Echoes (17 page)

“It has. I just wish we'd brought the new clothes your friend organized for us.”

“He'll bring them. Checking in with only shopping bags looks too suspicious, and we didn't have time to round up suitcases.” At her puzzled expression, he explained. “We talked it over while you were changing.”

“So he'll be here tonight?”

“If he can get away. With the escalation, there doesn't seem to be time to waste.”

Callie shook her head. “Don't you ever sleep?”

“Adrenaline.” Mac smiled wryly. “You may be exhausted, but if you were to lie down on that bed right now, I doubt you'd be able to close your eyes.”

“I'll just hop in the shower, then,” Callie replied, hoping he wouldn't notice the blush that had begun to rise the moment he'd said the word “bed.” What was wrong with her? So the guy was sexy as hell. She had more important things to worry about.

***

When the bathroom door closed behind Callie, Mac drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to ease the tension in his muscles. What the hell was the matter with him? He'd lost control on the train, so intent on the woman in his arms he'd barely heard the conductor announcing their arrival at Times Square.

And that after he'd admitted to her things about himself—and his relationship with Nikki—he'd never admitted to another person. He'd barely recognized the thrill-seeking behavior that had drawn them together himself. He paced the room for a couple of minutes, flipped on the TV, then sat at the desk to make a list of the things he wanted Nash to get him.

The knock at the door came sooner than he expected, not even twenty minutes after their arrival. Callie was still in the bathroom, though the shower had cut off and he could hear the hair dryer buzzing. He took the sack of women's clothes Nash had with him and tapped on the bathroom door. When Callie peered out, shielding her towel-wrapped body as much as possible behind the door, he handed her the bag.

As well as clothes, Nash had brought a laptop-computer setup complete with printer, and two large thermoses full of coffee. While they waited for Callie to finish up, Nash poured mugs full of the steaming brew for all three of them and laid them on the table in the sitting room of the suite, and Mac set up the laptop on the desk.

When Callie emerged, she was wearing the same outfit she'd had on earlier, minus the vest, which reminded Mac to take off his own. Some cops he knew complained that the things were hideously uncomfortable, but he'd never noticed. Perhaps it was because of the Army training, where he'd become accustomed to wearing and carrying far bulkier, more awkward items.

Nash settled in the armchair next to the small coffee table, leaving Mac and Callie the couch.

“So tell me about the Steeles and the Lewises,” Mac said as soon as everyone was seated. “What kind of deal did they have going?”

“Do you remember what the press dubbed Ed Steele before he was arrested?”

“The gift rapist,” Callie said promptly.

Nash looked at her in surprise. “Do you remember why?”

“Because he told the women they should be happy that he'd selected them, that he was a gift from God.”

What a sick fuck.
Mac hadn't had a chance to read through all the papers himself, and he'd forgotten that aspect of the rapes.

“Ed Steele grew up believing himself to be special. His parents repeatedly told him he was, literally, a miracle child, a gift from God. Financial records show payments to three separate fertility clinics before his conception, including—at the end—Mark Lewis's Miami office.”

“Hell,” said Mac, a sick feeling settling in his gut, “I know where you're going with this.”

“Mark Lewis wouldn't have been the first fertility doctor to use his own sperm to inseminate a woman if her husband's wasn't doing the trick, nor would he have been the last. Probably the most famous was Cecil Jacobson, in the eighties. He was convicted of many crimes, but there was only one case where they found the genetic evidence he'd substituted his own sperm for a patient's husband's. In most of the cases, the women had signed up to receive sperm from anonymous donors. Since he claimed that one instance to have been a lab mistake right to the end, never admitting that he did it on purpose, we have no way of knowing the psychology behind the act.”

“You're telling me that Mark Lewis might be my biological father?” Callie's voice was strained, and lines bracketed her lips. Without thinking, Mac reached for her hand and warmed it between his own.

“It's a good possibility.” Nash kept his tone matter-of-fact, but Mac could see the anger seething below the smooth mask. He knew his own expression mirrored Nash's.

“John Lewis said his father was a name-dropper,” Callie offered. “If he wanted famous clients, he'd have to keep up a good success rate.”

“And Lewis would be reluctant to tell a famous client like Ephraim Steele that his sperm wasn't viable, which is likely what the other doctors the Steeles saw said. So when Polly got pregnant, they called Ed their miracle baby.”

“And Lewis their miracle doctor,” Mac remarked, slotting the various pieces into place.

“The Masters family hasn't spoken to the police about fertility treatments,” Nash continued, “but the incidence of fraternal twins is high in IVF, as it is when women take fertility drugs.”

“What does any of this matter, though? Mark Lewis is dead.” Callie shook her head. “So he was a criminal, and he conned a lot of people; his good reputation might have been enough for him to kill for, but surely not for anyone else to?”

“If you're all his biological heirs, you all have claims against his estate. Unlike ours, the French legal system specifies exactly how much of the estate has to be held for biological heirs. And when an estate is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, which Lewis's was by the time he died, that's a damn good reason for murder.”

“So John Lewis could be killing off his father's other children.” Mac watched Nash closely. “But you don't think that's all there is to it, do you?”

“No.”

“Finish it, then.”

“Thirty years ago, adoption services focused on ‘matching' a child to parents of the same religious, ethnic, and cultural background, and they liked to keep track of adoptees. So your parents, Callie, with their traveling and the fact that they came from different backgrounds, much like the Corys, would have been considered unstable and bad bets as far as legal adoption went.

“Your mother died of ovarian cancer?”

Callie nodded.

“There's a long history of ovarian cancer associated with fertility drugs. I suspect that the problem for your parents wasn't on your father's side. If your mother couldn't conceive, even after the drugs, even with IVF, and adoption was out of the question, Lewis may have offered a . . . slightly less legal alternative.”

