Hush

20

“DO YOU KNOW her?” Alexis asked. She was studying Lake intensely and had seen the flicker of discomposure.

“No-of course not. I’m just trying to absorb everything.”

“So what are you going to do to help me?”

“What?” Lake asked distractedly. She could barely concentrate. In her mind she kept seeing the slip of paper in the bowl. Why did Keaton have Melanie Turnbull’s name? Had he stumbled onto something suspicious about her pregnancy? Maybe this was the reason he’d decided not to join the clinic. And maybe this was the reason he’d been murdered.

“You wanted the truth and I told you,” Alexis said fiercely. “Are-?”

“Let me ask you one more question,” Lake said, trying to find her footing again. “The day you spoke to Sherman-you didn’t talk to another doctor there, did you? Mark Keaton?”

“No,” Alexis said, annoyed, it seemed, at having been driven off topic. “I’ve never even heard of him. So are you going to be able to get into the lab or not?”

“I definitely want to help, but what would getting into the lab do? I’m not sure what I’d be able to discover.”

“You could see what the people there are up to,” Alexis said. “You might overhear something important.”

“I seriously doubt they’d say anything incriminating in front of me, even if I did manage to spend any time in there. But look, I do have access to the charts-I actually looked at yours before. Now that I know about the Turnbulls, I can see if there’s anything in their chart linking the two of you.”

“Like what?”

“Well, they must have made some kind of notation in Melanie’s file indicating who they got the embryos from. With both files in front of me, I may be able to spot it.”

Alexis eyed her skeptically. “Maybe,” she said. She glanced away, thinking.

“There’s something you should be aware of,” Lake said. “Your chart indicated that you had only two embryos left. You told me there was a good amount.”

Alexis shook her head back and forth angrily.

“Those bastards,” she said. “So if Brian ever relents, they’ll just say I had fewer than I thought-or that some deteriorated.”

Unexpectedly, tears welled in Alexis’s eyes. It was the first time Lake had seen her look truly vulnerable.

“I’m going to do my best to help,” Lake said. “I’m headed to the clinic later today and will try to see the files. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

As Alexis walked Lake to the door, she grasped her arm so hard it hurt.

“I have to get my baby back,” Alexis said. “There has to be a judge who will give her to me, if you can prove what Sherman did.”

When Lake hurried out of the building minutes later, she saw the doorman study her curiously and she realized how rattled she must look. Halfway down the block toward Fifth Avenue she sank onto a stoop. Could Alexis’s story really be true? she wondered. It seemed so farfetched. And yet it couldn’t be a coincidence that Keaton had Melanie’s name.

If doctors at the clinic really were stealing embryos, they weren’t doing so just to make their patients wild with joy. It was obviously to improve their success rates and enhance the clinic’s reputation as a place that was expert at making older women pregnant. And that guaranteed greater profits.

This had to be why Keaton had been killed. He’d figured out somehow that Melanie had received someone else’s embryos and had decided to contact her.

Or what if Melanie had begun to have suspicions and reached out to him?

Lake dug her BlackBerry from her purse and called 411. There was a listing for a Steve and Melanie Turnbull in Brooklyn. She started to punch in the number and then paused. It was one thing to cold-call Alexis because she’d already approached Archer’s producer with her concerns, but what could Lake possibly say to Melanie? Your baby may not belong to you and we need to chat?

No, she would have to find something in Melanie’s file linking her to Alexis. Lake rose from the step and glanced at her watch. In nine hours she was due to give her presentation. She dreaded the idea of being back at the clinic, especially in light of what she now knew. She also dreaded the idea of going into the file room again. But she had to. Since there’d be no chance of going through the records after the presentation, as the clinic was closing, she needed to arrive early.

Back home she rehearsed her presentation several more times. She knew the only way to get through it tonight was to focus totally on the slides and not on the people in the room. How utterly ironic it will be, she thought, when she reaches the slide about capitalizing on the clinic’s success with older women.

Melanie Turnbull flashed in her mind again. Lake started to worry about her plan to search the files once more; she had learned nothing from going through the patient charts so far. What, if anything, would she find tonight? She reconsidered talking directly to Melanie.

At around two she made a salad-just canned tuna and an onion so old it had thick green sprouts shooting from one end-and ate it listlessly. She felt stalled-marooned, really. She had told herself before that she needed to take action, to outsmart Levin as well as Jack, but she was just sitting here, betting on some paper files.

Without giving herself time to think it over anymore, she grabbed her BlackBerry from her purse and punched in Melanie’s number. A woman answered, sounding unhurried, pleased with the day, and in the background Lake could hear classical music playing and the babbling of a child. What a contrast, she thought, to Alexis Hunt’s sad apartment.

“Is this Melanie Turnbull?” Lake asked.

