Lake let out a long breath. The story was horrific-and almost too crazy to believe.
“But why would Sherman have to resort to this?” Lake asked. “If this woman couldn’t conceive with her own eggs, why not use eggs from an actual donor? The clinic has even started its own donor program.”
“She probably didn’t want a donor,” Alexis said. “She looked like she was in her early forties and she was probably hoping she could still have her own child. And I’m sure Sherman encouraged her just like he did me. He and Levin like to tell women, ‘You will get pregnant,’ as if they’re the Baby Makers. When Sherman found her eggs were useless, he was stuck. So he just used my embryos-without ever telling her.”
Over the past few weeks Lake had read enough about in vitro fertilization to understand the challenges faced by patients over forty. As part of IVF, a woman underwent hormone therapy to encourage the ovaries to release multiple eggs. Those eggs were then collected and placed in a petri dish with sperm from the woman’s partner-or, for an additional fee, even injected with sperm to facilitate fertilization. But if the woman was close to forty, or older, like Melanie, the chances for successful fertilization were slim. By that point in a woman’s life, her eggs had not only declined rapidly in number but also in quality-in fact, by the time a woman was forty-three, only about ten percent of her eggs were viable. The older the woman, the poorer the chances of harvesting enough viable eggs to fertilize and transfer back to her body. That’s why some clinics didn’t even take women over forty.
“And you never signed any kind of permission allowing them to share your eggs?”
“Never.”
“Have you confronted Sherman about this?” Lake asked.
“Of course. I called him after I’d figured out Melanie was a patient. He was totally patronizing. He told me I should talk to a psychologist who specializes in-quote-‘women like you.’”
“Did he suggest you talk to Harry Kline?”
“The psychologist they have on staff? No. I guess they only use him for the women they feel haven’t gone completely off the deep end yet and they can still milk for procedures.”
“Is there any way of getting a DNA test?”
“Not that I’ve found so far. Believe it or not, in these cases, the law protects the custodial parent-which is despicable. That’s my baby and she’s supposed to be with me.”
Lake glanced down at the photos again. It was uncanny how alike the two little girls looked. If Alexis was right and the clinic had done this to improve Melanie’s chances of conceiving, it likely wasn’t the first time-or the last.
“Do you think this woman, Melanie, has any suspicions that the child may not be hers?”
“I doubt it,” Alexis said. “If you’ve been desperate for a baby, you don’t allow yourself to question these things. And whether it was intentional or not, Sherman did a brilliant job of matching the coloring. This Melanie woman has light coloring like mine. And her husband’s probably fair as well. His name is Turnbull, a snooty English name.”
Lake felt her skin turn cold. Melanie Turnbull. She’d heard that name before-and recently.
And then she remembered. It was the name written on the scrap of paper she’d seen in the black bowl in Keaton’s loft.
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.