“You think my parents . . .” Callie's voice trailed away, and Mac's heart broke for her. He'd heard in her voice that night on the beach how much she'd idolized her father.

“I think they bought you. Possibly, they believed they were going through a surrogate, that the egg and sperm were their own, but I doubt it. Not only because the idea of legal surrogacy didn't become popular until after your birth, but because had the transaction been legal, there would have been no need to dummy up a birth certificate that claimed your mother gave birth to you.”

“And by then, Lewis had moved to the island,” Mac agreed.
Stick to the topic, keep away from the personal aspects.
“He was operating outside the US legal system. He had the birth mother with him there. Your father must have taken the picture of you with your mother when they picked you up. You said your father was familiar with boats; chances are they came over from, say, Miami, collected you, and sailed home. Restrictions were a lot looser in those days. If they drove from New York to Florida, they'd never have to pass through an airport, through any kind of official channels. Using the private dock at the hotel and another private dock in Florida would have made them virtually invisible. Sure, their boat might have been searched for drugs, but that's about it.”

“But why not bring my birth certificate with them? Put an earlier date on it, not a later one?”

“Maybe you were premature,” Mac suggested. “They had everything planned out, organized the birth certificate and had it done up in advance so your parents could bring it with them to St. Martin in case anyone checked on their way back into the US, but you came early.”

“That would do it,” said Nash. “Lewis wouldn't want the birth mother to keep you—she might get attached to you.”

“Even if I accepted all this, and I am not saying I do, parts of what's happening still don't fit for me.” Callie pulled free of Mac's grip and walked over to the window overlooking Times Square. “You think John Lewis killed all these people to protect his inheritance. But would a man like him even know how to hire a killer? How could he find someone to stab Ed Steele in prison? And why try to blow up my house before I got to St. Martin, but then attempt a kidnapping once I was there, rather than just killing me outright?”

“I don't know,” Nash admitted. “We're a long way from having a perfect theory, and a longer way from proving it, certainly from proving it to the satisfaction of the court system either in the US or in France.”

“So even if you knew for sure John was behind this, you couldn't make him stop.” Callie still hadn't turned around, and Mac wished he could see her face, rather than those tight shoulders, that stiff back. She was taking the whole situation remarkably calmly, at least on the surface, but without a glimpse of her eyes, he couldn't tell how much was an act.

“Not yet. We've put his name out through channels to see what we can dig up, though. HSE has resources, Calliope. We will get John Lewis. You just have to give us a little time.”

Callie nodded but remained where she was. Nash shared a glance with Mac, then rose.

“I'm heading back downtown. I'll call you as soon as we hear anything. Try to get some sleep.”

After bolting the door behind Nash, Mac walked over to the window. Callie had not budged. After a minute, he slipped his arms around her, pulling her back against him. She stiffened even further, every muscle strung tight, then relaxed. In silence, he rested his chin on the crown of her head. Outside, lights flashed, giant videos played on electronic billboards, and tourists in T-shirts made merry in the warm summer night. Times Square was still alive, bustling with movement despite the late hour.

“When we were on the island,” Callie said at last, “and you suggested trying for a DNA match between me and the woman they thought might be Nicole, did John object?”

“Not much. He probably knew it wasn't Nikki, so he didn't worry about the results. I never mentioned wanting to send the results to Vince, or he might have put up more of a fuss.”

“Do police check international databases of DNA? Do such things even exist?”

“I'm sure every country has their own that other law-enforcement agencies could theoretically get access to if they were willing to go through the necessary hoops, but the fact is that not every local PD even has the necessary equipment to connect to CODIS, the Combined DNA Index System for the US. I never heard of anyone in our department, or even in the GBI—the Georgia Bureau of Investigation—trying to find a match through an international database. Why?”

“Because Mark Lewis bought the Paradis from Andre Charbonnet after helping him and his wife conceive. How many other European clients might he have had? I can't help wondering whether any of their children have turned up dead or missing recently.”

Mac reached for his cell phone with one hand, using the other to keep Callie anchored firmly to him, and dialed Nash. “Can you talk?” he asked when the other man answered.

“Yeah. I'm driving, though. What's up?”

“I have a project for your geek squad. We need an untraceable website with an e-mail drop box, dedicated to finding former clients of the Lewis clinic. And it has to be publicized as quickly and widely as possible, in papers worldwide. The kind of people who used Lewis's services don't surf the dark corners of the web, so we need to advertise in the
New York Times
, the
International Herald Tribune
, the
London Times
, the
Wall Street Journal
, places like that. If we can get enough evidence of Pop Lewis's misdeeds, maybe John will see the futility of trying to erase them.”

“Just one problem. We can't be sure any of the people involved is related to Lewis. His DNA we don't have.”

“Fuck. How could I have missed that?”

“We all did. Lexie was just pointing it out to me on the phone when you called. When I get downtown, I'll see what I can find out about Lewis's family, whether there are any brothers and sisters willing to submit samples for analysis. Exhumation's a possibility, if Lewis is buried in the States, though if the kid has half a brain—and he seems to—he'll have had dear old dad cremated.”

A couple of unconnected bits of data coalesced into an ugly whole, and Mac cursed again. “Don't bother. If there were relatives, John's eliminated them. He couldn't afford to have them hanging around, because they would have proved he wasn't Lewis's kid.”

“What?” Nash and Callie spoke as one.

“It's the only thing that makes sense. You never met Nikki, Nash, but I guarantee she and Callie are related. If they have the same father, and that father is Mark Lewis, then Callie and John should share DNA, too. But I'll bet anything you like they don't. It's the only reason he wouldn't have objected more strenuously to testing Callie. He knew no matter what happened, she couldn't be connected to him.”