Fertile Ground (31 page)

“I don’t have any clinic files here,” she said, but they’d already starting taking apart her living room.

At first, as they looked under the sofa and its cushions, she felt oddly unmoved, overwhelmed with a sense of unreality, as though what she was observing was happening to someone else. Minutes later they started removing the books from her wall unit, and she felt violated. How dare you! she wanted to say, but she was helpless to stop them from taking down the porcelain teacups she’d started collecting, or riffling through the books and tossing them carelessly on the floor.

They moved into her bedroom and she moved with them, even though one of the men in the suits asked her politely to remain in the living room. No one stopped her. They emptied her closets and shoe boxes and looked through her purses. They fingered her panties and bras and nightgowns. They opened packages of pantyhose and removed her bedding. They searched through her desk drawers and thumbed through a brand-new box of stationery. They took the “Notes” printout and her computer and three boxes of diskettes and the journal in which she wrote almost every night.

“That has nothing to do with the clinic,” she said calmly. “That’s private.” There was no response. It was as if she didn’t exist in her own apartment.

In the bathroom, from the cabinet under the sink, they took out boxes of tissues and tampons and rolls of toilet paper and spilled the contents of the Estee Lauder gift with-purchase makeup pouch that she’d bought at Bloomingdale last month. She wondered who would return everything to its proper place.

From the bathroom they went to the small, narrow kitchen and wreaked their havoc there, emptying her cabinets of pots and pans and searching behind her dishes and glassware. She swore to herself that if they broke anything, she’d sue.

The phone rang. She picked up the wall extension and said hello.

“The police just left my place,” Sam said. He sounded depressed. “They took everything except my underwear. What about you?”

“They’re here now. I can’t talk, Sam.” She hung up because she was tense having strangers trash her apartment, and because she hadn’t quite figured out what to say to Sam, who might have been lying to her all along.

They were removing everything from her pantry and still hadn’t said a word. She was reminded of the silent ritual her father performed every year on the night before Passover eve.

Lisa would hide ten pieces of bread all over the house. Then her father, holding a lit candle in one hand and a long feather in the other, would recite a blessing on the removal of leaven and, walking from room to room, would search everywhere for it—under furniture, on top of the living room mantel, on the kitchen counter. No one would utter a word until he had found every piece of bread and swept each one carefully with the feather into a soft white cloth that Lisa held open for him and which he would burn in the morning in their back yard.

Her father, well aware that her mother had been cleaning the house for weeks, never expected to find any leavened products on the day before Passover. That was the purpose of the ten pieces of bread, he’d explained to Lisa—to ensure that the blessing wasn’t in vain. But one year he did find leaven—some Cheerios had rolled under the drapes. Lisa could still remember the prickly sensation she’d felt at his discovery. “I don’t know how that could have gotten there,” her mother had said, flustered.

Lisa had the same prickly feeling now as one of the uniformed officers pulled out a two-inch-thick stack of

money and placed it on the kitchen counter and called over the other men.

She moved farther into the kitchen, but no one noticed. They were all staring at the bills, which she could see were fifties. At least the top one was.

“I don’t know how that got there,” she said.

Three black-and-white police cars were parked in the clinic lot when Lisa arrived at eight-thirty. Entering the lobby, she passed four uniformed officers. Each one was carrying a box filled with multicolored files. She saw more uniformed police and other men in suits walking up and down the halls, robots on parade.

Sam was standing in the waiting room next to Selena, who was looking through the window into Reception. She was grabbing her arms, and her lips were grimly pursed as she watched her office being dismantled.

Lisa approached her and put an arm around her.

“I don’t know what the hell they think they’re going to find,” Sam said. “I phoned Ted—he said they took everything, including his computer and diskettes. Yours, too?”

Lisa nodded. She found it difficult to look him in the eye. “Did you call Mr. Fisk?” she asked Selena. “He’s on his way. We had only a few patients scheduled for this morning, gracias a Dios. I called and canceled.”

“Did they go to my office?”

