The 3rd Victim

by Sydney Bauer

  ‘There's always another way, Carlson,’ said David, his thoughts going to Lauren. ‘You left it way too late. A baby girl was murdered.’

  ‘Not just any little girl, David, my daughter,’ Carlson reminded him.

  David met his eye, seeing nothing but the deepest of regret. ‘The price was too high,’ he said.

  And a weary-faced Carlson opened his mouth to answer, before closing it once again.

  *

  They all poured themselves more water. The room felt hot and thick and heavy and tight, despite the cool breeze pushing out of the airconditioning vent above them. David knew they were close to understanding it all now, but there were still a few very important issues to explore. While he was desperate to learn the last of the details from the group that sat before him, he understood that scooping out the dregs from the very bottom of the dark and deadly pit that was Jim Walker and Dick Davenport's sick and twisted business would mean revisiting not just what he and Sara had suffered, but also the life-shattering consequences of Sienna Walker and Michael Carlson's decision to act on the attraction they felt for each other. David knew that if Sienna and Carlson had their time again, they might not have let their feelings interfere with their purpose – or, alternatively, they would have let the two men go in the hope that they would catch them later, in some other foreign city some time down the track. But they stuck to it and made the mistakes they made, and it was these mistakes that David needed to explore now, before their time was over and the truth of it was lost forever, hidden in some warehouse of boxes marked ‘confidential’ and in Sienna and Carlson's hearts.

  ‘You fell in love,’ he said, stating it as plainly as he could.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sienna. ‘At first I hated Special Agent Carlson – for telling me the truth. And then … then I began to work with him and see that his motivations were noble and pure and …’ She took a breath. ‘I could sit here and say it was because of the pressure we were under, but that would not be true. Yes, we were working closely together, yes, it was intense – the daily necessity of upholding our charades, of working and living with a man who was capable of doing what he did. But Special Agent Carlson … he is the opposite of everything my husband turned out to be, a man I respected for who he was, and what he fought for, on behalf of me – and on behalf of our daughter.’

  But Sara was shaking her head. ‘I understand, Sienna, but acting on it, on those feelings – it was so … irresponsible, so dangerous.’

  ‘I know,’ agreed Sienna. ‘But I need you to understand that we weren't …’ she hesitated, searching for the words … ‘it was not as if we sought every opportunity to express our feelings physically. On the contrary, apart from a single night when Jim was away on business, when I thought I'd heard an intruder and I called Special Agent Carlson …’

  ‘It was my fault,’ said Carlson, ‘and I have taken full responsibility, professionally, personally. I reported it to Special Agent King the morning after it happened and while in normal circumstances I would have been taken off the case and reprimanded, in this case it was vital that I remained on point – as Hunt. Of course, at that stage we didn't understand the full repercussions of our decision.’

  David knew what he was saying, that that one night resulted in the child who was slaughtered by the very man who wrongly believed he had ‘created’ her. And while this would need to be addressed, David sensed that this is where the story had to be told backwards – at the end and not the beginning – for in a way Eliza's death was decided in spite of her conception, and not because of it.

  ‘The night she was killed,’ David began. ‘You kept Davenport close, despite the fact that you knew he …?’

  ‘Yes.’ Sienna was the first to answer, perhaps sensing this final part of the story belonged to her. ‘We had no choice. As soon as I found her missing, I …’ Sienna blinked, ‘… I rang Special Agent Carlson and he came immediately, and I was hysterical but he … we … we knew it was Dick or my husband who had killed her but …’ She shook her head.

  ‘I called Davenport,’ said Carlson, coming to Sienna's aid. ‘I had no choice. His actions suggested that they suspected Sienna had been compromised, but there was a chance my cover was still intact – which was all we had to hold on to at this point. So I had to think like Hunt, I had to act like Hunt. Hunt was Davenport's friend. He knew Davenport was Sienna's doctor. Calling him, watching as her sedated her,’ Carlson's left eye twitched, ‘it was the only way I could maintain my cover and keep him close. I was afraid he would run, and that we would have lost Walker and Davenport forever.’ Carlson looked at Joe. ‘That night, you believed that I saw Davenport as an ally.’

