Albuquerque School of Medical Genetics laboratory, Albuquerque New Mexico
It was 5AM and Dr Rachel Bernstein had worked through the night first culturing - then analyzing the results of the testing done on the two chorionic villus biopsies done on Liz Parker. The DNA of the chorionic villus is identical to that of the fetus that is attached to it. Pluripotential stem cells can be cultured from cord blood at the time of delivery, but the chorionic villus biopsy provides these same cells for testing many months earlier. The initial chromosomal testing had been perfectly normal, but it was the defect found in the same gene locus in both of the specimens that was intriguing enough to keep a PhD in her mid-50s up all night doing her own labwork.
Rachel had never lost the love of discovery, and what she'd discovered on these two specimens was intriguing indeed, and might explain why concern had been raised that these two pregnancies were at risk for serious problems in adulthood. Specimen 'A' and specimen 'b' were taken from the same subject - and they were dizygotic or fraternal twins.
Specimen 'A' had normal chromosomal number and conformation, 22 pairs of autosomal chromosomes, one 'x' chromosome, and one 'y' chromosome. That is, that pregnancy was male.
Specimen 'B' had normal chromosomal number and conformation, 22 pairs of autosomal chromosomes, and two 'x' chromosomes. That pregnancy was female.
At that point in testing, there had been nothing out of the ordinary except for the pregnancy being twins, and even that was not greatly unusual. Fraternal twins make up almost 2% of the population.
But it was the chemical and enzyme testing of the resultant cell cultures that had been such a surprise to Dr. Bernstein. Not one but both of the specimens had produced cultures with a never-before-seen enzymatic quirk. And since the trait wasn't present in the DNA of the mother at all, this appeared to be not only a paternally derived defect, but quite likely a dominant one as well. That meant that the two fetuses growing down south in Roswell were likely to be just like their daddy and their offspring would likely have the same defect - assuming, of course, that the young lady carried through with the pregnancies.
But now that she knew the facts, Rachel was trying to put together her recommendations. It would be the mother's decision to carry the fetuses to term - or not - but Rachel Bernstein was weighing the pros and cons herself, knowing she'd be asked to predict just what the life of the two fetuses who shared this DNA would be like. They were - certainly - defective. But would it be a defect that was important? Either to the mother... or two the potential children themselves? It wasn't her decision to make, but if it was ... well, Rachel didn't think it would have stopped her from carrying those twins to term - not that she was still in the baby-making business. She'd given THAT up almost thirty years ago, and their youngest had long-since graduated from college.
Rachel looked at her wristwatch and sighed.
There was reasonable time to mull over how to break this to the girl involved. She wouldn't call this Liz Parker until 7AM. A mother of twins didn't need to be awakened at 5AM. But she knew the girl was anxious - frightened half to death was how Linda Huntington had described it. So she wouldn't wait too long. Besides, she was getting too old to pull all-nighters in the lab. By 8AM she planned on being in bed and sound asleep her self.
Decisions AUwA (Mature) 12/28/10 [WIP]
Moderators: Anniepoo98, ISLANDGIRL5, truelovepooh, Forum Moderators
Re: Decisions AUwA (Mature) 11/13/10
Back at the pod chamber, Alex wasn't waiting nearly as impatiently as he might have been under other circumstances to find out what would happen when the xenocomputer finally got done with it's reboot. It had to be a hellaciously complicated program to take that long, but if it was truly an AI - that is, an artificial intelligence - that was being reconstructed, it WOULD be a very complex program. It was truly - a groundbreaking moment in the field of Terran computer science.
But as fascinating as that might have been under other circumstances, the fact that he knew her secret and hadn't rejected her, as incredible as that latter concept seemed to the young man, seemed to have a very warming effect on the young lady that most of the guys at school still called the 'Ice Princess.' That was proving to be more than distracting.
The problem was, he really did love the girl, and this seemed all too much like dealing with a young lady -totally human or not - who was somewhat impaired by her upwelling of emotion and not really responsible for her actions. Alex didn't want her to do something while caught up in the emotions of the moment that they might both regret under less - well amazing might be the best term - circumstances.
Currently he was sitting on a rock and she was sitting in his lap - their lips tightly locked together and her tongue occasionally sneaking between his lips to tease his tongue. He tried again - not very hard perhaps - to explain to her that they ought to take things a little more slowly but the words of caution were somehow changed into a combination moan and sigh as they tried to emerge from his lips.
'Fortunately, there is no real surface in this place that would enable us to get horizontal,' he thought to himself, remembering the depth of the dust on the floor and the sparse furnishings. Or at least he thought he had that thought to himself. He discovered differently when she pushed herself away from him slightly and smiled as she stared into his eyes and he heard her thoughts in his mind.
'I'm not sure if that's fortunate or not, actually, Alex,' she 'said' through the connection. 'If that thing over there,' she thought, nodding to the rebooting screen, '...winds up being some sort of doomsday device, we may just have to improvise... If not..... well I can wait if you can, I guess...'
