[MD2, in the car, 8:30AM]

As Kate and September got into the car, they could just see Paul pulling out of the parking lot. Kate stared after him for a second before she started the engine and pulled out of the parking space.

"Quick," Kate said. "First answer that comes to mind, don’t think about it. Do we follow him?"

"Yes," September said. "But if he spots us.."

Kate grinned. "I said don’t think about it. I’ll stay back far enough that he won’t. And if we lose him, the only thing we’ve really lost is a bit of time."

September looked a bit concerned at the prospect, but nodded.

The first thing that became apparent was that Paul was not headed toward the field office. He was going in the opposite direction. The heavy morning traffic made it easier not to be noticed, but more difficult to keep track of him. Still, Kate managed to do the job until he turned off the road into the University of Miami campus. She was in the wrong lane to make the turn and too far back to see where he went once he was on the campus anyway.

"What do you suppose he’s doing there," September wondered.

"No way we’re going to find out right now," Kate answered. "It’d be like looking for a needle in a haystack."

*****

[U. of Miami Sciences Building, 8:50AM]

Dr. Anton Hirsh was in his office, doing the one thing he hated most, grading term papers. He was a scientist, a researcher, and if he did say so himself, a brilliant man who was being wasted in his latest position. Undergraduates, he often grumbled, were the scourge of society. There was no other single group so lacking in drive and originality. They were capable only of absorbing information and regurgitating it back, occasionally in its proper form, but too often half-digested and mangled.

With great relish, he picked up a thick red marker and drew a giant ‘F’ across the first page of one of the papers and went on to the next. Now this one might be interesting. In a good year, he might stumble across one or two students who showed some real potential.

His office door opened suddenly, and he looked up with a start.

"Been a long time, Tony," the visitor said.

Hirsh frowned at him for a moment before recognition kicked in. When it did, he leapt up, skirting the desk nimbly, and thrust a hand out.

"Paul? Paul Moran, you old son-of-a-gun! What are you doing in Miami?"

Paul shook his hand. "Business," he answered. "I need to talk to you. About the project."

A brief flash of fear showed in Hirsh’s eyes. "You weren’t followed?"

Paul shook his head. "I’m not stupid, Tony."

Hirsh nodded. "I didn’t mean to imply anything. Okay, we’ll talk. Not here, though. People busting in all the time." He quickly jotted something down on a scrap of paper and handed it, along with a key ring to Paul. "My address.. Wait for me there. I’ll be along in a little while."

*****

[Nunez home, 9:08AM]

Plans had changed slightly. It happened that Maria Nunez lived near the University, so rather than driving all the way back to the other side of Miami, Kate and September decided to talk to her first.

"Can you tell us what happened," September asked.

Maria rubbed her eyes and sighed. She was twenty-two, but didn’t look a day over eighteen, and the redness around her eyes from crying made her look even younger. "Yes. If it’ll help, I guess I can." She cast a glance at the older man who was lurking in the corner of the room, keeping an eye on things. "Dad, please? It will be easier if you.." She made a small motion toward the door.

"Is this necessary," he asked bitterly, but he left the room.

"What exactly do you need to know?"

"Whatever you can tell us," Kate said.

Maria sniffled and nodded. "Well, I was working late that night. I work at a law firm, and there was a big backlog of papers to be typed up, because one of the other girls was out with the flu. I got home after dark. Mom and Dad weren’t home."

"Would anyone have known that they weren’t going to be here," September asked.

Maria nodded. "Anyone who knows us. It was Thursday. Every Thursday they go out to play cards with friends. They have for years. He was here when I got home. Waiting for me."

"Did you get a good look at him."

Maria shook her head. "I didn’t have a chance to turn on the lights, but I could see him, a little bit. He was dark. Dark hair, dark eyes. He had a very thin face. I remember that."

"Can you guess his age?"

"He wasn’t old. Under thirty, I think, but it’s hard to say."

"Maria," Kate said, "we have to ask you this."

"About the baby," Maria said, nodding. She rested a hand on her stomach, where her pregnancy was not yet showing. "You want to know if I’m sure that.. that the pregnancy is a result of the rape."

"Yes."

"I have a boyfriend," Maria said. She smiled slightly and blushed. "We’re going to get married. He’s been so wonderful about all of this. We decided to wait until after the wedding. It was supposed to be the first time for both of us."

*****

[Dr. Hirsh’s home, 9:30AM]

Paul made himself at home. He warmed up a cup of coffee in the microwave and sat down in the doctor’s den with his feet up on the edge of the desk. He was feeling confident. As long as Kate didn’t figure out the truth, there was nothing to worry about. And even if Delta did stumble across some evidence of the project - the odds against that were, he figured, roughly one in a billion - there was no way she could make the connection.

