She resisted. Rather than cowering to avoid the cameras, she held her head high and walked with a slow gait that Frawley found impossible to quicken. He took a deep, irritated breath and fell in step with her pace, tugging at her arm every so often in an effort to make her appear unsteady. She seemed to sense his strategy and to counter each tactic he attempted to employ.
This was the day she had anticipated for so long. Anticipated, feared, and rehearsed for. She was not going to act the criminal's role.
A raven-haired woman shoved a microphone past the offic-ers while her partner pointed a glaring videocam at the doc-tor. Amidst the din of questions, hers rang through clearly. "How many babies did you steal?"
"Our only comment," Frawley said, "is that a complete in-vestigation is underw-"
"After performing three thousand six hundred eighteen preg-nancy terminations," Fletcher said in a powerful, level tone, "I managed to save one baby from death. I welcome being con-victed of such a crime."
That was enough for Frawley. With a subtle but firm tug at her arm, he caused her to stumble over her own feet. She re-covered, glared at him, and resumed her tall stride.
The cloud of reporters orbiting around Dr. Fletcher encoun-tered a choke point at the elevator. The police cleared out a car, and the four descended.
"I know," Fletcher said, "that it's in your interest to make me look bad before the press. Battery complaints go both ways, though. Don't set the grounds for a civil suit against you when all this is over." Frawley rubbed his nose and stared at the elevator door. "You're right. That was a lame trick. But don't you get your hopes up. You doctor types get so wrapped up in your experi-ments that you think the rest of the world will welcome you as a god floating down from Olympus. Don't count on it. You're a cold, calculating demon, and I'm personally going to see you raked over the coals for this." The doors parted before another swarm of reporters. The faces were familiar, if a bit flushed, from the third floor. They continued their questioning with labored breath. The entire knot of people moved outside.
"Were you driven to this by religious convictions?" shouted one voice.
"How much did the parents pay you?" hollered another.
"How do you justify breaking the law?"
"I broke no law," Fletcher said in a loud and level tone. "Ex-cept the unwritten one that thou shalt not act on conscience. I delib-"
Something hit the side of her head with stunning impact and exploded in a cloud of brown dust. She stared incredu-lously at the man who had thrown the dirt clod. A member of the picket line, he carried a sign that read Abortion Is Mur-der-Save the Future.
"
The attack, caught on video, played for the noon news view-ers.
Terence Johnson sat in his cluttered Long Beach apartment, watching with intense fascination. Surrounded by stacks of law books upon which rested empty fast-food containers from Popeye's, Del Taco, and Gourmet to Go, the twenty-six-year-old man observed the scene with sharp black eyes. His curly almost coal-black hair was longer than was currently fashion-able for his profession, and the cramped quarters of his Sev-enth Street lodgings gave lie to the canard that all lawyers made a fortune. As if any further proof were needed, he wore aging acid-wash jeans that had apparently seen more acid than wash. The T-shirt clinging to his trim frame bore the smiling face of Captain Midnight, urging everyone to drink their Ovaltine.
He scooped up another mouthful of yakisoba with chopsticks, set the nearly empty carton on his copy of Black's Law Dictio-nary, and concentrated on the woman's expression. He tried to read her personality from her body language and neurolinguistics.
He might as well have used her sun sign for all the informa-tion he was able to glean. He was intrigued, though. Enough to reach for his briefcase, shove a few notes into its crammed interior, slip on a reasonably clean, natural-hued knit sweater, and listen carefully.
The camera shifted to the reporter at the scene. "This bi-zarre story of medical experiments and stolen babies has only just begun to unfold. Dr. Fletcher will be interrogated further in the DA's office downtown. When further word develops on this astonishing-"
Johnson heard nothing more. He slammed the door run-ning and rushed to his battered white Volkswagen.
"
"You can't make any of the charges stick, Mr. Frawley." Dr. Fletcher addressed the DA in cool, precise tones. She was calm now, sitting in a comfortable leather French Provincial chair inside Frawley's well-appointed, wood-paneled downtown of-fice. Lawrence and Deyo sat in similar chairs off to the side. Dr. Cospe had elected to stay behind at the hospital, his stint as a member of the ad hoc subcommittee at an end.
The police officers, at a glance from Frawley, unshackled Fletcher and promptly retired to the outer room.
She spent ten minutes silently listening to what the DA had against her, then struck back.
"Any charge," she said, "related to kidnapping, child abuse, child endangerment, or indeed any charge that implies what I withdrew from Valerie Dalton was in any way human will di-rectly conflict with the Supreme Court's rulings on abortion. If a fetus is human enough that you can accuse me of kidnap-ping, then I accuse the hospital's other abortionists of murder in the first degree. A charge that others have brought with no results." She glanced at Dr. Lawrence for support; he merely stared ahead at Frawley.
Frawley glared back at Fletcher. "For criminal purposes, a fetus can be considered a human being. If you'd shot Ms. Dalton in the abdomen, wounding her and killing the fetus, I could easily charge you with murder."
Fletcher smiled a smile that failed to conceal her contempt. "The problem is that she asked me to remove the fetus. And it's alive. You can't have it both ways or you'll be playing right into the antiabortionists' hands. You can't arrest me for kid-napping someone I was legally permitted to kill." She drew her cigarette package and Zippo lighter from her lab coat.
Frawley cleared his throat. "There's no smoking in city build-ings." She grinned, lighting up. "If you really want to get coverage, add aggravated smoking to the charge of fetal kidnapping. The press loves little touches like-"
The sound of arguing voices drifted into the room. From outside the office a policeman thrust in his head to say, "Sorry, sir. There's a guy out here claims to be her lawyer." Terence Johnson peered inside, waved at Fletcher as if they were old army buddies, and nodded at the DA.
Evelyn looked back at him with a blank stare.
Frawley cleared his throat. "Is he?" he asked.
Tapping cigarette ash into an empty coffee cup, she smiled with wry anticipation. "He said he was, didn't he?"
"What's his name?" Frawley asked her.
"Terence Johnson," the lawyer spouted before Evelyn could react. He let himself in and dropped his briefcase beside an empty chair. "But everyone including Dr. Fletcher calls me Terry." He looked at the bemused doctor. "You really should give a guy a call. I had the toughest time finding you."
"I'll remember the next time I'm busted," she replied, sizing him up with cautious eyes. He looked to be fresh out of law school, full of energy and spirit. If he had legal skills to match his enthusiasm and inge-nuity, he might be worth retaining.
He pulled a canary-yellow notepad from his briefcase. "How much have you told them?" She reiterated the conversations nearly verbatim. He switched on a tape recorder and took simultaneous notes. Occasionally, he used his Pilot Razorpoint pen to brush a curly lock of black hair away from his eyes, back with the rest of his mop.