Cold truth

Chapter 27

"We've got three hours to kill before we meet Roy Bowen," Mason said, "and we're not spending it on this bench. Come on."

Abby said, "I'm not in the mood for sightseeing."

"And I'm not coming to your pity party," Mason told her. Abby's face fell, Mason cupping her chin in his hand. "I need your help," he told her. "I need you in the game, not on the bench feeling sorry for yourself."

Abby held his wrist, nodding her head. "Okay. What's next."

"Vital records," he said. "Another bureaucratic adventure. Emily's birth certificate will say where she was born. I want a copy. Might as well get one for Jordan while we're there."

An hour later, they were sitting in a Starbucks in downtown St. Louis, the birth certificates, medical records, and Baby Book entries spread in front of them, alongside a copy of the St. Louis Post Dispatch. Mason didn't like the taste of coffee, but he did like the smell. The double latte Abby ordered revived her.

"Emily's birth certificate confirms she was born at Caulfield and that Gina and Robert Davenport were her parents," Abby said.

"Gina just didn't sign the Baby Book, that's all," Mason said. "We can't check her medical records without an authorization or a subpoena, and the hospital would fight a subpoena."

"Why?" Abby asked. "She's dead. What do they care?"

"They don't, except they would want a judge to order them to turn over the records so that Robert Davenport doesn't sue them for invasion of privacy. If Davenport objected, the court wouldn't order the hospital to turn over the records unless I could establish some relevance to Jordan's case, which I can't do at the moment. That song and dance will take at least a month."

Abby leafed through Jordan's medical records again, smoothing the pages, stopping at the court order granting custody to the Hacketts. "What's this mean?" she said, pointing to the language in the order reciting that the natural parents had waived their parental rights.

"It means that the natural parents consented to the adoption. Otherwise, one of the parents could have shown up later and asked to have their baby back. I know what you're thinking," he said. "We could find the father, talk to him, but those records are sealed too."

Abby grinned for the first time that morning. "Don't be so certain you know what I'm thinking, mister. We don't need the court records. I know the father."

"Assuming Jordan is your daughter, you know where he is after twenty-one years?" Mason asked, basking in her smile.

Abby showed him the front page of the newspaper's sports section, pointing to the picture of a columnist whose byline and picture appeared beneath a column titled, "Kramer's World." Mason studied the photograph of Tony Kramer, resisting an unexpected twinge of jealousy. Kramer was bald on top, his full cheeks made heavier by a thick beard. Mason felt better.

"You followed his career after all these years?" Mason asked.

"Not really," she answered. "I knew he went to the University of Missouri for journalism. I heard from some friends that he ended up in St. Louis with the Post Dispatch." Abby turned the paper toward her. "In high school, his hair was on his head, not his face. He was cute and I was easy. Turned out to be a bad combination. Let's call him."

"Bad idea. Most guys don't like starting the week with a phone call from the girl they knocked up in high school. You won't get anything out of him."

"What do you suggest?"

"A personal visit. Really shake him up."

Roy Bowen was having a bowl of fresh fruit and raw vegetables for lunch. "I'm on a fruit-and-vegetable diet," he explained, patting his belly. "My wife tells me I've got done-fell syndrome. She says my stomach done fell and I can't see my feet anymore. My wife, she's a panic," he said with no trace of humor.

Bowen's desk job was deputy chief of police. His office was on the top floor of police headquarters, two doors down from the chief. The walls were lined with commendations and photographs with dignitaries. His desk was thick with paper. The Arch dominated the landscape beyond the windows behind his desk, reducing the Mississippi River to an afterthought.

"Harry Ryman said you used to work narcotics," Mason said.

"That was back when I thought it was fun to get shot at," Bowen said. "My wife didn't mind that so much, or the pierced ears. She drew the line at tattoos, so I went into management," he said with the forced laugh of a joke told too often.

"What can you tell us about Robert Davenport and Terry Nix?"

Bowen picked up a file from his desk. "I had somebody dig this out after I talked to Harry," Bowen said. "One of the perks of this job is that you can actually make somebody do something if it's about a two-bit bust twenty years ago. Davenport and Nix were small-time dealers. One of the cops screwed up the warrant and the case got thrown out. End of story," he said.

"You run into either one of them again?"

"Nope," Bowen answered. "We kept tabs on them for a little while. The bust cost Nix his job and he left town. I don't know what happened to Davenport."

"Where did Nix work?" Mason asked.

"That was the part that made me remember him when Harry called," Bowen said. "Nix was a substance-abuse counselor working at Caulfield Medical Center. The guy was supposed to be treating people and he was selling them dope. Can you believe it?"

"Yeah," Mason said. "I can. If you have a picture of Nix from when he was arrested, I could use a copy."

"No problem. Making copies is one of my secretary's specialties. There's one other thing you might be interested in based on what Harry told me about your case,"

Bowen said.

"What's that?"

"We heard rumors at the time that Nix had another sideline brokering illegal adoptions. Some of the girls he counseled were pregnant, and he offered them cash or drugs if they sold their babies. Nix left town before we could prove anything. You snag this guy or need some help, let me know," Bowen said, writing his home phone number on a business card and handing it to Mason.

"Count on it," Mason said.

A security guard stopped Mason and Abby in the lobby of the Post Dispatch building, making them sign in, produce identification, and wait while he called Tony Kramer.

"So much for shaking him up. I understand the need for security, but do we look like terrorists?" Abby asked, resuming the jittery pacing she'd done at the hospital.

