A Perilous Conception Read online

  “Little sadistic, is she?”

  “More than a little. That’s where the staff gets the most upset with her. A supervisor’s supposed to keep watch for mistakes or lapses in protocols, then use them as an opportunity to help the staff, to get them to feel even more involved in the work. But Alma…”

  Giselle shook her head. “The more stupid, the more careless, the more negligent she can make someone feel, the more she seems to like it. I’ve seen her face get flushed when she’s chewing someone out. She looks like a kid, sticking a pin into a worm, watching it wiggle, then sticking it again. My guess is that some time when she’s not getting enough of a charge from making the techs squirm, she’ll be back to you. That line about not wanting to foul her own nest? She’s gotten this nest so foul it couldn’t possibly smell worse.”

  “It wouldn’t occur to her to go ask the Kennetts for a payoff, would it? Especially if she really was standing outside the men’s room when James came out with the second sample.”

  “Whatever would give her the biggest tingle is what she’d do. But I still think I ought to apologize to the Kennetts. Maybe that would help a little.”

  “It wouldn’t help at all. It’d be a disaster. Remember, I told James the first sample was inadequate, and if he could get us a second one, you’d do your best to make it work? He thinks you’re a hero. All he’d have to hear would be that you dropped the first tube.”

  Giselle sighed. “I guess we’d better deal with Alma. I’ve got an idea.”

  Chapter Three

  Baumgartner

  My old man was a cop. He died three months before I was born, and if you don’t think that’s a weird thing for a kid to get his mind around, think again. It never even felt right to refer to him as “my dad.”

  From all I heard, he was a good man and a good cop. His name was Harry Baumgartner, but they called him Bulldog because of how he went after his cases. He’d tug at a piece of evidence this way, that way, every way he could think of, until finally he was looking at it from just the right angle, case closed. Which is why he died, or at least, why people figured he died. A whole family had been executed gang-style in their house, the investigation was going nowhere, and my father was driving himself and everyone around him nuts. Then one night, he told my mother he thought he had it, he only needed to make one more connection. He went out to get that connection, but he never came back. They found him three days later, floating in the Green River, south of Emerald. They never got his killer, and they never cracked the murder case, either.

  My first memories are of my mother telling me about my father, what happened to him, and why. Ma did everything she could think of to make sure I’d never become a cop, which the shrinks told her later was about the worst tack she could’ve taken.

  But I didn’t join the force out of spite. All that talk from my mother started me reading crime stories, real ones and made-up. I read everything I could get my hands on, newspaper accounts of murders, books with genius private eyes like Philip Marlowe, Hercule Poirot, and Philo Vance, and I always tried to nail the bad guy before the detectives did. By the time I was fifteen, it was a rare book where the dick beat me to the killer. By my last year in high school, I was spending all my free time and then some hanging around our neighborhood station house. The cops knew who I was, and who my father was, so they put up with me. A young looey, Mel Richmond, took me under his wing, told me war stories, even let me ride around with him on night patrols. Finally, word got back to my mother. She told me if I ever became a policeman, she’d never talk to me again. She never has, either, thirty years now and counting.

  In those thirty years, I’ve seen my share of homicides, but there’s one case I’ll never forget. The call came in a little after eleven in the morning, an apparent murder-suicide in a laboratory at the University Medical School.

  By the time my partner, Roger Olson, and I got there, it was like all Niagara had busted loose. Two people were down, a man and a woman. She’d been shot twice in the chest, he’d shot himself up through the mouth, and the ER doc and paramedic who’d been called in were standing over the bodies, waiting for me to tell them they could officially leave. The first responders had done a good job of making sure nothing got touched or changed, keeping people out who didn’t belong there, getting everyone who was in the lab when it happened seated quietly in the room next door. When Olson and I came in, one of the cops showed us a list of names, and some notes he’d taken. The woman was Dr. Giselle Hearn, the head of the lab, but no one knew anything about the man. One of the techs had heard an argument, the man and the woman shouting, and then there were three shots.

