by Jamie Metzl
I nod nervously.
“And why are all of these young, single women going to get impregnated in the first place?” she adds. “I get it that the IVFGS clinic is where most women go to get pregnant these days, but young, single women can still freeze their eggs in their twenties and have babies whenever they want. What’s the urgency?”
The shrill ring of my prehistoric cell phone cuts through the car like a buzz saw.
“Becker called and said he needs to meet me tomorrow. Says he’s coming to Kansas City to do it in person.”
“What do you think, Maurice?”
“My gut says he’s playing for time.”
“You don’t think . . . ?” I say, my voice trailing off as I start to hypothesize in my head. I brief Maurice on everything Martina’s learned, Maya Armstrong, and our current plans.
“And if Maya is the last one,” he says, “I could imagine wanting to hold off meeting me until the last bit of evidence is . . . gone.”
I press down on the gas pedal. “Or he could be covering his tracks in other ways, maybe getting Senator King lined up to do something.”
“I thought of that,” Maurice says.
“So what do we do?”
“You get where you’re going. I’ll mail a letter to myself before I meet with Becker just to be safe.”
It’s ironic how old-school we are getting with our technology. “Meet him in public,” I say. “We still have no idea whom to trust.”
The line drops.
It’s twenty minutes after 1 a.m. when we hit the outskirts of Oklahoma City, a quarter to two when we pull up to the Cambridge Landing apartment complex. Despite its highbrow name, Cambridge Landing is a couple of steps above a trailer park.
We drive around until we find apartment 228, park, and race up the exposed cement stairs. I take a few steps back as Toni touches the doorbell. My hand is trembling. We don’t hear a sound. Toni knocks, quietly. Nothing. Could we be too late? A little harder. Nothing. Toni’s face says she’s starting to share my concern. She knocks harder. No sound. Harder.
“God dammit,” the muffled voice says, “who the hell is it?”
Toni and I exchange strange, twisted smiles.
“Maya,” Toni says in her sweetest voice, “my name is Antonia Hewitt. I’m a nurse. I’m so sorry to bother you this late at night, but we really need to talk with you.”
“’bout what?”
Maya, I can tell from her raspy voice, is no wallflower.
“It’s about your baby,” Toni says, trying to take the edge of off her words.
Silence.
Not knowing what’s happening on the other side of the door, I begin to worry. Then I see the knob turning. The door opens a crack, still tethered to the wall by the chain.
A disheveled mess of sandy blond hair pops into the open space. A shake reveals a small, angular, pasty-white face defined by suspicion.
“Who the hell are you and how do you know about the baby?”
“It’s a long story,” Toni says sweetly. “You may be in danger. A friend of ours tried to call you yesterday about this. Can we come in?”
Maya looks at Toni intently, then me. “Who’s he?”
I begin to answer, but Toni cuts me off.
“He’s my boyfriend, Rich Azadian. He’s working with me to try to protect you.”
Boyfriend? Yikes, my inappropriate synapse fires.
“From what?”
“It’s a long story. You need to hear it. Your life may depend on it. Can we come in?”
Maya’s eyes fix back on Toni’s. She’s clearly trying to process what Toni is telling her and get some kind of instinctual sense of whether or not to trust us. Toni gives her the face that had finally convinced me to open up to her about Astrid almost a year ago.
Maya stares a few moments longer. “You know it’s two o’clock in the morning. I need to be up at six. This better be good,” she says.
“Maya, we drove from Kansas City to talk with you. We may not have much time. Believe me, we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t think it was important. It’s really important.”
Through the crack in the door, I see Maya’s hand reaching for the chain.
59
Maya’s apartment is not much. A postage stamp living room with only a nook of a kitchen, what looks like an even smaller bedroom, white walls, cheap white carpet, a few prints that look as if they’ve come from a Holiday Inn going-out-of-business sale.
Maya herself seems to fit the décor. Her shock of blond hair running halfway down her back seems almost designed to be swinging around a pole in some roadside club. Her triangular, pinkish face looks pinched. Her hazel eyes dart between Toni and me as she opens the door to let us in. Her movements as we enter remind me of a basketball guard on defense.
“We’re so sorry to bother you this late,” Toni says in her gentlest voice. “I know it must be frightening to have two strangers show up at your door in the middle of the night. There are a lot of terrible things happening, and we’re worried you might be in danger.”
“But who are you?” Maya thrusts in.
“Maya”—I like the way Toni keeps repeating her name in her effort to connect—“I’m a nurse at Truman Medical Center in Kansas City. Rich is, or was I should probably say, a reporter for the Kansas City Star. He got fired for looking into this situation.”
Maya stretches her neck and pushes her head toward us, turtle-like. “What situation?”
Toni looks over at me.
“Maya,” I say, following Toni’s lead, “last Tuesday I was covering the death of a young woman about your age in Kansas City named MaryLee Stock. When I saw her, she was lying dead on her floor in an apartment kind of like this one but roped off by the police.”
“What’s that got to do with me?” Maya asks suspiciously.
“I fear a lot, Maya,” I say, “but I need to give you some background to help you better understand. Is that okay?”