“Yes,” the woman said. “Who’s calling?”

“My name is Lake. I-I’m a friend of Dr. Mark Keaton’s. You two spoke, right?”

“What?” Melanie asked, sounding mildly irritated now. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Dr. Keaton-with the Advanced Fertility Center. He was murdered last week. I know that there were some-well, confidential things you needed to discuss with him. About your baby.”

The woman didn’t say anything for a moment, though Lake could hear the baby fussing in the background.

“Like I told you,” she finally said, all the softness gone from her voice. “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. Do not call here again. Do you understand?”

A hard click followed. Damn, Lake thought. She’d blown her chance. She should have talked to Archer first and plotted out a clear strategy. Now everything rested again on what she could find in the files.

Feeling drained, she wandered into the living room and sank onto the couch. The drapes were pulled and the room was dim. She swung her legs up on the seat and closed her eyes. The last thing she remembered was Smokey hopping up next to her and nuzzling her face.

When she woke, she felt sticky, and her mind was fuzzy. She glanced nervously at her watch, worried about how long she’d slept. It was just after four. She had the odd sensation that a noise had woken her, though Smokey was nowhere in sight. She listened carefully. Then she heard the sound of her BlackBerry, ringing softly from the kitchen, where she’d left it. She shot up awkwardly from the couch and hurried to answer it. Maybe it’s Archer, she thought. But the screen said “caller unknown.”

“Lake,” a woman said.

“Yes,” Lake said quietly. She didn’t recognize the voice.

“This is Melanie Turnbull.”

Lake nearly gasped in surprise.

“Hello,” she said.

“I’ve been thinking about your call,” Melanie said. “And actually I do think we should talk.”

“Thank you,” Lake said, still taken aback. “As I said before, Dr. Keaton-”

“In person, though. I don’t want to do this over the phone. And as soon as possible.”

“Of course,” Lake said. “You tell me when and where.”

“Tonight. I want to get this over with.”

Lake winced. She wouldn’t be done with the presentation until at least seven.

“I have a little hitch tonight. I have to work until around seven.”

“That’s not a problem. I don’t want to do it until I’ve put my daughter to bed, anyway. At around nine?”

“Okay. Where should we meet?”

“I can’t come all the way into Manhattan so it’s going to have to be in Dumbo.” She gave the name of a restaurant on Front Street and said she’d meet her at the bar.

“Uh, that’s fine,” Lake said, jotting down the information. Melanie told her that she was tall with shoulder-length blond hair. Then she brusquely ended the call.

Lake felt like sobbing with relief. The fact that Melanie had called her had to mean something.

There were some logistics to work out. As long as she left the clinic at around seven-thirty she would reach the restaurant in time. Taking the subway there would be a hassle, though, involving at least one transfer, and it would be tough to find a taxi at that hour, and then again when heading back home. The smartest approach, she realized, would be to take her car. That meant driving to the clinic. She needed to get moving.

By the time she parked her car in a garage on the East Side, Lake felt fried. Traffic had been awful and the trip had taken longer than expected. She was wearing a black skirt and a pink jacket, and they both already looked rumpled, as if she’d picked them from a pile of worn clothes on the floor. But as she hurried down the street she knew she had bigger concerns tonight.

There were a few patients bunched at the reception desk and she skirted around them, heading directly toward the back. No one was at the nurses’ station, indicating that the staff was involved with patients. As she turned one corner she saw the backs of two people in scrubs emerging from the OR-Sherman and Perkins, it looked like.

As soon as she entered the large conference room, her stomach began to roil. The last time she had been in this room was when Levin had announced Keaton’s murder and Hull and McCarty sat there like predators anxious to pick up a scent.

After unpacking her tote bag, she hooked up her laptop so that it fed into the flat-screen TV on the wall. Next she distributed pads and pencils around the table, a touch that a former boss had always insisted on. When she was done, she ran through the PowerPoint presentation.

“You’re early.”

Lake spun around and saw that the comment had come from Brie, who was standing in the doorway. Great, she thought. Brie had probably been sent to watch her like a hawk.

“I just wanted to run through my slides on the big screen,” Lake said, hearing the defensiveness in her voice and hating it.

“No problem,” Brie said, weirdly chipper for her. She was wearing a slim black dress and her lips were painted a nude color that made them almost recede into her face. “Everyone’s still finishing up with patients, so six-thirty is the earliest we can start.”

“Perfect,” Lake said, trying to smile. “Excuse me, you said everyone-who do you mean? Isn’t it just Dr. Levin and Dr. Sherman?”

“Dr. Levin asked a few others to join them. He thought it would be great to get their feedback.” Still that unnatural cheeriness. “Did you figure out how to hook up your laptop okay?”

“Um, yes, thanks,” Lake said.

