Without waiting for instructions, the younger investigator ran to start up the car. “Come on, Richard,” Scott snapped.
Richard grabbed Katie’s file. “We have to know what-all he’s done to her.” For an instant he looked at Edgar Highley’s body. They’d been seconds too late preventing his death. Would they be too late for Katie?
With Scott he hunched in the back of the squad car as it raced through the night Highley had given Katie the heparin over an hour ago. It was fast-acting.
Katie, he thought, why didn’t you tell me? Katie, why do you feel you have to go it alone? Nobody can. Katie, we could be so good together. Oh, Katie, we could have what Molly and Bill have. It’s there waiting for us to reach out for it. Katie, you felt it too. You’ve been fighting it. Why? Why? If you’d only trusted me, told me you were seeing Highley. I’d never have let you go near him. Why didn’t I see that you were sick? Why didn’t I make you tell me? Katie, I want you. Don’t die, Katie. Wait. Let me find you. Katie, hang on . . . .
They were at the hospital. Squad cars were roaring into the parking lot. They ran up the stairs into the lobby. Phil, his face drawn into deep lines, was commanding the search.
Bill and Molly came running into the lobby. Molly was sobbing. Bill was deadly calm. “John Pierce is on his way over. He’s the best hematologist in New Jersey. They’ve got a reasonable supply of whole blood on hand here, and we can get more from the blood bank. Have you found her?”
“Not yet.”
The door to the fire stairs, partly ajar, burst open. A young policeman ran out. “She’s on the floor in the morgue. I think she’s gone.”
Seconds later, Richard was cradling her in his arms. Her skin and lips were ashen. He could not get a pulse. “Katie. Katie.”
Bill’s hand gripped his shoulder. “Let’s get her upstairs. We’ll have to work fast if there’s any chance at all.”
♦80♦
She was in a tunnel. At the end there was a light. It was warm at the end of the tunnel. It would be so easy to drift there.
But someone was keeping her from going. Someone was holding her. A voice. Richard’s voice. “Hang on, Katie, hang on.”
She wanted so not to turn back. It was so hard, so dark. It would be so much easier to slip away.
“Hang on, Katie.”
Sighing, she turned and began to make her way back.
♦81♦
On Monday evening Richard tiptoed into Katie’s room, a dozen roses in his hand. She’d been out of danger since Sunday morning, but hadn’t stayed awake long enough to say more than a word or two.
He looked down at her. Her eyes were closed. He decided to go out and ask the nurse for a vase.
“Just lay them across my chest.”
He spun around. “Katie.” He pulled up a chair. “How do you feel?”
She opened her eyes and grimaced at the transfusion apparatus. “I hear the vampires are picketing. I’m putting them out of business.”
“You’re better.” He hoped the sudden moisture in his eyes wasn’t noticeable.
She had noticed. With her free hand she gently reached up and brushed a finger across his eyelids. “Before I fall asleep again, please tell me what happened. Otherwise I’ll wake up about three in the morning and try to put it together. Why did Edgar Highley kill Vangie?”
“He was experimenting on his patients, Katie. You know about the test-tube baby in England, of course.
“Highley was far more ambitious than to simply produce in vitro babies for their natural parents. What he set out to do was take fetuses from women who had abortions and implant those fetuses in the wombs of sterile women. And he did it! In these past eight years he learned how to immunize a host mother from rejecting an alien fetus.
“He had one complete success. I’ve shown his records to the fertility research lab in Mt. Sinai Hospital, and they tell me that Edgar Highley made a quantum leap in blastocyst and embryonic research.
“But after that success, he wanted to break new ground. Anna Horan, a woman he aborted, claims that she changed her mind about the abortion, but that he knocked her out and took her fetus when she was unconscious. She was right. He had Vangie Lewis in the next room waiting for the implant. Vangie thought she was simply having some treatment to help her become pregnant with her own child. Highley never expected Vangie to retain the Oriental fetus so long, although his system had become perfected to such a degree that the race issue was really not a consideration.
