Chapter Twenty-one
“Why the hospital?” Zach asked as he drove out of Mudbug toward the hospital. “Do you need to talk to Hank?”
“No. The hospital has a weak security system. It’s easy to hack their Internet access. And I’ll be less likely to be caught hacking medical records at other hospitals if the signal is coming from this hospital.”
“You want me to help you hack medical records?”
“Trust me, Zach. If I’m right, I’m going to blow the lid off all of this.”
Zach shook his head, knowing he was making a big mistake. A career-ending, prison-sentence sort of mistake. But if Raissa was right…if she really could wrap this up with a couple of pieces of paper, Zach was almost to the point of risking it. He’d figure out a way to get to that point before he pulled into the hospital parking lot.
The lot was sparsely populated, but then, it was eleven at night. This was it, he thought as he parked in front of the building and turned off the car. He either followed Raissa into the hospital because he had no doubt she’d go in with or without his help, or he backed out of the parking lot and kept his record clean. Sort of.
Raissa hopped out of the car, then looked back inside when he didn’t follow her. “Are you going to sit here and wait to be discovered by security?”
Zach pointed through the glass front of the hospital to the security guard, flirting with the nurse at the front desk. “Do you have a plan?” Zach asked. “Or are you just going to hijack the front-desk computer when they’re not looking?”
Raissa laughed. “I have a plan, but I need to find Helena. I’m hoping she’s still here.”
It was crazy—a plan to help an FBI fugitive hack a hospital’s computer system, with a ghost as the primary advantage. And it was a plan that he’d never, ever be able to tell to anyone else. Essentially, if he was caught, there was no way out of this. No rational justification for his actions. But it was also the last option they had, and time was running out.
He hopped out of the car and flashed his badge at the security guard, who nodded. With all the traffic in and out of Hank Henry’s room, the security guard wouldn’t suspect anything was out of order. Raissa pointed at the hallway to Hank’s room, and they headed down it. They were halfway down the hall, when Raissa stopped short. Zach looked back, wondering what was going on.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Raissa said. “Helena’s right here. She’s leaving Hank’s room.” Raissa quickly explained to Helena that she needed to get into the medical records of several hospitals, then turned to Zach. “She knows just how to help us.”
Zach squinted, staring at the air in front of Raissa, wishing he could make out something…anything…that would prove he wasn’t crazy for believing in ghosts. “Help us do what?”
“Break into the medical-records room. Listen, if you’d rather stay out of this, I understand. It’s not exactly the sort of thing you want on your record.”
“Of course I’d rather stay out of this, but it’s too late now. Worst case, I’ll say you’re a suspect in an investigation, and I followed you into the hospital to apprehend you. I will have to arrest you, though, if we get caught.” And no one’s likely to believe it, but what the hell.
“Fine by me. C’mon. Helena says the medical-records room is this way.”
“Why medical records?” Zach asked as they walked. “Can’t you use a computer somewhere else?”
“Yes, but the IP address of every computer is unique, so when I dial into another hospital asking for medical-records information, the security system is going to see the request coming from a medical-records-department computer at this hospital. I’m hoping it’s enough to avoid setting off alarms. At least long enough for me to get what I came for.”
“Which is? You still haven’t covered that part.”
Raissa turned down another hallway and stopped in front of the door to the medical-records room. A couple of seconds later, Zach heard the door unlock from the inside and it opened. He looked inside, but couldn’t see a thing.
“Hurry up before someone sees you,” Raissa whispered, motioning him inside.
Zach hurried into the room and shut the door behind him. Raissa had already slipped behind a desk in the far corner of the room. “Sorry,” Zach said, “but that ghost shit still gets to me.”
“As soon as I solve the mystery of Melissa Franco, I’m going to help Helena leave.”
Raissa motioned for the folders, and Zach handed over the stack. “Help her leave?”
“Yeah, didn’t I tell you? Helena was murdered. We’re pretty sure that’s why she’s still hanging around. So the general consensus is that if we can figure out who murdered her and why, she’ll be able to cross over.”
Zach shook his head, trying to absorb all of that into anything that resembled rationalality.
Raissa picked up the first file and handed it to Zach. “You read. I’ll type. That will be faster. Give me the town the first girl lives in.”
