The Baby Squad

by Andrew Neiderman

  “Me and you know who,” she said, gently tapping her stomach with her left hand.

  He looked down and nodded. “Right,” he said.

  “I can speak for both of us, Preston. I really can. That’s the magic. I feel everything, know everything. It’s really what should be,” she said excitedly.

  “Probably so,” he said, and dropped back to his pillow. “But until the rest of this society sees it that way, we’d better tiptoe around them.”

  “Just think,” Natalie said, “Judy and I will have children about the same time.”

  “If the Normans are approved,” he said.

  “There’s no chance they won’t be, is there, Preston?”

  “Nothing is certain except that nothing is certain,” he replied.

  She didn’t like that.

  She didn’t like it when he was coldly realistic.

  At a time like this, who needed realism?

  Romance, hope, dreams, fantasies, all of it had a reason to be, just as much as anything else.

  People still had candles. They could light up the world if they wanted with their electric power, but they still had candles. Why?

  Because there was still something about a small flame, still some promise in its light, still some beauty in the shadows it threw. That’s why they still put them on birthday cakes and lit them at special dinners, she thought.

  Preston pressed the button, and all their lamps went dark, instantly lighting their alarm zone around the house. He turned over, snug, safe in their electronic cocoon.

  “Good night,” he said.

  “Good night,” she said.

  I have one hope, she prayed after she closed her eyes, one hope…that my child will not have to hide herself if she’s a girl and will not want anything but his own child, fully, if he’s a boy.

  Amen to that, she thought.

  And then, in her mind, the candle flickered and went out.

  Despite the wonders of modern police forensics and investigative science, Ryan Lee had confidence in his own instincts. Perhaps because he was a naturally born child, he had more faith in what others would call mumbo-jumbo, especially his superiors. He believed he had a sixth sense and that extrasensory power gave him the ability to be a highly successful investigator.

  The bottom line was he didn’t believe Stocker Robinson. Alarms had gone off when she gave her explanations and told that story about Lois Marlowe and the mysterious victim of her blackmail plot. Although it wasn’t scientific, he noted movements in Stocker’s eyes, the way she looked at her parents and avoided looking at him, and the nuances in her tone of voice. He often told himself he had an air for detecting liars and lies. They settled in those soft places in his brain where they could be dissected quickly, their falsity easily uncovered.

  Without any more concrete evidence than the fact that she wore Rockers, he didn’t want to confide too much in Henry McCalester, even when McCalester commented about Stocker.

  “That’s a weird one,” he said. “Of course, you have to consider her mother is an Abnormal.”

  “Oh? Mr. Robinson works for the highway department. Does Mrs. Robinson do anything more than keep house?”

  “Esther Robinson is what we call a domestic engineer,” McCalester said, smiling.

  “Cleans houses?”

  “Well, I suppose with all the sophisticated cleaning equipment some people have these days, you just can’t get any old body to do that sort of work anymore. Her clients are the most respected people in the community. You’d be surprised at how much money she makes. Thus, the term domestic engineer,” he said with a sardonic smile. His smile faded quickly as a preamble to the question that followed. “You think she’s the one, then? The shoes and all, right?”

  “We’ll see,” Ryan said.

  “Why don’t we just bring her in and interrogate her? I know you guys have all sorts of sophisticated training for that sort of thing.”

  “Soon,” Ryan said. He saw that McCalester looked nervous and unhappy about his hesitation. “I realize all the pressure on you, but we don’t want to make a mistake here.”

  “Right,” McCalester said, but not with any sincere note of agreement.

  The state had McCalester provide Ryan with an undercover vehicle, and he parted company with him shortly after, but instead of returning to the hotel, he drove back to the Robinson residence and planted himself and his vehicle in the darkest possible shadows, settling in for a few hours of surveillance. As was often the case, he didn’t have any specific expectations. Guilty people simply exposed their guilt on their own if you left them to their own devices, Ryan thought. Patience was still a virtue, regardless of the speed with which answers could be acquired through the variety of tools in his CID investigator’s bag.

  At first, he wasn’t sure he saw someone leaving the house. She was so well melded with the shadows, like just another silhouette carved out of the darkness when a cloud shifted to permit some starlight to rain down. Then he clearly saw her emerge with her bike and start down the street. With his car lights off, he followed, lagging far enough behind to remain almost invisible.

  He had no idea whose house it was that she made her final destination. His mind was running along the theory that she was visiting a friend, someone who knew her lies, perhaps, someone she had to count on to support her fabricated story and explanations.

  When she finally stopped at a house, he parked far enough away to get out of his vehicle and track behind her, still using the shadows to disguise himself and his movements. He watched through his night glasses with curiosity and interest as she scurried like some creature of the dark, keeping herself out of the dim glow of illumination that spilled from the upstairs windows of this home. He saw her take something from under a rock and then go to the garage. He moved close enough to see that she was carrying a flashlight, possibly the one he had identified. It looked that long. However, his first impression was that she had brought it along to see her way to something. His suspicions were aroused when she never turned it on and went into the garage.

