The 6:20 Man(119)

He knew the cloud that ran the Hummingbird platform was housed elsewhere, because Tapshaw had told him.

Tapshaw’s office was in the back corner. He tried the door, but it was locked. Then he saw the reader port and waved the RFID card in front of it, and the door clicked open.

He turned on the light and looked around at the messy space.

He again had the idea of calling her phone to see if it would ring somewhere in the mounds of all the stuff in here, but it didn’t. She might have it on silent. But he didn’t hear vibrating anywhere, either. The battery might have died for all he knew.

He started to slowly search the space. The woman’s workload was immense, if all the docs he was looking at were an indicator. It was no wonder she looked tired all the time.

He looked through all the file cabinets until he came to one that was locked.

He hesitated and then decided to see if the other key on the ring would open it. He didn’t know why she would lock her phone up in there, but he had seen her rushing around enough times trying to find stuff at the town house. Her car keys had once ended up in the refrigerator for some odd reason.

The key worked and he slid the drawer open. There was a mass of papers in here and some colored files. He moved them out of the way to see if perhaps the phone had slipped down to the bottom when he saw the red file. He slowly pulled it out.

It was from the doctor’s office of Jonathan Wyman, more specifically his clinic for women wanting to undergo artificial insemination.

A stunned Devine slowly opened it and started to read what was inside.

The patient’s name was Sara Elise Ewes.

The procedure was artificial insemination using donor sperm.

Then, written on a Post-it note, was a name: Sperm donor: Dennis Tapshaw.

Jill’s twin brother was the sperm donor for Sara Ewes’s pregnancy?

Devine was so overwhelmed by these revelations that he could barely think.

He turned when he heard the noise behind him.

Jill Tapshaw was standing in the doorway, pointing Devine’s Sig at its owner.





CHAPTER





82


“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE, Travis?” she demanded.

He let the file drop to the desk. “Looking for your phone. Your mother called. She wanted to reach you. I knew you didn’t have your phone with you at the hospital. I was trying to find it. It wasn’t at—”

She held up her hand. “Just stop, okay? Please, just stop. Who cares about a phone or my mother?” She glanced down at what he had been holding. “Wonderful Dr. Wyman.”

“Who?”

“Don’t pull the stupid act, okay? I’m really tired from sucking in all that gas.”

“Okay. Then let’s talk about this, but not with the gun pointed at me.”

“I told you to drop the stupid act. The gun is going nowhere.”

She seemed like a totally different person now. He also had the impression that perhaps the Jill Tapshaw he thought he knew was an act. Maybe this was the real version.

He picked up the file. “You and Sara were having a baby together?”

“That was the plan. It didn’t end well. But you know that, right?”

“And your brother was the sperm donor?”

“Why not? He was perfect.”

“I also understand that he’s dead.”

By the look on her face, Devine wished he hadn’t mentioned that.

“Who told you he was dead?” she said quietly.

“Your mother. I mentioned that I wanted to let him know about your being in the hospital, and that’s when she told me he died.” He paused. “Only she didn’t tell me how he died.”

Tapshaw held up the gun. “He put one of these in his mouth and pulled the fucking trigger.”

“Why would he do that? You said he had everything going for him.”

“Because Dennis desperately wanted to transition to being a woman, and my ‘brilliant’ father couldn’t accept that. That’s why my parents finally divorced. He was awful to Dennis. Never one minute’s peace, never any support. He drove him to suicide. I wanted to kill him, but he ran away to Canada, and nobody knows where he is.”

“Wyman said he didn’t know who the sperm donor was.”

“He didn’t. Neither did Sara, at first.”

“So you and Sara were in love and were having a baby? Why didn’t anyone know about that?”

“You met her parents, so do you really have to ask the question? Sara wasn’t about to tell them about me. And it’s not like my father would have been thrilled with two, as he would see it, alien children.”

“But no one even knew you and Sara were dating? That’s hard to believe.”

“Sara wanted it that way. She wanted to move up in her field.”

“There are lots of gay people in the world of finance.”

“Not that many gay women.” She bit her lip and looked unsure for a moment. “And Sara was . . . confused, it seemed to me, about her sexuality.” Tapshaw’s face twisted angrily. “She needed to make up her mind, so we kept things quiet. Very quiet.”

“So you two broke up? And she terminated the pregnancy. Why?”

She motioned with the gun to the file drawer that Devine had been looking through.