If not for that Lewandowski woman, they wouldn’t even have had a place to start. She was a problem, that was for certain, but she couldn’t possibly know anything. Paul pulled a notebook out of his pocket and flipped through the pages until he found the one where he had jotted down the basics of that article.

"Jack Sparks," he muttered. He picked up a pen from the desk and circled the name. It suddenly struck him as strange that no one had said anything about talking to the reporter. That would be just Delta’s style, poking around in murky corners trying to root out clues. Probably just too many irons in the fire. No doubt they would get around to it sooner or later.

Paul tapped the pen against the reporter’s name. Reporters could be dangerous. They have a way of digging up all kinds of information they shouldn’t have. Not that anyone in their right mind would believe anything printed in The Tattler. But Kate might believe it, and the rest of Delta might, too. Jack Sparks might be a problem.

He heard the front door open. "In here, Tony," he called out.

Anton Hirsh appeared in the doorway. He looked composed, but Paul suspected that underneath that calm exterior, he was squirming something crazy. Hirsh was a bit of an alarmist, with paranoid tendencies. But he was also solid and reliable, and there are times when a touch of paranoia can be quite a handy thing.

"What’s going on," Hirsh asked.

"Are you still in contact with the head of the project?"

Hirsh shook his head. "Not in years, Paul. I follow the same rules you do. You know that."

"The time may have come to break those rules. Do you know how to contact him?"

"It might be possible. Why? Has something happened?"

"It appears that one of the test subjects is on the loose here in Miami. I got lucky and fell into the case, but if he’s not stopped, he’s going to start drawing attention none of us wants."

Hirsh collapsed into a chair. "Do you know who it is?"

Paul shook his head. "How would I know that? All the members of our group are accounted for, and unless I was kept out of the loop, none of knew the identities of any of the others."

"You’re right, of course. I’ll see what I can do, Paul."

"Good man," Paul said. He stood up and headed for the door. "I’ll be in touch."

*****

[Miami Field Office, 11:50AM]

"What do you mean, picked up," Kate exclaimed. "That fax was addressed to my attention, wasn’t it?"

The secretary turned an alarming shade of red and muttered a series of incomprehensible sounds. "I just thought," she managed at last, "well, since Agent Moran is heading the investigation.."

Kate took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Taking her frustrations out on the secretary sounded like a good idea, but it wouldn’t accomplish anything. It would only make it more difficult to get any cooperation later. Still, there was a little thing called procedure, and if this woman didn’t learn about it quickly, she wouldn’t last long in this job.

"I won’t make a big deal out of it this time, but if I receive anything else - faxes, messages, anything - through this office, you make damned sure that you give them to me and to no one else. Is that understood," Kate said.

The secretary looked grateful. "Yes, Ma’am."

"Good. When did he pick up the fax?"

"Just a little while ago. Twenty minutes or so. I think he’s still in the office."

Kate managed a thank-you that was anything but heart-felt and rejoined September in the corridor. "That son-of-a-b.. He already picked up the reports."

September shook her head. "Just great."

They started down the hallway toward the office. "I don’t imaging there would be anything there he would find troublesome," Kate said. "But I want you to look them over very carefully. If it looks like anything’s missing or that anything has been tampered with, let me know immediately."

"Of course." September frowned. "Don’t you want to see them first?"

Kate shook her head. "No. I’m formulating a theory, and they’d just distract me."

When they arrived at the office, Paul was on the phone and just writing down something in his notebook. Kate caught just a glimpse of it before the closed the book. She saw the name Jack and what appeared to be an address. Paul hung up the phone.

"These came in for you," he said. He held out a stack of papers. "Medical reports. I can’t make heads nor tails of any of it."

"Thank you," Kate said as she took the papers. She was surprised. She had expected to have to coerce them away from him. She passed the reports to September.

"I don’t know what you think you’re going to find in them," Paul added.

"You never know. Did you take care of whatever it was you had to do?"

Paul nodded. "Ready to go whenever you two are. Did you make any progress this morning?"

"We’ve talked to three of the women. Maria Nunez, Jenny Coates and Becky Williams," Kate said. "And we came away with no new information." That was the truth. They had put together a reasonable description of the rapist, but nothing that wasn’t in the original police reports. There was one more thing that she and September had agreed Paul should be let in on. It was just the sort of procedure he would find acceptable, and it was almost guaranteed to produce nothing he could use. "All three of them have tentatively agreed to work with a police sketch artist. Maybe we can get a good composite that all of the victims can agree on."

Paul considered that for a moment. "That’s not a bad idea," he said finally. That single phrase seemed also to contain the words, ‘I’m surprised you thought of it.’

On the way out of the office, when Paul’s back was turned, Kate turned to September and glanced at the reports. September made the OK sign.

