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November 10, 2011
Liz Roberts made her way from the bedroom, lured by the aroma coming from the kitchen. She found her husband making breakfast burritos and her mouth watered as she watched him load scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, and nopales into warm flour tortillas. He smiled and kissed her as he handed her a plate with two burritos. A cup of coffee was already sitting on the table. Steve brought his own plate over and sat next to her.
“Mmmm... .oh God,” she moaned, biting into a burrito.
“Yeah, that’s what you said last night,” Steve told her with a laugh.
“I would try to burst that ego of yours, Jacobs, but this burrito is just too damn good.”
After finishing their breakfast, Liz cleaned the kitchen while Steve finished getting ready for work... a tradeoff she was more than willing to make in appreciation for the delicious food. Before meeting Steve, she had survived mostly on takeout and frozen dinners.
“What’s your day look like,” she asked as they both prepared to leave. She was dressed in light gray pants and matching jacket over a long-sleeved fuchsia shirt. Her dark brown hair pulled back into a French braid, as it usually was while she was working. The jacket concealed her gun, the holster clipped to her belt
“Boring,” he answered. “I’ve got meetings all day.”
“Poor baby. At least you have dinner to look forward to tonight. Jack and Melinda are going to meet us at the restaurant at seven.”
“Don’t forget... tomorrow is dinner with my parents.”
“I won’t forget,” she told him with a grin. “You know I love your mother’s cooking almost as much as I love yours.”
He pushed her against the counter and kissed her, running his hands over her hips and the sides of her breasts. His eyes, several shades lighter than the dark brown of her own, looked at her with amusement. His dark blond hair was still slightly damp from his shower and he smelled of soap.
“I know you didn’t marry me for my culinary talents.”
Liz wrapped her arms around his waist as he deepened the kiss.
“Well,” she said breathlessly when it ended. “It’s not the only reason.”
Steve laughed and dropped a kiss on her nose before moving away and pulling his coat on over his black jeans, blue dress shirt, and blue and black striped tie. Liz reached for her own coat as well.
“It’s foggy this morning. Be careful out there, Jacobs. You and your... talents... are important to me.”
“Ditto, detective.”
Liz drove slowly through the thick Tule fog that hemmed in Fresno. She liked driving in the fog, although she understood all too well the dangers. It muffled sounds and softened the shapes of buildings and other vehicles, making it feel as if she was alone. Sometimes she and Steve spent a weekend with his parents and she loved going for early morning walks around the dairy, especially in the winter, with only the fuzzy shapes and muted lowing of the cows to keep her company.
She parked her car, a 1967 green Mustang that she loved, and walked into the police station. She sat through the morning briefing, taking notes, and then settled at her desk to finish some paperwork. She looked up when Sergeant Howe walked over.
“Hey Roberts, I gotta woman who wants to report a baby-selling ring.”
“Really.”
Liz looked at him skeptically. More than once he had played practical jokes on her. The sergeant was closing in on 60. He was a big man, well over six feet, with a gruff voice. His police uniform emphasized his broad shoulders and narrow waist. He was completely bald, making his hazel eyes stand out on his craggy face.
“Seriously. She says a doctor here in Fresno was selling babies.”
“And she knows this how?”
“She says she’s one of the babies that were sold.”
“She was sold as a baby?” She frowned. “When was this, exactly?”
“It was in 1946.”
She laughed and shook her head.
“Nice one, Sarge. And were her real parents aliens from another galaxy?”
“This is no joke. She says that the doctor who delivered her sold her to the couple she always thought were her parents.” Liz stared at him, looking for any sign that this was another practical joke. He looked serious. “She’s in Interview Two. Go get her story and see if you think there’s anything to it.”
Liz sighed and picked up her pen and notebook, shaking her head.
“Why do I get all the crackpots, Sarge?”
“Because you’re so good with them, Roberts,” he told her with a grin.