“I tried to stop them. “At least wait until Dr. Brockman gets here,” I said. They just waved that damn paper in my face and told me to step out of the way. I called the people where you’re staying, but you’d left. The police took stuff from Dr. Cantrell’s office, too. And from the lab.”

Poor Charlie. Lisa could imagine his angry reaction to the full-scale invasion of his kingdom.

“I don’t know why they didn’t just ask to see some of the records,” Sam said.

“I can’t watch anymore,” Selena said. She turned abruptly and left the waiting room.

Lisa wondered what Selena would do now, what the others would do.

“You told me this would happen, but I didn’t really believe it.” Sam took a sip of water from the paper cup he was holding. “Talk about denial. Did you look through the files last night?”

“No, I decided you were right. It’s a waste of time.” She kept her eyes on the window and hoped he couldn’t see her face.

“Maybe not. I was wrong to discourage you. Lisa. Maybe there is proof in those files that there was no embryo switching. Or maybe there’s proof that there was-more denial on my part, I guess. I can come over and help you look. Hell, it’s not like I have anything better to do.” He grunted and took another sip.

“Thanks, but I’m not up to it.” Her head had been pounding ever since the officer had removed the money from her pantry.

” “Not tonight, I have a headache,” huh?” He smiled wryly. “I phoned you last night after the game—my kids won, by the way. Elana said you were sleeping.”

“I was exhausted.” And she hadn’t wanted to talk to him. She’d lain in bed for hours, staring at the ceiling, her mind in turmoil.

“Probably a delayed reaction from Sunday night.”

“Probably.” She watched him carefully and said, “The police found a large sum of cash in my pantry.” She saw surprise in the lift of his brows.

“How much?”

“Twenty thousand.” The officer had counted the bills twice and had made her count them and sign for the money before he’d placed it in an envelope, which he’d sealed and signed.

“Twenty thousand?” Sam’s eyes widened. “Where the hell did that come from?”

“Obviously it’s the cash stolen from the clinic safe.” That would be easy to verify—the police could check the serial numbers against the numbers on the photocopies of the cash payments patients had made.

“Who put it there? And why would someone do that to you?”

“That’s obvious, too, isn’t it?” she said wearily. “Whoever killed Matthew and set him up wanted to implicate me, too.” She wondered what Edmond would think, but that wasn’t her main concern. “I’m going to my office, to take a last look around.”

“You’ll only depress yourself. Lisa.”

“I’m already depressed.”

He touched her arm. “What’s going on. Lisa? Aside from the money, I mean. You’re keeping something from me, aren’t you?”

“No. What makes you think that?”

He stared at her for a moment. “Nothing.”

“It’s been a horrible morning. Don’t pay attention to my mood.”

Her office looked pathetically barren now that all the files had been removed. Her drawers were empty. So was her file cabinet. Aside from the medical textbooks and furniture, the only things remaining were the photos of “her” babies and the two charts hanging on the wall-failed sentinels.

She called home for messages. Barone had called. She phoned him at the station and caught him as he was about to leave.

“I didn’t have a chance to return your call yesterday,” he told her. “I’m glad you weren’t hurt Sunday night.”

Again she felt hands around her neck, squeezing. She shook her head to clear the image and told him what had happened. “He was wearing a mask and a surgical gown, so I couldn’t see his face.”

“That’s what Officer Reynaldo said. He phoned this morning. He said this same person attacked Dr. Davidson when he arrived. I’m confused. Didn’t Dr. Davidson go with you to the clinic?”

Was he checking up on Sam’s story? “No. He wasn’t home, so I left a message on his machine, telling him where I was going. He came later to make sure I was all right. Something else has happened,” she said, anxious to change the subject from Sam and to forestall a rebuke

from Barone, who’d warned her not to go out alone. “The police raided my apartment.” She told him about the money they’d found in her pantry. “I never saw it before. I hope you believe me.”

“How do you think it got there?”

“Obviously someone broke into my apartment. You saw the scratches around the outer lock.”

“Who’s been there since Dr. Gordon’s disappearance?”