*****

Before going to lunch, they stopped by the apartment of another of the rapist’s victims. Carrie Carter was not at home. When they checked with the building manager, they learned that she had moved out two weeks earlier and had not left a forwarding address. He thought she might have gone to Colorado, where her parents lived, but he wasn’t sure. He said that she’d had her baby a week before she moved out, and that since the baby came, she had been rather despondent.

*****

[Field Office, 1:30PM]

>The azoospermia remark was a decoy. September began to
>type: DR. QUINONES TOLD ME THAT SOMEONE ALREADY
>ORDERED DNA TESTS ON ONE OF THE BABIES.
>
>Kate mouthed, "Who?"
>
>NOT SURE. BUT THE TESTS SHOWED THAT THE MOTHER
>WAS NOT THE BIOLOGICAL MOTHER OF THE BABY
>
>Kate mouthed, "When will the other tests be ready?"
>
>HOPEFULLY BY TOMORROW. MY QUESTION IS WHO
>ORDERED THE TESTS? AND WHO ARE PERFORMING
>THESE IMPLANTING FERTILIZED CELL PROCEDURES ON
>THESE MEN?
>
>Kate mouthed," We've got to find that out fast. I wonder if the
>others found anything out."
>
>KATE WE HAVE TO GET RID OF PAUL SO THAT WE CAN
>CHECK OUT THE BABIES FOR OURSELVES.
>
>Kate mouthed, "Okay, I'll think of something."

Kate returned to her own desk and looked disinterestedly through a pile of papers. A couple of minutes later, she looked up casually.

"Paul," she asked. "Who is our contact on the Miami PD?"

"Why?"

"I was thinking we ought to set up a session with their sketch artist. No point wasting time." She watched out of the corner of her eye as a thoughtful look crossed Paul face. If he liked the idea, and he thought it might work, he would certainly want to take credit for it.

Paul nodded. "I’ll give him a call."

Kate looked at him, this time smiling inwardly while glaring at him. He was so predictable. "Whatever," she said. He was already reaching for the phone. "Look, we’re not accomplishing anything here. While you take care of that, why don’t Agent Foster and I.."

"Fine, go on. We’ll meet back here at five."

After the ladies left, a broad grin crossed Paul’s face. A composite sketch. Yes, that was just what he needed. Now, if Tony managed to get in touch with their mutual friend, everything could be taken care of very quickly and quietly.

*****

[in the car, 1:45PM]

"That was easier than I thought," September said as they drove toward Christine Raleigh’s home.

"He liked the idea. He’s just sorry that he didn’t come up with it himself," Kate answered. She smiled. "But if he can take credit for it, that’s close enough." She took out her cell phone and started dialing. "I want to get the team together before we meet with him," she explained to September while she waited for an answer.

[Woods.]

"Flynn, it’s Kate. Are you still at the library?"

[Just left there. I got the name of someone to take a look at that photograph. He specializes in debunking alleged UFO photos, but he might be our best bet if there’s anything to find. I’m on my way to his lab.]

"Good. We’re supposed to meet back at the field office at five. Can you meet us at four so we can go over what we’ve found?"

[Sure. Where?]

They were driving along a stretch of road that ran near the beach. It seemed as good a place as any. Kate gave him the address of the marina as they passed it. Next, she called Newt with the same message.

*****

[Raleigh home, 2:10PM]

Christine Raleigh answered the door with her baby in her arms. Two older children and a beagle were chasing each other through the house behind her. The beagle paused only for a second to glance at the strangers at the door, bark once, and then pranced off to rejoin the game.

"Mrs. Raleigh? I’m Agent Calloway, this is Agent Foster. FBI. Could we have a moment of your time?"

Christine held the baby protectively and gave them a suspicious look. "This isn’t a good time," she said, and started to close the door.

"Mrs. Raleigh? Is everything all right?"

"This is about the baby, isn’t it? About those tests?"

Kate and September exchanged a glance, and must have took sufficiently startled, because Christine relaxed slightly. "What tests are you talking about," September asked.

"A few days ago. Someone.. Please, um, come in."

Kate and September went into the house, but they were not invited any farther than the hallway.

"What do you want?"

"Well, right now we’d like to know what tests you’re talking about."

Christine cradled the baby and didn’t look at them. "Three days ago, some people turned up at my door. One of them was a nurse and the other said he was from the FBI. They had a warrant and they took blood samples from me and from the baby, but they wouldn’t tell me why. I mean, I had heard from my doctor that there was going to be a federal investigation of the rape, but I don’t understand why they wanted blood samples. What’s going on."

Three days ago, Kate thought. That was the same day Paul got the case. "Did you get the agent’s name," she asked.

"May, I think. William May, something like that."

"Well, we’ve never heard of him," Kate said. "And we don’t know why those tests were ordered. But we would like to ask you a few questions."


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