Faithless in Death (In Death, #52)(90)

“No, it doesn’t. Which is why Officers Carmichael and Shelby are watching Jane Po at this time. We have more evidence she’s complicit in this, which I’ll get to.”

“Pick her up now,” Jenkinson commented, “her first tag’s to whoever she’s working with.”

“Correct. We have good reason to believe she, in coordination with the halfway house, is funneling young women, potentially young males as well, to Natural Order. She may be a true believer, it may be for money. It could be both.”

“It’s certainly for the money.”

She glanced at Roarke when he spoke.

“You have something.”

“I had a bit of time during the transfer of electronics and so on, so I had a look at Po’s finances. It would be unusual, I’d think, for a social worker—without family money behind her—to own a vacation home on the South Carolina shoreline, and have a bit over ten million in a pair of tucked-away accounts. Then there’s the jewelry she has insured—she’s fond of canary diamonds—in the amount of six million or so.”

“Yeah, that’s unusual.”

“It was a cursory search,” he added, “but with a little more time I could find when she had influxes of money. Which you could, very likely, tie to those disappearances.”

“I just bet. Good work. You can add the staff at the halfway house there and we’ll pin who she’s working with.

“Shortly before zero four hundred this morning—” She broke off when her ’link signaled. A glance showed her Nadine on the display.

“Sorry, this could be relevant. Roarke, take over with this area, as you were there. Peabody, if necessary, brief on the subsequent interviews.”

She stepped out. “I’m in the middle of a briefing,” she told Nadine.

“And I assume that briefing is on Natural Order. I think you’re going to want to include what I’ve got.”





19


“Spill, but make it fast. Things are moving here. Wait, where are you? Are you on a shuttle?”

“I’m shuttling back from a source, a hot one, Dallas. I pushed on an angle, and it paid off. Rachel Wilkey—Stanton Wilkey’s wife. Things weren’t adding up. Number of pregnancies, timing of them, number of children.”

“Yeah, I hit on that.”

“Pursuing that, I found she went incommunicado for long periods of time, and, pursuing that, I tracked a source that led to a source, and while her medical records are buried in Natural Order and not documented anywhere else I can find, there are ways and means to persuade people to cough up information.”

“Cut to it,” Eve demanded. “I’m pressed here.”

“Rachel Wilkey had three difficult pregnancies that resulted in live births, five miscarriages, and, the big one, a hysterectomy in 2037—which is three years before Wilkey’s youngest son, Aaron, was born.”

“She’s not the bio mother.”

“Medically impossible, and, pursuing that, I hit the very, very hot.”

“Is Paula Huffman her OB?”

“Oh yeah, and Huffman had an OB nurse-slash-midwife who not only attended Rachel Wilkey, but spent a couple years in the compound medical facilities. My information is Rachel nearly didn’t survive the birth of her daughter, was emotionally unstable, but became pregnant within the year, miscarried, and shortly after that, underwent an emergency hysterectomy.

“Following this, a young woman—unidentified—was brought into the facility and impregnated with Wilkey’s sperm.”

“Okay.” Eve began to pace. “That follows. That’s a pattern I see coming.”

“The OB nurse was assigned to tend to her. She was kept isolated. She was basically in prison, Dallas. She wasn’t there willingly, wasn’t pregnant willingly. The OB nurse assisted in the birth. They took the baby, and she never saw the bio mother again.”

“But she saw others.”

“Right, you’ve got it.”

Eve paused by the conference room door, where she could see the board. “Yeah,” she said. “I’ve got it. Keep going.”

“Some, impregnated like this one, others who’d been shipped in, married off—against their will—who either came in for the birth, or the nurse assisted Huffman in home deliveries. The nurse was a member at the time, was given a bonus of a thousand for every successful birth.”

Money, Eve thought, it always wound back to the money.

“Dallas, male members paid Natural Order upwards of twenty grand—at that time—for a woman between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four, of their specific race.”

The outrage in Nadine’s voice began to rise, and Eve resumed pacing.

“Healthy women who passed medical and mental screenings. These members were awarded five grand for every successful birth. Money was paid out to whoever shipped these women in, most of them unwilling or unknowing, where they were trained—and you can read that tortured—to live by the rules, were married, whether they wanted to be or not, by Wilkey, then given to some asshole whose job it was to plant his fucking seed in her so he could get his bonus and propagate the damn world.”

“You’ve got the OB nurse? She’ll attest to this?”