Charise waved the phone in the air and said, “Still no answer, Mr. Cookson.”
Miles leaned in close to Gold, close enough for the doctor to feel his breath on his face. “You told me I had no idea what I was getting into, who I was dealing with. It’s time you explained what you meant by that.”
When Gold said nothing, Miles turned to Charise. “Back in your wrestling days, was there a favorite move you used?”
Charise thought for a moment. “We had something we called the tombstone piledriver. It was actually so dangerous we weren’t supposed to use it. You turn someone upside down, then drive his head into—”
“I think we get the idea,” Miles said. He turned his attention to Gold again and waited. Gold raised his head and looked into Miles’s eyes. There was the sense of a dam about to burst.
“Pritkin,” he said.
“Pritkin?” Miles said.
“Jeremy Pritkin.”
“The Jeremy Pritkin?”
Gold nodded. “It’s him.”
“What do you mean, ‘it’s him’? What’s ‘him’?” Miles was aghast. “Pritkin? You’re not serious.”
Gold’s head went up and down.
It all came out, in a rush. A man who hours earlier was ready to end his life evidently no longer felt a need to keep secrets.
Gold related how Jeremy believed he was a superhuman being with an extraordinary genetic profile, and he wanted his sperm implanted in women who were, essentially, unwitting test subjects. He wanted to try it with ten women, but one miscarried. Miles’s donations were discarded, but his name went on the files.
Then commercial DNA testing came along.
“It wasn’t enough that they die,” Gold said. “They had to be erased.”
“I set out to find children I thought were mine to help them, while their true biological father set out to destroy them.”
Miles had to get up and walk. He paced the room, went to the window, and looked out into a nearby wooded area.
“It’s unthinkable,” he said. “How could one person be that—”
Gold said, “He’s not who he appears to be. When you get a look behind the curtain, you see what he really is. He makes the devil look like Mr. Rogers.” He paused. “And that’s why I was on that bridge.”
Gold said to Charise, who was still holding Miles’s phone, “You still haven’t reached her, have you?”
Charise shook her head.
The doctor looked at Miles. “After you came to the storage locker I... I called him.”
“What did you say?” Miles asked.
“That you and Chloe were putting it together.”
“What are you saying?” Miles said. “You think he’s got her? You think he’s killed her?” He became unsteady on his feet, placing a hand on the back of a chair to steady himself.
Gold said, “I don’t know. I think he’d try to find out what she knows first. To find out if he’s vulnerable. Exposed.”
Dorian rushed to Miles’s side in case he lost his balance or collapsed, but he pushed her away. Dorian looked as though she’d been struck.
Miles said, “Where would she be? If he has Chloe where would it be?”
Gold said, “Probably at his place, in Manhattan. It’s massive. Two or three brownstones joined together. He could easily keep her under wraps there. He’s protected. He knows everyone. Cops, judges, politicians. No one’s going to go busting in on him unless they’re really sure he’s done something wrong. And even then, who knows? He’s had me in his pocket for two decades. God knows what he has on everyone else.”
“Are you saying if we call the police, he’ll be tipped off?”
The doctor shrugged. “Maybe. And you have to know, once he’s done with Chloe, he’ll be coming after you.”
Miles handed Gold’s phone back to him. “Call him,” he said.
“And say what?” he asked, his voice on the verge of squeaking.
Miles considered the question. “Tell him... no, first, find out if he has her. If he does... shit, let me think.” He walked away, started pacing again. “We have to find a way to stall. To buy some time.” He turned to Dorian and spoke to her for the first time since they’d all been in the room together. “Still nothing from Murkowski?”
“No,” said Dorian. “And if he’s to be believed, even she could be compromised. Or if not her, whoever she brings in on it.”
Miles put his hand to his forehead. “Jesus.”
Gold said, “I have an idea.”
Miles waited.
“I tell him, if he has her, I need... I need to get a DNA sample from her.”
“Why?” Miles asked.
“Because, because...” Gold struggled for a reason. “Because I need to compare her against some other adult children. That I may have made a mistake with the filing, there might have been more than nine women impregnated with his sperm. That he might have more children out there he needs to track down.”
Miles was skeptical. “Does that even make any sense? Why would you need her DNA? Wouldn’t a sample of his suffice? What about—”
“Shut up!” Gold said. “Just... shut up. It’s the best thing I can think of right now. I know the science better than he does. I might be able to bluff my way through.”
Miles looked like a man who had run out of options.
“Do it,” he said.
Gold entered a number on the phone and waited. Finally, he said, “It’s Martin. I need to speak to Jeremy.” He was put on hold. “Waiting,” he said, looking at Miles.
“Put it on speaker,” Miles said.
Gold tapped the screen, held the phone a few inches in front of his mouth. The wait went on for the better part of a minute before there was the sound of someone at the other end.
“Jeremy?”
“No,” a woman said. “Dr. Gold?”
“Yes. Who is this?”
“Roberta.”
“Roberta, I need to speak to Jeremy.”
“He’s busy,” Roberta said.
“It’s urgent.”
“What’s it concerning?”
“The Swanson girl.” He paused, and lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Is she there?”
“Why would you think that?”
Gold’s eyes danced while he tried to think of something, and Miles shuddered inwardly. Why would Gold think that? How would he have been tipped off?
Gold decided to go with a version of the truth, since it would sound the most credible. “Cookson called me. The girl’s disappeared. I’m just connecting the dots.”
“Suppose she were here,” Roberta said. “What’s that to you?”
“I wanted to discuss an issue with Jeremy.”
“Discuss it with me.”
Gold took a breath and said, “I need a DNA sample from her. I need to run a comparison between her profile and some others. It’s rather complicated.”
“You think I wouldn’t be able to understand it?” Roberta asked.
“No, no, not at all. But it makes more sense for me to explain it to Jeremy directly.”
There was silence at the other end. Charise and Miles exchanged glances, wondering if maybe the signal had been lost.
But then Roberta spoke.
“You’d have to come here to do this, of course?”
“Yes,” Gold said.
“When?”
“Tomorrow?”
Another moment of dead air. When Roberta came back on, she said, “That would be too late. I’m sorry, Dr. Gold, but we’re not going to be able to accommodate you on this.”
“But you see—”
“Goodbye,” Roberta said.
“Hello? Don’t hang up. Are you there?”
She was not.
“He’s got her,” Miles said.
Charise said, “I’ll bring the car around.”