“When Vangie didn’t abort spontaneously, he became so fascinated by his own research that he couldn’t bear to destroy the fetus. He decided to bring it to term, and then who would blame him if Vangie had a partly Oriental child? The natural mother, Anna Horan, is married to a Caucasian.”
“He was able to suppress the immune system?” Katie remembered the elaborate charts in college science courses.
“Yes, and without harm to the child. The danger to the mother was much greater. He’s killed sixteen women in the last eight years. Vangie was getting terribly sick. Unfortunately for her, she ran into Highley last Monday evening just as she left Fukhito. She told him she was going to consult her former doctor in Minneapolis. That would have been a risk, because a natural pregnancy for Vangie was a million-to-one shot, and any gynecologist who had treated her would have known that.
“But it was when she mentioned Emmet Salem’s name that she was finished. Highley knew that Salem would guess what had happened when Vangie produced a half-Oriental child, then swore that she’d never been involved with an Oriental man. Salem was in England when Highley’s first wife died. He knew about the scandal.
“And now,” Richard said, “that’s enough of that. All the rest can wait. Your eyes are closing again.”
“No . . . . You said that Highley had one success. Did he actually transfer a fetus and have it brought to term?”
“Yes. And if you had stayed five minutes longer at Molly’s last Thursday night and seen the Berkeley baby, you could guess now who the natural mother is. Liz Berkeley carried Maureen Crowley’s baby to term in her womb.”
“Maureen Crowley’s baby.” Katie’s eyes flew open, all sleepiness gone. She tried to pull herself up.
“Easy. Come on, you’ll pull that needle out.” Gently he touched her shoulder, holding her until she leaned back. “Highley kept complete case histories of what he did from the moment he aborted Maureen and implanted Liz. He listed every medication, every symptom, every problem until the actual delivery.”
“Does Maureen know?”
“It was only right to tell her and the Berkeleys and let the Berkeleys examine the records. Jim Berkeley has been living with the belief that his wife lied to him about artificial insemination. You know how Maureen felt about that abortion. It’s been destroying her. She went to see her baby. She’s one happy girl, Katie. She would have given it out for adoption if she had delivered it naturally. Now that she’s seen Maryanne, sees how crazy the Berkeleys are about her, she’s in seventh heaven. But I think you’re going to lose a good secretary. Maureen’s going back to college next fall.”
“What about the mother of Vangie’s baby?”
“Anna Horan is heartbroken enough about the abortion. We saw no point in having her realize that her baby would have been born if Highley hadn’t murdered Vangie last week. She’ll have other children.”
Katie bit her lip. The question she’d been afraid to ask. She had to know. “Richard, please tell me the truth. When they found me, I was hemorrhaging. How far did they have to go to stop the bleeding?”
“You’re okay. They did the D-and-C. I’m sure they told you that.”
“But that’s all?”
“That’s all, Katie. You can still have a dozen kids if you want them.”
His hand reached over to cover hers. That hand had been there, had pulled her back when she was so near to death. That voice had made her want to come back.
For a long, quiet moment she looked up at Richard. Oh, how
I love you, she thought. How very much I love you.
His troubled, questioning expression changed suddenly into a broad smile. Obviously he was satisfied at what he saw in her face.
Katie grinned back at him. “Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you, Doctor?” she asked him crisply.
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Books by Mary Higgins Clark
Before I Say Good-Bye
We’ll Meet Again
All Through The Night
You Belong To Me
Pretend You Don’t See Her
My Gal Sunday
Moonlight Becomes You
Silent Night
Let Me Call You Sweetheart
The Lottery Winner
Remember Me
I’ll Be Seeing You
All Around The Town
Loves Music, Loves To Dance
The Anastasia Syndrome and Other Stories
While My Pretty One Sleeps
Weep No More, My Lady
Stillwatch
A Cry In The Night
The Cradle Will Fall
A Stranger Is Watching
Where Are The Children?
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Copyright © 1980 by Mary Higgins Clark
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Mary Higgins Clark, The Cradle Will Fall
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