Deadly Design (9780698173613)

by Dockter, Debra

  He looks like he wants to hug me, but seeing Cami, he squeezes my shoulders instead. “Good job getting this meeting.”

  “I can be pretty persuasive sometimes,” I say, wondering how much he knows.

  The house’s front door is a glossy black. Dad lifts his hand toward the doorbell, but the door opens before he can push it. An older man stands staring at us like he hasn’t merely been expecting us, he’s been waiting.

  “Welcome,” he says. Dr. Hodges has a tan, slightly wrinkled face and wisps of gray hair hovering over a mostly bald head. There’s a tan line on his narrow forehead, probably from the hat he wears to keep his scalp from burning when he’s golfing or doing yard work. He’s tall and slender and wears a yellow pullover with an insignia over the pocket, probably the logo of some country club.

  “I really do remember you,” he says, offering his hand. My dad takes it, and the two engage in a firm handshake. Dr. Hodges turns toward me. He focuses in on my face. “I remember you too, although the last time I saw you, you were barely visible to the naked eye.”

  He takes my hand in both of his. He lets go, but his eyes hold on to me for another moment.

  “Come in. Come in,” he says, his gaze finally breaking away. He smiles and nods at Cami. “I don’t believe I know you, but welcome. My wife made some lemonade before she went out. It’s horribly hot today. Looks like we’re in for another scorching summer.”

  “Do you know what’s going on?” I ask as we step into a spacious living room. “Do you know why my brother died?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says. “Let’s sit down, shall we? See what we can sort out.”

  There is a silver tray on the coffee table with a glass pitcher of lemonade encircled by several glasses of ice. Dr. Hodges starts pouring, but I don’t want to sit down on his expensive sofa, and I don’t want to drink lemonade. I want answers.

  “What exactly did Dr. Preston tell you?” I ask.

  He stops midpour. “He said that you and your brother were both conceived at the clinic and that your brother recently died. I’m very sorry,” he says, looking at Dad, then back at me. “He told me about Alexis Warren. He told me that they both died on or near their eighteenth birthdays.”

  “And there’s another one.” I look at Dad, trying to gauge if he already knows about Triagon. He doesn’t. It’s obvious from the way his back stiffens in an effort to hold himself together. “His name was Triagon Summers. He lived in Nebraska. He died on his birthday, just like Connor, and he was conceived at Genesis.”

  Dr. Hodges leans back against the thick cushions of his sofa. “And there’s Hannah Welch,” he says with a heavy voice. “After Dr. Preston called me, we discussed what information we have about Dr. Mueller’s patients, and I made some calls.”

  “Four Mueller babies have died?” The stiffness in Dad’s spine slackens, like he’s overwhelmed. Three dead kids were bad enough, but four is just too many. “Why? What’s wrong with them? How many are there? How do we fix them?”

  “Dr. Mueller disappeared almost eighteen years ago. He took all the files with him. I can’t tell you how relieved I was, Mr. McAdams, when you and your wife called about having your twin implanted. There was only one frozen embryo in the lab, which was odd enough for a fertility clinic, but Dr. Mueller hadn’t bothered to write your name anywhere. There was just a Post-it note on the outside of the cryopreservation unit. ‘Twin,’ it said. And the date it was created.”

  “What are you talking about?” Dad asks. “What about the other people who worked there?”

  “Dr. Mueller started Genesis, and he was its only doctor until I came along. I met him twice before he hired me to be his partner. He seemed to be very involved with every aspect of running the clinic. Controlling, you might say.” Dr. Hodges smirks as though, in hindsight, he realizes he should have known something wasn’t right. “At the time, he said he’d just fired his nurse for being incompetent and had a retired woman working part-time as a receptionist. He said there was a private agency he’d hired to take care of billing and insurance. To be honest, I was concerned about what I was getting myself into. But I saw it as a great opportunity. Being part of Genesis was like a dream coming true. As a gynecologist, seeing so many couples struggling to conceive, I felt this was an opportunity to really help individuals achieve parenthood. But my dream job started off as a nightmare. Dr. Mueller disappeared the same day I started working there.”

