She Was at Risk

by P. D. Workman

  “Sorry. Sorry, I was focused on a conversation. With Rhys.” Zachary turned the phone toward her, as if to prove what he’d been doing, even though he was sure she didn’t really care. “What did you say?”

  “You said you would put things away. In the kitchen. The food and the dishes…?”

  Zachary pushed himself to his feet. He was pretty sure he had taken care of everything. He remembered putting a couple of cartons of food into the fridge. Maybe he’d just missed one thing—a forgotten soup bowl or condiment cup of sauce.

  “I did… didn’t I?” Zachary walked past Kenzie into the kitchen.

  The dirty plates were still on the table, as were several takeout containers.

  He had the illogical thought that someone must have come into the house and taken them back out of the fridge after he had put them away. Or Kenzie was trying to gaslight him. But he knew that wasn’t the case. He had just forgotten or gotten distracted.

  He grabbed a couple of containers and folded them closed, moving quickly so that he would get it done before Kenzie got too angry or he got distracted by something else.

  “I really am sorry. I thought I had done it.”

  He shoved the containers into the fridge and went back to the table for more. Even after he had cleared all of the food away, Kenzie just stood there watching him, her arms folded in a closed-off gesture.

  Zachary looked at her, then back around the kitchen to figure out why she hadn’t relaxed yet.

  The plates were still on the table. Zachary ran a stream of water over them and put them into the dishwasher.

  Kenzie stalked into the kitchen and, before he could shut the dishwasher door, took a moment to rearrange the dishes he had put away. “You know they won’t get clean if they are facing away from the spray.”

  “Yeah. Right. Sorry.”

  Kenzie pushed the door shut with a bang. She looked around the room and nodded. “Thank you.”

  Zachary grimaced. He held himself back from apologizing again. “Have you already had your bath?” he asked. “Are you ready for bed?” He turned his phone to look at the face to see what time it was. Sometimes when he was immersed in his work, he lost track of time.

  “No.” Kenzie pinched the fabric of her shirt between her finger and thumb to draw her attention to it. She was still wearing her work clothes. “You’d think that a detective might notice that I haven’t bathed and changed for bed yet.”

  “Oh, right.” Zachary laughed. “Yeah. You’d think, wouldn’t you?”

  9

  After a few days on surveillance, Zachary strongly suspected that Bridget was not having an affair. That didn’t mean she hadn’t had one, of course. He would poke around iscreetly to see what he could find out about any interests she might have had in the past year but, if she had been seeing someone, Zachary suspected they had broken it off and were no longer involved. It hadn’t been long enough to be sure, but Bridget’s routine seemed to have changed little since he had last tracked her whereabouts. She slept later and walked more slowly, but still went to the same places as she had previously—no noticeable deviations.

  So what did that mean? Zachary brought it up with Kenzie as they got ready for bed. Zachary’s thoughts were spinning too fast and he hoped that if he talked it through with her, his brain would settle down and he would be able to get to sleep quickly rather than lying awake for hours. He told her about the IVF, that the couple hadn’t thought that they could conceive, and when his client had found out about the Huntington’s Disease, he had assumed that his wife had been involved with someone else.

  “But if she didn’t have an affair, then what does that mean?” he asked Kenzie. “A mix-up at the fertility clinic?”

  Kenzie nodded. She climbed into bed and applied cream to her hands and arms, rubbing the moisturizer in to keep her skin from getting chapped. “It does happen sometimes. You hear about a parent ending up with a child of the wrong color, or there’s some other genetic red flag and they know the baby could not belong to both parents.”

  “Like Huntington’s Disease.”

  “Not usually. Maybe a blood type mismatch, the wrong color of eyes, or obvious racial differences. But yes, Huntington’s Disease could mean that there was a mix-up with either the eggs or the sperm. Most clinics have lots of controls in place now, so that the parents are shown the labels on the genetic material being used and can be assured that they haven’t mixed up files or room numbers.”

  “But mistakes still happen.”

  “Yes, they do. Who knows how many have been made over the years that the parents never figured out.”

  “And it could be the eggs or the sperm. Either one.”

  “I don’t know all of the ins and outs of running a fertility clinic. Maybe one is more likely than the other. But from a purely biological standp200oint, then yes. They could have mixed up either the eggs or the sperm. Or they could have implanted the wrong embryos. So, three places they could have made a mistake.”

  “And if they used the wrong eggs, then the mother’s body wouldn’t… I don’t know… reject the baby?”

  “It isn’t an organ transplant. It doesn’t work the same way. The mother’s body will accept an embryo whether it was created from her own genetic material or not.”

  Zachary nodded. “So I guess I’ll talk to the clinic, find out on a no-names basis what their controls are, see where they might have screwed up.”

  “This client of yours… they haven’t done any DNA testing to see if both parents are biologically related to the baby?”

  “Is that something they can do before she is born?”

  “They can. Most places will wait until after the baby is born, but it is possible to do it prenatally. I figured since they had done the Huntington’s Disease test prenatally that they would check everything out before deciding whether to continue with the pregnancy.”