“Orlando, Florida.” Zach pulled a chair next to Raissa and watched the screen flicker as she worked her magic. Finally, the screen stopped whirling and Zach looked at the header at the top left. “I hope I don’t regret this.”
Raissa laughed. “Don’t worry. I’ve been doing this for years for my fortune-telling clients. Why do you think I’m so accurate?”
Zach placed his hands over his ears and hummed. “I am not hearing this.”
Raissa swatted at him. “Give me the first girl’s name with exact spelling. Middle name, too.”
Zach read from the file and Raissa typed the girl’s information into the hospital medical-records database. “All the girls came from families with moderate incomes and lived in outlying areas of small towns, sorta like Mudbug. I’m hoping they used a local doctor who worked out of the hospital.”
“Is that common?”
“Yeah. It cuts out the doctor’s office overhead and gives the hospital a doctor on-site a great majority of the day.”
“So you’re thinking their medical records would be at the hospital?”
“Yeah. Worst case, I’ll get the emergency records, which might still tell me what I need.”
“Okay.” Zach didn’t even pretend to understand where Raissa was going with this and apparently she was a show, not tell, kind of person.
“Bingo!” Raissa said. “Her records are here.”
He leaned in to watch as Raissa opened the first girl’s medical records. “Stomachache, vomiting, fever,” he read. “Twice in the four months preceding her abduction.” He looked over at Raissa. “So what? She ate something bad…had a virus…nothing that screams ‘kidnap me.’”
“Not yet,” Raissa said, and reduced the record to her desktop and opened another search. “Next name.”
Zach shook his head and read off the name from the next file, wondering how one bridged the gap between a tummy ache and a kidnapping.
“Look,” Raissa said, excited as she pointed to the next girl’s record. “Stomach trouble three times in the six months preceding the kidnapping.”
“Okay. So kids get sick. Maybe there was some big strain of the flu going around that year.”
Raissa turned from the screen and stared at him. “I’ll bet you twenty bucks that every single one of those girls went to the hospital complaining of stomach problems within six months of abduction.”
Zach shrugged. “You’re on. That’s too big of an anomaly.”
Raissa lifted the files from his lap and started typing. One by one she pulled up the girls’ records, and one by one, the facts were right there for Zach to see. When she finished, Raissa looked at him.
“Okay,” Zach said, still bewildered by the similarities in the records and the time line to abduction. “I owe you twenty bucks. Now, would you like to tell me what’s going on? Obviously this proves your theory.”
“I think every one of those girls was sick. I think the reason they were abducted has something to do with what was wrong with them.”
Zach frowned. “But after they were returned, there’s no record of illness.”
“Exactly! And there was no record of illness earlier than six months before they disappeared.”
Zach stared at Raissa, amazed. “Seriously? I didn’t even notice. What the hell?”
Raissa jumped up from her chair and began to pace back and forth across the room. “Don’t you see how extraordinary that would be? The oldest victim is seventeen. I know from my other research that she still lives with her family, in the same home, and they are still in the same income bracket, yet she’s never visited the doctor again after her abduction.”
Zach struggled to wrap his mind around what Raissa was saying. “So you think…what? They cured her?”
“Not then. Remember, they weren’t sick until right before the abductions.”
Zach ran one hand through his hair. “Jesus, Raissa. That sounds a little crazy, even for you. Even for this case, which is anything but normal.”
“Melissa Franco was the same way. Remember, her dad said she was never sick, but Dr. Spencer said the medication they were giving her had curbed some symptoms that were beginning to form. What do you want to bet those symptoms included stomach problems?”
She slid into her chair again, tapped on the keyboard, then pointed to the screen.
“Cancer. And would you like to take a guess at how cancer usually presents itself in the early stages?” She tapped one fingernail on the monitor. “Take a look.”
Zach read the screen that provided a list of the symptoms of leukemia in children. “Initial symptoms are usually attributed to the common flu,” he read. “Damn.” His mind whirled with the possibilities of everything Raissa had said. “But why these kids? And how did the abductors know when to take them? I’ll admit this is fascinating, but it creates more questions than it answers. And it doesn’t prove anything.”
“I think someone’s been carefully watching these girls since they were born.”
“Spencer?”
“Most likely. But I bet there’s more.”
