She Was at Risk

by P. D. Workman

  “What are you working on? Still the Huntington’s case?”

  Zachary was correlating names on the page, looking for any sign that the Jacqueline Merrit listed there was the same person as Dr. Jackie Merrit on his list. While he didn’t think that they were looking for a woman, it was always possible that someone had just been intent on causing chaos and had mixed sperm samples between clients. There was nothing to say that it had to be a man using his own DNA.

  Kenzie prodded Zachary’s arm, making him startle. His jump made Kenzie jump as well. Zachary put his hand over his heart, trying to tell himself that there was no need to be freaking out over a love tap from his girlfriend. He wasn’t being attacked.

  “Sorry,” Kenzie laughed. She gave his arm a squeeze and cuddled against his shoulder for a moment. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “No, no, it’s fine. I was just focused. What did you ask?” He realized belatedly that he had heard her talking to him, but had tuned her out. He tried to run back the tape in his head, but had been too focused to know what she had said.

  “I asked what you’re working on. Is it the Huntington’s case?”

  “Oh. Yes. Background on the doctors and staff that could be our culprit.”

  “Ah. I guess they’re probably in a rush for the information to decide whether to terminate or not. How far along is she?”

  “Um, yes. Probably. I think she’s probably going to terminate whether we figure out what happened or not. I think she was already looking for a reason to.”

  “Oh?” Kenzie’s eyebrows went up. “Why would she do that? I would think that if she’s doing IVF, she’s pretty invested in getting pregnant. Why would she want to terminate? Especially before she even knew the baby has Huntington’s?”

  “I don’t know. People can still get cold feet. Decide that they’re not ready for it, even though they have been waiting for a long time.”

  “I guess. I just think if I had decided I was going to spend all of the time and money and mental resources on IVF, I’d make sure it was what I really wanted before going ahead.”

  Zachary nodded. He looked down at the work he had been doing, rubbing a crick in his neck that he hadn’t noticed before.

  “How far along?” Kenzie prompted.

  “I don’t know, exactly. She’s… big.” Zachary made a movement suggesting a large pregnant belly.

  “So, not early.”

  “No. But I don’t know how many weeks or when she is due. Still a few months away.”

  “Not that it’s any of my business,” Kenzie admitted. “I’m just curious. It’s hard to imagine what they must be feeling like right now. You think that you’re going to have that baby you wanted, that everything has worked out and your dream is going to come true… and then you find out that the baby has a potentially fatal disease. A genetic disease that he didn’t inherit from either of you. It would be pretty tragic.”

  “I guess.” Zachary fiddled with the keys on his laptop, tapping lightly. “I really can’t imagine deciding to terminate, though. I know…” He tried to put the words together in a way that would make sense to her. “I know… what it’s like to hold a newborn, and to love her… even though it’s the first time you’ve ever seen her. To decide that you won’t let that child be born… I’m not a woman, but once she’s felt the baby moving and heard her heartbeat… I don’t know how she could make that decision.”

  “You can’t know what you would do if you haven’t been there.” Kenzie stared off, thinking. “It’s funny, you know, that we’ve both had that experience, with helping to raise a sibling. Not just entertaining the baby or giving her an occasional bottle, but actually being one of her caregivers.”

  Zachary nodded slowly. “I hadn’t thought about that. But yeah. I guess we have. What was it like for you?” He hesitated to ask, but did anyway. “What kind of home did you grow up in? Was it hard on them? Having another baby? Or did they want to?”

  Kenzie gave him a quizzical look. “Yeah, of course they wanted Amanda. They had been trying to have another baby. There was at least one miscarriage between me and Amanda. They never intended for me to be an only child, but I almost was. I’m glad they didn’t decide that it was too late to have a second baby.”

  “And your mom… I guess if she didn’t have the two of you close together, like with my family, it wasn’t so hard on her to be pregnant and to take care of Amanda.”

  “No. I don’t think it was too bad. I don’t remember her complaining a bunch about how hard it was to be pregnant. Some women do have a really hard time, feel really bad, but I don’t remember her throwing up or being overly tired, or complaining about a lot of pain.”

  “That’s good. So it was easier for her to take care of a baby.”

  “I don’t think it was really very hard for her. I loved helping with everything, even changing diapers. And Dad liked babies too. A lot of men don’t get very involved with babies. They figure they’ll bring in the bacon and leave that part to Mom. But he was always involved if he was in town.”

  “He traveled a lot?”

  Kenzie nodded. She didn’t tell him anything else about what her father did. Zachary assumed he must be a doctor from what Kenzie had said earlier. But doctors didn’t usually travel a lot, as far as he knew. Maybe her father had clinics in several different cities that he rotated through. That could be a thing.

  Zachary closed the lid of his laptop, deciding that further research could wait until morning. He didn’t want to shut Kenzie out. He wanted to have this conversation with her.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Kenzie said immediately. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you. If you need to get it done right away…”

  “It can wait. I shouldn’t have been working on it tonight.”

  “You can,” she repeated.

