“I guess. But we thought… at least I thought… there would be safeguards in place at the clinic to ensure something like that couldn’t happen. I just figured… that it wouldn’t. That there wasn’t any way an employee could swap his own sperm in.”
“Gordon didn’t suspect that Bridget had Huntington’s?”
Zachary thought back to Gordon’s shocked expression when they had told him everything. His ashen complexion. The way he sat there, frozen, not wanting to believe what they had told him. Was that the face of a man who had suspected it all along?
“No. From his reaction today… I don’t think there’s any way he thought she might have it. He was… as white as a sheet. He could barely talk. And Gordon is never in that state. He didn’t know. I’m sure of it.”
“What a horrible shock. I can’t imagine how it must have hit him. This woman that he’s been living with for a couple of years… that he was hoping to start a family with…? It’s just too tragic. I don’t know how she could have hidden it from him. It should have been obvious that something was wrong.”
“I didn’t pick up on it. Neither did you. We all just thought… that she was overwrought. I thought she had good reason to be as mad as she was. I wasn’t a very good husband.”
“Not being a very good husband doesn’t make a woman completely unhinged. The things that Bridget has been doing—the tantrums over you being someplace by coincidence, acting like she cares and wants to be involved and then dropping you again once she has what she wanted, just the intensity of her anger—that wasn’t because of something you did.”
Zachary turned that over in his mind, trying to figure out if what Kenzie said made sense. He had already been over it a hundred times in his mind in the past twenty-four hours. He had worked it through in his notebook, thinking about the various scenarios, trying to weigh Bridget’s behavior against some kind of standard of normal responses.
It was hard for him to do. He’d faced a lot of anger and emotional behavior in the past. Much of it felt undeserved or like an overreaction to him. To the point that he no longer trusted his own judgment over what was normal.
He poked at his lasagna and mused, “What would I have done if I’d figured it out while we were still married?”
37
She’s just here in the hospital as they run the tests,” Gordon informed Zachary gravely. “She’s had a couple of falls that she hadn’t told me about, and they’re concerned with the possibility that she could do harm to the twins if she falls again. After the testing… we’ll see.”
“You didn’t know?” Zachary asked.
“I know she’s been clumsy lately. Just chalked it up to being pregnant. I’ve read that a lot of women bump into things, drop things, trip over things. Their bodies go through so many changes; it’s only natural. I knew she’d had a couple of accidents. Tripping before sitting on the couch or bed. Catching herself on a wall. She would laugh it off, say that she was getting as big as a house. Even though, of course, she isn’t.”
“But she told the doctor that she’s fallen down?”
“No.” Gordon rolled his eyes. “Her assistant. The girl who comes to help her with things she wasn’t strong enough to do after the cancer treatments. She knew but hadn’t told me. Bridget wouldn’t let her.”
“Ah.” Zachary nodded. Of course Bridget wouldn’t want Gordon to know about it. She would keep it quiet. Write it off as just being clumsy because she was pregnant. And when she was no longer pregnant and was still bumping into things and falling down, there would be another excuse. Being tired. Getting up too fast. Having a bit of anemia. Something innocuous to cover up the increasing difficulties she was having.
“How did she… take it? Hearing that she might have Huntington’s?” Zachary had problems forming the words, but managed to get them out. He hated that Bridget had to go through this.
“As well as can be expected… she was angry. Said that we were all interfering with her life. Didn’t know what we were talking about. That everything is fine and she hasn’t been experiencing any difficulties or changes in behavior. But in the end… resigned, I guess. She’ll let them run the tests. She says that will prove that she doesn’t have Huntington’s. I hope to heaven she’s right… but I think you and I both know…”
Zachary nodded. He swallowed hard. Since reading that people with Huntington’s Disease often had problems swallowing, it seemed like every time he swallowed, he was going to choke. Sympathetic symptoms.
He badly wanted it not to be true. He wanted Bridget to be well.
“The prognosis isn’t as bad as all that,” Gordon said bracingly. “She could live another twenty years after diagnosis. It’s not like it’s going to take her in a year, like with cancer.”
But what would those years be like? Bridget was already declining. She would need care. Gordon would pay for some sort of care worker at home. For as long as they could make it work. But eventually, it would be too much for home care. Bridget would have to go to a nursing home. She would gradually lose control of all functions. She would be a prisoner in her own body.
“She knows that I’m coming?” he asked Gordon.
Gordon nodded. “She wants to talk to you.” He rolled his eyes heavenward and gave a wide shrug. He didn’t mention anything about how Bridget had ranted after Zachary had mistakenly called Gordon at home. Bridget didn’t want Zachary until she wanted him. She would scream and harangue and tell him that he had to stay away from her or she’d have him put in jail, until she wanted him to do something for her, and then she would be sweet as honey again, talking him into doing something he knew he shouldn’t. Just as Gordon himself had done.