Raissa pulled up the first record. Her fingers flew across the keyboard, pulling up one record after another until she had three hospital records side-by-side on the screen. “Look.” She pointed to the records of the parents of the first girl. “Look at the blood types.”
She turned and looked directly at Zach. “Don’t you see? There’s no way she’s their daughter. And I’d be willing to bet that we’ll find that’s the case with all the girls who went missing, including Melissa Franco.”
“Peter Franco said they had trouble conceiving. Could be that Melissa was conceived in vitro.”
“And the others? All blue-collar families, but they managed to pay the cost of in vitro while in the military? No way. Every one of those children except Melissa was conceived while the father was stationed at the military base in North Carolina.”
“So what? Someone made a mistake with meds, or gave them the wrong babies. I don’t know what you think this is, Raissa.”
“I’m not sure, either. But let’s go over what we know. Someone helped these parents conceive babies that were not biologically their own, and Spencer was present on the base when every one of those babies was conceived.”
“You think he gave them in vitro—without them even knowing?”
“Could be. The actual insertion of the egg wouldn’t require much more than an extensive exam. Spencer could have said their Pap was irregular in order to do more ‘tests,’ ” Raissa answered. “So, continuing with what we have so far, someone was keeping tabs on the kids and arranged an abduction around the time the girls started showing symptoms of a stomachache.”
“A possible precursor to cancer,” Zach chimed in.
“Right. The girls are taken for a week, then returned—perfectly healthy and with no memory of what happened.”
“Okay, even if I buy that Spencer impregnated these women against their will, where did the eggs come from? They had to be the same person, right? There’s no way they’d develop the same disease at the same age otherwise. Wouldn’t that imply a genetic similarity?”
Raissa nodded. “I think so.”
“But that doesn’t explain Melissa Franco. Why start all this again after nine years had passed?”
“My best guess is that when Susannah Franco couldn’t get pregnant, she talked about it with her family. I’m certain Monk Marsella is the one who kidnapped those other girls, and he must have known enough about what was going on to convince whoever he was working for to do it for Susannah.”
“You think Monk Marsella strong-armed Dr. Spencer into impregnating Susannah with a bionic baby?”
“Monk could’ve threatened to expose the other girls, so he agreed to the procedure.”
“Then why wait almost six years after creating Melissa to kill him?”
“I don’t know for sure, but it looks like someone’s eliminating all liability associated with this mess. That would also explain why Dr. Spencer’s car has a bullet hole, likely from my gun, in his trunk. He must have seen Melissa going into my shop after the appointments. He knew I could expose his relationship with Melissa and her mother.”
“And on the day of the kidnapping, you went to the police station. It must have been Spencer who pushed you in front of the bus.” Zach was beginning to think that in a bizarre, out-of-this-world sort of way, things were starting to make sense. “That would explain why Susannah lied about Melissa’s medical condition, and why I got the feeling she wasn’t as worried as her husband. She already knew where Melissa was and why. She knew they were going to do something that would kill off the cancer. She knew Melissa would return to her, the perfect child.”
“Exactly. And I think that treatment involved a blood transfusion from Hank Henry.”
“Whoa, you lost me here.” Zach shook his head. So much for things making sense. “Why Hank? Because he was abducted?”
“Because he was abducted by an alien, like the others, and because he had a needle mark in his arm and was anemic when he was brought into the hospital. They were giving him iron pills, remember?”
“Okay, I’ll bite—why Hank Henry?”
“We know Hank couldn’t have been Helena’s biological son,” Raissa explained. “But he’s obviously tied up in this mess, because Monk mentioned his name to Sonny in connection with the kidnapping—Sonny just didn’t know why. And from everything Maryse told me, the man’s never been sick a day in his life. I think Hank is the original version of the bionic baby, and a successful one. He supposedly had periodic problems with anemia, but what if it was because they were harvesting blood from him? Doing a transfusion to save the other girls?”
“But Hank’s never been kidnapped before.”
“No. Because he’s always been available, and I think that’s why Helena was impregnated. So they could keep an eye on their work. Until the last couple of years, at least, when Hank pulled a disappearing act.”
“But the only person who could have gotten that much blood from him without anyone suspecting something is—”
“Yes,” a voice sounded behind them. Raissa and Zach whirled around to find Dr. Breaux standing in the doorway, a 9-millimeter in his hand.