Yep, whatever angst was about to go on up at the Parker ranch, Alex and Isabel were definitely missing it, or perhaps more correctly, they weren't going to be a part of it. The young man slowly got down on one knee - not letting go of her hand and looked up at her, looking like he was gathering his courage for something.
"Isabel, I don't want an answer right now - it's only fair to give you time to think it over - but, well would you marry me? Not today, but someday I mean?"
The lips closed back over his and her thoughts poured through the connection: 'I was sort of hoping you would ask...'
Back at the Parker ranch, Diane was just getting to the back door which was hidden by the bulk of the old ranch house from the observer on the ridge line.
She had taken almost forty-five minutes of walking to get there - taking advantage of all the cover she could find to conceal herself from view from the ridge line, but she'd finally arrived at her goal.
'So do I just barge in, or knock on the door?' she asked herself.
New Mexico's breaking and entering statute is a type of statutory burglary. It requires no intent to commit a crime upon entering, only the breaking and entering need be shown. The doctrine of "breaking," didn't even necessarily mean actual breaking. If she were to fraudulently enter without permission of the owner - like lying to Jeff Parker to gain entry - it would have the same effect. Just barging in the door - assuming it was open - was still criminal trespass, but at least a misdemeanor and not a felony. In theory though, Liz Parker was a co-owner since it was held in trust for her as well as her father. If Liz told her she could stay she could legally stay - no matter what Jeff Parker said.
Oh hell, Diane,' she told herself finally,'...Max is your kid even if he has made a horrible mistake... committed a horrible crime, you need to do what you can for him ... and for Liz Parker. Kick the damn door in, if you have to....
Liz hadn't slept much, worried about the outcome of the testing on the twins. That's how she thought of the pregnancy now - 'the twins,' and she honestly didn't know if she'd be able to bring herself to abort one of them them even if the news from Doctor Bernstein was as bad as Max had feared.
Her father - she knew - was almost as upset as she was, but it seemed to be about more than just the pregnancy. He was still angry - she figured - over whoever it was that the sheriff's office had caught. That was understandable, she guessed, but in the grand scheme of things - danger past was danger forgotten to her. She had the rest of her life ... the rest of three lives now - to deal with.
He was at the stove - distracting himself from trying to come up with a breakfast for his daughter. Liz had pretty much gotten over the morning sickness, and though her body had barely started to show the pregnancy - and then only if you were already aware of it beforehand - but apparently the metabolic demands of the pregnancy were starting to be reflected in her appetite. She swallowed a prenatal vitamin and watched him start some pancakes, trying to let her appetite distract her from her fear about the results of the testing. She needn't have worried. She was almost immediately distracted by the sudden opening of the back door.
Jeff Parker looked up from the range at the sound of the back door being opened. What he saw - Diane Evans standing there - was the very last thing in the world that he wanted to see. Liz was frightened and confused enough with everything that was happening to her. The last thing in the world Liz needed right now was Diane Evans getting her worked up and trying to play on her emotions to help her get her criminal son off and put Liz at risk again.
"Mrs. Evans. You aren't welcome here," said Jeff, "... I want you to get off this property immediately."
"Please," said Diane, "... I just need to talk to you for a minute, Liz..."
"You need to leave her alone...," started Jeff, only to be cut off by his daughter.
"Daddy...., don't speak to her like that. She is my lawyer...."
"And she has a conflict of interest that - if she were any sort of an HONORABLE person - would lead her to disqualify herself immediately and have nothing to do with you."
"Daddy! Don't talk to her like that...," shouted Liz.
"I didn't come here to cause trouble between you and your father, Liz" said Diane. And he's right. Max admitted to me that he was the one that ... that raped you. But he swears that he wasn't the one who tried to kill you - that THAT person is still out there somewhere."
"Max raped....? He is the one who did this....?" screamed Jeff Parker.
"Max thinks he raped me....?"asked Liz in disbelief. "... but that's just .... so wrong. He can't actually believe that's what happened, can he? Omigawd...., what have I done?"
Just that quickly everything that Diane thought she knew started to totally unravel....
But as fascinating as that might have been under other circumstances, the fact that he knew her secret and hadn't rejected her, as incredible as that latter concept seemed to the young man, seemed to have a very warming effect on the young lady that most of the guys at school still called the 'Ice Princess.' That was proving to be more than distracting.
The problem was, he really did love the girl, and this seemed all too much like dealing with a young lady -totally human or not - who was somewhat impaired by her upwelling of emotion and not really responsible for her actions. Alex didn't want her to do something while caught up in the emotions of the moment that they might both regret under less - well amazing might be the best term - circumstances.
Currently he was sitting on a rock and she was sitting in his lap - their lips tightly locked together and her tongue occasionally sneaking between his lips to tease his tongue. He tried again - not very hard perhaps - to explain to her that they ought to take things a little more slowly but the words of caution were somehow changed into a combination moan and sigh as they tried to emerge from his lips.
'Fortunately, there is no real surface in this place that would enable us to get horizontal,' he thought to himself, remembering the depth of the dust on the floor and the sparse furnishings. Or at least he thought he had that thought to himself. He discovered differently when she pushed herself away from him slightly and smiled as she stared into his eyes and he heard her thoughts in his mind.