“Go on,” she says without emotion.
“It’s a bit complicated how I did this, but I learned that she’d been pregnant when she was killed. We can give you the details later, but when the Kansas City police announced what had happened they didn’t mention her pregnancy or even that she’d been killed.”
“But you knew?” Maya asks, getting more interested in the story.
“We figured it out,” I say.
Maya nods nervously.
I tense up in advance of what I know I need to say next. “They also discovered that the baby that MaryLee was carrying had been genetically enhanced. Do you know what that is, Maya?”
“I’m not an idiot.”
“Sorry, Maya,” I say. “We figured out she’d been genetically enhanced on purpose because she’d been impregnated”—the words sound antiseptically cold coming out of my mouth—“at a fertility clinic that would have known what they were doing.”
Maya stiffens.
“Am I correct in assuming that you are pregnant and that you got impregnated at the Bright Horizons fertility clinic here in Oklahoma City?”
Maya’s eyes dart between Toni and me like those of a cornered animal. “And you think . . . ?” Her tone makes clear she understands what we’re saying.
“We do, Maya,” Toni says, “but please let Rich tell you more. You need to know. Is that okay, honey?”
“MaryLee was a member of a church in Springfield, Missouri. It’s called the Holy Virgin Church of Christ,” I say. “Have you ever heard of it?”
Maya shakes her head no.
“Have you ever heard of the pastor who runs it, Reverend Cobalt Becker?”
“No,” Maya says quietly.
“And,” I say, “am I correct in assuming that you did really well on your SATs, that you are a Brin scholar?”
“You are really freaking me out,” she says. “How do you know all this?”
I pause.
“Tell her,” Toni orders.
“Maya, we hacked into the national police datab
ase and got a list of young women who died in the US over the past year. Then we compared it with names from Bright Horizons database. Nine names came up. MaryLee’s was one of them, as was Megan Fogerty, a young woman who was killed in Olathe, Kansas, two weeks before her.”
“What about me?”
“That’s how we found you. We analyzed what the nine women had in common. All of them were roughly the same age, a little more than average height, and all of them were Brin scholars.”
Maya lifts her hand to cover her mouth. Toni rubs the top of Maya’s other arm.
“We then looked through the Bright Horizons database to see if there were any other women who fit the same criteria,” I continue.
Maya’s two hands now cover her face. “Oh fuck. So you think someone is going to try to kill me?”
“We don’t know, Maya,” Toni says, “but we really don’t want to take any chances.”
“But how do I know if I can trust you?”
“Maybe you don’t, honey,” Toni says, “but we really hope you will. Whoever killed those women is still out there.”
“Shouldn’t we just go to the police?”
“We can, but my friend with the KC police thinks it won’t help,” I say.
“Why not?”
“For the same reason I got fired from the Star, the police lied in the autopsy, and they’re holding my friend in jail. They’re hiding something. If we go to the police now, we’ll just make you more of a target and they may not do enough to help. The worst of both worlds. We can’t risk it until we know more.”
Maya’s eyes are in full panic mode. She holds her head steady. “Mother fucker,” she says, stressing the first syllable of each word. “So now what?”
I look over at Toni.
“Maya, we don’t think you are safe here,” Toni says. “We’d like to get you out.”
“To go where? I’ve got a job, you know.”
“Do you think you can call in sick for maybe a couple of days?” I say.
Maya hesitates.
“We don’t want to disrupt your life, and maybe we’re wrong about all of this,” Toni pleads. “We hope we are. But we really don’t want to take any chances.”
Maya’s body language begins to suggest surrender. “But what do I do, just disappear?”
“I think so, Maya,” Toni responds. “For now.”
“Where?”
“Probably to a hotel. Somewhere where people won’t know how to find you.”
“Two random people I’ve never met come knocking on my door in the middle of the night and want me to go away with them to a hotel?”
I’ve had enough. We don’t have time for this. It’s time to be the adult. “Maya,” I say sharply, “last Monday I saw MaryLee Stock sprawled out dead on the floor of her apartment. I won’t let that happen to you. I’m not leaving you unprotected.”
Maya takes in my words. “So why don’t the two of you stay here?” she asks after a pause.
“We could,” Toni says, “but we’ll be a lot safer if we’re somewhere a bit tougher to find.”
Maya shakes as if caught between movement vectors pointing in opposing directions.
“Maya, it’s not safe here. We need to go now,” I say.
Toni steps in to take off my edge. “Please,” she says in a way few mortals could reject.
Maya twitches. She looks at Toni for a few moments and then me. Her shoulders fall. “I’ll pack a few things,” she says in a raspy whisper as she shuffles toward her bedroom.
She swivels back toward us just before she reaches the bedroom door. “If this is some of kind of trick, you guys are going to be in a world of hurt.”
“Maya honey, please,” Toni says, her every word radiating concern and good will.
Maya stares at Toni for a moment, then me.
Then she turns toward her bedroom.
60
If there’s a thing called monkey mind, Maya Armstrong has it. I can’t blame her.
