Keeping his amusement to himself, he emptied his suitcase, set out his toothbrush, and picked up the phone. Somewhat to his surprise, he got lucky with his first call. The hospital informed him that the intern who'd been named in Mrs. Pruitt's now defunct malpractice suit was having her day off. Alex worked a little magic on his laptop and, within minutes, had Dr. Alisha Kerry's home address.
"You want to call ahead?" Bryan asked. "Make sure she's there?"
Though they hadn't been here longer than half an hour, Bryan's half of the room already looked messy. Evidently as organized as he was going to get, Bryan parked himself on the bed a foot away from Alex. The distance was carefully calculated—familiar but not presumptuous, Alex considered the small open stretch of mattress, then smiled directly into Bryan's eyes until the other man flushed slightly.
The response inspired a pleasant heaviness in his groin. Yes, indeed, Bryan was on the menu for tonight.
"No calling ahead," Alex said. "She'll only avoid us if she gets a chance."
Alex was convinced he'd made the right decision when he saw the good doctor's home. It was a modest, single-level ranch, whose yard was overgrown with bear grass to the point where the clumps were swallowing a small birdbath. In Alex's experience, this was not the mark of someone who'd welcome uninvited visitors. The windows were dark, increasing the abandoned look, but an old blue Honda Civic sat in the cracked driveway.
It seemed Dr. Kerry hadn't upgraded her circumstances since her days as a broke intern.
"TV," Bryan said, pointing to a flicker on the front window.
"Oprah," Alex replied after glancing quickly at his watch.
They grinned at each other, realizing things were looking up. Oprah fans were favorite targets for interrogation. As long as you appealed to their emotions, you could almost always get them to talk.
They needed the advantage. When Bryan knocked and began to explain who they were, Dr. Alisha Kerry turned fury-red.
"That crazy bitch needs to let this drop!" she snapped—once she'd stolen enough breath back from her anger to speak.
Alex caught the door she was trying to slam in their faces. She was better looking and better kept than her surroundings might have led them to expect. Slim, thirty-ish, and tidy, she wore a pair of jeans and a crisp white T-shirt, which she filled out generously. Her dark brown hair was brushed back into a shining pony tail. Her eyes were blue and, beneath their glare, desperate for understanding. The minute Alex saw them, he knew the interview had a chance.
"Our job isn't telling our client what she wants to hear," he said, holding her gaze as steadily as he held the door. "Our job is telling her the truth. Frankly, we're concerned about her inability to accept Oscar as her son. For his sake, we'd like to settle this once and for all."
"Fuck," said Dr. Kerry, but it was a curse of resignation. She stepped back from the threshold to let them in. "I've told this story a thousand times. Why not a thousand and one?"
Bryan and Alex followed her into a darkened living room that smelled of unwashed dog and stale takeout. Two open cartons waited on the coffee table: rice and teriyaki steak. Dr. Kerry switched off Oprah, and they all sat down—Alex and Bryan on the old plaid couch and Dr. Kerry in a big armchair. She sat forward on its cushion, her body canted over her knees. Hollows deepened beneath her eyes as she played with her fingernails.
The controversy surrounding Oscar's birth seemed to have cast a long shadow.
"I was an intern," she began with a heavy sigh. "First year. Pediatrics. Oscar Pruitt was practically my first case. He had a heart defect, a murmur. It made him turn blue periodically. Hearts were my thing then, and, damn, I was sure the problem was serious. The attending surgeon, Dr. Lopez, was sure of it, too. He ordered an echo… an echocardiogram," she explained when Bryan made an inquiring sound. "Lopez told me to inform the mother. I assumed he meant for me to warn her that her kid might need surgery, or even die, so that's what I told her. I thought she had a right to know."
Alex turned his most soothing look into her defensive eyes. "Of course you did. I'm sure most mothers would want to be told."
"Damn right they would." Alisha Kerry stared at her nails again. "Lopez had no call to tear my head off the way he did, or to put that reprimand in my record. He was the one who didn't explain clearly. The thing was, when the tests came back, the baby's heart was clean. No murmur whatsoever, benign or otherwise. That's when Mrs. Pruitt started up her racket about the baby being switched. She said he didn't fed the same as when she'd held him for, like, two minutes after he was born.
"I swear to you, though, nobody could have taken him. Even if the DNA hadn't come up a match, he couldn't have been stolen. Those neonates aren't left alone. There's always someone watching them."
"And none of the nurses or other interns had a history of mental imbalance? Nothing you might have seen that someone else would miss?"
Bryan had asked the question, and Dr. Kerry shifted her gaze to him. Alex noticed she did this reluctantly. In the time he and Bryan had known each other, he'd never understood why women seemed to prefer him. To his mind, Bryan's roughness was more attractive—ironically, more masculine. On occasion, Alex had seen his partner respond to women just as he would himself: with automatic sexual speculation. How would this one look naked? What would she be like in bed? So Bryan wasn't giving off unavailable vibes; he was giving off vibes that said he'd be a challenge.
But it wasn't a challenge Dr. Kerry was rising to. She shrugged sardonically. "Every intern is imbalanced those first few years. Believe me, though, no one at Fairyville General was insane enough to snatch an infant. Shit, I can hardly take care of my dog. If you ask me, Mrs. Pruitt had a bout of postpartum depression that she hasn't gotten over yet."
Alex brought her attention back to him by the simple act of flipping a page in his notebook. "Did you notice anything odd? Anyone who might have spoken to Mrs. Pruitt? Either to witness her acting strangely, or maybe someone who could have given her the idea that her real son was gone?"
Dr. Kerry leaned back in the armchair, apparently not having thought of that. After a moment, she shook her head reluctantly. "It was a quiet night except for Mrs. Pruitt coming into the ER in early labor. FG isn't like a big city hospital. We had a patient die that night, but that was just old age. They'd transferred him the week before from a nursing home." She rubbed her lips, her eyes focused five years ago. "I think that lady who talks to ghosts was sitting with him, the one who's got a shop in town. We see her now and then, helping patients 'cross over.' " She made the quote marks with her fingers. "Honestly, though, I'm not sure that counts as odd in Fairyville."