She Was at Risk

by P. D. Workman

“Hmm.” Maureen settled back into her seat on the sofa. “I didn’t know, at first, that anything was going on. He was irritable. Angry, sometimes, for no reason I could tell.”

  “Did he eventually tell you why?”

  “Eventually it was all coming out, and he had to tell me before it hit the news. Or, he wanted to tell me before it hit the news. It was the right thing to do, but I don’t think it was very easy for him.”

  “What did he say was happening?”

  “He said it was just sour grapes. People whose pregnancies hadn’t worked out the way they expected. When they go to a high-class place like Sandhills, they expect everything to be perfect. And things aren’t ever perfect. If they have a miscarriage or the baby has defects, they blame the clinic. Even though that could have happened anywhere. It could happen with a natural pregnancy. But they have to have someone to blame it on.”

  “I guess that happens. People want to be able to explain why something happened. They want a reason.”

  “Yeah. I never tried to get pregnant, so I can’t say what it would be like not to be able to get pregnant.”

  Zachary nodded. “So he didn’t tell you that anything had actually gone wrong at the clinic? He said it was just people complaining?”

  “Yes, to start with. As it went on… it became obvious that something was going on. It didn’t just go away, you know?”

  “I understand that there were settlements made.”

  Maureen shrugged. “That doesn’t mean anything. It might just be money to keep people quiet, to keep them from saying something in media, ruining the clinic’s reputation.”

  “I’m sure there was some of that as well. But some of the others that worked at the clinic that I have talked to figured that it wasn’t just smoke.”

  “Did you want a drink? I didn’t offer you anything.” Maureen got up and walked toward the kitchen. “Coffee? Tea? Wine?”

  “Just water, if that’s okay.”

  “Sure, yeah.”

  She returned with a coffee cup and a glass of water. Zachary took the glass from her and sipped the lukewarm tap water.

  Maureen sat down. “So what did you need to know about Forest? I’m not really clear on what this is all about.”

  “I guess you know that when he left Minnesota, he started working at another fertility clinic in Vermont.”

  “Yes, I know he said that.”

  “My client’s wife is one of the patients at the clinic. There have been some questions.”

  She pressed her lips together. “What kind of questions?”

  “Prenatal testing shows that the baby has a genetic disease that neither of the parents has.”

  “Some of them can skip a generation or two.”

  “Apparently, this isn’t one of them.”

  “But that doesn’t necessarily mean that someone at the clinic made a mistake.” Maureen clamped her mouth shut, then reconsidered. “Okay, it probably does. I don’t… I don’t like to hear that. I don’t like to think about Forest or one of the other doctors at the clinic screwing up samples and making a mistake like that. That’s just a parent’s worst nightmare, right? Do you have kids?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “I can’t imagine finding out something like that about my kid, especially before he was even born. It would be terrifying. And you would be so angry, right? Someone screwing things up like that?”

  Zachary nodded. “It’s a violation. A betrayal. Especially if…”

  She sipped her coffee, looking over the brim at him. She didn’t prompt him to continue. As she had said, she didn’t like to talk about it or think about it.

  “Especially if someone did it intentionally,” Zachary told her.

  “Intentionally? No one is saying that. Forest wouldn’t do that. Who would do something like that?”

  “What is Forest like as a person? How did you get along, when the marriage was going well?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. He was an interesting guy. Very smart, very… self-centered in an attractive way. Confident in himself, you know? That can be very attractive in a man. Women like someone strong and confident in himself.”

  Zachary wouldn’t know. He had never been that kind of person.

  “It’s nice to know that you can depend on someone,” he suggested.

  “Yes, it is. I liked it, felt safe with him. He knew he was going to succeed, so I felt like things would go well for us. I believed him.”

  “But things didn’t work out the way you expected.”

