The Baby Thief (A Liz Roberts Mystery) by Don Canaan

Author:Don Canaan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: medical, adoption, lawyer, adoptees, illegal adoption, obgyn, birth parent, physician patient, medical personnel, baby broker, adoptive parent, miscegnation
Publisher: Don Canaan

CHAPTER 14

Liz fumed all the way back to the police station and was in a foul mood for the rest of the day. She sat down with Sarge to bring him up to date on what she had found. She told him about Sarah Perkins and about her conversation with Dr. Goodman.

“She confessed, Sarge! She just confessed and said there were more. Can we get an indictment?”

“I don’t know, Roberts. It happened sixty-five years ago; the statute of limitations has probably run out. Plus you’ve got her age and her health. We can talk to the DA, but I wouldn’t count on him getting too excited about this. Maybe if we can come up with other victims. Any chance she’ll tell you who they are?”

“I doubt it,” Liz said with disgust. “She’s having too much fun yanking my chain. This is all a game to her.”

“She told you she’s dying… maybe she wants to clear her conscience.”

“Doesn’t look like she’s got much of a conscience to me,” Liz muttered. “But even if we can’t get an indictment, maybe I can at least find out who some of the babies were and try to find their birth parents. Do you think we can get a warrant for her medical records?”

“Probably not, unless we have specific names we are looking for. Judges don’t like opening up doctors’ confidential files just to let the police go fishing for information.”

“I can go back to the office manager and see if she’ll give me any names of ‘the girls’ who Goodman put up in those apartments. But then, she thinks the doctor is some kind of saint. Everyone does. They all talk about her charities and how many people she helped.” Liz shook her head. “I don’t know if people didn’t know what she was up to, or just didn’t care.”

“Maybe some of both,” Sarge told her.

She had other open cases that needed attention, but before she put this one aside for the afternoon, she put in a call to Linda Graly. She told her about Sarah Perkins and that she claimed to have had a baby in Dr. Ramsey’s office, delivered by Dr. Goodman, on January 27, 1946. There was silence and Liz began to wonder if the line had gone dead.

“Are you telling me that this woman is my mother,” Linda asked softly.

“I think so,” Liz told her. “You will probably want to get a DNA test to make sure, but her story seems to match up to the one your mother told you. Her name was Sarah Odem then, and she was fifteen years old.”

Linda’s voice choked with tears. “I… I didn’t really expect you to find her, certainly not so quickly. Thank you, Detective. Thank you so much.”

Liz gave Linda the phone number and address for Sarah and hung up the phone. That was one happy ending… or at least a satisfactory resolution. She wondered how many of the three hundred or so babies that Goodman sold knew the truth about their births and were trying to locate their birth parents.

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