  When she emerged, she did not have the flashlight with her. He watched her put the key back under the rock and hurry to her bike. She took off down the road, pedaling and then using her electric motor to speed away. He lingered a moment, noted the address, and returned to his vehicle. Seconds later, he had the names of the residents. Their histories and identities scrolled on his pocket computer screen.

  What was her reason for leaving the flashlight behind? Very likely, it was the murder weapon. Was she trying to frame one of the residents of the home, Mr. or Mrs. Ross? How could she hope to do that?

  With the flashlight as the weapon and with his knowledge that he had placed her at the crime scene, he felt confident that he had already found his killer. He didn’t know her motivation, and he didn’t have the pieces put together yet, but he would have it all done within the next twenty-four hours.

  Then he would make his arrest and return to headquarters.

  He envisioned it all. He would receive an impressive commendation and perhaps a promotion that would trigger a salary raise.

  However, the looks on the faces of those who thought him inherently inferior would be the best reward of all.

  Something stirred in the bushes behind him, and he spun around and studied the darkness. He saw nothing. It could have been a deer or some other field animal, he thought.

  The lights went off in the Ross house, casting the entire area in a deeper darkness but permitting the stars to brighten and emerge.

  He turned back to the Rosses’ property and watched the tiny red electric field alarm lights illuminate like the eyes of a nocturnal beast waiting in the shadows, eager to attack some unwitting prey.

  The sound of footsteps on the road spun him around again. He listened hard. Moments later, he was sure he heard a car engine start and then a vehicle not five hundred yards down the road drive off in the opposite direction.

  There weren’t any other houses here
, not for a good quarter of a mile in either direction. Who the hell was that? He went to his car and got his own flashlight and his evidence bag, then tracked back until he saw tire tracks. In minutes, he had the information he needed to determine who might have been here.

  He hurried back to his vehicle, started it, and slipped back into the darkness, turning on the headlights and blowing the night out of his way.

  That car behind him might have been nothing, or maybe it was important. Maybe he didn’t have it all figured out, after all.

  Maybe there was something else out here, some other reason all this had happened.

  That commendation and promotion might take a little longer than he had hoped.

  Nine

  As Preston had suggested, the call came while they were at breakfast. Unlike some recent mornings, Natalie woke almost simultaneously with Preston and showered when he showered, dressed when he dressed. She was down a few minutes before he was and had started the juice machine and coffee maker. She had just put out his favorite dry cereal and put a cinnamon slice in the toaster for herself when he arrived, poured his juice, and turned on the television monitor to read the Wall Street report.

  Then the phone rang.

  They looked at each other, she freezing for a moment. Now that she had shared her secret with someone else, she couldn’t help this sense of paranoia. It wasn’t that she thought Preston would reveal it to anyone accidentally or otherwise, so much as it was this oppressive sense of impending doom, as if the walls had ears, as if Hattie Scranton and her baby squad had psychic talents.

  Preston lifted the receiver, said hello, and then just listened.

  Finally, he said, “I understand. Thank you.”

  He cradled the phone gently and nodded at her.

  “They’ll be by in an hour, Natalie.”

  “They’ll be by in an hour? Who?”

  “The limousine taking you to the safe house,” he said. “It’s where everything will be taken care of. It has the staff and the necessary equipment and facilities.”

  She felt her heart start to thump. “But…I didn’t really get started packing and…”

  “You’ve got an hour, honey,” he said softly. “You don’t need all that much. I’ll bring the rest when I come to visit you. Just take what you need for the first week or so,” he instructed.

  “Where am I going, exactly, Preston?”

  “Farther upstate, actually, a very rural, out-of the-way area. You’ll probably like it a great deal, Nat. It’s woodsy, the nearest village about ten miles away, a lake nearby, streams, truly back to nature, just like in your novel In the Arms of the Oak Tree.”

  “You remember that one?” she asked, smiling.

  “Kinda my favorite,” he admitted. “Especially the man, the naturalist living in that cabin. Don’t wander off and run into any strong woodsman types before I get there,” he warned with feigned concern.

  She laughed. The toaster popped, and she scooped out the slice of cinnamon bread, stuffing it into her mouth and grabbing herself a glass of juice as she started out of the kitchen. She paused in the doorway.

  “How did you find this place so quickly, Preston?”

  “Got to keep it a secret,” he said. He smiled and added, “If I tell you, I have to kill you right afterward.”

  “You idiot. An hour! I can’t believe it!”

  She hurried to the stairway.

  “Remember, don’t take too much, Nat,” he called after her. “I’ll bring what else you need.”

  “Right.”

  What did she need now, anyway? Running through her wardrobe and making the choices put her into a frantic pace. Surely, she would forget something she would want the moment she got there and realized she didn’t have it, she thought. She definitely would take her portable Wordsmith. She had to finish the novel and keep herself occupied. She considered her cosmetics and rejected taking most of them. This wasn’t exactly a vacation. She also rejected most of her jewelry. Why would she need any of it?

