Daybreak (21 page)

“The story is wild enough,” Mackenzie said quietly, “but it isn’t tricky. That I can vouch for. I have known these people, they’re my friends as well as my clients, and they are honorable people. Also, it goes without saying that I have made my own extensive private investigations. We searched the records that were transferred to Wilson General when Barnes was closed, we interviewed the only nurse from that section who is still employed there, and naturally she knows nothing. The sole fact we can establish clearly is that there was just one other male infant in the nursery at that time, and he belongs to Homer and Laura Rice. That’s it.”

Bud was breathing heavily, leaning forward with his tense hands on his knees. Still quietly, with a visible effort at control, he said, “No more, please. That’s enough, Mr. Mackenzie.”

Laura said, very low, “It’s not enough, Bud. We have to listen. We have no choice.” And she grasped the arm of the sofa as if to brace herself.

“About five months ago,” Mackenzie began, “these people’s son Peter, who had been a sick child from birth, had a crisis. They had gone everywhere over the years from one great medical center to another—Baltimore, New York, Atlanta—all over. At the last place where he was hospitalized, it happened that some genetic study was being made, and for its purposes, extensive blood tests on the parents were made—DNA
and so forth. It was then that they learned that Peter could not possibly belong to them.”

“And laboratories don’t make mistakes?” Now Bud’s control vanished. “Some jerk in a laboratory decides that their child isn’t theirs? Those people are big jerks themselves. And so they go creeping around to find out who
is
their son, and they decide that my boy is their son. Not on your life! What kind of a fool do you take me for?”

“I know this can sound something like a detective mystery, but—” Mackenzie started to say when Bud again interrupted.

“Half a mystery. My Tom is mine, and there’s nothing mysterious about that. Period.”

There were a few moments of silence. Laura wiped her forehead and her hands, twisted the handkerchief, and waited.

Then Mackenzie said very gently, “I have records here in my case. Will you take a look at them?”

“No. I won’t dignify the subject by reading such stuff,” Bud cried.

Inquiring of Laura, Mackenzie now took another path. “Wouldn’t it ease your minds if you were to find out more about this?”

“Our minds are quite easy,” Bud said. “Quite.”

“Mine wouldn’t be if I were you. There were only five newborns in that hospital during the days when your son and this other boy were there. Three out of the five were girls.”

“Listen to me,” Bud commanded. “There were other male infants in that hospital. Some baby from the sick ward could have been brought somehow to the nursery. It’s not even common sense to pinpoint the other boy in the nursery, who happens to be ours.”

“Your possibility is farfetched, Mr. Rice, but still I admit it’s a possibility.” Mackenzie paused. “So that’s why we have to look into everything, look at everything. My clients say that the switch couldn’t have taken place anywhere but at the hospital, since once they took their baby home, he was never out of their sight.”

“That’s another crooked story,” Bud said.

“If so, it’s a simple thing to set it straight. All you need do is have some blood tests made, both of you and of your son.”

Bud exploded. “Blood tests! I’ll be damned if we will. It’s unconstitutional, an invasion of our privacy.”

“No,” Mackenzie said. “I could get a court order, Mr. Rice, but I’d rather not have to do that.”

Nausea was rising to Laura’s throat. If Bud would only tell the man to go! If she might only lie down and pull her thoughts together!

“Why the hell don’t they sue the hospital?” demanded Bud. “And let other people alone.”

“The hospital doesn’t exist, as I told you. Anyway, they’re not interested in damages. They only want to know what became of their child.”

Laura was struck unbearably by full horror. Tears that must have been gathering and been bravely contained now gushed in force. She put her hands over her burning face and let them pour between her fingers.

“Look,” Bud said roughly, “look what’s happening to my wife. A family torn apart on a nice summer Saturday. Just like that!” He snapped his fingers. And taking Tom’s photograph from the library table, he held it up. “This is our son. He’s not going to know one thing
about this rot, Mr. Mackenzie. Is that clear? It would destroy him, and I won’t allow it.”

Mackenzie said only, “He’s a very handsome young man.” He reopened the attache case. “I have here a picture of Peter Crawfield.”

“Keep it,” Bud told him.

Mackenzie then held it up in full view. Unwillingly, Laura raised her eyes. A fair-haired youth with a delicate, narrow face looked back at her. The nose was short, the upper lip long, the chin was markedly cleft … The face was Timmy’s.

“It’s Timmy. Oh my God, it’s Timmy,” she moaned.

Bud stretched out his hand and took the picture. “It’s not Timmy at all.” he said gently. “I’ll straighten this business out. Leave it to me.”

Mackenzie said calmly, “I think you should get a lawyer, Mr. Rice. This isn’t going to go away, you know.”

“Damn right, I will. Fordyce and Fordyce are my lawyers. I’ll sue those people in every court in the land if they don’t let us alone. I suppose they’ll want custody next, eh?” he sneered. “Jesus Christ!”

“There is no question of custody when a person is over eighteen.”

Laura was thinking, Who are these people? What are they trying to do? My Tom belongs to me. Oh, dear God. I don’t, won’t, can’t, believe this. Even if that boy looks like Timmy. A lot of boys look like Timmy.

Mackenzie was looking from one to the other. Bud was staring at the floor; his hands, hanging at his sides, were fists. In half an hour, he has grown old, Laura thought, and raising her head, met Mackenzie’s sad brown gaze. He was sorry for them. He was a decent man. Somehow she trusted him.

