Part 14

Paul and Quinn were having breakfast at Kelly's. Quinn had just gotten off work from the midnight shift. Paul was on his way in.

Alexis came in for a take-out cup of coffee, and saw Quinn as she began to walk out. She said hello, and was going to go on, when Quinn stood up and asked her if she would be able to sit with them for a minute.

"I have something I want to tell you about," Quinn explained.

"O.K.," Alexis said, putting her briefcase down on the chair next to Quinn.

"Sit there," Quinn said, "we'll give this to Paul," she took the briefcase and gave it to Paul to put on the chair next to him. "This is Paul Whitman. He's a psychiatrist at the hospital. Paul, this is Miss Davis, you remember me telling you about her."

"Sure," he said, reaching across the table to shake her hand. "My girlfriend Quinn here, she's a lovely young woman. But she can't resist the mystery of your young friend Smith in the hospital."

Alexis was curious now. She took a sip of coffee. "I'm grinding away at Zander's story," she said, "nothing really usable yet, though. But I intend to get to the bottom of it."

"I was just telling Paul about this," Quinn said, "I did find out something, only I can't be sure it really means anything, or if it's just a red herring. I was talking to him the other night. I don't know how, but somehow I ended up telling him half my autobiography. Before I knew it, he was asking the questions. Still, in the course of this conversation, I was talking about my grandparents, and I asked him about his, and he said he'd never met them."

Alexis drank some more coffee, taking this in.

"See, I know I'm lucky with my family all living nearby. My grandparents always lived in the same town with my folks and aunts and uncles, and I know that's not the case with everybody. Some people live far away from their family and see them only at reunions and on holidays, and I get that," she directed this at Paul. Alexis realized Paul had been arguing that not everyone's family was like her own.

"But," Quinn went on. "Not seeing them much is one thing. Never having met them is weird. One could have died, or even two, but not all four. And this remark seemed to go to great aunts and uncles, too. They can't all have died."

Paul turned to Alexis and said, "I thought maybe he was adopted. So he knows the biological ones are the ones you are looking for, and he doesn't know who they are anyway."

"That would make sense," Alexis answered. "but heck, why not say so? Wouldn't it get us off his back? But I thought of that too. Last night I specifically asked him that. He said no. I'm glad I ran into you. We can put things together. I got him to tell me something else - his parents are from a foreign country."

"That fits a little better," Paul said, looking at Quinn. "Doesn't it? Maybe they were too far away to visit?"

"No, I don't buy it," Quinn said. "How much do plane tickets cost? If one set, I could see that and a falling out, say the parent not speaking to his or her parents, but both of them?"

"Maybe their marriage was against the culture," Paul said. "Not arranged properly, or something. They fled for love!"

"Doesn't explain why their son won't talk to them or about them, though."

"There are some countries people can't go back to, and where people can't just leave from," Alexis said. "Like Iran, that's one. They could have fled Iran in 1979, come here, settled down, had kids. They can't go there again. I don't think just anybody can come out of there, either. There you have it, a kid who cannot meet his grandmother."

"See what's happening here?" Paul said. "He may want to keep it a secret, but he can't. A person just can't go around living like that. Somebody has to know who you are, where you come from. You'll go nuts. He ends up telling you something anyway. So keep at it, and you'll get more and more."

"This is right up your alley," Quinn said. "I wonder if there's some reason to have him referred to a psychiatrist."

"Oh, he'd never cooperate with a psychiatrist," Alexis said. "but you have a good point, Doctor. I think backing off from direct confrontation is a key. I looked in my old file, too, I have a possible old girlfriend. Now that we've had this conversation, I feel pretty confident she can give me another clue."

"Do you think the hospital even could get medical records from a country like that?" Quinn asked.

"It could be possible," Paul said. "I know records come in all the time from other countries. But we're talking Germany and England and Australia. The kiddies would have gone there to visit granny. So it looks like the Axis of Evil is it."

They were all silent a moment, drinking coffee, brain gears cranking this way and that.

"What about the witness protection program?" Paul said, as if his internal light bulb had just gone on. "What do the authorities do with medical records of people that go into it?"

"Yes! There's a thought," Alexis said. "Though I think he could just tell me that, but maybe they are not supposed to. Or maybe even it's the parents who disappeared under it."

"But wouldn't people's children go with them into that?" Quinn asked. ""I can't imagine anybody separating themselves totally from their children. Even their adult children."

"I don't have children," Alexis said. "But I'd take the risk, unless, of course, on second thought, you really thought that they were in your zone of danger and you had no other way. Still, one would think that in such a case the government would have put the children into the program on their own account."

"Maybe this program is more fictional than real," Paul laughed. "The more I think about the details, the more unworkable the whole thing seems to be."

"I can try to find out more about it," said Alexis. "You're right, though. How could it really work? Zander can't be in it, because he doesn't have a driver's license and a social security card, and goes to work under the table; now it's obvious why; to avoid using his own I.D. The feds would give him all that with the new I.D."

"For that matter, why not get a fake I.D.?" Paul asked. "There are people who do that. Isn't identify theft a big problem?"

"Yeah," Quinn said, laughing, "Everybody goes on about what a criminal Zander Smith is! So he has a conscience when it comes to identity theft?"

"I'll sell drugs to kids and commit assault, battery and mayhem," Paul said in a faked voice, as if he were imitating someone else, "and even disturb the peace every once in awhile, but I draw the line at stealing someone's identity."

Alexis couldn't help smiling. Quinn was bent over laughing.

"And I bet he didn't register for the draft, either," Paul added, grinning.

"Stop!" Quinn ordered him. "You're killing me."

"He's great," Alexis said to Quinn, "where did you find him?"

"At the hospital."

"Maybe I should spend more time there," Alexis said.

"You should!" Paul said. "Nothing wrong with another pretty face around."

"He really is great," Alexis said. "How can you stand it?"