  Even her supply of black market prenatal vitamins wasn’t important. Surely, the safe house would have everything she needed medically, but she did decide to take them and the birth control pills anyway. No sense leaving that sort of thing lying around now, she thought. The crush of an hour’s packing wasn’t as bad as she had anticipated once she considered what she really did and didn’t need. Nevertheless, she still wasn’t quite emotionally prepared when Preston came up to tell her the limousine had arrived.

  “Already?”

  “It’s right on time, honey. I guess you didn’t realize how long you’ve been up here.”

  He picked up her two suitcases and shoved her portable Wordsmith under his arm.

  “I feel like I’m being scooped off,” she complained.

  “You are. That was the idea, wasn’t it? You’re too far along to waste any time, Nat.”

  “I know,” she said, gazing around the bedroom, “but now that it’s actually happening…”

  “You told me to get on it, to do what had to be done,” he said.

  “Right. Of course.” She smiled. “Why shouldn’t I expect you to be efficient, effective? It’s why I have so much faith in you to start with, Preston.”

  “I’m not saying I’m not nervous about all this, Nat. Inside, I’m shaking as much as you are, I bet.”

  Her smile widened and softened even more. “I’ll miss you, even for a week.”

  “I’ll be at your side first chance I have,” he promised. “Come on,” he urged.

  “Coming,” she said. She took one last look around the bedroom to be sure she wasn’t leaving anything she would need immediately, and then, with a deep sigh, she followed him, holding her breath all the way down to the front door.

  When it was opened, she saw the stretch pearl-black limousine. The chauffeur stepped out to help with the luggage. He wore very dark sunglasses and was a tall man with a military demeanor, his back and shoulders firm, straight, his body strong but trim. He barely glanced at her as she walked to the vehicle. He and Preston put her things in the trunk, and then he returned to his seat and stared ahead like some kind of mindless robot.

  She stood there with Preston.

  “It’s happening so fast,” she whispered.

  “It’s what you wanted, Nat. I’m doing what you wanted.”

  “And what you wanted, too,” she emphasized.

  He nodded. “Yes, but it’s really all falling on you, Nat. You’re the one going through natural childbirth, not me. Are you sure you still want to do it?”

  “Yes. More than ever,” she insisted.

  “Okay, then.” He opened the door for her.

  She looked into the rear of the vehicle, darkened by the tinted windows that behaved as mirrors. Her home was reflected in the glass, her wonderful home, her dream house. She would miss it almost as much as she would miss Preston. Tears came into her eyes. She sucked in her breath, turned to him, kissed him, and slipped into the limousine.

  Preston gazed at her, smiled, and closed the door.

  Almost instantly, the vehicle started away. She felt as if she had been swallowed up in it. There was so much room for just one person.

  “Cold drinks are in the small refrigerator on the right side,” she heard the chauffeur say. “The television remote is in the cradle by the glasses. You can ask me for anything you want. There’s a built-in intercom. Just speak at will, Mrs. Ross,” he concluded.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Oh. How long is the trip?” she asked.

  He was silent.

  “Excuse me,” she followed. “How long is the ride?”

  “That’s confidential, Mrs. Ross,” he replied. “I’m sure you understand. It’s for your own protection as well as ours.”

  “Really?”

  As they turned onto the main highway that would take them away from Sandburg, she heard the whir of an electric motor, and then, to her shock and surprise, metal curtains came sliding down and over the windows, shutting
off her view of the world outside, locking her in as if she had been put in a moving casket.

  “What are you doing?” she cried.

  “It’s standard operating procedure, Mrs. Ross. Relax. The air system is filtered and set at a comfortable temperature. If you get too cold or too warm, I can make instant adjustments.”

  “But…I like to look at the scenery.”

  “Television remote is by the glasses,” he repeated. “Relax,” he said. It sounded more like an order. “You’ll be fine, ma’am, just fine.”

  The soft sound of the vehicle’s cushioned movement over the highway was seductive, hypnotic. She closed her eyes and told herself there was just this little inconvenience for a while and then great happiness. No reason to worry about anything. She was safe. Preston was in charge. She and her baby were safe.

  Hattie Scranton usually rose from bed seconds after her eyes opened. She despised wasting time. It actually made her sick to her stomach whenever she was in a situation where she had nothing to do but wait. From the moment she rose until the moment she laid her head back on her pillow at night, she was on the move, doing practical and useful things. After all, she had a major responsibility. In her way of thinking, the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of people were dependent on how she carried forth.

  Her husband, William, was no match for her when it came to this show of energy. He was a rather quiet man, plodding along, a true journeyman, never initiating anything new or creative, not even changing the decor in his offices. He was the community’s most successful ophthalmologist, a good technician utilizing the computerized laser machinery that could eliminate most eye maladies.

  As tall and slim as Hattie, he had a far softer look, practically a look of defeat, in his dull brown eyes, long nose, and weak mouth. Hattie was always chastising him about his posture, the way he dipped his shoulders and let his arms dangle loosely when he walked.

  “You look moronic, primitive,” she told him.

  William accepted her criticism with the indifference of a man resigned to pain, to whipping. It was almost as if he viewed his marriage as punishment for some ancestral sin passed down through the genes that were continued into his human genome. Marriage to Hattie was his burden.