Two months earlier, Sarge had sent her out on what seemed like another crackpot case... a confused man found wandering around the Fresno Fair. In fact, the person who found him was her husband, Steve Jacobs, the manager of the fair. The man was finally identified as Armen Bedrosian, the wealthy owner of a car dealership in a town at the eastern fringe of Fresno County. He was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and unable to tell them how he got to the fair or who left him there. Liz tracked down Bedrosian’s daughter and got her into an interview room, where the woman confessed to Liz that not only had she deliberately abandoned her father, but she had murdered her mother. She claimed that she was molested by her father for years. The daughter was still in the county jail, awaiting trial.
The investigation had also led to the revelation that Bedrosian had another daughter, one he had not seen in thirty-five years. Neither sister knew about the existence of the other, nor did either express any interest in meeting. Bedrosian’s older daughter arrived from Maine and took over conservatorship of him, moving him back east. Before leaving, she admitted to Liz that her father had molested her, telling a story eerily similar to that of her sister’s.
Delving into the dysfunctional, tragic childhoods of the two sisters had caused Liz to take a closer look at her own childhood and the abusive mother from whom she had been estranged for years. She initiated contact with her mother, now in a nursing home and suffering from Parkinson’s disease. The last few months had not been a picnic, but Liz was able to visit her mother now. She was trying to let go of the past, to forgive and move on.
Liz opened the door to Interview Room Two. It was a small room with a table in the middle, chairs on either side. There was no observation window in this room, as there were in the interrogation room. The walls were pale blue, maybe to make the room seem warm and friendly, as opposed to the institutional green of the interrogation rooms.
She found a smartly dressed woman standing next to the table. She was a large woman and her blue skirt and matching jacket flattered her figure. Her eyes were green and her hair the soft silver color Liz’s own mother coveted, complaining that her own hair was just “drab gray.”
“I’m Detective Roberts,” Liz said, stepping into the room and extending her hand. “Mrs... ?” She realized Sarge had not given her the name of the woman.
“Graly... Linda Graly,” the woman said, shaking Liz’s hand.
“Please have a seat, Mrs. Graly.” They sat in chairs facing one another across the table. Liz opened her notebook and asked, “Sergeant Howe says you want to report a baby selling ring?”
“Well, I don’t know about a ‘ring.’ But there was at least one person involved... the doctor who delivered me.”
“You believe you were sold as a baby?”
“Yes, I was. Before my mother died last month, she told me the whole story. She wasn’t able to get pregnant, so my father paid $5,000 for me.”
“Why didn’t your parents adopt legally?”
“My mother said that they tried, but my father had health problems.”
“What kind of health problems?”
“It was his heart,” Linda told her. “He’d had problems with it since he was a little boy. He did get sick pretty often when I was growing up, but he lived to see his grandchildren.”
“OK, so your parents paid this doctor for an illegal adoption.” Liz paused and looked across the table at Linda. “How old are you, Mrs. Graly?”
“I’m 65.”
“And what is it that you want to do?”
“I want to know who my parents... my birth parents... really were. I want to know where I came from.”
“Why now?”
“Don’t you see, Detective? I’ve lived my whole life thinking I knew all those things. Suddenly, not only are the parents I loved gone, but I learn that I wasn’t even related to them. That even the stories about the night I was born were lies.”
“You mean... they didn’t even tell you that you were adopted?”
“No.”
“Wow,” Liz said softly. “I’m very sorry you have to go through this, Mrs. Graly. But why don’t you just petition the court for your birth certificate?”
“That’s just it... there is no sealed birth certificate, no adoption records. I’ve searched, my lawyer has searched. The only birth certificate is the one listing my parents... my adoptive parents. The doctor who delivered me, and sold me, put their names on the birth certificate, instead of my birth mother’s.”
Liz blew out a breath. “Well... is it possible your mother was... wrong? What did she die of?”
“Cancer... and no, it’s not possible that my mother was wrong.”
“Maybe the pain or the medications or the disease itself caused her to... .”
“I had a DNA test done,” Linda said quietly. “She was not my mother... she was not related to me.”
She pulled an envelope out of her purse and handed it to Liz. Liz, frowning in concentration, opened it and pulled out two documents. The first was the results of the DNA test, showing that Linda Graly and her mother, Lucille Thomas, were not related. The second was her birth certificate. Finally she sat back and studied Linda silently as she mulled over the information.
“I have to be honest here, Mrs. Graly. There probably isn’t much we can do at this point. Your parents are dea... gone. It’s likely that this doctor is, too.”