  “No. He kept saying that he was doing great at this or that, that he was the best one in his class, or the clinic, or whatever, and he was going to work himself to the top. He was going to be one of the most prominent fertility doctors in America. I just had to believe that and to wait for that to happen.”

  “That is pretty confident.”

  “Yeah, and after a while, I got tired of it. He kept bragging himself up, and whenever anything went wrong or didn’t turn out the way he expected it to, it was someone else’s fault. For not recognizing his genius, or because they were jealous and pulled him down, whatever. The predictions of grandeur grew and grew, but he didn’t advance. He was still basically a tech at the clinic. Not even dealing with patients most of the time. Not making enough money to make his loan payments. So here I was, still carrying him, and he was apparently the most brilliant doctor in the country.”

  Zachary wondered if this was an early warning sign of Huntington’s. The literature that he had looked at talked about forgetfulness, mood swings, aggression, and confusion. Were McLachlan’s mistakes just a symptom of his disease?

  “And after a while, I just couldn’t take it anymore. All of the bragging and whining about how everyone else was holding him back. The lack of progress, and worrying about whether he was even going to be able to keep his job.”

  “Did they fire him, or did he quit and go to Vermont?”

  “He was… let go during the management change. They didn’t call it firing. So he didn’t have that on his employment record.”

  “He didn’t put his Sandhills job on his resume.”

  “I guess… that makes sense. The way things ended up there, I can see why he wouldn’t want people to associate him with it.” She looked at Zachary, narrowing her eyes. “It wasn’t him, though. No one ever proved that he did anything wrong.”

  “But that doesn’t mean he didn’t. Especially where this has happened at his new clinic… it’s suspicious, don’t you think?”

  “I think I would know. If he was making mistakes like that at work, I would have known that there was something wrong. He would act differently. Guilty. Upset. Angry. Something.”

  “He might. Or he might hide it. Or maybe those things he was saying about everyone else blocking him and what he would do if they would just let him be brilliant was talking to you about the mistakes he had made or the things he had done to someone else.”

  Maureen shook her head. Zachary looked for another segue. He wasn’t going to get her to admit that he could have been involved—accidentally or intentionally—in the problems at the clinic. And she didn’t need to. He didn’t need that to make his case. There were more important things for him to find out.

  “What are his family like? Were his parents still living? Did you meet them?”

  “Yes. Both were still living, and he has a brother and a sister.”

  “His parents must be getting on in years,” Zachary suggested.

  Maureen raised her brows. “No, they’re not that old. Fifties, I think.”

  “And they’re in good health?”

  “As far as I know. I think his dad has some diabetes, but his mom is doing okay. They’re both doing okay, I mean.”

  “No dementia or anything like that.”

  “No. They’re too young for that.”

  “Sometimes, it starts younger. What about his grandparents? What’s his family history like?”

  “I don’t know what you’re looking for.”


  “I’m just wondering about these grandiose opinions of himself. Whether they come from his upbringing, or maybe they’re cultural or even genetic. You never know, do you? All kinds of things can affect your mood and… stability. Has he ever been treated for bipolar?”

  “No, I don’t think so. His parents had him in some therapy when he was younger, but I don’t know what it was for. He talks about it like it was like, speech therapy or something, but it was when he was older. I don’t really know and I never asked. I don’t think… not bipolar or anything like that.”

  “And his dad? Everything has been good with him too?”

  “Just diabetes. He was in the hospital a little while back. I didn’t know what it was for.”

  Zachary thought back to the notes he had made about Huntington’s Disease. He took out his notepad to refresh his memory.

  “How about clumsiness? Problems walking or weird movements?”

  She gave him a look. “What are you looking for?”

  “Things run in families. If he has grandiose ideas about himself because of bipolar, then his dad might too. Or his mom. Someone else in his extended family.”

  “No, nothing like that. And what would that have to do with being clumsy? That’s not part of bipolar.”

  “No, but it could be a symptom of another disease. There could be something to explain the behavior you saw. It might not have been by choice.”