  Joe paused before nodding.

  ‘Well,’ said Carlson, ‘I needed Davenport to do the same.’

  There was another pause then as David gave Joe the room to comment further, but he didn't, so David moved on. ‘So within days of the murder you were well and truly flying solo,’ he said. ‘Because Sienna was arrested and Special Officer Loxley had already left?’ David looked at Loxley, prompting her to continue, but once again Sienna broke in, no doubt for the same reason she had earlier, because this part of the story belonged to her.

  ‘Senior Officer Loxley left the day after Eliza and my son's birth,’ she said. ‘The fact that Davenport stayed, that they had gone to so much trouble to keep me in line … we knew there must have been a final deal to do and that this deal was worth a great deal of money.’

  ‘Did you believe this deal to involve the male embryo created using your and Walker's genetic material?’ asked Sara. ‘Eliza's brother, the boy they assumed had been transplanted into Sophia?’

  ‘We believed so, yes,’ replied Sienna.

  ‘And this order,’ Sara continued, ‘were you ever made aware of how much the boy was …?’

  Carlson went to answer but Sienna held up her hand. ‘We were not sure, but prior to Jim's disappearance, Special Agent Carlson's men at Hunt and Associates believed they intercepted an order to the value of $12.5 million.’

  Sara looked at David before turning to Sienna once again. ‘Walker and Davenport intended to sell your son for 12.5 million dollars?’

  Sienna nodded. ‘The amount was so high that Special Agent Carlson's men assumed it was an anomaly.’ She took a breath before turning to David. ‘He was the key, of course, my son,’ she said, this time without blinking.

  David nodded, meeting her eye. ‘You know the questions I need to ask,’ he said. ‘Eliza, her brother, the third girl carried by Sophia …?’

  She nodded. ‘There was only ever meant to be two,’ she said, ‘but in order to explain it all, I shall have to start from the beginning, from the night my children were born.’ Sienna looked at Leo, who glanced at the clock once again before offering her the slightest of nods. ‘I apologise in advance if my recall is a little … affected.’ She managed a sort of melancholy smile, perhaps at the memory of the best and worst night of her life.

  ‘That's okay and … I'm sorry,’ said David, feeling the need to apologise for things he could not help.

  ‘Can't be changed,’ she said, before giving him that sad smile once again, and sitting up in her chair to continue.

  *

  ‘My son,’ she said. ‘I thought he was going to be a girl.’

  ‘You knew you were having twins,’ said Sara.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But Davenport didn't?’

  ‘No. Despite what Dick claimed, I left him, as a patient, the moment I discovered I was pregnant. I did not want that man involved in any way with the care of my unborn daughter.’

  ‘So you sought outside discreet medical monitoring,’ said David, ‘by an institution organised by the FBI?’

  Sienna nodded. ‘It wasn't long before I became aware of the extra foetus, but of course, given I knew that Dick had only implanted me with one embryo, I assumed the embryo had split and that I was carrying identical twin girls.’

  ‘You didn't find out the sex of the
second baby?’ asked Sara.

  Sienna shook her head. ‘The baby's positioning made it impossible.’

  ‘So until the night of the birth, you assumed Davenport had taken the male embryo for implantation into the surrogate – for the order Special Agent Carlson and his men uncovered – leaving you with …’

  ‘The girl – who became two. Instinct told me to keep this from Davenport. As you can appreciate, by this stage I was protective – paranoid even. I was terrified Jim or Dick might decide that my daughter was also of some value, perhaps even more so as one in a set of two.’

  Sara nodded. ‘But when your son was born, you must have assumed that Davenport had made a mistake – that he had implanted the girl, and not the boy, into Sophia … or that he had given you both …?’ She frowned. ‘But that seems like an awfully big gaffe to make.’