  Dad shakes his head in disbelief. “When we came to have Kyle implanted, my wife and I were told he’d left, but no one said anything about him disappearing.”

  “As you can imagine, the clinic—which consisted of me, no records, and an unidentified embryo—was in complete turmoil. When you called about having your twin implanted, I thought about telling you, but you were so happy. So excited about having your second child. Genesis was finally starting to function like a normal clinic, and I guess I just didn’t want to worry you when there seemed no point. The police had all but ended their search. Dr. Mueller had vanished quite thoroughly.”

  Dad stands, outraged. It looks like he’s about to punch someone, but there’s no one to hit. “So there are no records of what he did to our children? To any of them?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Dr. Hodges says. “The police asked for help after his disappearance. They ran a story on the local news asking anyone with ties to Genesis to notify them. Two families came forward. I had Dr. Preston pull their information. One of them lives here in Wichita. I called their number and told the mother that the clinic was updating old files. Her daughter is fine, but her birthday isn’t for three weeks.”

  “And the other one, Hannah,” I urge. “When did she die?”

  “Her father answered the number I called. He and Hannah’s mother divorced a few years ago. Hannah’d been living with her mother in Denver. She would have turned eighteen three months ago, but she died the week before her birthday. Heart failure, though there seems to be no apparent cause.”

  I feel sick. I feel like I’ve just stumbled off one of those cheap carnival rides manned by a sadistic chain-smoker who makes the ride spin faster and faster the greener the occupants get. I grab hold of a high-backed chair and try not to pass out or throw up. “You don’t know how many there are? How many might have already died? How many are about to die?”

  Dr. Hodges shakes his head.

  “And after all these years, Dr. Mueller still hasn’t been found?” Dad asks.

  Dr. Hodges pours some lemonade into an iceless glass and downs it like it’s a shot of hard liquor. “No, he hasn’t. Of course the search would be easier if Dr. Mueller were his real name. The police discovered pretty early on that the name was an alias. His true identity was never discovered.”

  “Let me get this right,” I say. “The doctor disappears, the files disappear, then it turns out he wasn’t even who he was supposed to be?”

  “It doesn’t make sense. None of it. I know.” Hodges looks up at us, his expression one of shared confusion. Then his eyes narrow. He looks at me, then at Dad. He starts to say something, then stands and comes closer.

  “I read the article in the paper about your son, Mr. McAdams. And I saw the news report about Alexis Warren. When I talked to Hannah’s father, I asked him about her academic and other achievements. It turns out that while she tested as extremely gifted, Hannah did poorly in school. Her father attributed this to her general dislike of conformity and organized education. He said she was an avid reader and writer, and that their mother moved them to Denver to pursue her talents in modern dance. He also said she was a very beautiful girl.” Dr. Hodges looks at Dad. “No offense, Mr. McAdams, but you are a rather average-looking man. And Kyle is exceptionally handsome.” He turns to Cami. “Would you agree?”

  She bites her lips, and I know she wants to say that I’m exceptionally annoying. She meets my eyes for just a second. “I gues
s,” she says.

  Dr. Hodges sighs, no doubt frustrated by the lack of conviction in Cami’s voice. It’s not like she’s a sheet of paper with lab results typed on it. She can’t, or won’t, confirm or deny his diagnosis about my looks.

  “How tall is your mother?” Dr. Hodges asks.

  “I don’t know. Around five foot five.”

  “And you, Mr. McAdams. You can’t be more than . . . five foot seven?”

  Dad nods.

  “It’s odd, not impossible, but odd, for a boy to be—what, six two?—when his parents are well below that. And your hair. You and I, Mr. McAdams, seem to share a genetic predisposition for male pattern balding. But you.” He brushes my hair from my forehead to better see my hairline. “Your hairline would seem to suggest that you will always have a nice full head of blond hair. And you have blue eyes, brilliant blue eyes, while your father’s are brown. Could be that you inherited recessive genes from both your mother and your father, but if her eyes are brown, there would only be about a twenty-five percent chance of that happening. Does your mother have blue eyes?”

