It's One of Us(53)
He has to do something.
He flees to the shed, takes a seat at his computer, and looks up Winterborn. The website is slick, three-quarter-screen shots of smiling partners standing in a field of tall grasses, holding the hands of a beatific child, couples hiking among redwoods with a baby in a carrier strapped to a chest, moms and kids jumping into shimmering blue lakes.
Apparently, sperm donation equals a happy, active life outdoors.
He locates the number for the facility and dials it. An actual person answers, chirpy and hopeful.
“Winterborn Life Sciences. Amanda speaking. How may I direct your call?”
“I’d like to speak to the director.” He skims the About page, lands on a name. “Thomas Slade. I am a donor, and I have an issue I need to discuss with him.”
“Oh, I’m afraid Dr. Slade is busy at the moment. Perhaps I could route you through to his lab assistant and you can leave a message with him. Hold please.”
Chirpy Amanda is gone, replaced by the deeper lilt of a man who identifies himself as Juan.
“How may I help you?”
“I’m a donor with an issue. I need to speak to the director. It’s urgent.”
“May I get your name, sir?”
“I’m—”
“Get off the phone, right now.” Lindsey storms into the shed, abject horror on her face. “Seriously, hang up.”
“I’ll call you back,” Park says into the receiver. Then to Lindsey, “What the hell?”
“Park, what in the name of God were you doing?”
“I—I wanted to find out the names of the women who used me as a donor, so I can start figuring out who he is.”
Neither of them need to qualify who “he” is.
“Don’t be daft. You can’t go off and play detective. The police are all over that, though the privacy laws are making their lives difficult. But you—you have to stay away from this. We need to plan this out. I want you and Olivia to sit down with my friend Lucía Perez. She’s the best crisis management lawyer in town, and I’ve already cleared it with Olivia. Where is she, by the way?”
“At therapy,” he replies absently. “Crisis management lawyer? We don’t have the kind of money it would take—”
“Park. You don’t seem to have any real concept of what’s happening. Lucía will run you through how you need to act going forward. We can’t have the police dragging you in for questioning again. They are not your friends.”
“Technically, they didn’t drag me in. Olivia was giving them a statement about the guy who broke into her build this morning. They think it’s the same person who tossed this place overnight. I went to give her moral support.”
“Moral support?” He hates that smug raised brow she gives him that makes her look like a sulky thirteen-year-old again. “The police suggested you come down to give Olivia moral support? I suppose they didn’t ask you anything about your past?”
“Olivia asked me to come. And yes, they mentioned they learned Melanie was pregnant and they’re exhuming the body—”
Lindsey groans and flops onto the crackled leather chair.
“No more talking to the police without me, do you understand? We need to have a conversation with Lucía. I called her from the car, she’s on her way. She needs to talk to Liv, too. It’s going to take all of us working together to keep your heads above water.”
“I don’t—”
“Do you remember when Melanie disappeared?”
“Of course I do.”
“When you were suspect numero uno, we were inundated.”
“It wasn’t that bad.”
Lindsey stands, hands going to her hips in a move so reminiscent of their mother in moments of extreme unction that he fights back a laugh. “Park. Are you slipping into early dementia? You seem to have lost your memory. They interviewed me. They interviewed Dad, and Perry, and the local news heard about it and ran stories. The moment the media put you and your biological son together with Melanie’s death all those years ago, they will smell the blood in the water and attack. Trust me.”
“But I didn’t do anything.” He sounds weak, even to himself.
“Honey. The media doesn’t care. The cops don’t care. It’s a story. A juicy one. The suspect in a splashy murder is your biological kid. That in and of itself would be raw meat to the dogs. And there’s a bunch more biological kids you didn’t know about, which is another great angle. But now they’ve found Beverly Cooke dead in a lake, and another woman is missing. And apparently they’re talking about exhuming the body of the woman you dated in college who was murdered. Think, brother. It doesn’t take more than ten minutes to put you in proximity to another similar murder. You are on their radar. Maybe you thought it was moral support, but trust me, it was anything but. You’re a suspect. Again. We don’t even know that they’re telling the truth about the DNA.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong!” he roars at her, and she steps right into his space and yells back, enunciating every word in tight, clipped fury.
“They don’t care! Don’t you understand? They want to solve this case, and you’re in it up to your eyebrows, regardless of what you did or didn’t do. I refuse to let them railroad you—”