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CHapter 059

The warehousewas located near the airport in Medan It had a skylight, so the lighting in the rooe appeared healthy enough, bright-eyed and alert He seemed to have recovered completely from the darts

But Gorevitch paced back and forth, intensely frustrated, glancing at his watch On the table nearby, his video ca out of it Gorevitch would have taken it apart to dry it, but he lacked the tools He lackedhe lacked

Off to one side, Zanger, the network representative, said, "What are you going to do now?"

"We&039;re waiting for another bloody ca Malay er now?"

"They said within the hour, sir"

Gorevitch snorted "They said that two hours ago"

"Yes, sir But the plane has left Bekasi and is on its way to us"

Bekasi was on the north coast of Java Eight hundred miles away "And the camera is on the plane?"

"I believe so, yes"

Gorevitch paced, avoiding Zanger&039;s accusatory stare It was all a cole, Gorevitch had worked to resuscitate the ape for alns of life Then he had struggled to bind the aniain - not too much this time - and then oing into adrenaline shock while Gorevitch brought hi toith an airport

The orang survived the journey without incident, ending up in the warehouse, where he cursed like a Dutch sailor Gorevitch notified Zanger, who ier arrived, the ape had developed laryngitis, and no longer spoke, except for a raspy whisper

"What the hell good is that?" Zanger said "You can&039;t hear him"

"It won&039;t matter," Gorevitch said "We&039;ll tape him and then dub in his voice later You know, lip-synch him"

"You&039;ll dub in his voice?"

"Nobody will know"

"Are you out of your o over this video with sophisticated equipht," Gorevitch said, "then we&039;ll wait until he gets better"

Zanger didn&039;t like that, either "He sounds quite ill Did he catch a cold somewhere?"

"Possible," Gorevitch said In fact, he was al the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation It was a mild cold for Gorevitch, but appeared to be serious for the orang, as now bent over in spas

"He needs a vet"

"Can&039;t," Gorevitch said "He&039;s a protected anier said "And if you&039;re not careful, you&039;ll kill hi He&039;ll recover"

And, indeed, the following day, the ape was talking again, but coughing spasobs Gorevitch decided he&039;d better filet his equipment from the car, stumbled, and dropped the camera in a muddy ditch Cracked the case open All this not ten feet from the warehouse door

And of course in the entire city of Medan, they did not seem to be able to lay their hands on a decent video camera So they had had to fly one in fro for the cahed and spat at thee, shaking his head "Christ, what a cock-up"

And once again Gorevitch turned to the Malay kid and said, "How ed

And inside the cage, the orang coughed and swore

CHapter 060

Georgia Bellaran a swift examination The room was a mess, of course Crumbs in the creases of the rumpled bedcovers, scratched CDs on the floor, knocked-over Coke cans beneath the bed, along with a dirty hairbrush, a curling iron, and an eia pulled open the drawers of the bedside table, revealing a clutter of chewing-gum wrappers, balled-up underwear, breath mints, mascara, photos from last year&039;s proue andPeople And a pack of cigarettes, which didn&039;t h the all the way to the back; then the closet, which took her quite a while A jumble of shoes and sneakers at the bottom The cabinet under the bathroo to explain the bruises

Of course, she thought, there was hardly any purpose to putting a hamper in the room, since Jennifer just dropped her clothes all over the bathrooia Bellar about it That hen she noticed the streaks on the tile floor of the bathroom Rubber streaks Faint In parallel

She knehat had caused those streaks: a stepladder

Looking up at the ceiling she saw a panel that provided an entrance to the attic There were set a stepladder

She pushed the panel aside, and needles and syringes tuht She reached up into the attic space, feeling around Her hand touched a stack of cardboard tubes, like toothpaste She brought them out; they all bore s

What was her daughter doing?