  We called in the ME, the criminalists, and the photog, and were starting to find out who was who, and what they’d heard and seen, when a fat guy in a long white coat blew through the doorway in a cloud of expensive men’s cologne. For a minute, he stood there like a moose in a car’s headlights. Then he bellowed, “What’s going on here?”

  I walked over to him, and flipped my badge under his nose. “Detective Baumgartner, Emerald Police, Homicide,” I said. “You are…?”

  He looked down his nose, and made a major effort to pull in his gut and stand tall. “I’m Dr. L. Gerald Camnitz, the chairman of this department. I want to know what’s going on—”

  He shut up in a hurry when the doc from the ER stepped away, and he got a better view of the vics. “Oh, my God. Giselle Hearn?” He ran the few steps to her side, started to kneel and grab at her wrist, but I got to his arm first. “Please don’t touch anything, sir.”

  It took some work to get him back to standing. He couldn’t take his eyes off the woman. “My God, she’s dead,” he muttered, then raised his voice. “Who’s that man on the floor there? Did he kill her?”

  “Looks that way,” I said. “My partner and I are going to try to sort it out. Meanwhile, the policeman over there will get you a seat for a little while. Soon as we’re squared away here, I’ll want to talk to you.”

  He didn’t like that. “I have a full schedule of appointments the rest of the day.”

  “The policeman will walk you back to your office so you can ask your secretary to reschedule them.”

  “What? You’re treating me like a prisoner. This is outrageous.”

  I looked over to the bodies on the floor. “No, sir, that’s outrageous. This is standard investigative procedure. Don’t take it personally.” I motioned the cop over. He reached for Camnitz’s arm. The doctor grunted at me, then stalked toward the door.

  Chapter Four

  Sanford

  It was the nastiest medical situation I could remember. I gave Amy Dickenson, the postpartum charge nurse, a quick heads-up before we went into Joyce Kennett’s room. As we walked to Joyce’s bedside, her round face creased into a smile. I took her hand. “How’re you feeling?”

  “Oh, much better than I expected. I’ve hardly needed any pain medication. I’m so glad you talked me out of a c-section.”

  She’d been concerned over possible hazards to the baby of labor and vaginal delivery, and wanted to “play it safe.” But the idea of so-called premium babies has always bothered me. Is any one human life, no matter how difficult it was to conceive, more valuable than any other? I told Joyce that sections have risks of their own, both to mother and baby, and that I wouldn’t take a step off Labor and Delivery from the minute she came in until she was holding her baby. Her labor lasted only seven hours, and the delivery was as uneventful as her pregnancy had been.

  “And she’s already been up and walking, several times.”

  Amy’s enthusiasm over a few strolls to the bathroom and nursery came across as forced. I gave her a hard look. “My patients don’t have episiotomy pain. They all walk right away.” I coughed, squeezed Joyce’s hand. “We do have a problem, though.”

  Cheer drained from her face; her free hand s
hot to her throat. “What’s wrong with my baby?”

  “Nothing at all. The baby’s fine. It’s something else. Do you know why James went to talk to Dr. Hearn?”

  She was clearly puzzled. “Well, yes. He wanted to thank her for the work she did…” Her voice faded as she looked at Amy. “You know, what she did to help us get pregnant. That was all right, wasn’t it?”

  I grimaced, couldn’t help it. “Joyce, I’m sorry. I just got word that James shot Dr. Hearn. And then he shot himself.”

  She grabbed at my white coat. “Are they…I mean…”

  “I’m sorry,” I said again. “At least from what I’ve heard, they’re both dead. I wanted to come see you before you heard it from anyone else.”

  Joyce released her hold on me, put both hands to her eyes, and began to weep silently. But then lowered her hands, looked at Amy, and without the slightest waver in her voice, said, “Ms. Dickenson, would you excuse us, please? I’d like to talk to Dr. Sanford privately.”