Zachary stopped before they got to Bridget’s door. “So, Gordon…”
His eyebrows went up.
“We never really had a chance to talk about McLachlan. I know I left you messages, but…”
Gordon shrugged. “He ran. Maybe he wasn’t involved in anything to do with Bridget’s pregnancy, but he still bolted when you started asking questions. That suggests that he’s guilty of something.”
“I just wondered… whether you had anything to do with that.”
Gordon gazed at him. “I hired you to investigate. So, yes, if asking questions prompted him to run, I guess I’m responsible for that.”
“I meant… personally. Did you go over there to talk to him?”
Or to try to get answers out of him another way. Or maybe he hadn’t even tried to get any answers. Maybe he figured he knew enough already and just took action. Or hired someone else to do that part.
“Of course not,” Gordon said blandly. “You didn’t even give me his address.”
It would have been easy enough to find. Heather hadn’t had any trouble getting it. The receptionist at the clinic had it and verified it over the phone.
“So you didn’t do anything when you thought he might have been the one tampering with samples.”
Gordon shook his head. His face was smooth. There was no sign that he was lying. There never was.
“The police haven’t been able to find any sign of him yet,” Zachary told him.
“I suppose he left the state again. Maybe he went somewhere warmer this time. Florida or California. Who knows? He’ll ditch his car, take on a new identity, and forge references to get himself a new job. None of us will ever see him again.”
His words had the ring of finality. None of us will ever see him again.
Zachary couldn’t think of anything else to say. If Gordon had anything to do with McLachlan’s disappearance, he would never admit it.
He walked with Gordon into Bridget’s hospital room.
Bridget was sitting in bed. Zachary’s heart gave a tug as he approached her. She was still so beautiful. Cancer and treatment and the early stages of Huntington’s Disease had not taken that away from her. She looked more fragile, and yet she glowed with radiance from the pregnancy, as she sat there with one hand over her pregnant belly.
Zacha
ry was reminded of the pictures of Mrs. Downy, pretending to be pregnant, cradling her fake stomach in her hands. But Bridget wasn’t faking. The lives of those two babies depended on her decisions.
Her blond hair fell in waves around her face. She was wearing makeup in spite of being in a hospital bed. She wore one of her own nightgowns rather than a hospital johnny. She looked at Gordon, and then at Zachary, a quick movement, analyzing them both.
“Zachary. I didn’t know if you would come.”
Of course she had known he would come. He would always come when she called.
Bridget smiled sweetly at Gordon. “Could I talk to Zachary alone, Gordon?”
“Of course, sweetheart.” He bent to kiss her on the top of the head. “Don’t tire yourself out.”
“I can talk to him without tiring myself out.”
“You don’t have a lot of energy with the pregnancy. You need to be careful.”
She waved him away. Gordon nodded to Zachary and walked out of the room. There was a man with self-confidence. Zachary couldn’t imagine letting an ex-lover sit alone with his wife.
As if anyone could prevent Bridget from doing what she put her mind to. Zachary sat down in a metal and plastic chair near the bed. Not too close to her. Maintaining a respectful distance so that everyone would know that he wasn’t doing anything improper.
“So… I guess all of this was your idea,” Bridget said, indicating the room around her. “You decided that I have Huntington’s Disease.”
“I don’t know,” Zachary said. “It was only a thought; I can’t prove it. I hope I’m wrong. But if you do… they can give you medications that can help you feel better…”
“Nothing is going to make me feel better right now. Would you feel better if you knew you were going to lose control of your body and your mind and die? Just how would that make you feel?”
“I’m sorry.”
Thirty seconds, and he was already apologizing to her. Not for something that he had done wrong, just for generally being in her line of fire. For guessing before anyone else had what was wrong with her.
“They don’t know for sure yet, do they?” he asked tentatively.
Gordon had said that she didn’t believe she had Huntington’s, but she seemed remarkably resigned to having it.
“We’ll see what they find out.”
Zachary nodded. “I’m sorry. I wanted to help. I never wanted this.”
“Gordon should not have involved you in… our mess.”
Zachary looked away. He already knew that. Everybody involved knew that. But he felt like it was partly his mess too. He still wanted to be a part of Bridget’s life. Even though they were divorced, he still felt like they would be a part of each other’s lives forever.
“Zachary.” Bridget put her hand on the rail of the bed. Closer to him. Like she was going to take his hand and hold it as they talked intimately about the whole thing.
He swallowed again. His throat felt stretched out and dry. He should have bought a water bottle at the cafeteria. Nothing felt natural. Like it was his own body that was shutting down instead of Bridget’s.
“Zachary, I need you to do something for me.” Her expression was soft. Her eyes doe-like.
“Anything,” Zachary assured her. Though he already knew what it was, and he already knew that he would never do what she wanted him to.
“I need… I need to find out more about my biological parents.” She shook her head in wonder. “I can’t even believe I’m saying that. I never knew I had any other parents. I never thought that I wasn’t a Downy at birth. It’s a shock.”