  “Hers are brown too,” I say. “But we all have blue eyes—at least Connor, Alexis, and Triagon did.”

  Dr. Hodges looks at my dad. “Did Mueller, or whoever he really was, did he ask you what color you wanted your child’s eyes to be?”

  A shadow crosses my father’s face, making him look guilty.

  “What about how tall you wanted your child to be? How intelligent? How about athleticism?”

  “He asked us a lot of questions,” Dad snaps. “But all we wanted was a healthy baby. My wife had already had six miscarriages. Then when we thought we had a healthy baby, we were told we both carried the gene for a type of muscular atrophy. We watched our son, our baby, die a slow, horrible death. We just wanted a healthy child. We didn’t care if it was a boy or a girl. We didn’t care about height or eye color. We wanted a child who would live. Is that so much to ask?” His voice cracks. “Dr. Mueller started asking us all of these questions. We kept saying that none of those things mattered. We just wanted him to take out the gene that could kill our child and let nature take care of the rest. But I’ll never forget what he said.” Dad looks at me as if he’s trying to explain why he did something wrong, like he’s about to offer an excuse, a defense. “He said that nature had killed our first son, and there was a one-in-four chance that nature would kill any child we ever had. He said we didn’t owe nature anything, so why not take advantage of his skills and show nature what science could do. With all we’d been through, why not give our new child all the advantages we could? Yes, we said we’d prefer a boy, but I swear, we were just hoping and praying he could get rid of the gene that might kill our child. We didn’t believe Dr. Mueller could really do all those other things.”

  “Things like making your child tall and handsome and intelligent?” Dr. Hodges asks.

  Dad looks at me, and suddenly he doesn’t seem so ordinary, so average anymore. He’d hired a doctor to not only make his son healthy, but to make him superior. And Connor had been. So had Alexis and Triagon and Hannah. But Hannah sucked at school. Not because she wasn’t smart—she just didn’t try because she didn’t like it. What about me? Could I get the highest GPA in my class like Connor had? Could I break records and win games? I’m superior at video games. What else could I be superior at?

  “Dr. Mueller was manipulating genes,” Dr. Hodges says. “Do you know how certain traits are selected today? Traits like having blue eyes or having a boy or a girl?”

  No one answers.

  “Fertilization takes place in the lab. Once the cells in the fertilized eggs begin to divide, cells are taken out and tested. The embryos with the undesired traits are discarded, and the ones with the desired traits are implanted or frozen. As you can imagine, some have thought this to be an unethical use of the genetic mapping of human traits. But what Mueller was doing . . . actually changing the genetic map of a human . . . it’s . . . beyond what science could do back then. Science is still struggling with this technology today. Our mystery doctor must have been, and still possibly is, quite brilliant.”

  “He, Mueller, said he’d developed a way to get rid of certain genes,” Dad says. “He assured us that it was safe and that we’d have a healthy baby. That was all we cared about. You want to talk about ethics? Bringing a child into this world who will suffer and die, that’s unethical. That’s wrong. He gave us not one, but two healthy children.” His eyes fill with pain and tears. Dad looks at me, and I’ve never seen him so helpless. “He didn’t give us healthy children, though, did he? Something’s wrong with them.”

  “It could be that manipulating so many genes caused some type of unintended mutation. Where Kyle’s concerned, we have to take into consideration that even though the others died on or near their eighteenth birthdays, Kyle was frozen for two years. This may or may not have an impact on how his body will react to any mutation.”

  “What are you saying?” Dad demands, but I know what he’s saying. Being frozen may have done something to me, something that might make me live longer than the others or make me die sooner.

  “We need to get the two Mueller babies that we know about, you and the girl, in for testing,” Dr. Hodges says. “We need a full genetic screen for comparison. There’s a hospital in Dallas that specializes in cardiac care. It’s one of the best in the world. I’d like to send you there. I’m sure Dr. Preston will agree that the clinic should pay for your traveling expenses. I’ll start making the arrangements. We can start the genetic panels right away. “Hopefully”—he puts a heavy hand against my shoulder— “we’ve got more time to sort this out for you. She doesn’t have much time.”

