by Judi Lind
Since she’d come to know Karen well over the past few months, Valerie leaned toward the second option. Until proved wrong, she would never believe Karen guilty of a crime concerning the disappearance of her own baby, or any crime, for that matter. Why would the girl manufacture a nonexistent social worker when it was so simple for the authorities to double-check her story?
No, Karen wasn’t at fault here.
The truth chilled her. No one person was responsible for these kidnappings. A team of at least two people was working in tandem, setting up the mothers, stealing their babies, then selling them to the highest bidders.
These criminals, these reprehensible heartless ghouls, were as coldly efficient as a surgical team.
With their limited knowledge, would she and Gil be able to stop them?
Chapter Eleven
All afternoon Gil pondered the ramifications of what they’d learned. He’d had plenty of time to dwell on the case. After their intimacy of the night before, Valerie had withdrawn again. Offering no explanation, she’d simply retreated into her shell like a frightened turtle.
Just as well. In fact, he ought to be happy. Most women wanted to jabber incessantly about the “relationship” the moment they moved into the sexual arena. As a loner with no ties, Gil generally dreaded these verbal ordeals.
With Valerie, though, he wanted to talk. He was sure she could help him recover some of his past. And for the first time in his life, he wanted to take those initiated tentative steps toward a future. Apparently Valerie wasn’t interested.
So he threw his energy and concentration into the case. So far he’d determined that no caseworker had called on Karen Lundquist yesterday. He’d stake his professional reputation on the distraught young mother’s truthfulness.
That meant the operators of the phony adoption ring understood the system a lot more fully than he’d first believed. But was the ringleader a medic or someone in the welfare office?
A doctor, nurse or other medical technician might well know how the social-services department was structured, he reflected. Hospital personnel were often instrumental in guiding their patients to the appropriate social services. But did it necessarily follow that a welfare caseworker would be as familiar with the internal workings of Parker Memorial?
Until these infants were actually under the social-services umbrella of protection, how would a caseworker even know of their existence? Much less know which doctor delivered each infant. No, the “caseworker” who had called on Karen Lundquist was only a diversion, a ploy utilized by the gang to gain her confidence.
Someone at Parker Memorial Hospital was the mastermind of this well-organized team.
Despite what Gil felt were compelling arguments, his immediate supervisor still held on to his suspicions that Valerie was involved. Granted, she was intelligent enough to pull off such a complicated scheme, but she was no villain. Gil would bet his life on it.
Still, his instincts, his years of observing and interpreting human body language, warned him that she was keeping something back. Perhaps she was fearful of incriminating a friend or colleague, but she was definitely withholding information. He could smell it, the way a dog could sniff out a morsel of prime rib at sixty paces.
Somehow he had to convince her to trust him with whatever knowledge she was concealing.
The bedside phone rang, interrupting his troubling thoughts.
He snatched up the receiver. “Yeah?”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Valerie emerge from the bathroom dressed in jeans and a sleeveless cotton top, toweling dry a long length of golden hair. “Hi, Nick. What do you have for me?”
Gil grabbed his pen and notebook. After ten minutes of frantic scribbling, he replaced the receiver.
Valerie crossed the room to sit on the opposite bed. “What is it?”
“I asked the local field office to run background checks on your pals at the hospital.”
“And?”
“And mostly they’re clean.” He looked at his notes. “Dr. Bender owes the national debt in student loans, which is natural for a doctor at his stage. Weingold makes decent money but has extravagant tastes. He currently has five credit cards maxed out and two more on the way. He hasn’t missed a payment, though, so he’s not in real trouble. He also has some money stockpiled in an account in the Cayman Islands. Your administrator, Martin Abel, is above reproach. Of course, power can be as big a motivator as money, and there’s no doubt Abel is a power monger.”
“True, but I don’t know how stealing and selling babies can enhance anyone’s power,” she argued.
“Money is power. Rumor has it that Abel has political ambitions. It takes a great deal of money, and power, to take even a tiny step into the political arena.”
Valerie began rubbing her hair again. “I suppose that’s true. But it was a woman who pretended to be the social worker, so maybe we’d have better luck working from that angle.”
They’d stopped at Karen Lunquist’s apartment on the way home to obtain a description of the mysterious “Mrs. Horton.” Karen’s description didn’t fit anyone in the case. Medium height, medium build, medium brown hair, glasses, whoever she was, the false social worker had made sure to disguise her identity.
He flipped a page in the spiral notebook. “I did check out a few women. First, that Nazi who works in the ER—Pierce? I saw her name in at least one of the missing babies’ files.”
She chuckled at his description of Fierce Pierce. The no-nonsense nursing supervisor had been called far worse by her own staff from time to time. “Emily Pierce might be lacking in charm, but she’s certainly a dedicated caregiver. She volunteers one of her days off each week at the WomanCare clinic.” Valerie paused in her hair-drying routine. “Surely you didn’t uncover any detrimental information about her, did you?”
Gil consulted his notes again. “She’s frugal to a fault. Probably has more money salted away than Manuel Noriega. No known sexual partners, male or female. No gambling or drug problems that we could discover. The woman’s a paragon of virtue.”
