Cast Of Shadows

– 22 -

It took about ninety seconds for a nurse to inform Dr. Burton that Dr. Moore’s black Volvo had pulled into its spot, and another minute or so for Joan to say good-bye to her contractor, who had called with a few questions regarding the tiling she’d selected for her new bathroom. Following that, it was a ten-second walk from her office to his.

“Can I talk to you, Davis?”

Davis looped his collared jacket over the top of the wooden coat stand, caught the whole thing as it toppled, and then wrestled coat and rack until they were in balance. Joan Burton looked fantastic. Under her smock, the silk shirt she wore billowed in the right places. Her hair was pulled back today, and the elastic at the back of her neck strained to contain it. He imagined the band snapping and waves of dark hair crashing around her face, hiding and revealing it like a dance of veils. At first, he didn’t even notice she was upset.

“Sure, Joan. What’s up?”

“You know Justin Finn?”

Davis was certain his face didn’t betray panic, but he quickly slid into his chair, where his knees trembled unseen. “Sure. Something wrong?”

“Yeah, I’d say so.” Joan shut the door and perched on the edge of the chair nearest his desk. In one hand, she held a large gray binder with a white sticker running down its spine. The label said XLT-4197, which was the office code for Justin Finn. Of the dozens of clones who had been conceived in his clinic, it was the only code number Davis had memorized. “Is he okay?”

“The kid’s fine. It’s our control that’s gone to hell.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I just did his five-year checkup,” Joan said. “There’s been a colossal screwup, and when I report it, you’re gonna take the heat. We all will, actually, the whole clinic, but mostly you.”

Christ. The five-year. Davis knew this was coming; Martha Finn had even mentioned the appointment when he saw her at Starbucks. Somehow, this morning, he hadn’t been ready for it. “Tell me,” he said. He hoped something would occur to him. Sometimes solutions make themselves. Not often in Davis’s case, unfortunately. He was a plotter. A plan-aheader.

Voice lowered, Joan said, “This kid isn’t who we claimed he is. His DNA doesn’t match the donor. Hell, he doesn’t match any donor on file. I don’t have the slightest idea where he came from.”

Davis said nothing. She’ll keep talking, he thought. Joan hates silence. Since the day she had joined the staff at the clinic, Davis had often counted on her to answer her own questions when others were slow to respond.

“This is a nightmare. How do you think it could have happened?” she asked. “I have a theory, and the disciplinary committee might let us off with a slap and a fine, but who knows what the parents might do? If they decide to sue… Do you remember that couple in Virginia last year? Jesus Christ. Anyway, I was looking back through the files, and around the time the Finns were being prepped for implantation, we fired this young admin after a long list of screwups.” She turned pages on a legal pad. “Tardiness, bad reviews, poor attitude, complaints from the nurses, complaints from patients. About six months later he was brought up on drug charges in McHenry County, dealing designer drugs to teenagers or some shit. I don’t remember him that well, but I recall Pete having to testify at his trial. Do you remember that?”

“I remember, yeah.” Davis did remember the kid. That had seemed like a big deal at the time. There were lots of nervous meetings between the partners. New Tech’s reputation was on the line. Their license had been threatened. But Joan was right. That was nothing compared to this.

“Anyway, I can’t prove he had anything to do with it – not yet – but if we dig around a little bit, we might find he had access to the samples, and that might be enough to build a case against the guy. I have a feeling.”

Davis stared at her, thinking, trying to forge a blank look that would hold the silence but also provide emphasis no matter what he said next. Joan was offering an answer of sorts. She had tried to solve the mystery with a story that turned out to be more plausible than the truth, and now that he’d been caught, Davis felt stupid and lazy for not leaving a trail of lies to a likelier culprit than himself. Now he was tempted by the opportunity to put the blame on a punk kid who was already in prison. The repercussions for a doctor found guilty of illegal cloning could be devastating: loss of license, possible jail time, shame. To a convicted drug dealer, however, the consequences of the sort of negligence Joan was suggesting would be, well, negligible.

There would be an investigation, though. Perhaps a trial. Testimony. Controversy. This story made sense to Joan, and others might believe it, as well. Still, the last thing Davis needed was scrutiny, and this had the low rumbling of a rolling snowball gathering size.