“Well, just let me know if you need any help. I’m going to be in Dr. Hoss’s office going over a few things.”

As Brie left, closing the door behind her, Lake pressed the tips of her fingers to her lips, thinking. Why was Brie acting so helpful? Was it because Lake’s work was almost done and she’d soon be out of Brie’s hair-or was something more sinister afoot? Maybe the geniality was an offshoot of devilish glee because Brie knew Lake was in trouble. In any case, Lake couldn’t worry about that now. She had to focus on sneaking into the file room, which she had fifteen minutes to do. The good news was that it sounded like Brie would be ensconced in Hoss’s office.

Lake slipped out of the conference room and looked both ways up and down the hall. No one was in sight. Quickly she made her way to the file room. This time she didn’t bother with the stepladder ruse. It hadn’t worked before anyway and she needed to make dead certain no one saw her this time. She shut the door firmly behind her.

She went to the drawers and quickly found the Turnbull chart. It wasn’t as thick as the Hunt chart, and as she thumbed quickly through the pages she saw that Melanie had indeed undergone two IVF procedures, the second resulting in a pregnancy. Though it was difficult to completely decipher the doctors’ notations, it seemed that only six eggs had been harvested the first time and only one embryo had made it to day three, which Lake knew was the first point it was viable to transfer embryos to the uterus for implantation. The low number wasn’t surprising if Melanie was in her forties, as Alexis had suggested, but it also meant that the chances of a pregnancy were very slim. The next IVF, however, produced eight eggs and six viable embryos. What a nice surprise, Lake thought mockingly. If Alexis was right, this was when her embryos had been used because Sherman realized Melanie had little chance on her own.

What Lake didn’t see was any notation that seemed to link this chart to another. She would have to pull Alexis’s chart and compare them side by side. But first she flipped to the front of the file to check Melanie’s age. According to her birth date, she’d been forty-one at the time of her first in vitro. As Lake started to lay the file down on top of the open drawer, she noticed several letters, written in pencil, by Melanie’s name on her information form. BLb. It was similar to what she’d spotted in the Kastners’ file, but with different letters, she thought. Her eyes jerked toward Melanie’s husband’s name. BLg. Was this the code that linked one couple to another?

She glanced at her watch. To her shock, it was 6:28. She needed to look at Alexis’s file again, but she’d run out of time. Suddenly, from behind the door, she heard the muffled sounds of conversation. She froze. But the sound soon receded and she dropped the chart back into place. Lake eased the door open, peeking cautiously into the hall-no one was there-and quickly slipped from the room. Her heart was thumping so hard, she could hear the sound it made. As she hurried back to the conference room she could feel that the inside of her jacket was sticky with sweat.

Steve was the first to arrive for the presentation, only seconds after Lake had returned to the room. Lake felt a momentary rush of relief. Surely she could count on him to be supportive tonight.

“I’m so sorry about yesterday evening,” he said quietly. “There were some complications with a patient.”

“Did everything turn out all right?”

“Yes, thankfully. Hilary said you weren’t feeling well.”

“Oh-it was just a very bad headache. I’m better now.”

“Lake, I-”

Hoss had just entered the room-followed by Perkins-and Steve took a seat without finishing his comment. Sherman came in next, along with Brie. Finally Levin appeared. He greeted Lake politely but his eyes slid quickly off her face.

“Okay, let’s get started,” Levin said as people eased into their chairs.

Lake took a deep breath and pulled her laptop closer to her.

“These past few days have been extremely stressful,” she said, “but it’s important to press ahead with the marketing plans. You do wonderful work here, and more women need to know about it.”

Her voice, she knew, sounded strained. She cleared her throat.

“This is the first of several presentations I’ll be making,” she continued. “Today I’m going to share some of my initial ideas. I’ve also included some of the first concepts from the person I retained to do regular PR for the clinic as well as the terrific Web designer who will be redoing your site. They’ll develop more extensive ideas after I share the feedback I get from you.”

Everyone was looking at her but their faces were expressionless. Except for Dr. Hoss. Her lips were pursed, as if she’d found Lake’s introduction oddly confusing. Lake tried not to let that rattle her even more.

The actual presentation took her about thirty minutes. As the slides came up, they looked foreign to her, as if she’d never seen them before. But she read the words aloud and then expanded on each point the way she had rehearsed, often giving examples. When she discussed her community-outreach ideas, she described the halo effect those would create for the clinic. Finally she got to the part where she encouraged a more public role for Levin. She smiled as she described making him a media star, a la Dr. Oz, and forced herself to look at him. All he did was nod.

Finally it was over. Her hands were sticky and she slipped them into the pockets of her jacket to try to absorb the moisture.

“So that’s it-round one,” she concluded. “There’s much more to come, of course.”

