Free The Midwife Murders by James Patterson, Richard Dilallo Page A

sneaked from the fast-food restaurants—cold, chewy shish kebabs, Coca-Colas without fizz, hot dogs without buns.
    This happened every night of the week except Wednesday. Wednesday was delivery night. That night he would come screeching into the parking lot, she would jump into the Toyota, and then she would pick up the swaddled bundle on the back seat.
    The bundle always contained an infant. Sometimes there were two infants.
    The woman would take a stethoscope and examinationlight from her purse and carefully examine the babies. Then she would write careful notes.
    “Less than four pounds.”
    “Enlarged rear head.”
    “Jaundice.”
    “Atrial fibrillation.”
    But most often her notation was “Perfect.”
    These notes were attached to the swaddling cloth around each infant.
    Then the man and the woman and the baby, or babies, would travel along the back roads of northeastern New Jersey. Eventually the car brought them to the William T. Davis Wildlife Refuge on Staten Island. There they would meet a man and a woman driving a small white van. The back of this van was outfitted with emergency medical supplies and oxygen tanks.
    The people from the van took the infants, changed their diapers, powdered them, wrapped them again carefully, and read the doctor’s notes. Then the white van drove off.
    This ritual occurred every Wednesday evening for eight months until one night when the man pulled into the Molly Pitcher parking lot and said to the woman, “No more Trenton. We’ve been transferred.”
    “To where? What happened? Tell me!”
    He smiled. “They’re moving us to Manhattan.”
    She exclaimed in surprise.
    “Yep. Like they say in America, this is the big time, baby.”

CHAPTER 22
    “I WANT YOU TO take a look at CNN
and
NY1 online.” I am now practically screaming at Dr. Katz.
    He holds out his hand like a traffic cop. “Who the hell allowed you into my office?” he yells.
    I ignore the question. I yell just as loudly at the man: “Take a look at what’s going on in the news, Dr. Katz.”
    “I’ve already seen it, Ms. Ryuan. I don’t depend on you for my news. Now answer my question. How did you—”
    I continue to ignore him and begin to read out loud the report from the internet:
The very place that people go to get healed has turned into a place where people go to get kidnapped, even killed. Gramatan University Hospital is now being called the Hospital of Death. In the past forty-eight hours, three newborn infants have been kidnapped from the hospital’s maternity ward. What’s more, the mother of one of the kidnapped infants wasviciously attacked and left for dead in a basement storage room. CEO Dr. Barrett Katz issued a statement saying the hospital was cooperating fully with the FBI and NYPD. Chairperson of the hospital’s maternity division, Dr. Rudra Sarkar, was away from the hospital and unavailable for comment. Leon Blumenthal, the NYPD detective heading up this shocking criminal investigation, would say only that the inquiry was ongoing. Further—
    “Enough, Ms. Ryuan,” Katz says. “Are you here to tell me what I already know?”
    “No, I’m here to tell you that sooner, rather than later, we won’t have a functioning maternity ward, or more importantly, we won’t have a viable Midwifery Division. No pregnant woman in her right mind will want to come here to deliver.”
    Katz sits at his handsome steel-and-glass desk, more of a dining table than a piece of office furniture. He folds his hands, and it is obvious to me that he is struggling to stay calm.
    “The statements that we issued are completely accurate. There’s not much more we can do. You’ve seen the security. It’s like the Pentagon around here.”
    He could have chosen a better security comparison than the Pentagon—Fort Knox, maybe—but I decide to say nothing about that.
    I do still have a lot to say.
    “I think we could have twice as much security. I think we could have more cops. I think this Blumenthal