“Who are these people?” she asked. “May we know?”

“Why, of course. They already know about you from the hospital records.”

Bud jumped. “The hospital doesn’t exist, you said.”

“When it was sold, the records were transferred to Wilson General. The family is named Crawfield. They’re the department store people. Arthur and Margaret Crawfield. They used to live here, but they sold this branch years back and kept the main store across from the state capitol. You’ve probably been in it.”

Bud’s eyebrows drew together, making a long, straight bloodred line across the bridge of his nose.

“Crawfield? You don’t mean to tell me that they—they’re not—”

Mackenzie gave him a long, calm look. “Not what? Jewish? Yes, they are.”

“Well. Well. You not only bring an unbelievable story, that’s bad enough, but you add insult to injury. Jews. It’s disgraceful.”

Bud was almost unable to enunciate. He fell back onto a chair. He will have a stroke, thought Laura, but I can’t afford to come apart. And it seemed to her that in spite of everything, she would cope with this catastrophe. Somehow. And somehow, Tom must be shielded.

“You said, Mr. Mackenzie, that this—other boy—this Peter, was ill?”

Again she met a sorrowful brown gaze. “Yes, almost from birth. Or I should say, right from birth. He had cystic fibrosis.”

Her heart was hammering again, racing, spinning in her chest. Cystic fibrosis. And that photo had—yes it
had—looked like Timmy. Yet she managed to form words.

“And what became of him? I mean, how is he now?”

“He’s dead, Mrs. Rice. He died three months ago.”

9

“I
don’t know how you manage,” said Margaret Crawfield, “tearing back and forth across the state for the campaign and now for our affair on top of it. You must be exhausted.”

“I like the activity,” Mackenzie told her, smiling.

There was in Margaret a kind of peasant strength that pleased him. It was odd to apply the term “peasant” to a woman who was so fashionable, from the cut of her swinging thick black hair to the scarlet sandals on her feet, but she was sturdily constructed and had a look of endurance that was not urban. He always felt whenever he was in the Crawfields’ house that he envied Arthur, and how good a thing it would be to marry. And yet he never had.

“So you were there yesterday,” Arthur said a trifle impatiently. “And?”

“And as I told you over the telephone, I believe they may be the right people.”

Margaret took that up quickly. “Why, Ralph? Circumstantial evidence? Because theirs was the only other male infant on the maternity floor?”

“That figures mightily, of course. But there’s more.
When I showed Peter’s photo to Mrs. Rice, she was shocked. It was quite clear. And she told her husband that he looked like Timmy. They have two sons, Tom and Timmy, you remember.”

“Tom being the elder,” Arthur said. “You saw his picture, you said. And?” he asked again.

“A rather handsome young man, I thought.” Then, seeing how the two leaned forward on their chairs and how they tensed, Have I said too much? he asked himself. And he retreated quickly, “Of course, she may have imagined Peter’s resemblance to her boy. Only the blood tests will tell anything certain, as you well know.”

“But you said Mr. Rice objected, didn’t you?”

“That doesn’t matter. We can obtain an order if we must, although I rather think that won’t be necessary. Mrs. Rice was quite willing.”

“She sounds more reasonable,” Margaret said.

“She is.” And he recalled the moment when, in her struggle for control, she had put her hands over her face and then looked up at him—so hurt, like some frightened woods creature discovered in the moment before the crash of the gun.

Margaret pursued the subject. “What does she look like?”

He knew that the question stemmed from more than a woman’s natural curiosity about another woman; it stemmed from Margaret’s certainty that these were the people who had her child.

“Blond. Simply dressed,” he said. “Refined. But please, Margaret, don’t get your hopes up too high and too soon.”

“What about him?” Arthur asked. “I have the impression you didn’t like him.”

Nothing escaped Arthur. He had the pale, indoor skin, and the sedentary body of the legendary scholar; his expression was acute. You had to be careful of your words, of every nuance and tone.

Have I already said too much? Ralph asked himself again. There would be no sense in telling the truth about Rice, that he was hot tempered, stubborn, anti-Semitic, and had made me angry. Suppose the Rices were, after all, not the ones who had the Crawfields’ boy?

Yet Ralph was almost certain that they were.

“I neither liked nor disliked him,” he replied. “It was too short an interview to learn much about anybody.”

“Everything moves so slowly,” Margaret complained. “All these months since Peter died, the investigation and the conferences, everything moving like an iceberg, inch by inch.”

She made a sweeping gesture, upsetting the glass of ginger ale, which splintered on the porch floor. Exasperated with herself, she apologized. “Sorry. I’m not a very patient person.”

Arthur contradicted her. “On the contrary, you are extremely patient. This situation is enough to make a saint frantic.” And he stooped to pick up the fragments with a paper napkin.

Arthur talked like a professor. There was no affectation in this; it was merely his way of expressing himself. Yes, he should have been a professor, Ralph thought with fondness. And a curious, amusing contrast came to mind: Arthur Crawfield and Rice. Was it “Bud” she had called him? Then came another contrast: Bud and his wife. “Laura”—the sound of it was serene.

Arthur made a neat little bag out of the napkin and
set it on the glass-topped end table with a caution. “Be careful. I’ll get rid of it in a minute. What I have to ask you, Ralph, is, what comes next?”

“Next. I plan to call Mrs. Rice tomorrow and try to make an appointment at the hospital for blood tests. That failing, I’ll need to—” He stopped, for the daughter of the house was just then coming across the twilit lawn.