CHapter 059
The warehousewas located near the airport in Medan. It had a skylight, so the lighting in the room was good, and the young orang in the cage appeared healthy enough, bright-eyed and alert. He seemed to have recovered completely from the darts.
But Gorevitch paced back and forth, intensely frustrated, glancing at his watch. On the table nearby, his video camera lay on its side, the case cracked, muddy water draining out of it. Gorevitch would have taken it apart to dry it, but he lacked the tools. He lacked...he lacked...
Off to one side, Zanger, the network representative, said, "What are you going to do now?"
"We're waiting for another bloody camera," Gorevitch said. He turned to the DHL rep, a young Malay man in a bright yellow uniform. "How much longer now?"
"They said within the hour, sir."
Gorevitch snorted. "They said that two hours ago."
"Yes, sir. But the plane has left Bekasi and is on its way to us."
Bekasi was on the north coast of Java. Eight hundred miles away. "And the camera is on the plane?"
"I believe so, yes."
Gorevitch paced, avoiding Zanger's accusatory stare. It was all a comedy of errors. In the jungle, Gorevitch had worked to resuscitate the ape for almost an hour before the animal showed signs of life. Then he had struggled to bind the animal and tranquilize it again - not too much this time - and then monitor the animal with care, to prevent the creature from going into adrenaline shock while Gorevitch brought him north to Medan, the nearest big town with an airport.
The orang survived the journey without incident, ending up in the warehouse, where he cursed like a Dutch sailor. Gorevitch notified Zanger, who immediately flew in from New York.
But by the time Zanger arrived, the ape had developed laryngitis, and no longer spoke, except for a raspy whisper.
"What the hell good is that?" Zanger said. "You can't hear him."
"It won't matter," Gorevitch said. "We'll tape him and then dub in his voice later. You know, lip-synch him."
"You'll dub in his voice?"
"Nobody will know."
"Are you out of your mind?Everybody will know. Every lab in the world will go over this video with sophisticated equipment. They'll spot a dub in five minutes."
"All right," Gorevitch said, "then we'll wait until he gets better."
Zanger didn't like that, either. "He sounds quite ill. Did he catch a cold somewhere?"
"Possible," Gorevitch said. In fact, he was almost certain the ape had caught his own cold, during the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. It was a mild cold for Gorevitch, but appeared to be serious for the orang, who was now bent over in spasms of coughing.
"He needs a vet."
"Can't," Gorevitch said. "He's a protected animal, and we stole him, remember?"
"Youstole him," Zanger said. "And if you're not careful, you'll kill him as well."
"He's young. He'll recover."
And, indeed, the following day, the ape was talking again, but coughing spasmodically and spitting up ugly, yellow-green gobs. Gorevitch decided he'd better film the animal now, so he went to get his equipment from the car, stumbled, and dropped the camera in a muddy ditch. Cracked the case open. All this not ten feet from the warehouse door.
And of course in the entire city of Medan, they did not seem to be able to lay their hands on a decent video camera. So they had had to fly one in from Java. They were waiting for the camera now, while the ape swore and hacked and coughed and spat at them from inside his cage.
Zanger stood just out of range, shaking his head. "Christ, what a cock-up."
And once again Gorevitch turned to the Malay kid and said, "How much longer?" The kid just shook his head and shrugged.
And inside the cage, the orang coughed and swore.
CHapter 060
Georgia Bellarminoopened the door to her daughter's bedroom and began a swift examination. The room was a mess, of course. Crumbs in the creases of the rumpled bedcovers, scratched CDs on the floor, knocked-over Coke cans beneath the bed, along with a dirty hairbrush, a curling iron, and an empty tube of self-tanner. Georgia pulled open the drawers of the bedside table, revealing a clutter of chewing-gum wrappers, balled-up underwear, breath mints, mascara, photos from last year's prom, matches, a calculator, dirty socks, old issues ofTeen Vogue andPeople. And a pack of cigarettes, which didn't make her happy.
Then to the dresser drawers, riffling through them quickly, feeling all the way to the back; then the closet, which took her quite a while. A jumble of shoes and sneakers at the bottom. The cabinet under the bathroom sink, and even the dirty clothes hamper.
She found nothing to explain the bruises.
Of course, she thought, there was hardly any purpose to putting a hamper in the room, since Jennifer just dropped her clothes all over the bathroom floor. Georgia Bellarmino bent over and picked them up, not really thinking about it. That was when she noticed the streaks on the tile floor of the bathroom. Rubber streaks. Faint. In parallel.
She knew what had caused those streaks: a stepladder.
Looking up at the ceiling she saw a panel that provided an entrance to the attic. There were smudged fingerprints on that panel.
Georgia went to get a stepladder.
She pushed the panel aside, and needles and syringes tumbled out, clattering onto the floor.
Dear God,she thought. She reached up into the attic space, feeling around. Her hand touched a stack of cardboard tubes, like toothpaste. She brought them out; they all bore medical labels:LUPRON, GONAL-F, FOLLESTIM.
Fertility drugs.
What was her daughter doing?
She decided not to call her husband; he would get too upset. Instead, she took out her cell phone and dialed the school.
CHapter 061
In theChicago offices of Dr. Martin Bennett, the intercom was buzzing, but Dr. Bennett paid no attention.
The biopsy report was worse than he had expected, much worse. He ran his fingers along the edge of the paper, wondering how he would tell his patient.
Martin Bennett was fifty-five; he had been a practicing internist for nearly a third of a century, and had delivered bad news to many patients in his day. But it never got easier. Especially if they were young, with young children. He glanced at the pictures of his sons on his desk. They were both in college now. Tad was a senior at Stanford; Bill was at Columbia. And Bill was premed.
A knock on the door and his nurse, Beverly, stuck her head in. "I'm sorry, Dr. Bennett, but you weren't answering the intercom. And I thought it was important."
"I know. I was just...trying to think how to put it." He stood up behind the desk. "I'll see Andrea now."
Beverly shook her head. "Andrea hasn't arrived," she said. "I'm talking about the other woman."
"What other woman?"
Beverly slipped into the office and closed the door behind her. She lowered her voice. "Your daughter," she said.
"What are you talking about? I don't have a daughter."
"Well, there's a young woman in the waiting room who says she's your daughter."
"That's impossible," Bennett said. "Who is she?"
Beverly glanced at a note card. "Her name is Murphy. She lives in Seattle. Her mother works at the university. She's about twenty-eight and she has a toddler with her, maybe a year and a half. Little girl."
"Murphy? Seattle?" Bennett was thinking back. "Twenty-eight, you say? No, no. Impossible." He had had his share of affairs in college, and even in medical school. But he'd married Emily almost thirty years ago, and since then the only times he had been unfaithful had been at medical conferences. True, that was at least twice a year, in Canc
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