“Park!” Olivia slaps a hand down on the table. They don’t talk about this. Not with anyone. This is their own crucible.
He glances over, seeking approval to continue. She shakes her head, teeth gritted. How dare you?
If they weren’t broken before, this…this is the last straw. She did not agree to reveal their problems. He’s supposed to be sticking with his past, damn him, not dragging her into it.
Park ducks his head in false apology.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Osley says with such compassion that she blinks back sudden tears.
“Thank you,” she forces out. “But this is irrelevant to the situation we are discussing.”
“It is, and it isn’t,” Moore says. “The thing is, we’ve identified a number of individuals who share significant DNA markers with our suspect. All with paternal matches to you, Mr. Bender. I’m sorry to be the bearer of complicated news, but you are the father of multiple children. And you’re without question the father of the suspect we’re seeking.”
Moore sips gently from her coffee, watching Park’s reaction over the edge of the cup.
Park fiddles with his napkin, and nods. “I figured that was the case. That’s what we wanted to tell you. That I donated sperm, years ago. To Winterborn Life Sciences. How many are there?”
Olivia can feel Osley studying her, waiting for her reaction, and tenses. This isn’t going to be good news.
Moore clears her throat and slaps a thick manila folder down on the table. “At last count? Twenty-eight.”
Park drops his cup on the table, coffee spreading everywhere, muddling the edges of the folder with wet brown. Olivia and Osley jump up, tossing down napkins to catch the spill. The contents of the file fall onto the floor, a sea of faces swirling across the hardwood. Olivia stoops to pick up the papers and catches a glimpse of one flame-haired girl who looks so much like Lindsey she wants to scream.
Moore takes the folder and pages from her with a gentle nod. Olivia holds on to one, fingers bent protectively around the edges, still staring at Park’s daughter. She sees a name and part of an address before the page is gently tugged from her hands.
“Twenty-eight?” Park says, voice laden with incredulity. “I have twenty-eight children? How is this even possible? Surely—but that’s completely unethical. There’s no way they—”
“It’s not a mistake,” Osley says. “There very easily could be more. Ethics and upsets aside, our job is pretty straightforward. We need to identify the suspect. Right now he’s just an anonymous marker on a spreadsheet. But he’s real, he exists, and we need to find him.”
“How are you going to do that?” Olivia asks, gathering up the remainder of the mess and throwing the napkins in the trash. She has gone totally numb.
“One kid at a time, Mrs. Bender. One kid at a time. One male kid, I should say. There’s nineteen of ’em.”
This detail. They need to know it, of course, but it feels as sharp as a slap.
“This seems pretty implausible,” Park says, regrouping. “I can’t imagine… Winterborn is a first-class outfit. They aren’t just some crappy sperm bank that anyone can get into. They have standards.”
Olivia wants to laugh. Park would toss that out there. He wouldn’t give his precious sperm to just anyone.
But Moore nods. “Not implausible. Unethical, without a doubt, on the part of the doctor who facilitated the matches. To confirm our findings, we have sent a warrant to a DNA database in question to access their information. These databases are very private, and it’s possible they will decline our request. We’re hopeful, though, that because of the nature of the situation, they will cooperate. There’s clearly a sense of urgency for us to catch this killer. We hope that’s enough to sway them.
“Now, if we can get some details from you? Mr. Bender, when did you donate to Winterborn?”
Park slumps back in the chair, clearly rocked. She can almost hear his thoughts. This isn’t possible. This isn’t happening.
Yeah, I feel you, buddy.
From one child to twenty-eight. From one son to nineteen. All of them his, and none of them hers.
What a nightmare.
Park is back in professor mode. “It was during graduate school. I was friends with a couple of guys at the med school. They said I fit the profile the doctors were looking for. Healthy, intelligent, you know. They said there were limits on how many times I could be used. They mentioned the ethics of it, right up front. I also signed the paperwork that I didn’t ever want to be contacted. I was fine helping out some families who couldn’t have kids of their own. It felt—”
“Noble?” Moore provides helpfully.
“I didn’t think of it like that. Maybe. But I was meant to stay anonymous. That was the deal.”
Olivia’s phone chimes discreetly. She glances down. Work beckons.
“Well, Mr. Bender. I don’t know that anonymous is in the cards anymore. One of the kids has been reaching out to the others to try and identify and contact their biological father. How you interact with her—with them—going forward is not our problem. We need to identify our suspect. It would be a big help, Mr. Bender, if you could give us all the information you have about Winterborn Life Sciences.”
14
THE HUSBAND
Olivia is up out of her chair before the echoes of the ding from her text are entirely gone.
“So sorry, I have to run. An emergency at one of my sites. Fill me in on the rest later, okay, honey?” She busses him briefly on the forehead and is out the door a moment later, leaving Park staring.
He listens to Olivia’s Jeep drive away, feeling very small, and very alone. Abandoned in his moment of need. Embarrassed in front of the cops who are already eyeing him like he’s a juicy steak and they haven’t eaten in weeks.
The ballerina especially. “So, Mr. Bender, if we could go into more detail about Winterborn—”
“Hold up,” he says, trying to get control of the conversation again. “My—she—this girl. Who is she? Where is she?”
“She’s here in Nashville,” Moore says, a little gentler now. “She and her mother are willing to meet you, if you want.”
“Of course I want to meet her. My God. What kind of man do you think I am?”
“No one’s saying you’re anything but an honorable guy, so don’t freak on us,” Osley says. “I know this is an extraordinary situation, and you’ve had some bad experiences with the police in the past. Just…hang in here with us for a bit, so we can get through the rest. Then we’ll give you her information, and you can do with it what you will.”
Park manages to get through the remainder of the interview with the detectives, giving them everything he can about the donation process he’d undertaken, the names of the doctors, assuming they were still there, of course, all these years later. The names of the friends who talked him into it, the interviews he went through, every single detail he can spit out.
Now, an hour later, Osley finally stands and stretches like a cat, complete with yawn. The ballerina cuts her eyes at her partner and sets a card and a piece of notebook paper down on the table. “We’ll do what we can to keep this quiet, Mr. Bender,” she promises, and the two leave.