“Doesn’t surprise me at all,” Valerie declared.
“Yeah, well, I never met a paragon yet who didn’t have some skeleton rattling around in the closet just like everyone else. We just haven’t found it yet.”
“Did you check out anyone else? Like me?” She averted her eyes and Gil knew she was obliquely asking if he had done a background check on her, as well.
To keep from telling her an outright lie, he replied, “Yeah, we checked out that physician’s assistant you have running the WomanCare clinic—Monica Giesen.”
Valerie laughed and stood up. Strolling to the dresser, she picked up a soft-bristled brush and ran it through her hair. “Monica is a saint. Everyone loves Monica.”
“Everybody but her ex-husband. He called her a cold-blooded snake.”
“That’s because she threw him out for cheating with their next-door neighbor,” Valerie said in staunch defense of her working partner.
“Not according to the next-door neighbor. She said Monica was crazy jealous and always screaming at him. According to both the ex and the neighbor, the husband left Monica quite voluntarily—she didn’t throw him out.”
Valerie set the brush back on the dresser and turned to face him. “Okay, maybe she told us that story to save face. That doesn’t mean she’d be involved in such a despicable crime. What would be her motivation?”
With a dry chuckle, he closed the notebook and stuck it in his laptop case. “You’ve seen too many Columbo reruns. Motivation? Greed, power, lust, money, revenge, ambition, hate...” He dropped his voice and intoned in the dramatic voice of an old-time radio announcer, “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Only the Shadow knows.”
He crossed the room and stood in front of Valerie. His voice reverting to normal, he said, “And I’m going to turn into a shadow if you don’t take me out and feed me. I’m hungry, woman. You sapped my strength. I need nourishment. Energy.” H
e waggled his eyebrows suggestively and leaned forward to nibble on her earlobe.
Laughing, she pushed him away. “Not so fast, Shadow. You never finished answering my question. Did you have my background checked?”
Trying to keep the mood lighthearted, he grinned. “But of course. If I’m going to take you home to Mom, I needed to know exactly what kind of temptress I was dealing with.”
“That’s kind of creepy, you know? Someone having the ability—and the right—to delve into my personal affairs.”
“I am your personal affair,” he said.
“You know what I mean. It...it makes me feel violated. I know there’s nothing...shocking in my background. I’m basically a very boring person. I go to work, pay my bills—”
“You’re not completely lily-white,” he interrupted. “There was that vicious sit-in during college when you were involved with that human-rights group. As I recall, you were in the pokey for several hours before you were sprung.”
“That’s exactly what I mean! You shouldn’t know that. Not unless I wanted to tell you. My life is... well, my life should be my business.”
He reached out and took her chin between his fingers. “First, I hope you realize that I would never violate my authority by doing a background check without excellent cause.”
“I know that, but—”
“You should also know that these investigations don’t tell us about the real you. We get raw data, hard facts. I know how long you’ve been a doctor, where you went to school, how much money you make and how much you spend. But I don’t know what you love, what you dislike. What makes you laugh or brings you to tears. Although I intend to find out.”
He raised two fingers and gently pressed her lips when she started to interrupt. “No, let me finish. The real you, the intrinsic Valerie Murphy, is a complex and special human being, who holds the keys to her own privacy. I’m not saying I don’t want to know all those secrets. Not because I’m on a case, though, but because I want to know everything I can about the most fascinating woman I’ve ever met.”
She stared at him. Then her gaze softened, the corners of her eyes crinkled, and she laughed aloud. “You must have been a snake-oil salesman in a former life. So let’s go get a pizza.”
FINDING A FREE TABLE at Bits ‘n’ Pizzas on Saturday night was no easy task. Finally Gil spotted a free table and grabbed her arm. “Hurry, let’s stake our claim before somebody else does.”
Valerie trailed behind him through the crowded restaurant until they reached the empty spot. It quickly became apparent why the table was still empty. On one side was the swinging kitchen door; on the left, a noisy birthday party for a dozen preteen boys livened up the atmosphere.
“I think I see why this one is still free,” she commented as he held out a chair for her.
“What?” he shouted over the din. “You think people would be bothered by a few rowdy kids? Nah.”
He took the chair beside her and they scanned the menus. Miraculously a harried waitress appeared almost immediately. “Hi, folks, can I get you something to drink while you’re deciding?”
A sudden clear flash of memory shot to the forefront of his mind. They’d eaten here before. Pepperoni and pineapple, thin crust, was Valerie’s favorite. Accompanied by a light beer. “Two beers,” he ordered. “Whatever light beer you have on—”
“Actually,” Valerie interrupted, shooting him a confused look. “I’ll have a soft drink. Any diet cola.”
“You got it.” The waitress nodded and hurried off.
Gil sighed in exasperation. “Just when I thought I had it right.”
“What do you mean?”
“I had a memory of us pigging out here once before. Guess I was wrong.”
She looked away, studying the table of boys who were now blowing the paper off their straws at one another. “You weren’t wrong. We’ve eaten here a couple of times.”
