Birthright

time. He’s not going to publicize an adoption. It doesn’t suit his self-image. But he wants a child, and he’d be the type who’d want a son. A girl isn’t going to do. He’d want to know exactly who and where that child came from. He wouldn’t tolerate the rules they had back then of sealing records onbirth parents. And he’s looking around. Look at all these people who have children. Two, three, four kids. Much less worthy than he. Less financially secure, less important. Less.”
    “It fits.” Lana swiveled her chair around. “With what we know about him, it fits his profile.”
    “He’s been representing adoptive parents for years now. He knows the routine, he knows doctors, other lawyers, agencies. He socializes with them. People create their own tribes within tribes,” Jake continued. “They form circles with like minds, or with those who bring a knowledge or skill to the group. Using this system, he finds birth parents who may fit his criteria. He takes his time. Then with or without a private arrangement with those birth parents, he takes his son. I’ll bet my Waylon Jennings CD collection there’ll be no adoption petition or decree on Richard Carlyle filed in the courts, but that fake ones exist somewhere.”
    “Shortly after, he relocates to Houston. New city, new practice, new social group.”
    “And because it worked, because he got what he wanted the way he wanted, he saw it as a means to . . . What did Dorothy call it?” Doug asked Lana.
    “His mission, his profitable hobby.”
    “He saw it as his way to meet the needs of other worthy, childless couples. His way.” Doug nodded. “And to profit from it. That’s, ah, fetched.”
    “Fetched?” Callie repeated.
    “Not so much far-fetched. But pretty fetched.”
    “Cute. Fetched or not, it’s a reasonable supposition. Then you add that somewhere along the line Richard found out. It caused a rift between father and son. Marcus treated his mother shabbily, and perhaps because she didn’t give him a son the more traditional way, this increased or caused his infidelities.”
    “They didn’t divorce until he was twenty.” Jake tapped his fingers on the time line. “The year Dory was born.”
    “The marriage suited Carlyle. But now his son’s grown. And, possibly, it was during this time Richard discovered the truth. The family’s fractured. The marriage is over.”
    “And Carlyle’s had an illegitimate child with his secretary. That’d be a slap in the face for mother and son.” Now Doug picked up the coffeepot, set it down again. “It’s an interesting theory, but I don’t see how it helps locate Dory.”
    “There’s another layer.” Callie turned to the time line again. It all seemed so clear to her now. Just brush that last bit of dirt away and everything was right there. “Look at the dates again. The move from Boston to Seattle. About as far away as you can manage. Why? Because your secretary, who you’ve been intimate with, who knows your personal business, your criminal activities, who’s been part of both for years, has just told you she’s pregnant. But not with your child. With your son’s.”
    “Dorothy Spencer and Richard Carlyle?” Lana leaped up, hurried over to stand at the chart.
    “A young, impressionable boy—maybe one who’s just discovered he’s not who he thought he was. He’s shaken,” Callie surmised. “He’s vulnerable. And he’s angry. The older, attractive woman. If he knows his father’s been with her, it only adds to the pull. ‘I’ll show that bastard.’ Dorothy’s late twenties now, staring at thirty. She’s been working for—and sleeping with—Carlyle for a long time. Given him her first youth. Maybe he made promises, but even if he didn’t she’d be tired of being the other woman. The cliché. And getting nothing out of it. Here’s the son. Young, fresh. Another hook into Carlyle.”
    “If we assume she was sleeping with him since she was eighteen, nineteen,” Lana put in, “and there were no previous pregnancies, it might be Carlyle was sterile.”
    “Or they were very careful, and very lucky,” Jake said. “More logical to believe it was the younger Carlyle who impregnated her, than the older. He’s sixty and, according to known data and current supposition, had never before conceived a child.”
    “Carlyle wasn’t protecting his estranged, dying father,” Callie concluded. “He was protecting his daughter.”
    “The question was, where