Though people had maintained a decent amount of eye contact with her during the presentation, most of them now glanced down. All the pads, she noticed, were absolutely blank. From one of the two small windows that faced the alley between the clinic’s building and the next, she heard the distant, muted honk of a horn. She felt as if she were in some kind of alternate universe.

“Well,” Levin said finally. “You’ve given us lots to think about.”

Lake was stunned by his comment. Was that it? All he-or anyone else-was going to say? She grabbed a breath and forced herself to smile.

“Are there any questions?” she asked.

“Not at the moment,” Levin said. He gestured toward a stack of papers in front of her. “Is that the hard copy of your presentation?”

“Yes. I have a batch of copies.”

“Why don’t we take a look at those later and digest what you’ve done. Then we’ll get back to you with our thoughts.”

“Um, okay,” she said awkwardly. “I’ll pass them out.”

The next few minutes were nearly unbearable. People collected the hard copies and left silently, with just Perkins muttering a thank-you. Steve refused to catch her eye. The last person to leave was Levin, and when Lake turned and saw him hanging by the doorway, her stomach knotted. What’s he thinking? she wondered desperately.

“Do you need any assistance?” he asked. His words were polite but his tone was without any warmth.

“No-I’m set, thank you,” Lake said.

“All right, then,” Levin said and then walked out of the room.

She unplugged her computer and stuffed her things haphazardly into her tote bag. She wanted to run out of the clinic, but she knew she had to do her best to seem nonchalant. As she passed by the desk of the receptionist, the girl stared hard at her without saying a word.

Lake didn’t give herself a chance to think about the presentation until she was safely out the door and halfway down the block, hurrying to the parking garage. Something was definitely wrong. From her perspective the presentation had gone decently enough-her strategies were hardly brilliant, but, as she’d decided last night, they were more than adequate. So it was bizarre that no one, especially Levin, had made a single comment. She’d been dismissed, practically rushed out. Why? If Levin was in any way connected to Keaton’s murder and sensed she knew something, he might have initially wanted her around, to keep an eye on her. But if he’d been recently told by Brie she was snooping, he may have changed his mind.

Traffic was heavy but not gridlocked and within fifteen minutes Lake was on the FDR, headed south. To her left, in the fading light, the East River throbbed with activity-speedboats and sailboats and small “dining” yachts with tourists hanging over the rails. As disturbing as the evening had been so far, she tried to focus on her meeting with Melanie Turnbull. Melanie surely wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize her situation as a mother, and yet she had agreed to talk. Maybe, Lake thought, she would actually come away with something tonight that could help her figure this all out. From there, she’d reach out to Archer.

She crossed the Brooklyn Bridge and drove the few blocks into Dumbo. With its cobbled streets and nineteenth-century warehouses-and the Manhattan skyline as a backdrop across the East River-the area had always seemed to Lake like a cross between old New York and Blade Runner. Using her GPS, she located the restaurant Melanie had suggested. Parking was problematic, and the best she could do was a parking place three blocks north on Water Street.

She stepped out of her car and locked it. It was cooler over here, probably because of the proximity to the East River. Walking south along Water Street, she pulled her jacket tighter. To her right, the waterfront was partially hidden by trees. She glanced at her watch. She wasn’t supposed to meet Melanie for another twenty-five minutes. She turned west instead and made her way closer to the water. There was a small park, its entrance nothing more than the mouth of a narrow path. She began to follow it. Within a few yards the winding path opened onto a large open area. Off to the left, along the East River, was a small, pebble beach, with water lapping gently over the rocks. It looked more like the edge of a lake than a river. To the right were large terraced steps made out of pavement where a dozen people sat, scattered about and enjoying the view under the streetlamps. Lake stared across the water at the glittering island of Manhattan. For a moment she wished she could just pick the kids up from camp and drive away from here forever.

She retraced her steps and turned onto Water again and then walked up Dock to Front Street. The restaurant was like a tavern, with old wooden tables and twinkling lights strung across the windows. She picked a table that gave her a view of the door and ordered a glass of wine.

Once again she replayed the presentation over in her mind. How ridiculous those pads and pencils had been, she thought. No one had taken a single note. She drained the last of her wine. It probably wasn’t smart to have more, she realized, but if she didn’t she’d be in danger of jumping out of her skin, thinking about the clinic. She flagged the waiter down and ordered a second glass of Bordeaux.

This time she sipped slowly, trying to calm herself. She looked up at one point and surveyed the restaurant. When she’d first come in she had noticed a table of five boisterous women clearly celebrating something, but she saw now that they had paid their bill and gone. She glanced down at her watch. It was nine-thirty.

She’d been so consumed by her thoughts that she hadn’t noticed that the time for her appointment had come and gone. With a start she realized the truth: Melanie Turnbull wasn’t coming.