“But I remember your saying that only uncivilized peasants ate pizza without beer.”
She ducked a flying paper, and his implied question. “Hand me a napkin, please.”
Making a large show of wiping the already clean table, she managed to avoid his eyes until the waitress set their drinks down.
“You decided, folks?”
Gil nodded. “We’ll have a medium pepperoni and pineapple, thin crust, extra cheese.” He glanced at Valerie. “Unless I got that wrong, too?”
“No, that’s fine.” She smiled at the waitress and carefully stripped the paper from her straw.
When the woman walked away, he reached across the table and clasped Val’s hand in his. “So what am I missing?”
“Missing?”
“Yeah. A dedicated beer-and-pizza woman suddenly chooses diet cola, instead. Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”
Feeling trapped, she yanked her hand away. Pregnant women weren’t supposed to drink, but she couldn’t just blurt that out. “For Pete’s sake, Gil, I simply decided not to have a beer. Let’s not make a federal case out of it, all right?”
His shoulders raised in an exaggerated shrug and he lifted his hands, as if they could ward off her sudden fit of temper. “Sorry I mentioned it. Look at that kid, the one in the red hat.”
She peeked at the table of raucous youngsters. The dark-haired boy in the red baseball cap had found a rubber band and was taking careful aim at the back of the boy seated beside him. Waiting to make certain he had the attention of his peer, he pulled the rubber band taut and let it go.
“Yeow!” The other youngster clutched his back and turned around, his fists at the ready. “I’m gonna tell Mom!”
Valerie grimaced as if she’d been the victim. “Charming child,” she muttered.
“I can’t stand a whiner, either,” he said.
“I meant the other one, the instigator. He’s a brat.”
“Nah. Just being a boy. Reminds me a bit of myself at that age. And my brother, Geoff, was always tattling to my Mom. I think I spent more time restricted to my room than I did out of it.”
“I’m sorry to say it doesn’t seem to have done much good. You’re still a brat. You never told me you had a brother. He’s younger than you?”
Gil shook his head. He’d been wondering exactly how much he and Valerie had shared besides a bed. Apparently they hadn’t gotten past the hot and hurried stage to the point of exchanging personal histories. In a way that was kind of nice. Now he wanted to know every detail of her life. He wanted her back in his bed, too, but was willing to let that happen in its own time. “Geoff was older. Two years, but somehow I always felt like the older one. He was...sickly.”
“I’m sorry. Is he...?”
He lifted his tankard and swallowed deeply. Wiping the foam from his mouth with the back of his hand, he closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. He was the one, after all, who wanted to share their histories. “No,” he said at last. “He died two months after I graduated from high school. Cystic fibrosis.”
“Oh, Gil, I’m so sorry. And your folks, are you close?”
“It’s just my mom. My dad left when I was real little. We had a few letters here and there, once in a while a birthday card or a Christmas present, but he was pretty much out of our lives from the time I was four or five. How about you? What’s your family like?”
“Big and rowdy. Five kids, three boys and my sister and I. My folks just had their fortieth anniversary. They live in Tucson. I try to get down to see them every couple of months. The others are scattered around the country.”
“How about your sister? Are you close?”
She batted a runaway balloon back toward the birthday celebration. “Gail and I are closer since we’ve grown up. I was the family anomaly. The only reader, lousy in sports and kind of a wimpy kid. She coaches junior-high girls in Sacramento. Married, two boys.”
“Watch it, folks, this is hot.” The frazzled waitress elbowed her way around the table of boys and set the steaming pizza on a rack. “Can I get you anything else?”
As soon as the waitress put down their napkins and shaker of Parmesan, they dove into the pizza.
They munched happily until the edge was off their hunger. Valerie stretched a strand of mozzarella around her finger and nibbled at the gooey cheese. “So what’s next on our agenda?”
“What do you mean?” Gil asked in between bites.
“I never got to the hospital to do any research. Think I should go back this evening?”
Wiping his mouth with a paper napkin, he shook his head decisively. “No way. You are officially off the case, Doc. A civilian from here on out.”
She dropped the uneaten portion of her third slice on her plate. “What do you mean, ‘off the case’? You were glad enough of my help this morning.”
“That was before somebody tried to kill you. It’s too dangerous, Doc. Your involvement is finished.”
“I seem to remember patching you up in the ER just a couple of days ago. We’re both in danger until these criminals are behind bars where they belong.”
“Taking risks is part of my job. Not yours.”
“Are you kidding me? This is my life, my career hanging by a thread here, Gil. Besides, without me, you don’t have any way to access those records.”
“Then I’ll find another way. I’m not letting you put yourself in any more danger.”
She swallowed the last of her soft drink and leaned back, arms crossed over her chest. “That’s not your decision to make.”
For the first time Gil glimpsed a bit of that steel core that ran through her. He knew it wasn’t easy to get through medical school, much less earn a position as head of the obstetrical unit in a large metropolitan hospital at such a young age. He considered his options. Either accept her help or muddle along blindly.
If this were any other woman, any other person, his decision would be simple—let them in on the case at their own peril. But not Valerie. He couldn’t risk losing her. Not again.