  “I think… the subject doesn’t know that her husband has any doubts. She didn’t want to do the Huntington’s test herself, and I don’t think he told her that he’s had his done.”

  Kenzie nodded her understanding. “There is one other possibility. I hesitate to bring it up, but…”

  “What?”

  “There have been several recorded cases where… the fertility doctor has been using his own sperm.”

  Zachary stared at her. “You’re kidding.” He was repulsed by the thought. It felt like a violation. To fertilize the egg with his own sperm and implant it into a woman felt like an assault.

  “Unfortunately, no.” Kenzie stopped rubbing the flowery-smelling cream into her hands and looked off into space. She looked back at Zachary, then away again. “I guess it wasn’t such a big deal back in the heyday, when they pioneered fertility treatment. Fresh sperm worked better than frozen, so doctors and students generously provided the genetic material in cases where women were using donor sperm anyway. What did it matter whose genetic material they used?”

  “Well… I would think it made a difference to the parents. And maybe to the kid who goes through life not knowing his family medical history.”

  “Yeah. Can you imagine? I guess they didn’t see anything unethical about it in the beginning. The science was new. They were setting up their own policies and procedures. There wasn’t the regulation that there is now.”

  “But you think that maybe the doctor in this case could have… used his own stuff.”

  “It’s just one of the possibilities if we are trying to narrow down what happened. It still happens every now and then.”

  “But now it’s been determined to be unethical, right? So why would anyone take the chance?”

  “Why does anyone break the law or society’s taboos? Because they see a benefit, I guess.”

  Just like the psychologist Zachary had talked to when he was ten and they were evaluating him for the school and his foster parents. He observed that Zachary would break the rules if he saw it to be to his own advantage. Even though Zachary knew what the rule was, he
would break it if he felt like he had a good enough reason.

  And so did everyone, to some extent, the doctor assured him.

  Some people broke the speed limit only when someone’s life was in danger and they needed to get them to the hospital. Others thought it was okay to speed all of the time, as long as they stayed within ten miles per hour of the posted speed limit. Still others sped because of the thrill.

  Did the same apply to a doctor using his own sperm to fertilize patients’ eggs? Did he do it because he thought it was their best chance at maintaining a pregnancy? Because he wanted to spread his genetic material far and wide? Because it was a thrill?

  “These doctors tend to have pretty big egos,” Kenzie said. “I honestly think that some of them are doing it just because they think that their progeny will be superior to anyone else’s.”

  “That’s pretty… egotistical,” Zachary admitted. “They really feel that way?”

  Kenzie raised her eyebrows and nodded. “Believe it. Doctors in general are a very arrogant bunch. I’ve known some doctors…” Her focus drifted. Zachary was starting to wonder what was on her mind. She had seemed to be somewhere else a few times lately, and that was usually his domain.

  “Doctors who would do that?” he prompted.

  “Doctors who… would do anything they thought they could get away with. Anything to get better results, to exercise their power over death. Or in this case,” her eyes focused back on Zachary again, “power over life.”

  He nodded slowly. He could see how that could be intoxicating. Power over life and death? What could prove their superiority better than that?

  Zachary took one last look at his phone screen before putting it on the side table.

  “So… how would someone figure that out? How do you know that the doctor has been… providing his own samples?”

  Kenzie lay down beside him, her body relaxing. “In the cases that I’ve heard of, they have done private DNA testing, like for genealogical research, then submitted it to one of the public databases to see who popped up as relatives.”

  Zachary knew some of the ins and outs of that kind of testing from Heather’s case. He nodded. “Okay, sure.”

  “And before those databases were around, it was a little more difficult. Finding other patients of the same clinic or doctor and seeing if they had the same doubts, or if the children had the same traits. Easier with some traceable trait like celiac disease. They would need to gather all of the data they could before anyone would look at it. Because who would think that one of these eminent doctors could do something like that?”

  Zachary shut off the lamp that was still on beside him, then cuddled close to Kenzie, rubbing her back and hoping it would release some of the stress she seemed to be under.

  “Is everything okay with you?” he asked in a low voice, nearly whispering. “And between us?”

  She snuggled and didn’t say anything. Zachary decided just to hold her. If she didn’t want to talk about whatever was on her mind, that was fine. As long as she knew he was there and was ready to help or just to sympathize.

  His mind wandered to his surveillance of Bridget, picturing her getting in and out of her car, the glimpses he had caught of her as she walked into different business establishments or met with friends to socialize. It still blew his mind that she was pregnant. She, who had said that she would never ruin her body by getting pregnant. He’d always thought that he’d eventually be able to talk her into it, but he hadn’t.

  Gordon had some real skills.

  “Zachary?” Kenzie murmured.

  “Mmm-hmm?”

  “There’s something I want to tell you.”

  10

  Zachary’s chest and stomach muscles tightened into hard knots. He tried to ease his breathing. She hadn’t said it was something to do with him. But what else could it be?

  She had found out about Bridget.

  Or she had decided that things just weren’t working between them.

  She had given it a good long run, but Zachary couldn’t shed all of his problems and conform to the person she thought he should be and, like Bridget, she’d decided to stop wasting her time.