She decided not to call her husband; he would get too upset Instead, she took out her cell phone and dialed the school

CHapter 061

In theChicago offices of Dr Martin Bennett, the interco, but Dr Bennett paid no attention

The biopsy report orse than he had expected, e of the paper, wondering hoould tell his patient

Martin Bennett was fifty-five; he had been a practicing internist for nearly a third of a century, and had delivered bad news to ot easier Especially if they were young, with young children He glanced at the pictures of his sons on his desk They were both in college now Tad was a senior at Stanford; Bill was at Columbia And Bill was premed

A knock on the door and his nurse, Beverly, stuck her head in "I&039; the intercoht it was i to think how to put it" He stood up behind the desk "I&039;ll see Andrea now"

Beverly shook her head "Andrea hasn&039;t arrived," she said "I&039; about the other woman"

"What other woman?"

Beverly slipped into the office and closed the door behind her She lowered her voice "Your daughter," she said

"What are you talking about? I don&039;t have a daughter"

"Well, there&039;s a young wohter"

"That&039;s ilanced at a note card "Her name is Murphy She lives in Seattle Her ht and she has a toddler with her, irl"

"Murphy? Seattle?" Bennett was thinking back "Twenty-eight, you say? No, no Ie, and even in medical school But he&039;d o, and since then the only times he had been unfaithful had been at medical conferences True, that was at least twice a year, in Canc��n, in Switzerland, somewhere exotic But he&039;d only started that about ten, fifteen years ago He just didn&039;t think it was possible he&039;d have a child that old

Beverly said, "I guess you never know for sureWill you see her?"

"No"

"I&039;ll tell her," Beverly said She dropped her voice to a whisper "But we don&039;t want hera scene in front of the patients She seeht be a little, uh, unstable And if she&039;s not your daughter, ht in private"

Bennett nodded slowly He dropped back into his chair "Okay," he said "Show her in"

"Big surprise, huh?"The wo a child in her ar jeans and a T-shirt, grunge clothes Her baby&039;s face was dirty, dripping snot "Sorry I didn&039;t dress for the occasion, but you kno it is"

Bennett stood behind his desk "Please come in, Miss, uh"

"Murphy Elizabeth Murphy" She nodded to the baby "This is Bess"

"I&039;m Dr Bennett" He waved her to the seat on the other side of the desk He looked at her closely as she sat down He saw no resehtest He, hiht She was olive-complexioned, rail-thin, brittle, tense

"Yeah, I know," she said "You&039;re thinking I don&039;t look anything like you But with ht, you can see the fa down, "but to be frank, I don&039;t see it"

"That&039;s okay," she said, shrugging "I figure itup at your office like this"

"It&039;s certainly a surprise"

"I wanted to call ahead and warn you, but then I decided I should just come In case you refused to see me"

"I see Miss Murphy, what hter?"

"Oh, I&039;ht There&039;s no question about it" She was speaking with an uncanny confidence

Bennett said, "Your mother says she knows h of relief "Then I&039;ht to the point You did your residency in Dallas At Southern Memorial"

He frowned "Yes"

"All the residents had their blood typed, in case they were needed as eo" He was thinking back About thirty years, now

"Yeah, well They kept the blood, Dad"

Again, he heard that conviction in her voice "Meaning what?"

She shifted in her seat "You want to hold your granddaughter?"

"Not at the ave a crooked sht a doctor would be ot more sympathetic people at the methadone clinic in Bellevue"

"Miss Murphy," he said, "let s, and I had this beautiful daughter, I wanted to randparents And I wanted to finally meet you"

It was time, Bennett decided, to cut this short He stood up "Miss Murphy, you realize that I can have genetic testing done, and it will show - "

"Yes," she said "I realize that" She tossed a folded sheet of paper onto his desk He opened it slowly It was a report froraphs He felt dizzy

"It says you are definitely my father," she said "One chance in four billion that you are not They tested ainst your stored blood"

"This is crazy," he said, dropping back in his chair

"I thought you would congratulate ure it out My o; she was one to medical school in St Louis "But she doesn&039;t know me?"

"She had artificial insemination from an anonyured the donor must have been a medical student," she continued, "because she went to the clinic at the medical school And they had their own sperm bank Medical students donated sperht?"

"Yes Twenty-five dollars"

"There you go Good pocket money in those days And you could do it, what, once a week? Go in there and pop off?"