  “There’s at least one more,” I say. “Triagon had a blog and this guy James M. posted a response to it. I’m pretty sure he’s a Genesis baby, but I don’t know his full name. I put my information on the blog, hoping he’ll contact me, but he hasn’t yet.”

  “We can put it on Facebook,” Cami says. “Have all of our friends put it on too. It’s a long shot, but you know how crazy the connections are. We get enough people posting that we’re looking for him, he might see it.”

  “What about Emma?” I say, and mentally, I’m not in Dr. Hodges’s living room. I’m on the playground outside the church where Connor’s funeral took place. Emma is looking at me with those tear-filled eyes. Deep endless tears, like she’ll never stop crying. Ten years from now, twenty, when someone tells her a joke and she laughs, those tears will still be in her eyes because she’ll never stop missing him, just like I’ll never stop wishing we’d had more time together, time to be what we should have been. “I don’t want her to know about any of this. She’ll see it on our posts, and she’ll ask questions.”

  Cami nods. “We’ll come up with something.”

  “We need to find whoever is left,” Dr. Hodges says. “We need to get the genetic screens, then get all of you to Dallas. If you find out who this James is, let me know. I’ll make the arrangements for everything else.”

  I couldn’t save Triagon or Alexis or, now, Hannah Welch. I couldn’t save Connor. But I want to save James, almost as much as I want to save myself. “I wish we could use Facebook to find Dr. Mueller,” I say. “We still don’t know why he disappeared.”

  “Maybe he knew something was wrong,” Cami says.

  “Or maybe,” Dr. Hodges says, “he was done with that stage of his experiment. Maybe he just wanted to see if he could do it, if he could manipulate genes.”

  “But he wouldn’t know if he was successful, not back then. Not when he disappeared.” An icy feeling inches up my spine. “He wouldn’t know if we were athletic or smart or good-looking back when we were babies. He’d have to watch us grow up to know if it worked.”

  Dr. Hodges nods. “And if he’s alive and watching, he knows what’s happening.”

  “Then why doesn’t he do something?�
� I nearly shout, because he should do something. Like it or not, I wouldn’t be alive if Dr. Mueller hadn’t made me. Mom and Dad might have conceived me and Connor naturally, and we probably would have died like our brother, our lungs ever so slowly refusing to take in air, our hearts becoming as immobile as stone. Dr. Mueller, or whoever he is, created us. All of us. But he must not be alive, because if he was, he’d be watching, and if he was watching, he’d care.

  15

  Cami came up with a brilliant idea. She’d seen a post on Facebook about a stray dog someone found. That person posted a picture of the dog and the information from its collar. So we posted that I’d found a dog with a tag that said its name was Triagon, and the owner’s name was James M. “The dog is old, maybe even close to eighteen, so we really need to find his owner. If you are James M. and care about Triagon, contact Kyle McAdams.” I also posted Dr. Hodges’s information on Triagon’s blog site, just in case James M. checked it again.

  It’s been two says since I posted about the dog on Facebook. To be honest, I don’t have that many friends. But Cami does, and so do her friends and their friends and their friends. It’s crazy how the fingers of Facebook reach out through the borders of counties and cities and even states and countries. But nothing yet. If we’ve ignited any type of a fire, James M. isn’t seeing the smoke.

  I got up this morning, checked Facebook, and when there were no friend requests, I put on my tennis shoes and headed out the door. I never understood why Connor liked to run. I’ve always hated PE, especially the part where we’d have to either run laps around the gym or go outside and run around the track. But I’m not sure why I hated it. It’s not like I got out of breath or got that killer pain in my side people complain about. I think it was because I felt like people were watching me, wanting to see if I’d sprint my way to the front of the pack. They wanted to see if I was another Connor. So I didn’t sprint. I stopped to tie my shoes a lot. Occasionally, I stopped to look at a cute ass. I didn’t want anyone to think I couldn’t run. I just wanted them to think that I didn’t want to.