"When your old boyfriend finds out you're waiting in the lobby, he might prefer someone with a bomb. He's probably got a wife, three kids, and a dog, none of whom know they have a relative about to climb out of the woodpile. And when he sees you bouncing off the walls, he'll figure you're here to ask for child support."

"I can't help it," she said, tapping her fingers on crossed arms. "First my uncle, then the hospital, now Tony. That's a lot of baggage to unpack."

"Abby? Abby Lieberman?" Tony Kramer said from behind them. Abby and Mason turned around. "I took the stairs," Kramer said, pointing to the door at his back.

Abby brushed her hair back, smoothed her blouse, and smiled weakly. "Hello, Tony. Long time."

Kramer exhaled, hiking his trousers around his spreading middle, tugging at his beard. "Just a couple of lifetimes," he said, waiting for Abby to fill the void, neither of them knowing what to say.

Mason broke the awkward silence. "I'm Lou Mason, a friend of Abby's. Is there someplace here where we can talk privately."

"Are you kidding?" Kramer asked. "At a newspaper? What's this about, Abby?"

"It's not what you think, Tony. It's about…"

Tony raised his hand. "Let's go for a walk."

The newspaper's offices were downtown on Tucker Boulevard. Tony led them down Tucker, turning left on Cole. Mason gave Abby and Tony room, letting Abby break the ice as he trailed behind them, Tony looking over his shoulder at Mason as she spoke, Mason waving back at him, trying to picture them as teenagers, shutting the image down when it heated up.

They stopped in Carr Square Park. Tony was breathing heavily after the short walk, glancing around for witnesses as Mason caught up with them. "I want nothing to do with this, Mason," he said so quietly the birds couldn't hear. "You understand that. I've got a very nice life here. Abby and I made a mistake. We were kids and kids make mistakes. Giving that baby up for adoption was best for everyone."

"I do understand that, Tony. I don't want to bring either you or Abby into this case, but my client is on trial for her life. That trumps everything."

"All I know is that a guy showed up at my dorm. I was a freshman in college for Christ's sake," Tony said. "He told me if I signed the waiver, I wouldn't have to pay child support. So I signed it."

Mason showed him the picture of Terry Nix. "Was this the guy?"

"You want me to remember a guy I saw one time over twenty years ago?" Tony asked. "I don't remember what I looked like twenty years ago. I'm sorry," he said to Abby. "That's the best I can do. I'm on deadline. I've got to get back to the paper."

Mason and Abby stopped at her uncle's house before leaving town to show him Terry Nix's picture. He wouldn't let them in, shaking his head at the photograph before slamming the door closed. Mason dropped Abby off shortly after eight o'clock that night, understanding when she didn't invite him in. She shouldered her bag, her lips tight, her face drained from a short trip that had taken her too far into her past.

Tuffy jumped Mason when he got home, forgiving him for leaving her to be fed by a neighbor while he was gone. Mason had brought Jordan's file home from the office. He spread it out on his kitchen table, searching it for missing pieces while he drank a beer for dinner.

Mason had read every word on every page too many times to count. He didn't expect the words to change, but he knew that their importance could as he learned more about his case. The trick was to figure out what had changed. He finished his beer and started another, picking up Gina Davenport's autopsy report.

He forced himself to pay attention to each of the pathologist's findings, including the weight and color of each internal organ, the splintering of Gina's skull, and the pulverizing impact on her brain when she hit the pavement. He read the description of Gina's reproductive system twice, the second time out loud, to make certain he understood what he was reading.

Mason called his Aunt Claire. "Female anatomy is not my strong point," he told her.

"I'm so sorry," Claire said. "I thought by now you were more experienced."

"I'm good with the surface structures," he assured her. "Help me out with the internal stuff."

"You are such a sophisticated man," his aunt said. "How can I help?"

"If a woman's fallopian tubes are blocked, she can't get pregnant, right?"

"Good guess," Claire said. "Next question."

"A congenital abnormality is one from birth. That means that a woman who was born with her fallopian tubes blocked could never get pregnant. Still right?"

Claire sharpened her tone. "Get to the point."

"I just read Gina Davenport's autopsy report for the tenth time. She had a congenital abnormality that caused blockage of her fallopian tubes. She couldn't get pregnant, but the city of St. Louis issued a birth certificate for her daughter, Emily, showing Gina as the mother."

"Gina couldn't have given birth," Claire said.

"Exactly. Plus, Emily's birth certificate says that she was born at Caulfield Medical Center in St. Louis. That makes Gina the only mother in the history of the hospital that didn't sign the maternity ward Baby Book," Mason said, explaining what they had learned at the hospital.

"You said that the hospital has no record that Abby was ever a patient there," Claire repeated. "Didn't you?"

"That's what they say, even though Abby's signature is in the Baby Book."

"Why would Gina Davenport falsify the birth of a baby? Why not adopt?" Claire asked.

"Because no court was going to allow a couple to adopt a baby when the father was a drug addict," Mason explained. "Gina Davenport bought a baby and claimed it as her own because that's the only way she could get one. She and her husband probably left St. Louis at the same time so that no one would become suspicious."

Claire followed the implications of Mason's theory. "You're suggesting that Gina Davenport bought Abby's baby along with a phony birth certificate and that she managed to get rid of Abby's medical records in the process. You know what that means if you're right?"

"Yes," Mason said. "It means that Abby's daughter is dead."