  ‘The answer is yes,’ said Sienna. ‘At least to the latter part of your question – giving me both, that was just too big a gaffe. But did we assume Davenport had got the embryos switched?’ she repeated Sara's earlier query. ‘No.’

  ‘No?’ said a now confused Sara.

  But David saw it. ‘You understood there were three children. You assumed the girl – Eliza – was the one implanted by Davenport, that the male embryo had been given to the surrogate as planned, and that the third child – the boy you gave birth to, that he was conceived separately when you and Special Agent Carlson …’

  Sienna nodded. ‘It was the obvious explanation. Two boys, one girl.’ She looked at Sara, who still appeared confused. ‘It happens, a double conception. Don't forget I was stimulated by drugs to produce eggs for Dick to harvest … and Special Agent Carlson and I, well … we were intimate at a time when I suppose I was highly fertile. So when my son was born, I assumed I had conceived twice – once artificially and once naturally – and I was right, except I assumed Eliza was the result of the IVF and my son was fathered by Special Agent Carlson, not the other way around.’

  ‘But still you made the decision to get your son out,’ said Sara.

  ‘Yes. I was set on it. A boy was a boy. I felt he was in danger not just because of his gender but because he existed at all. So Senior Officer Loxley left with him immediately. She took him to a safe house in London and then to my grandfather's cottage in the depths of the Yorkshire moors. I just didn't think they would care about Eliza – she wasn't supposed to be of any value to them, there was no client order for her. I saw her as their gift to me. I was so, so wrong.’

  There was a moment of silence as everybody digested the truth of Sienna's words.

  After a tense thirty seconds, Loxley cleared her throat and picked up where Sienna had left off. ‘Of course this meant we lost our foothold in Dick's surgery, but by this stage we were sure that my cover as receptionist had been compromised, so we had little option but to try to monitor Davenport's actions from afar.’

  ‘Which is why you contacted Madonna for the latest patient lists?’ asked David of Loxley.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘That was my call. It was a risk but as it turns out one of the better ones we made given Ms Carrera was well … who she was.’

  At this point Joe sighed and David knew he was trying desperately to hold his frustration in check. It went without saying that Madonna Carrera was just another innocent bystander whose life had been put at risk thanks to all the mistakes made by the principals in this investigation – but perhaps Joe also knew that at this point stating the obvious would gain them little.

  David turned back to Sienna. ‘So you didn't know the truth of your children's paternity – of the mistake Davenport had made with the male and female embryos – until I told you about the anomaly associated with Eliza's blood type?’

  Sienna nodded.

  ‘And that was when you knew that Eliza had been fathered by Special Agent Carlson?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But your husband – Jim Walker – he did not know this?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And not long after his death, Walker decided that leaving Eliza intact was not an option, given her genetic make-up made her a link to his identity that had to be eliminated.’

  Sienna swallowed. ‘Yes. We believe he may have used his DNA before, most likely in the UK operation, and if the authorities managed to link Eliza to a child in Europe well … killing Eliza bought him some time to get out before the truth was revealed. It also gave him the chance to take care of me. I did my best at trying to fool him, but he must have suspected I was working with the authorities, and framing me for my daughter's murder was his way of killing two birds with the one stone.’

  ‘But didn't killing Eliza place emphasis on her DNA?’ asked Sara. ‘I mean, the blood samples recovered were comprehensive.’

  ‘It put my daughter's genetic make-up on record, yes,’ said Sienna. ‘And you have to remember that all the evidence pointed toward me. There was no reason to suspect her dead father, and by that point we didn't have an evidentiary leg to stand on, given our investigations were so tainted by our innumerable mistakes. My husband knew that having Eliza's DNA on record in death as a baby was far less potentially dangerous for him than it would be to let her grow up. She would always be that loose end that threatened to destroy him.’

  Sara nodded before settling her eyes on David, the truth of the futility of Eliza Walker's death now plain for everyone in the room to see. And David turned to Sienna, knowing it needed to be said. ‘But Walker was wrong,’ he said. ‘Eliza's DNA was no threat to him at all, because she wasn't his daughter.’