She hesitated. “No one.” Sam had been over on Thursday night. Sam had helped himself to snacks from the pantry. Sam might have erased his name on the lab form and written in Matthew’s. The thought had kept her up most of the night.

“I thought you said Dr. Davidson was with you on Saturday.”

“Yes, he was.” She was grateful Barone couldn’t see her guilty tint. “But he didn’t have money with him, or anything else. We’re not allowed to carry anything when we’re out of our homes on the Sabbath. We can’t even touch money, since it has no relevance to the Sabbath.” She gripped the edge of her desk. “Detective, I just remembered: when I returned from synagogue, the key wasn’t exactly where I’d left it, on top of the door molding. I had to look for it.”

“So you think someone used your key and planted the money while you were at the synagogue?”

“It’s possible.” But was it likely? “Did you find out anything about Chelsea?” “I spent yesterday checking with all the fertility clinics in the area—as far north as Santa Barbara and south to Orange County. No one at any of those clinics ever met her.”

Lisa frowned, puzzled. “Maybe she used another name.”

“I went to each of the clinics and showed her picture. No one recognized her. Which explains why no one phoned in after they saw her face in the papers and on the television news.”

Barone was right. “So why did she lie to Matthew?”

“That’s a good question. There’s something else I thought you should know. I spoke to each of the clinic directors. None of them knows anything about new research on freezing eggs.”

She was disappointed and confused. “So she wasn’t killed because she could identify the person who stole Matthew’s research?”

“I’m not discounting Dr. Davidson’s theory. One of those directors could be lying. In my line of work, I’ve learned that people lie more often than not. Out of fear of becoming involved, out of loyalty. And, of course, out of guilt.”

Lisa restored her living room first, crying softly now and then as thoughts of Matthew overpowered Elton John, who was keeping her company as she dusted the books and teacups before returning them to their shelves. She tackled the kitchen next. She’d placed the last box back into the pantry and was about to start in her bedroom, then decided she’d finish later, or tomorrow. No difference, really, since she wasn’t staying at home. And the files and the information she’d gleaned from them were like a magnet. She was anxious to know what was going on.

It was eleven o’clock. After eating an English muffin smothered with blackberry jam and drinking two cups of coffee, she drove to the Presslers, where she let herself in with the key Elana had given her. She sat at the desk and scanned the ten yellow sheets she’d filled with data.

She’d identified thirty-one problem files. Excluding four hang-ups and three disconnected numbers, she’d talked with twenty-four women who insisted they hadn’t received donor eggs, even though the computer data indicated otherwise. She agreed with Barone that many people lied—in this case, probably out of fear—but she couldn’t believe that all these women had lied to her.

She forced herself not to think of why someone would

have stealthily substituted donor eggs for a patient’s own eggs, not to think of who that person or persons could be, and told herself to look at the data and focus on what she did know.

Like the fact that all these women were under forty.

And that they’d all completed at least two IVF cycles.

Which meant what?

She studied the data again, focusing only on the “donor problem” patients, and noticed that of the thirty-one women, twelve had sustained a clinical pregnancy.

She did the math on a sheet of paper—that was almost thirty-nine percent.

She counted the women under thirty-five who’d sustained pregnancies. There were nine. Four were pregnant. Forty-four percent. Of the twenty-two women over thirty five, eight were pregnant. Thirty-six percent.

She was familiar with the statistics published by a rival clinic: a thirty-two percent chance for women under forty to become pregnant; a forty percent chance for women under thirty-five. Matthew had often scoffed and labeled the statistics advertising hype. Now his own clinic was surpassing those numbers.

Lisa realized she was dealing with a specific segment of a random sampling of one hundred and two files. She returned to the yellow pad. This time she counted all patients over forty and noted the number of pregnancies:

nineteen patients; four pregnancies. An impressive twenty-one percent for that age group. In the thirty-five to-forty age group, there was a total of forty-six patients and seventeen pregnancies: thirty-seven percent. There were thirty-seven patients under the age of thirty-five. Seventeen were pregnant: almost forty-six percent.