  “No. It’s okay.” Zachary took a couple of deep breaths and returned to their discussion. “My mom… she didn’t do so well with babies. I’m not sure why she kept getting pregnant. I mean, after the first two or three of us, she must have realized how hard it was on her body and that she wasn’t cut out to have a big family… but she still did. Six kids. I don’t know why she would do that.”

  “Was she Catholic? Some religions don’t believe in birth control. They think it’s a sin.”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t remember either of my parents being religious. We didn’t go to church. I’d never been to church until I was in foster care. Some of the families I was with would drag everyone off to church. But at home… I don’t think they were religious.”

  “Maybe she still thought that it was wrong. What was it like? She just didn’t like having kids around? She was overwhelmed?”

  “I think… she probably had postpartum depression. I didn’t realize that there was anything really wrong at the time. I mean, I was just a kid. Only eight when Mandy was born. But she…” Zachary put his computer aside, shaking his head. “She wouldn’t get out of bed. I just thought that’s how it was when you had a baby. When you break your leg, you have to have a cast on for six weeks, or a few months, whatever. Or stay in bed if it’s really bad. And when you have a baby, you can’t get out of bed for weeks.”

  “Yeah, sounds like she must have had it really bad. Or she might have lost a lot of blood and was anemic. Just having so many children in such a short period of time… she might have had other vitamins and minerals that were really depleted. Essential fatty acids. Deficiencies can cause a lot of psychiatric symptoms.”

  “Maybe that was it. I just know it was bad… We took care of the babies, me and the older girls. Gave them bottles, changed them, rocked them to sleep and tried to keep them from crying and waking my mom up. She would take them a couple of times during the day when she had to. When we were at school. I always hated going to school, worrying about if they would be okay while we were gone.”

  “Someone should have involved child services. Gotten her some kind of help. It’s pretty dangerous, letting kids so yo
ung be in charge of taking care of a newborn.”

  “I guess so. It was always a relief when she was able to get up again, and I knew that at least the baby wouldn’t starve while I was at school.”

  “How long was it before she could be up and around?”

  “I don’t know. Seemed like a long time. Weeks.”

  “Sheesh. She’s lucky she had the help she did. If one of you had ever had an accident with the baby because she couldn’t take care of it…”

  Zachary wasn’t thinking about his mother anymore. He was thinking about Bridget. Worrying, as he had many times over the previous weeks, how she was going to take care of a baby.

  He worried too much. Bridget wasn’t his mother. She wasn’t going to have depression that kept her in bed for weeks after the twins were born. If she even went ahead and had the twins.

  If she did decide to go ahead, if Gordon somehow managed to talk her into having the twins, she would have help. Not from children who were eight or ten years old, but maids and nannies and whatever else she or Gordon thought she needed to get through. She wouldn’t be lying in bed, her babies neglected.

  Kenzie cuddled up to Zachary, sliding her arm around behind his back, her touch warm.

  “A movie?” she suggested. “I think you could use the distraction. Something light and fun to get your mind off the case.”

  She knew, of course, that he wasn’t just thinking about the case. But he appreciated her putting it that way anyway. He didn’t need to be reminded how easily he sank into obsessive thoughts about his past.

  Or about Bridget.

  But Kenzie didn’t know that was what he was thinking about. He at least hadn’t given that away.

  21

  Heather had turned up several facts about Forest McLachlan. She went through what she had discovered point by point over the phone. Zachary made notes in his notepad that he would later expand upon on the computer.

  It wasn’t an airtight case, but there were plenty of reasons to be suspicious of McLachlan. So far, everything they had discovered was circumstantial, but many cases started that way. Then he gathered the evidence needed to prove his case. Or at least to get the police involved, and they could gather the evidence needed to charge a suspect.

  McLachlan had previously worked at another fertility clinic, and it was one that had been in the news for irregularities. It had been under investigation for sloppy or unethical practices. Heather hadn’t been able to find any verdict or resolution in the media, but the fertility clinic was no longer in existence. McLachlan had good reason for not wanting that clinic to be on his resume. More than likely, he had lied on his resume, but simply left it off of his social media.

  He had left an ex-wife in Minnesota. She would be a good source for them to check in with. Find out what had gone on at the clinic, why she had divorced him, and whether he happened to have Huntington’s Disease in his family tree. Heather promised to send him her information via email, so he didn’t bother to write it down.

  “That’s great. Is there anything else?”

  “I put in for some courthouse searches, here and in Minnesota. But they will take a few days to get in.”

  “Right.”

  “Before the fertility clinic, he was at a hospital. I haven’t been able to find any hint of scandal there. So maybe nothing. Or we might need to talk to people he actually worked with to find anything out.”

  “Sometimes there are non-disclosure agreements,” Zachary said. “They promise not to put anything in the media or to talk about what went on, if he’ll just go his own way and they don’t have to take him to court or deal with the fallout of people knowing what they allowed someone to get away with while he worked for them.”

  “Why would they do that? Don’t they know the same thing is just going to happen at the next place?”