“Yeah. I imagine it would be quite disconcerting.”
“You’re telling me. Anyway… you’re good at research and background and hunting down information and missing people. I want you to find out about my parents. Their names, what they did, why they ended up giving me up for adoption. Mom says they are dead, but I don’t know if that’s true. I need to find out. Soon.”
Zachary nodded. “Okay. Let me look into it.”
“I want to know while… I’m still myself. I need to know all about who I am.”
“Yeah. That makes sense. Well, you know me… how many different places I lived. But I always knew where I came from. I at least knew my biological parents, even if they weren’t a part of my life anymore.”
“Yes. And I need that. I need that connection to the past.”
“Of course.”
“I’ll give you all of the information I can. Don’t talk to Mom and Dad about it. I’m sure they’ll just tell you lies. But I want the truth.”
38
Zachary would never tell Bridget that he already knew what she was looking for.
He had known that it wouldn’t be before-bed reading material, but he couldn’t stop himself from a series of internet searches which he had hoped would turn up the tragic story of Bridget’s biological parents. She was nearly forty, so he would only be able to find anything about the incident online if someone had digitized the papers it was reported in at the time or someone had used it as a case study for some research project.
He sifted through various stories that had similarities to what Mr. Downy had finally described to Zachary. He discarded them all, searching deeper and deeper. He might have to go to the library or some hall of archives to find hard copy papers from the time. But he would find them. He would get them somehow.
Then he found a medical paper. A student who had done a survey of similar cases. Michael Webber had described it in detail. He had covered their backgrounds, the events that had led up to it, and the incident itself. The bare, cold facts. Zachary sat looking at the screen, oblivious to everything around him, for some indefinite period of time. Until Kenzie was tapping on his leg again, trying to bring him back to a conversation that he had not been a full partner in.
“What are you reading?” she asked, looking at his screen. “Looks like a medical journal from here.”
Zachary nodded. “Yes.”
“Need some help with it? I can interpret for you.”
He adjusted his screen a little, unsure what to tell her. “It’s a case I was looking for. Sort of a tragic one…”
Kenzie nodded. She worked in the medical examiner’s office. She’d heard more than her share of tragic cases.
“It’s an account of a murder-suicide.” Zachary let his eyes run down the columns, catching a word here and there. He’d already read it through a couple of times and, in spite of the medical jargon, he understood perfectly what had happened.
“Murder-suicide in a medical journal? Why? What is so interesting about it?”
“Just a few months before the murder-suicide took place… the husband had been diagnosed with Huntington’s Disease.”
“Oh.” Kenzie shook her head. “I know that the suicide rate for Huntington’s Disease is pretty high. It’s a terrible disease; people don’t want to face it, knowing what’s going to happen to them. And depression is a big part of Huntington’s. They don’t know whether the suicidal ideation is because of the prognosis, or because of what’s going on in the brain with the neurotransmitters.”
“It’s pretty bleak. I don’t think I would want to go on, knowing I was going to face that.”
“But murder, I don’t think that’s as common. I know there is aggression, sometimes assault of caregivers. But that’s not the same as murder.”
“The medical paper breaks it down. Number of cases, how common it is. Attempted murder is more common than murder itself. Because of the movement disorder, they often don’t succeed.”
“Still, tragic,” Kenzie commented.
“Especially in this case. They left behind an infant child.”
“Oh. Poor thing.”
“A little blond girl. They didn’t have a genetic test for Huntington’s back then, so she was never tested to see if she inherited it.”
“Whatever happened to her, I wonder.”
Zachary looked at Kenzie, surprised that she had
n’t picked up on the connections. “She was adopted. Raised without ever knowing what had happened to her biological parents, or even that she had been adopted. So she never knew that she had a fifty percent chance of having inherited Huntington’s Disease from her father.”
Kenzie’s eyes widened. “Bridget?” she asked gently.
Zachary nodded and closed his eyes. “Yes. Bridget.”
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Preview of Unlawful Harvest
1
MACKENZIE REACHED FOR THE ringing phone, trying to drag herself from sleep, but her hand encountered only the empty base of the phone, the wireless handset missing.
She pried her eyes open while feeling for it on the bedside table, knocking off keys and a glass and an empty bottle and other detritus. She swore and blinked and tried to focus. Where had she left the handset and who was calling her so early in the morning? The phone rang five times and went to her voicemail. Too late to answer it. She sank back down onto her pillow and closed her eyes. Whoever it was would have to wait.
But no sooner had it gone to voicemail than it started ringing again. MacKenzie groaned. “Are you serious? Come on!”
She turned her head and squinted at the clock next to her. It was hard to see the red LED display in the bright sunlight. It was almost eleven o’clock. Certainly not too early for a caller, even one who knew that she would sleep in after a party the night before. She rubbed her temples and scanned the room for the wireless handset.
She Was at Risk Page 21