“Joan,” Davis said, his hand on the back of his neck.

“What?”

“It wasn’t any admin with access to the samples.”

Joan’s face twitched as her fragile denial shattered like blown glass and fell away. “Oh, God, Davis. Do not tell me. Do not tell me you’ve known about this.”

Davis nodded.

“Goddammit!” she screamed. The legal pad bounced off his desk and landed sprawled on the floor. “Do you want us all to lose our goddamned licenses?”

“Let me explain.”

“Can you? Really? Can you explain how a fuckup like this happens and you don’t tell anybody? How long have you known?”

“I’ve always known, Joan.”

She glared.

“There wasn’t any fuckup. Justin was born of the same DNA I had scheduled for the procedure.”

Joan’s voice dropped to a croaking whisper, the result of nausea, he supposed, acid reflux. “What are you saying? This is some sort of experiment? If you’ve been conducting live trials on your own, there’s going to be a shit storm, and the disciplinary committee is just the start of it.”

Davis hoped Joan would be able to read his lack of expression.

“Well, who’s the donor, then?” Joan asked.

“I don’t know. I cloned him to find out.”

Davis explained it more like a lawyer than a doctor, beginning with Joan’s own assault and her frustration with the law. He told her that on his daughter’s seventeenth birthday, AK had taken him aside and apologized for years thirteen through fifteen, inclusive. They had laughed over that and sat on the cedar steps of the deck behind their house, leaning on each other and staring out into the yard. He told Joan about the providence in a vial the cops had delivered by accident, and about the Finns and their healthy baby boy. About the paperwork he faked and the sample from the donor of record, Eric Lundquist, he destroyed.

“This is insane, Davis,” Joan said quietly. “Insane. What did you think you were going to do with this child?”

“I’m not going to do a thing with him, Joan. He’s going to enjoy his life and I’m going to wait for him to grow up.”

“And then?”

“And then I’ll be able to look into the face of AK’s killer.”

“He won’t be her killer,” Joan said.

“No, no, he won’t. But I’ll know what he looks like.”

“Is that important?”

“It was,” he said. “Yeah, it still is.”

“You’ll be arrested, if they find out what you did.”

“Maybe.”

“ I’ll be arrested, unless I go to the committee with this right now.”

Davis made a quarter turn in his chair. From the beginning this was the part that had troubled him most. Of course, he had hoped Martha Finn would choose Dr. Burton as her son’s pediatrician because he wanted to keep the boy close. It was always likely he’d have to involve Joan down the line and he had never come to terms with it, even now, as he was about to bully her into keeping her mouth shut. “You never wondered what you’d be capable of if you ever again came face-to-face with the asshole who attacked you?”

“I can’t even believe we’re having this conversation.”

“Have you told anybody about this? Pete? Gregor? Anyone?” He meant the source of Justin’s DNA, and he was sure she hadn’t. “You can’t, Joan. You know you can’t. Forget about you and me for a second. Forget about the horrible thing you think I’ve done, about the breach of ethics and the lack of controls and all that bullshit. Think about Justin.”

“I am thinking about Justin,” she said. “I’m thinking about this poor little boy you just decided one day to carve out of a monster.”

That was a little melodramatic, Davis thought, although he might have put it the same way if the situation were reversed. “Fine. So you turn me in and Justin’s parents find out who their son really is? What will that do? To him? To the Finn family? Let’s say they prosecute me and the story makes the news – Mad doctor clones daughter’s killer! – and that guy, that monster, whoever he is, out there, that guy realizes there’s a living, growing, three-dimensional composite of himself that could, eventually, point the finger at him. You don’t think he’s going to do something about that? Christ, you might as well kill Justin yourself.”

That was unfair, Davis thought, but necessary. He watched the helplessness inside her build like steam in a kettle. Her face looked pressurized, her insides rusted shut like a forgotten metal box at the bottom of the ocean. Flush. She began to shake.

“We can protect him, Joan. The two of us. We can protect him with a secret.”

They sat together for a half hour or more, saying little, a contract between them drafted in the silence. When a nurse knocked on the door to alert Joan to an arrived patient, she nodded at her, nodded at Davis, and loped toward the exam room.