  “I don’t know. It got worse, but I think it was just the stress at the clinic. Not being promoted, and then the accusations going around about tampering with people’s embryos. It wasn’t a disease. He’s working at this other clinic in Vermont, isn’t he? He couldn’t do that if he had some disease that made him quit working here.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe for a while. But this client of mine… it looks like the whole cycle is going to start all over again.”

  Maureen leaned forward. “Don’t do it. It was such a mess, and everyone ended up feeling attacked and unfairly done by. Just… tell your client to let it go. He got his baby and if it wasn’t perfect… well, they never are, are they? He’s going to have to suck it up and raise it just like anyone. And he can try again. At another clinic, if he thinks there’s something wrong at this new Vermont clinic. But don’t… don’t make it a big thing like Sandhills was. That wasn’t good for anyone.”

  “If you could change the way things had gone down, is that what you would do? Just make everyone look the other way at the clinic?”

  “Everyone has to deal with risks when bringing a baby into the world. Whether they use IVF or other technology or just have them the old-fashioned way. There are always risks, and you take what you can get.”

  “Even if someone else has sabotaged it? If someone other than Forest swapped vials or fertilized the eggs with his own sperm, do you think they should just ignore it?”

  “His own sperm?”

  Zachary looked at her. “If the baby has a genetic disease that didn’t come from either of the assumed parents, then it had to come from somewhere else. Maybe the technician who did the fertilization. Maybe it was just an internal mix-up, but in a lot of these cases—” That was, Zachary knew, an exaggeration, “—then it wasn’t an accidental switch, it was the doctor using his own DNA for the fertilization process. When it was supposed to be donor sperm, or even the husband’s sperm.”

  “Forest would never do that. That’s horrible.”

  “You wouldn’t like the idea of him fathering babies all over Minnesota and Vermont, would you? Even if he didn’t have direct contact with the mothers? It’s still not a nice idea.”

  “No. And he wouldn’t do that. I could complain about a lot of things about Forest, but that isn’t one of them. He didn’t do that.”

  “He’s brilliant. He’s egotistical. He thinks that the babies would all turn out to be better if he was the father. They would all be as brilliant and exceptional as he is.”

  Maureen shook her head slowly, eyes wide.

  But Zachary wondered. Forest McLachlan fit the pictures of the egotistical, self-centered doctor that Kenzie had sketched for him. A doctor who thought the world would be a better place if it were filled with more people just like him.

  25

  Zachary had already promised Mr. Peterson and Pat that he would be at dinner on the weekend when Pat’s mother and sister were over for a visit. He finished up his interviews with that appointment in mind, and returned home in enough time that he could drive down Friday night to spend a quiet evening with Pat and Mr. Peterson, knowing that Saturday evening’s dinner would be more stressful and he would have to put on his company manners.

  Kenzie fussed a bit about whether he was jet-lagged, but it wasn’t that long of a flight. He had slept okay at the hotel and he enjoyed the highway driving.

  He called Gordon while he was on the road, and outlined to him the discoveries he had made. None of it was proof of wrongdoing on the part of Forest McLachlan. But it was strongly suggestive. He and Heather would delve as deep into McLachlan’s family history as they could, looking for early deaths, dementia, aggression, and any unexplained mental impairments. If McLachlan had Huntington’s in his family, they would find it.

  “What if you don’t find anything?” Gordon asked. “Is it back to the drawing board?”

  “No, I don’t think so. We have other suspects that we can look at, but I think our subject is probably the culprit. I talked to Kenzie about the genetics, and it is possible that someone who is not showing any symptoms or family history of Huntington’s Disease could pass the expanded form of the gene on to his child. It’s not common, but it is a possibility.”

  “Then he’s the guy. Whether you find it in his family or not, he’s the one.”

