. “Come on, take a bow.”

  Realizing my hesitancy just prolonged the inevitable, I rose and gave a half wave to everyone. I felt like a bashful ballplayer pushed out of the dugout by his teammates to take an obligatory curtain call.

  Jill Simpson, a slender, tough as nails reporter from the NY Syndicate, was up next. “Governor, are you sure Doctor Dietz is the right man? If so, what happened in the last twenty-four hours to convince you?”

  “Excellent question, Jill. Again, without jeopardizing our case, it is safe to say we uncovered some very damning evidence against Doctor Dietz.”

  The questions went on for ten more minutes, ranging from the inane to the insightful. All received the same well-rehearsed, non-answers that were Spatick’s trademark.

  After the press conference was over and all the photos were taken of Spatick with and without me, his golden boy, Spatick exited without a word of congratulations to anyone. Kelly and I lingered, enjoying the quiet that followed the disappearance of the crowd and the resolution of the case. I felt like a death row inmate who had just been pardoned moments before his execution. My job, my ability to provide for my family, even my health were under assault these last few months. For much of the case my failure seemed a certainty, but somehow I had prevailed. Right now I wasn’t as much elated as I was relieved it was all finally over.

  “So, what are you gonna do with yourself, Ravello, now that you don’t have to eat, sleep, and drink this case anymore?”

  “Not sure, sir. Guess I’ll catch up with Michelle and the kids and grab some shut eye,” I said with a sincere smile.

  “Now, that sounds like a plan, Chris. Tell you what, take the phone off the hook and put your 9 mm, radio, and badge in the bureau at home. Don’t worry about any police work for a while. We’ll catch up with you after the 4th of July. You’ve earned it,” Kelly said with a firm handshake and a pat on my back.

  “Thanks a lot, sir. I’m going to take you up on that. I’ll see you after the 4th,” I said with a nod as I turned and walked away, glad to draw this horrific case to a close.

  Chapter 62

  The taste combination of beer and lemon felt great as I soaked up the Vineyard Haven summer sun while reclining on my chaise lounge. A Corona dangled from my right hand, precipitation from the bottle’s bottom creating a partial ring as it touched the wooden deck below. To my left lay Michelle in her own chaise, wearing a sexy blue bikini and sipping her own Corona, our hands loosely intertwined.

  The temperature was in the low 80s; a cool breeze brushing over us. The woods beyond the deck provided the privacy we craved. The only sign of civilization was a golf course peeking through the trees far off in the distance. Wispy cumulus clouds dotted the blue midday sky and drifted by to the south. Birds and crickets chirped all around. Our children had just fallen asleep for their afternoon nap.

  For the first time in weeks, I took part in that most fundamental of human activities—I exhaled. The last few weeks chasing that psycho Dietz had cindered my spirit and charred my soul. I was littered with scar tissue, uncertain where it ended and I began. My mind, still racing far faster than I liked, flashed back to time spent as a surgical intern in the ICU caring for severely burned pa
tients, wondering if they would pull through. Most fought valiantly to regain what they had lost, but the sad truth was, few ever left the hospital alive. Did I have enough unscathed flesh and moxie to pull through yet again? I hoped so. Michelle and the kids deserved more than I had given lately. I had barely been around the last few months and felt disconnected, out of the loop with them. They had been patient and understanding, but they too thirsted for my return.

  I turned towards Michelle and looked through light-brown tinted sunglasses and tired eyes at my beautiful and bronze wife. Oblivious to the internal dialogue that tortured me, Michelle exchanged relaxed and sleepy smiles with me before turning her head away and drifting off to sleep. I remained awake, fortified in my determination to fight the good fight, to rise again from my own ashes a new and better man.

  Feeling so much, taking life so seriously, second-guessing my every move is a painful way to live my life, but the reality is it is who I am and how I live. I stared off for a long time into the sky, thinking about nothing in particular except taking in all the beauty that surrounded me. Eventually, I turned to Michelle, sleeping peacefully beside me and kissed her hand before drifting off to sleep myself. The healing could now begin.

  Chapter 63

  I finished the last of the Western Omelet Michelle prepared, washing it down with freshly squeezed orange juice as we sat on the deck admiring the clear blue sky. Life was indeed good—very good. The last two days had been beautiful, truly vintage Martha's Vineyard days. Bright sun combined with cool breezes, sandy beaches, and a carefree, laid-back attitude to create the perfect summer escape. But for some reason, I was having trouble letting go. Something in my subconscious kept pricking me.