Hold Tight
Your child often came here to die. You don’t want to see the image of someone else’s smiling, healthy children. You just don’t.
“Hey, Doc Mike.”
He turned. It was Hal Goldfarb, Ilene’s son. He was a high school senior, two years older than Adam. He’d made Princeton early decision and planned to go in premed. He’d managed to get school credit to spend three mornings a week interning for them.
“Hey, Hal. How’s school?”
He gave Mike a big smile. “Coasting.”
“Senior year after you’ve already been admitted to college—the dictionary definition of coasting.”
“You got it.”
Hal was dressed in khakis and a blue dress shirt and Mike couldn’t help but notice the contrast with Adam’s goth black and feel a pang of envy. As if reading his mind, Hal said, “How’s Adam?”
“Okay.”
“I haven’t seen him in a while.”
“Maybe you should give him a call,” Mike said.
“Yeah, I should. It’d be great to hang out.”
Silence.
“Mom in her office?” Mike asked.
“Yes. Go right in.”
Ilene sat behind her desk. She was a slight woman, small-boned except for her talonlike fingers. She wore her brown hair pulled back in a severe ponytail and had horn-rimmed glasses that nicely straddled the border between looking bookish and in vogue.
“Hey,” Mike said.
“Hey.”
Mike held up the pink Post-it note. “What’s up?”
Ilene let loose a long breath. “We got a big problem.”
Mike sat. “With?”
“Your neighbor.”
“Loriman?”
Ilene nodded.
“Bad tissue test result?”
“Weird test result,” she said. “But it had to happen sooner or later. I’m surprised this is our first.”
“Do you want to clue me in?”
Ilene Goldfarb took off the glasses. She put one of the earpieces in her mouth and chewed on it. “How well do you know the family?”
“They live next door.”
“You close?”
“No. Why, what’s that got to do with anything?”
“We may have,” Ilene said, “something of an ethical dilemma.”
“How so?”
“Dilemma might be the wrong word.” Ilene looked off, talking more to herself than Mike right now. “More like a blurry ethical line.”
“Ilene?”
“Hmm.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Lucas Loriman’s mother will be here in half an hour,” she said.
“I saw her yesterday.”
“Where?”
“In her yard. She’s doing a lot of pretend gardening.”
“I bet.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Do you know her husband?”
“Dante? Yes.”
“And?”
Mike shrugged. “What’s going on, Ilene?”
“It’s about Dante,” she said.
“What about him?”
“He’s not the boy’s biological father.”
Just like that. Mike sat there for a moment.
“You’re kidding me.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m doing. You know me—Dr. Kidder. Good one, right?”
Mike let it sink in. He didn’t ask if she was sure or wanted to take more tests. She would have thought of all those angles. Ilene was right too—the bigger surprise was that they hadn’t run into this before. Two floors below them were the geneticists. One of them told Mike that in random population tests, more than ten percent of men were raising children that, unbeknownst to them, weren’t biologically theirs.
“Any reaction to this news?” Ilene said.
“Wow?”
Ilene nodded. “I wanted you to be my medical partner,” she said, “because I love your way with words.”
“Dante Loriman is not a nice man, Ilene.”
“That was my vibe.”
“This is bad,” Mike said.
“So is his son’s condition.”
They sat there and let that sit in the room, heavy.
The intercom buzzed. “Dr. Goldfarb?”
“Yes.”
“Susan Loriman is here. She’s early.”
“Is she here with her son?”
“No,” the nurse said. “Oh, but her husband is with her.”
“ WHAT the hell are you doing here?”
County Chief Investigator Loren Muse ignored him and headed over to the corpse.
“Sweet Lord,” one of the uniforms said in a hushed voice, “look what he did to her face.”
The four of them stood now in silence. Two were first-on-the-scene uniforms. The third was the homicide detective who’d technically be in charge of the case, a lazy lifer with a potbelly and world-weary manner named Frank Tremont. Loren Muse, the lead investigator for Essex County and the lone woman, was the shortest of the group by nearly a foot.
“DH,” Tremont pronounced. “And I’m not talking baseball terminology.”
Muse looked a question at him.
“DH, as in Dead Hooker.”
She frowned at his chuckle. Flies buzzed about the pulpy mess that at one time had been a human face. There was no nose or eye sockets or even much of a mouth anymore.
One of the uniforms said, “It’s like someone shoved her face into a meat grinder.”
Loren Muse looked down at the body. She let the two uniforms jabber. Some people jabber to ward off the nerves. Muse wasn’t one of them. They ignored her. So did Tremont. She was his immediate superior, all their superiors really, and she could feel the resentment coming off them like humidity from the sidewalk.
“Yo, Muse.”
It was Tremont. She looked at him in that brown suit with the belly from too many nights of beer and too many days of doughnuts. He was trouble. There had been complaints leaked to the media since she’d been promoted to chief investigator of Essex County. Most came from a reporter named Tom Gaughan, who just so happened to be married to Tremont’s sister.
“What is it, Frank?”
“Like I asked you before—what the hell are you doing here?”
“I need to explain myself to you?”
“I caught this one.”
“So you did.”
“And I don’t need you looking over my shoulder.”
Frank Tremont was an incompetent ass but because of his personal connections and years of “service,” fairly untouchable. Muse ignored him. She bent down, still staring at the raw meat that had once been a face.