  Sienna blinked. ‘No.’

  ‘She was fathered by Michael Carlson.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So in effect …’ David followed the thought to its tragic conclusion.

  ‘Eliza was killed for nothing,’ finished Sienna, completing the thought for him as a single tear made its way down her smooth left cheek. ‘Yes.’

  They all stopped then, allowing Sienna a moment to grieve. Of course David knew the grieving would never be over. It was simply something Sienna and Carlson would somehow have to find peace with, or at the very least exist with, given neither of them could change the past.

  David looked at Carlson. ‘I am not sure how you did it – continue to befriend Davenport knowing he had killed your child.’

  But Carlson said nothing.

  ‘You're sure it was him,’ continued David, ‘that Davenport was the one who …?’

  ‘Yes,’ nodded Carlson. ‘Because of the presence of Sienna's blood at the crime scene and the way Eliza was killed. The thawing of Sienna's blood was an intricate medical process. Davenport would have had to control the temperature, make sure the sample looked legit – which he did, almost, his only mistake being to not wash the DMSO from Sienna's blood completely.’ Carlson's eyes went to Joe – perhaps in recognition of his ability to realise the significance of the cryopreservative, but when Joe remained expressionless, Carlson turned his attention back to David once again. ‘As for the method Davenport used to take Eliza's life, he gave himself away when he made that cut at the back of her neck. The cut was intentional – surgical – he severed her spinal cord on purpose to save her from feeling the pain. It was his form of euthanising his creation. His way of easing the trauma for the child he believed to be one of his.’

  David nodded, seeing it now. ‘And Eliza's body?’

  ‘Planted in the pipe later,’ said Carlson, ‘most likely by Walker in an attempt to consolidate Sienna's guilt. We believe Davenport did not have the time to do this on the night of her murder, and Walker decided, in hindsight, that the discovery of her body would destroy any skerrick of doubt as to Sienna's culpability.’

  David nodded again, before focusing on Sienna. ‘So from that point on, I assume you understood that it was only a matter of time before Davenport realised the mistake that he had made – and that Sophia was carrying a girl.’

  ‘Yes. The pressure we felt in this regard was tremendous. We knew the girl was expendable so �
�’

  ‘Hold up.’ It was Joe. ‘Aren't we forgetting something, or rather someone, here?’

  The room fell quiet.

  ‘The midwife – she knew about the boy. Didn't you consider that she was yet another person whose life you were putting at risk?’

  But Sienna, Carlson and Leo remained silent.

  ‘It stands to reason that a savvy man like Walker would have asked himself just how in the hell an experienced fertility specialist like Davenport could have made such a huge mistake. Davenport was sure he harvested both a male and a female embryo, so wouldn't Walker at the very least explore the possibility that a male child did exist after all?’

  Sienna went to answer, but Carlson beat her to it. ‘We considered this, of course. And we knew that if he was thinking along those lines, the midwife would be his first port of call. So we took precautions to protect her – both for her safety and, admittedly, for our own selfish reasons. We made some queries in regards to her circumstances. We learnt she was desperate to get back to Dublin but was short on funds and a decent job to return to. So we had Sienna pay her a very large fee for her services, and we organised – surreptitiously – a job for her back in Ireland, and we created a situation where she could depart without leaving a trail behind her. It was our way of paying for her silence without alerting her to the significance of the birth of the boy. Of course we also kept a close eye on her in Dublin, monitored her calls and so forth. But this became more difficult when she left the job we set up for her and ended the lease on her apartment. There was a period when she fell off our grid altogether, and we were concerned about the possibility of Walker's intervention. But as it turned out it was not Walker who found her after all, it was District Attorney Katz.’ He met Joe's eye.

  ‘Is this where you excuse yourselves by explaining that your resources were incredibly stretched,’ said Joe, ‘with your civilian deputy in prison, and your SOCA compatriot in Yorkshire, and your own hands tied by the limitations of your alias?’