She was close. She knew it. She backtracked to the tiny village of Capron. It was after four, dusk deepening into purple shadows, but she wasn’t ready for the trek back to Evanston.
She stopped at the Village Café, a diner that, happily, was still open. The place, small but tidy, gave off the scents of bacon, fried food, and onions. Overriding those smells was the aroma of freshly made coffee, and she ordered some from a round, pleasant woman. Seated at a table, Georgia checked the photos on her phone. In the eerie winter light, the location looked spooky yet nondescript—just snow, trees, and the expanse that was the driveway. She closed the camera app and was surprised to find she had a wireless signal, especially in the storm. She checked her email. Nothing important. And no word from Jimmy.
That was when it came to her. Zoya Tunick. Holy shit. Tunick was the name of the boy who’d died on the table while being operated on by Richard Lotwin. Was Zoya his mother? She Googled his name again; the same articles came up, but there was no mention of the mother’s first name. Still, how many Tunicks could there be in Northbrook?
Now it made sense. Zoya hadn’t filed a malpractice suit because she didn’t have to. The Russian Mafiya was known to exact vengeance of the eye-for-an-eye variety; they held a grudge for generations. She imagined how it could have happened: a couple of thugs visited Lotwin. Let him know that if he didn’t want his kids to end up like Antonin Tunick, he’d do what they wanted. Which was to deliver babies for the baby-breeding ring. And Zoya was a powerful part of the organization. Georgia wondered if that in some way made up for the death of her son. No. Unless the woman was an unfeeling bitch, how could it?
She was buoyed by the connection. She finally had a working hypothesis about the baby-breeding farm. Still, she needed proof. She checked the time; it was early. She went back online to try to suss out the farm’s owner. She wasn’t sure if Boone County’s property records were online, like Cook’s. She went to the Boone County gov site. The answer was maybe, if she had a pin number. But she didn’t.
She scanned the web for information about Capron. It was a tiny town, fewer than two thousand people. That was both good and bad. Good, because only a few people knew about the place; bad, because people in small towns all knew one another’s business. Unless that business was kept well out of view. Plus, she reminded herself, the population count was probably limited to the town, not necessarily the farmland surrounding it.
She mulled it over. Capron was small; it was unlikely to have any law enforcement of its own. It probably relied on the Boone County Sheriff’s Department, unlike Harvard, which was large enough to support its own department.
She sipped her coffee, thinking about the Harvard police and Jimmy and the day they’d met, or, to be accurate, met again. That had been a good day. A very good day. She checked her messages. She should have heard from him by now. They had a date. Was there a problem? Of course, now that the snow was flying, there was no way he would want to drive down, and she didn’t want him to. The irony was she was only twenty-five miles from Lake Geneva. If she drove over, she could surprise him. He could fill her in on Capron. Maybe they’d research the property records together. She smiled. Who was she kidding? Capron wasn’t even on the list of reasons she wanted to see him.