“No, she isn’t,” Linda told her excitedly. “She’s still alive.” She pointed to the doctor’s name on the birth certificate. “Dr. Ellen Goodman is alive and in a nursing home here in Fresno.”
“Which one?”
“Flor Rosada.”
“That pink monstrosity?”
“Yes, that’s the one. She’s a resident there. I went to see her.”
“You did? What happened?”
“She denied everything. She said that she never sold any babies.”
Liz shrugged. “Well, what else could she say? Look, I don’t want to get your hopes up. The chances that I can find out what happened or who your birth parents are... it’s pretty slim. I mean, the DNA... that could mean that there was a mix-up in the hospital... you know, a switched at birth thing.”
“No.” Linda shook her head. “I wasn’t born in a hospital. I was born in a doctor’s office.”
“OK, OK. I’m not saying I don’t believe you. But I just don’t think that after all this time, with at least some of the people involved being deceased, that I'll be able to give you the answers you're looking for. I’ll go and talk to this doctor... ” She paused and looked at the birth certificate again. “Dr. Goodman. And if necessary, I’ll see if I can subpoena her records... .if they’re still around. At the very least, with your permission, I should be able to get your records and your mother’s.” She held Linda’s gaze. “But you have to understand that this may not lead anywhere.”
Linda nodded eagerly. “I do, Detective Roberts, I do. I’ll be glad for any information you can find out.”
“And the brass may not let me spend much time on it, anyway. A 65 year old case of a black market baby broker is going to be a tough one to get an indictment on. Especially since the doctor must be... what? In her nineties?”
“I understand.”
“Tell me exactly what your mother told you before she died. How did they even know about this doctor?”
“She said that they had tried for years and she hadn’t been able to get pregnant. So they looked into adoption and found out that they didn’t qualify because of Dad’s heart condition. Then one day in the beauty shop, another woman told Mom about a doctor who had helped a couple she knew to adopt a baby privately.”
“I don’t suppose she gave you the name of the woman... or the other couple?”
Linda shook her head. “No, it was one of those ‘friend of a friend of a friend’ things. She didn’t even know the name of the woman who told her about it. Anyway, the doctor was Dr. Goodman. She was working for another doctor back then... ’Old Doc Ramsey,’ my mother said. My parents made an appointment to see her and explained how much they wanted a baby and why they couldn’t adopt through the county. She said she might be able to help them. Mom said that Doc Ramsey had a lot of poor women as patients and Dr. Goodman told my parents that sometimes teenagers would come to her, pregnant and scared, and sometimes she could help them place their babies with a family. She told them that she couldn’t guarantee anything, but she would let them know if any girls came to her, wanting to put their babies up for a adoption.
“A few months later she called and said she had found one. A few months after that, I was born. Mom said that Dr. Goodman called them in the middle of the night and said their baby was there and Dad should come and get her. Dad went to Doc Ramsey’s office and Dr. Goodman came out with this baby, wrapped in a pink blanket.” Linda paused and looked at Liz. “That baby was me. Dad gave Dr. Goodman $5,000 in cash and she handed the baby to him. He took me home. She said they were tempted to call her and try for another baby later on, but they were just so grateful to have me, that they never did go through with it.”
“Five thousand dollars was a lot of money back then.”
“My parents had money,” Linda said with a shrug. “Mom said that Dr. Goodman told them it was for living and medical expenses for the girl and for legal fees.”
“Looks like there weren’t any legal fees, after all,” Liz said. “Did they ever meet the girl?”
“No, they never saw her and had no idea who she was or where she was from. All Dr. Goodman would tell them was that she was healthy and there were no ‘genetic deficiencies’ with either the mother or the father.”
“Did she give you any other information about the doctor?”
“No. She was so weak by then, and the main focus of her story was me and how they got me. I didn’t push her for more.”
“Well then,” Liz said, standing up. “I’ll see what I can find.”
“Thank you, Detective,” Linda said, also standing up and shaking Liz’s hand warmly. “You have no idea how much I appreciate this.”
“Well, let’s see what I can find before you thank me. I’m afraid it may not be what you are hoping for.”