  Amy nodded. “Of course.” She practically flew out of the room.

  As the door clicked shut, I thought Joyce was going to wail like a siren, but no. She stared at me for a moment, then said, “I didn’t want to talk in front of her…oh, Dr. Sanford, I can’t believe it. James was so happy about the baby.” She choked, coughed, took a deep breath, brushed hair off her cheek. “He said he wanted to thank Dr. Hearn for giving him to us. He was so excited…I wonder if he forgot to take his medications this morning.”

  “Did he often forget?”

  “I never gave him the chance. I was there to remind him every morning at breakfast.” She shook her head. “But I wasn’t there today. And he was so wound up with excitement all day yesterday.”

  I considered not saying what was in my mind, but decided to go ahead. “If he got himself a gun beforehand, he must have had something on his mind.”

  Now, tears came, a flood down her cheeks. “He’s always had guns. He thought he needed them for protection. I didn’t know until we were engaged, and when I told him I wasn’t sure I liked the idea, he got upset. So I backed off. I mean, he did have a permit and all. He carried a gun everywhere, wherever he went.”

  I’d wondered why he came to every office visit wearing a sport jacket. “How could he have gotten a concealed-weapons permit? He’s been a psychiatric patient for more than twenty years.”

  Words worked their way out between choked sobs. “I don’t have any idea. I guess they don’t check all that hard.”

  “Did his psychiatrist know?”

  Helpless shrug. “Dr. Hammacher never talked about James’ condition with me.”

  “Of course not. Sorry.”

  She swallowed hard. “Dr. Sanford, you’ve got to cancel the press conference. There’s no way I can handle the publicity right now.”

  “Already canceled. But Joyce, listen. The police want me to come over to the lab. I’m sure they’re going to ask me a lot of questions, and when they’re done with me, they’ll be asking you at least some of the same questions. We don’t want to let the cat out of the bag, so we’ll need to be sure we give them the exact same answers.”

  Panic covered her face.

  “Don’t worry. I’ve got it figured out. One of Dr. Hearn’s lab projects was something called Density Gradient Separation, an experimental procedure to make sperm more efficient at fertilization. For now, let’s tell the police I got her to do a Density Gradient Separation on a sample of James’ sperm, and I inseminated you with it. You can handle that, can’t you?”

  She sighed. “I guess I’ll have to. Oh, I wish I could manage that press conference. I know how much it means to you, and it’s more important to me now than it ever was. Without the money from the publicity…” She started to cry again.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “You’re going to get full living expenses for you and…”

  “Robbie. Robert Jackson Kennett.”

  “Right, for you and Robbie. I promise. Meanwhile, it won’t hurt to wait a bit—better all around, in fact. By the time you get yourself in hand, there won’t be anything else going on to distract the reporters.”

  She gnawed at her lip. “Yeah. All right.”

  I patted her hand. “I’ve got to get along. Let the police catch up with us separately. I’ll go over to the lab now, see what I can find out.”

  She started to cry again, silently. “Thank you so much, Dr. Sanford. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “Don’t even think about it. Let me do the worrying. Now, what’s the name of the procedure Dr. Hearn did?”

  “Density Gradient Separation.” She made a poor attempt at a smile, then washed it away in a flood of tears.

  “Perfect,” I said, gently as I could. “Be back later. I’ll take care of everything.”

  ***

  My mind moved at least as fast as my feet as I hurried across the skybridge to the U Medical Center. No mulligans in this game. I’d need to do something about Joyce’s office records, and then, at the delayed news conference, if anyone asked about Density Gradient Separation, I’d go a little shamefaced, and explain it had been a necessary lie to protect my patient when she was so vulnerable. And if that led someone to ask why they should believe me now, I’d smile benignly and open the log I’d stashed under my file cabinet. After I’d made a small revision.