If a couple of strangers banged on my door at two in the morning, told me the baby I was carrying was some kind of genetic mutant, that someone, but they didn’t know who, was trying to kill me, and that I needed to go with them to a hotel right away but couldn’t tell me where, I’d ask a lot of questions, too.
Maya’s body twitches back toward her apartment, worrying, I can tell, she’s making a huge mistake as she walks with us to the car.
Front seat or back seat? I start the psychological analysis in my head. Front seat tells Maya we’re taking her seriously, that this is all about her. Back seat tells her that we are the adults here and are in charge. Toni beats me to it.
“Maya, honey,” she says opening the back door, “why don’t you get in here so you’ll have more space.”
“Where we going?” Maya asks suspiciously as we drive.
“I don’t know. Somewhere we’ll be harder to find,” I say.
“That’s the plan?”
“Maya. Honey,” Toni steps in, “we’re doing our best.”
“I want to call my friend to tell her where we are going.”
“Maya, look,” I say, “we don’t really know what we’re up against, but you could be in huge danger. I’ve been underestimating these guys for the last week, and now I won’t take any chances. They’ve been tracking our almost every move, and if you start using your u.D that might give them another way to find us, to find you. Power off the u.D.”
I make eye contact with her through the rearview mirror, then hear the beep of her u.D powering off.
“Thank you, Maya,” Toni says.
Maya looks annoyed.
I drive north.
“So you think the baby I’m carrying is some kind of mutant?” she says after a long silence.
Clearly, the thought has been weighing on her.
I’m not sure how to answer.
“Mutant is a strong word,” Toni slides in. “It’s more that we think that your baby may have genetic mutations, even enhancements. Do you know what a chromosome is?”
“I’m not a moron,” Maya shoots back.
“Maya, we know that,” I say, “that’s why you’re in danger.”
Maya rephrases, speaking like an annoyed adolescent to her clueless parents. “Yes, I know what a chromosome is.”
“I thought so,” Toni continues, unfazed. “We think your baby has a forty-seventh chromosome that, if we’re right, could give it extra capabilities.”
“Like Superman shit?”
“Maybe. We don’t know,” Toni says.
“A forty-seventh chromosome is kind of like an additional parking space in a person’s genetic code,” I say. “Different genes can be placed there that could give people extra abilities.”
“Like what?” Maya says, “Living underwater and shooting fire out of your ass?”
“Actually,” I say deadpan, “I do understand a lab in Utah is doing research on the genetic basis of anal thermogenesis.”
Silence.
Then a snort bursts from Maya’s mouth like an air bubble hitting the surface. She tries to hold it back, but I see in the rearview mirror what almost looks like a smile.
“So what are the options?” Maya asks, her voice now somehow more available.
“I don’t know, Maya. It depends on what someone is trying to do,” I continue in a more relaxed voice. “They’ve been doing all sorts of research for years trying to figure out what combinations of genes make up our human capabilities. Scientists have been trying to give special capabilities to mice.”
Toni’s eyes flash me a warning.
“They seem to be beginning to figure out what genes make up different skills, like intelligence and memory,” I say.
I see in the rearview mirror I’ve caught Maya’s attention.
“And you think they’re trying to do that with this baby,” she says, looking down at her stomach.
The way she refers to the baby strikes me as oddly distant.
“That’s what I think, but I don�
�t know for sure.”
“Don’t know?” Her previous caution returns.
Toni puts her hand on my arm.
“Maya,” I say more gently, “let me just tell you what I know. It’s not much. We’re still trying to figure things out. Maybe you can help.”
“Go on,” she says impatiently.
“We don’t know who is ultimately behind all of this. We’ve come up with three options.” I see Maya’s intent stare through the rearview mirror as I lay them out.
Maya interrupts me when I start talking about Becker. “So this guy wants to breed a red cow in Texas, and now I’m supposed to be the Virgin Mary?” she says giddily. It’s clear she may be more from the Mary Magdalene mold.
“Hmm,” Maya adds as I describe Bright Horizons. “What does Bright Horizons have that’s so good?”
“How do you mean?”
“You said that this guy Becker may have figured something out in Texas, and that the government and China all thought that Bright Horizons had some special capabilities. So what were they?”
I’d thought about the question before, but something about the way Maya phrases it jars me.
“We’ve been trying to figure out who owns Bright Horizons,” I say, “but it’s pretty important to know what exactly they could do, or maybe were willing to do, that nobody else could.”
“Maya,” Toni breaks in. I get the sense she’s feeling that our conversation is becoming too technical. “Can I ask you a question?”
Maya doesn’t answer.
“How did you decide to have a baby?
“Easy. I got a letter.”
“And?” Toni coaxes.
“They said they’d give me $75,000 cash if I had this baby and kept quiet about it, that they’d make sure it had a good home after it was born.”
I feel like I’ve been slapped across the face. So clear. So obvious. I wish I’d had a live woman to ask this question the past week.
“Who did?” I ask.
“Bright Horizons.”
It suddenly makes sense why Maya has been trying more to figure out the puzzle than to know how her baby may have been enhanced.
“How?”
“I got a letter in the mail. I thought about it. I needed the money. So I went in. It’s not like I hadn’t been pregnant before!”