  “Yeah,” Zachary agreed. “Not exactly protecting the rest of society, are they? They’re just getting rid of a problem. Covering their butts. They know that he’s going to keep causing problems, but they don’t really care as long as it is in someone else’s back yard.”

  “If this sicko has been breaking the rules and doing… disgusting stuff like this for years, then they’re partially responsible for that. They can’t just say they didn’t know. Or that they were gagged. Don’t they have a responsibility to do something?”

  “You’d have to talk to a lawyer. I couldn’t tell you. I’m sure they had lawyers advising them exactly what they could and couldn’t do. They probably had to make some kind of report to their professional board, whoever regulates doctors.”

  “Then why didn’t they do something?”

  “That’s why he moved. So he could start fresh in a new state.”

  “And it didn’t follow him? No one checks to see what his status was in Minnesota?”

  “Probably not. Or he gave them forged documents. If you see something in black and white, you don’t bother to call to find out if it is real or faked. You just assume that what you were given is legit.”

  “Not me,” Heather vowed. “I’m never trusting anything anyone gives me again. It’s crazy that he could get away with this.”

  “So far, we don’t know that he has gotten away with anything. All that we know is, he used to work at a clinic that had some issues. We don’t know that he did anything. We’re just speculating.”

  “I suppose so,” Heather said grudgingly. “But I really think he’s the one.”

  “Probably. But we can’t assume that until we find some more evidence. I’ll talk to his ex-wife, see if I can talk to anyone who worked with him at the clinic and hospital. Then we’ll have a better idea of whether he’s done this before. Still not proof of him fathering my client’s baby, but maybe enough that the police will investigate.”

  “Will your client cooperate? Do they want to know? If I had a new baby, I don’t know if I’d want them to confirm who fathered the baby. Does it matter?”

  “Well, there is always medical history and that kind of thing. They might want to know that.” There was a knot tightening in his gut. If Bridget terminated the pregnancy before they caught the biological father, that might prevent them from proving what he had done. Hints and rumors wouldn’t get them anywhere in actually prosecuting the guy or preventing him from going on to another clinic in another state and doing the same thing over again. “Uh, listen, Feathers, I have to make a couple of calls. Make sure that we don’t lose any vital evidence. Will you send me the info on the ex-wife, and anything you know about who he worked with at the previous clinic and hospital?”

  “I don’t have much, but I’ll send you what I’ve got. Do you want me to make a few calls and see if I can find out who he was friends with and who else he might have associated with?”

  “Yeah, that would be great if you can coax them into giving you any information we can use.”

  “All right. I’ll see what I can wheedle out of them.”

  Zachary looked up Gordon’s numbers on his contact list and tried his direct work line. He wanted to avoid, if at all possible, the chance that Bridget might overhear Gordon on the phone.

  He had considered sending Gordon a text to tell him to call back at his earliest convenience—code for when it was safe—but he didn’t know whether Gordon had his phone set to show the full details of his text on his lock screen, where there was the possibility that Bridget might see it.

  He should have asked Gordon for the best protocol for getting in touch with him when they had first met.

  The work line rang a couple of times, and Gordon picked it up. “Zachary. How are you?”

  Zachary didn’t bother answering the inquiry. It was just a social nicety and Gordon probably wouldn’t even hear his answer. “Are you free? Or is this a bad time?”

  “Actually, it’s a good time. I have a few minutes to myself, for once.”

  “I wanted to check in with you on… well…” Zachary’s face got hot, and he was glad that Gordon couldn’t see him. But it did
n’t make the question any easier to ask. “Whether you and Bridget have made any decision yet on whether to terminate.”

  “Well, that will be Bridget’s choice. I, unfortunately, have no say in the matter. If she doesn’t want to talk about it anymore, she can just go ahead and deal with it herself.”

  Zachary remembered that helpless feeling. When she’d had a positive pregnancy test, the false positive that had been a sign of cancer rather than a pregnancy, she had told him that she was going to terminate, and she wouldn’t even talk about it. It was her body, her life, and her decision. He didn’t get to have any say in it. She wouldn’t consider anything he might have to say about it.

  It really didn’t make him feel any better that she had told Gordon the same thing. She had at least discussed it with him, allowed him to talk her into waiting while they gathered more information and thought about it but, in the end, it would be her decision, not his.

  “I’m worried that if she terminates, we won’t have the evidence we need to prove that someone else’s genetic material was used to create the embryos. The lab that did the prenatal screen and found the Huntington’s Disease, did they do a full genome map? One that could be used for a paternity test?”

  “I don’t think so. I think it was just for certain anomalies.”

  “Then if she terminates… we won’t have the evidence we need—unless they keep samples. Do they do that? I don’t know if you can ask.”

  Gordon cleared his throat. “I’m not sure how I can suggest that to her unless you’ve come to a landing on what happened. Do you have something to report?”

  “Not yet. I’m still following up. But it occurred to me that if we get enough evidence on this guy—the guy that I think may have sabotaged the samples—to start a police investigation, they’re going to need proof of his wrongdoing. If we can establish him as the… uh… sperm donor, then he could be charged with fraud?”

  “You have identified someone, then.”