  ***

  The Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology was Pandemonium. All up and down the hall, secretaries, lab techs, doctors milled about. Some were crying. I worked my way through the mob to the end of the administrative corridor, where I turned left into the research wing, and went up to the third door on the left, next to the brass plate that read Reproductive Genetics.

  A gangly young policeman moved to block my entrance. “I’m sorry sir, you can’t go in here.”

  I nodded understanding. “I’m Dr. Colin Sanford, Dr. Hearn’s associate. Is it true she’s been—”

  “Sir, I can’t discuss anything with you. I need to ask you to leave.”

  I flashed the smile I’d intended to use on the reporters right about that time. “The wife of the man who did the shooting is my patient. A detective called my office and asked me to come over.”

  “Mr. Baumgartner?”

  “That’s the name my office manager gave me.”

  The cop looked like someone who’d picked up on a strong odor of fish, but he pointed down the hall. “Detective Baumgartner’s interviewing people in the department conference room and the room next door to it. You know the way?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  ***

  I walked down to the end of the hall, and into the conference room. Three techs, two women and a man, huddled at one end of the long table; at the other end, Laurie Mansell, the supervisor, sat with Gerry Camnitz. Their conversation was so intense, they didn’t notice me until I walked up to them. Camnitz’s face fairly glowed. His blood pressure must’ve been off the charts. “What are you doing here?” he barked at me.

  Little shrug. “I heard something terrible happened, and since it concerns one of my patients, I thought I ought to check it out.”

  Camnitz’s eyes bugged. “One of your patients?”

  “A postpartum. I delivered her yesterday, and I just heard her husband shot Giselle, then killed himself.”

  Ms. Mansell, slack-jawed, paler than any anemic patient I’d ever treated, looked up at me. She nodded several times, an automaton on low-wind. “I told the police detective, I was in my cubicle next to Dr. Hearn’s office, when I heard shouting, Dr. Hearn’s voice and a man’s. The man—Mr. Kennett—yelled something like, ‘What do you mean, second sample?’ and then Dr. Hearn said she was so glad the second one was adequate, she was upset when the first one wasn’t…and then they were both shouting. Dr. Hearn screamed, “No. Don’t. Listen,” and
right after that, I heard two shots. I didn’t think, just ran to the doorway and looked inside. Dr. Hearn was on the floor, blood…Mr. Kennett looked straight at me, and I’ve never been so scared in my life. I thought I was dead for sure. I tried to turn and run but I couldn’t, it was like in a nightmare where you’re stuck in place, and can’t move. But then…I’ll never stop seeing it the rest of my life. He put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.”

  I closed my eyes for a moment. “How did you know it was Mr. Kennett?”

  “I didn’t, not then. But the police found out somehow. Oh, Dr. Sanford, it was so awful. You must be beside yourself, how close you and Dr. Hearn were, all the time you spent here with her…”

  Mansell’s face went slack, cat caught in the cream pitcher. Camnitz looked like a balloon being dangerously overfilled with air. He glared at Mansell, who shrank back into her chair, then turned and waved a sausage-finger in my face. “Colin, what is she talking about? Why were you spending ‘all that time’ here with Giselle?”

  I shoved his hand away. “Get your finger out of my nose, Gerry. The police detective called me over, and besides, I need to do what I can to help my patient. Don’t give me—”

  I shut up as a stocky, balding man in a brown suit walked into the room with a young woman in a white coat; I recognized her as another of the lab techs. She was near-hysterical. The man spoke to her softly, then with a gentle hand on her back, directed her to the group of her colleagues. “Miss Stephens?” The man’s voice was a rich bass, almost musical, a human tuba. “Could you come with me, please…wait a minute.” He held up a hand to Miss Stephens, and looked at me. “Who are you, sir?”

  “Dr. Colin Sanford. My patient is the wife of the man who shot Dr. Hearn. You called my office and asked me to come by.”