  “Probably, but we would need direct proof to have him charged. We can’t just go on guesses and circumstances. It is possible that he didn’t do anything wrong in Minnesota. Or that he didn’t do anything wrong here. Or both. It could be pure coincidence that there were problems in both places. It could happen in the industry all the time, and we just don’t hear about it.”

  “We would hear about it,” Gordon insisted.

  “They do everything they can to keep it quiet. Just like you did everything you could to keep that business at Chase Gold quiet so it wouldn’t affect your bottom line.”

  There was silence on the line from Gordon.

  “Gordon?”

  “Yes, okay,” Gordon agreed, his tone more clipped than usual, lacking its usual warmth. “They would do everything they could to keep it out of the media. Of course. But if it was happening too often, they wouldn’t be able to keep it quiet, would they? It would still get out. You would have parents up in arms all over the country trying to find out who had screwed up and why the clinics couldn’t put procedures into place to make sure it didn’t happen again.”

  “Yes. I’m just saying; we don’t know how often the clinics have to quash problems like this. It could be far more common than they would have us believe.”

  “Let me know what your researcher finds out. I want to know as soon as you do.”

  “I’ll keep you updated.”

  “Thanks, Zachary.”

  Zachary pulled in front of Mr. Peterson’s neat little bungalow and looked at it, feeling warm and happy to be there. He didn’t get that feeling from a lot of things. But Mr. Peterson and Pat had been a constant in his life for a lot of years. The only people who had been there for him since he had been a teenager. He’d been through some bad times, and Mr. Peterson was always there, visiting him at the hospital, helping him with a tough problem, working through old memories that were painful to discuss. He’d been there for all of it. And Pat was always warm and welcoming, trying to tempt Zachary with a plate of cookies or the other homemaking hobbies he enjoyed. Neither fell into the stereotypical roles or affectations of gay men popularized by the media. Just two family men devoted to each other and their circle of friends.

  Zachary got out of the car with hi
s one packed bag, locked the car, tried the handle, and clicked the key fob a couple more times. He stood there looking at the locks, then up and down the street, looking for anything out of place or anyone watching him. He couldn’t help feeling uneasy sometimes, knowing that the couple had previously been targeted because of Zachary’s involvement in a case. He wanted them to be safe and needed to know that he wasn’t bringing any more danger in their direction.

  He clicked the key fob one more time and then forced himself to walk up the sidewalk to the house. He could see lights on in the living room and kitchen. As he got closer, he could see Mr. Peterson on the couch reading. His head went up as he saw the movement outside, and he motioned for Zachary to let himself in.

  It made Zachary anxious to know that the door wasn’t locked or the burglar alarm armed. He opened the door to let himself in.

  “Zachary.” Mr. Peterson laid aside his book and stood up, taking a couple of steps over to Zachary to give him a quick hug in greeting. “I wasn’t sure what time you’d get here. How was the trip?”

  “Good. Dry roads. No traffic problems.”

  “Glad to hear it. You want to put your bag in your room? Pat will be just a minute. He needed something at the store.”

  “Okay. Great.” Zachary went to the guest room to put his bag down. He guessed that Pat’s mother and sister would not be staying overnight. Or if they were, perhaps they would be at a hotel. There was a rollaway in the small bedroom Mr. Peterson used as an office, but that would still leave them one bed short. Zachary could take the rollaway and Pat’s mother and sister could share the queen bed in the guest room, but since Lorne had told him to take his usual room, he assumed they had made other arrangements.

  He stood in the bedroom for a moment, looking around for anything that had changed or was out of place, but everything seemed to be as it was the last time he had visited. He looked out the window but didn’t see any unusual activity in the neighborhood.

  Pat wouldn’t have gone out and left the door unlocked and burglar alarm unarmed if he had thought that there was anything to be concerned about. And he was probably right. Zachary wasn’t there because of a case this time. He wasn’t investigating anything in town or anyone who had indicated any interest in Zachary, his background, or his family. It was just a regular visit. And meeting Pat’s family.