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you remember a long time ago, I told you that I don’t have any siblings?”

  It was such a tangent from where Zachary thought she was going that he didn’t answer at first. He tried to remember when she had told him this. Back at the beginning, when they had just started to see each other? He had probably told her about his five siblings and many foster families, and she had told him that she was an only child. Totally different life experiences.

  He couldn’t remember it happening, but she clearly did.

  “I don’t remember specifically,” he said cautiously.

  “Well, I did… and it’s not quite the truth.”

  How could it be only partially true? A step- or half-sibling? A child who had been adopted out? Been disinherited?

  “Okay. Do you want to tell me about it? You don’t have to.”

  “I think I want to.” Kenzie squirmed, and Zachary tried to give her room while at the same time keeping her close and letting her know that he was there for her.

  He nodded, even though she might not be able to see him in the darkness of the room. He waited, allowing her to take her own time. Kenzie was quiet for a while, and he wondered if she were going to fall asleep without telling him whatever her family secret was.

  “The case that we had this week reminded me of my sister,” Kenzie said. She sniffled a little. “Amanda.”

  “Amanda. That’s a pretty name. I like it.”

  “She was quite a bit younger than me, and we were really different in our personalities, but she was like… she was more like my own baby than my sister. I loved to help taking care of her when she was little. She was never my bratty little sister, you know? We never had that dynamic.”

  “I bet you were a great big sister.”

  “With Amanda I was. I don’t know if I would have been with someone else with a different personality. But with Amanda… she was my baby sister.”

  She spoke of Amanda in the past tense. She clearly wasn’t around anymore. “What happened?”

  Kenzie had helped Dr. Wiltshire with a few cases that week; he wasn’t sure which one had bothered her and reminded her of her sister.

  “It was her kidneys. She had kidney disease. Started when she was really young. She couldn’t keep up with her friends, was tired all the time. And then… they figured out that her kidney function was really low.”

  Zachary remembered the scar on Kenzie’s abdomen. He rubbed the spot above her hip gently. She’d told him once it was a surgical scar, but she’d never said what it was for. He’d thought it might have been an appendectomy.

  Kenzie nodded. He felt her head moving against his chest. “Yeah… as soon as I was eighteen, I donated a kidney to her. Mom and Dad wouldn’t let me do it when I was younger, even though I wanted to. As soon as I could sign the permissions myself, I arranged to give her one of my kidneys.”

  “That was really generous.”

  “I would have given her both. Seriously. I loved her so much and wanted her to get better.”

  “Did the donation… not take?”

  “No, it worked. She got better and could do the things she wanted to and not have to sit at the hospital on dialysis. For a while. But a few years later… well, it eventually failed as well. That happens sometimes. Donated organs don’t always have the same lifespan as they would normally.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah.” She was quiet, squirming around to tuck her head into the hollow of his neck, breathing warmly on his throat. She smelled and felt so good. If he could just take that moment and stretch it out…

  “Anyway. I’m sorry I told you I don’t have any siblings. Because I did. I just… haven’t shared that with very many people. I’m a private person. Too private, sometimes.”

  “You’re allowed to shar
e or not share, it’s up to you.”

  They had agreed to that in therapy. Mostly in relation to Zachary. If she asked him something and he didn’t feel comfortable answering, he was allowed to just tell her instead of trying to find an excuse. And the same applied to Kenzie. It was an equal, two-way relationship.

  “And back around when you were working on the Lauren Barclay case, when I got mad at you for asking about that doctor wanting to screen organ donors based on what they said on social media…”

  She had blown up at him. Zachary hadn’t had any idea why she had been so upset. Except that they were on a break and he had gone to her with a question that he could have asked somewhere else. He’d thought it was because she didn’t want to be his go-to for answering all medical questions when they weren’t even together.

  “That was… because of Amanda? Could she… not get another transplant because of something like that?”

  “No, not something quite that close. Just… ethics and organ donations and some of the stuff that I went through with my dad…”

  “Sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “Of course not. You couldn’t have any idea about it because I hadn’t shared it. I can’t blame you for something you didn’t know.”

  “Well,” Zachary rested his face against her hair, breathing in her scent, “you apologized later and we worked things out.”

  “It’s like Dr. Boyle says, though, if we’re open with each other… we don’t have to try to read each other’s minds.”

  “Yeah.” He wiggled around a little, trying to get more comfortable. “And this girl at the morgue this week…? She reminded you of Amanda?”

  “Yeah. So young. It was kidney failure, and something about her… just reminded me of Amanda.” Kenzie shook her head a little. “It was such an awful time, Zachary. Losing Amanda and then finding out that my father had arranged for… a gray market medical procedure that contributed to her death.”

  “Ouch. That’s why you’re estranged from your parents?”

  “I’m not exactly estranged. I’ll still talk to them. But… I don’t really have anything to do with them most of the time. My mom’s personality is so different than mine; I can’t really talk to her about anything I’m interested in. Only her fundraisers and social appearances. That gets tedious. My dad and I are more alike, but our opinions, especially on medical stuff…” Kenzie trailed off. Zachary rubbed her back.