Nancy Kress Read Online Free PDF Page A

Barbara tomorrow, not wait until Monday, find out what the current crisis was.
    But Sunday he had a casual, non-involving date. Monday turned out to be spent putting down brush fires. By the time he called his sister, it was too late.
     
    April 2013
    “The same clinic that did your sister did the little boy’s mother,” Jamal said, “the ChildGive IVF Institute in Croton-on-Hudson. It went out of business in January 2001. Started in May 1999. Eighteen months, and we’re looking at some very weird stuff, boss.”
    Keith nodded. He wasn’t going to tell Jamal yet again that Keith disliked being called the semi-mocking “boss.” Most investigators were good at one thing: leg work or computer hacking or underworld informants or turning a tiny site clue into an entire trail of reeking spores. Jamal Mahjoub did it all, or at least got it all done by somebody, and if he wanted to call Keith “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” he could. Jamal was small, with dark curly hair, glasses, and a face that looked about sixteen.
    “The clinic had four employees: a secretary, two nurses, and the doctor. The secretary and nurses check out, working types who just found other jobs when the clinic ‘went bankrupt.’ The doctor is something else. His name was Timothy—”
    “Was?” Keith interrupted.
    “He’s dead. Coming to that in a moment. Timothy Allen Miller. Born in 1970 and grew up in Siller, Ohio, a small town, mostly farming. Never fit in, the high school yearbook is full of little snide jokes about him. Valedictorian, went to Harvard, did brilliantly in premed but not popular there, either. Arrogant, but also weird in ways other arrogant pre-docs didn’t like. Full of conspiracy theories about everything, from the JFK assassination to secret Jewish banking cartels to some sort of black-Catholic alliance to overthrow the government.”
    “I can see why nobody liked him.”
    “Big time. He was brilliant at Harvard Med, intern and resident at Mass General, and then they didn’t want him on staff. Neither did anybody else.”
    Keith looked out the window. Ten floors below, two yellow cabs had run into each other on Madison. The drivers stood nose to nose, waving their fists.
    “So Miller joins a group practice, and that lasts two years. Then he opens up solo, and in a year he files for bankruptcy. He takes a job as a lab technician in Poughkeepsie.”
    “Quite a comedown,” Keith said.
    “And he felt it. Now Miller is bitter as well as arrogant. One of his coworkers said she thought he was the kind of guy who was someday going to come into work with an AK-47 and blow everybody away.”
    “But he doesn’t,” Keith said. You had to let Jamal tell it his own way, and he liked audience participation.
    “No. Instead, he channels all his weirdness into the Roswell thing. Aliens coming to Earth, all that.”
    Oh, God. Spare me the nuts. “Roswell is a long way from Poughkeepsie.”
    “Yeah. But Miller makes the trip, several times. He goes to meetings where UFO types huddle on the highway, waiting to be picked up. And then one night, he is.”
    Keith grimaced and Jamal laughed.
    “Well, all right, he says he is. Comes into work and says he has important work to do, aliens have anointed him, blah blah. That same coworker is so creeped out she decides to quit, but the boss saves her the trouble by firing Miller. Miller had been AWOL for a solid month, no word, no excuse.”
    “Can’t blame the boss,” Keith said, keeping up his end. His hands felt like ice. Sometime in Jamais rambling tale, this lunatic medico was going to connect with Lillie.
    “No. But Miller just laughs at being fired—my informant was standing right there—and he saunters out, cocky as spaniels. A month later he opens ChildGive in Croton-on-Hudson. Big glossy offices, state-of-the-art equipment, competent personnel.”
    “Where’d the money come from?” Keith asked.
    “Don’t know. I couldn’t find the trail. But he pays his people