'I'm not sure if that's fortunate or not, actually, Alex,' she 'said' through the connection. 'If that thing over there,' she thought, nodding to the rebooting screen, '...winds up being some sort of doomsday device, we may just have to improvise... If not..... well I can wait if you can, I guess...'
Yep, whatever angst was about to go on up at the Parker ranch, Alex and Isabel were definitely missing it, or perhaps more correctly, they weren't going to be a part of it. The young man slowly got down on one knee - not letting go of her hand and looked up at her, looking like he was gathering his courage for something.
"Isabel, I don't want an answer right now - it's only fair to give you time to think it over - but, well would you marry me? Not today, but someday I mean?"
The lips closed back over his and her thoughts poured through the connection: 'I was sort of hoping you would ask...'
Back at the Parker ranch, Diane was just getting to the back door which was hidden by the bulk of the old ranch house from the observer on the ridge line.
She had taken almost forty-five minutes of walking to get there - taking advantage of all the cover she could find to conceal herself from view from the ridge line, but she'd finally arrived at her goal.
'So do I just barge in, or knock on the door?' she asked herself.
New Mexico's breaking and entering statute is a type of statutory burglary. It requires no intent to commit a crime upon entering, only the breaking and entering need be shown. The doctrine of "breaking," didn't even necessarily mean actual breaking. If she were to fraudulently enter without permission of the owner - like lying to Jeff Parker to gain entry - it would have the same effect. Just barging in the door - assuming it was open - was still criminal trespass, but at least a misdemeanor and not a felony. In theory though, Liz Parker was a co-owner since it was held in trust for her as well as her father. If Liz told her she could stay she could legally stay - no matter what Jeff Parker said.
Oh hell, Diane,' she told herself finally,'...Max is your kid even if he has made a horrible mistake... committed a horrible crime, you need to do what you can for him ... and for Liz Parker. Kick the damn door in, if you have to....
Liz hadn't slept much, worried about the outcome of the testing on the twins. That's how she thought of the pregnancy now - 'the twins,' and she honestly didn't know if she'd be able to bring herself to abort one of them them even if the news from Doctor Bernstein was as bad as Max had feared.
Her father - she knew - was almost as upset as she was, but it seemed to be about more than just the pregnancy. He was still angry - she figured - over whoever it was that the sheriff's office had caught. That was understandable, she guessed, but in the grand scheme of things - danger past was danger forgotten to her. She had the rest of her life ... the rest of three lives now - to deal with.
He was at the stove - distracting himself from trying to come up with a breakfast for his daughter. Liz had pretty much gotten over the morning sickness, and though her body had barely started to show the pregnancy - and then only if you were already aware of it beforehand - but apparently the metabolic demands of the pregnancy were starting to be reflected in her appetite. She swallowed a prenatal vitamin and watched him start some pancakes, trying to let her appetite distract her from her fear about the results of the testing. She needn't have worried. She was almost immediately distracted by the sudden opening of the back door.
Jeff Parker looked up from the range at the sound of the back door being opened. What he saw - Diane Evans standing there - was the very last thing in the world that he wanted to see. Liz was frightened and confused enough with everything that was happening to her. The last thing in the world Liz needed right now was Diane Evans getting her worked up and trying to play on her emotions to help her get her criminal son off and put Liz at risk again.
"Mrs. Evans. You aren't welcome here," said Jeff, "... I want you to get off this property immediately."
"Please," said Diane, "... I just need to talk to you for a minute, Liz..."
"You need to leave her alone...," started Jeff, only to be cut off by his daughter.
"Daddy...., don't speak to her like that. She is my lawyer...."
"And she has a conflict of interest that - if she were any sort of an HONORABLE person - would lead her to disqualify herself immediately and have nothing to do with you."
"Daddy! Don't talk to her like that...," shouted Liz.
"I didn't come here to cause trouble between you and your father, Liz" said Diane. And he's right. Max admitted to me that he was the one that ... that raped you. But he swears that he wasn't the one who tried to kill you - that THAT person is still out there somewhere."
"Max raped....? He is the one who did this....?" screamed Jeff Parker.
"Max thinks he raped me....?"asked Liz in disbelief. "... but that's just .... so wrong. He can't actually believe that's what happened, can he? Omigawd...., what have I done?"
Just that quickly everything that Diane thought she knew started to totally unravel....
Re: Decisions AUwA (Mature) 11/13/10
"I'm not just sure when I fell in love with Max," said Liz, knowing even as she said it that it was a lie. They wouldn't believe the truth - she scarcely believed it herself. In fact she knew the exact moment she'd fallen in love with him - the moment the wide-eyed apprehensive young third grader had stepped off that bus and their eyes had met.
Oh, it hadn't been a romantic love back then and certainly not sexual. It was scarcely sexual now, excepting one half-drunken mistake made on some gym floor mat that had ruined any chance she might of had of really finding happiness with him. But even so, she would always remember that first moment of seeing him - wanting so much for him to be her friend - feeling like it was just her destiny to be with him always. She shook her head slowly still not really understanding how things could have gone so badly wrong.
"I always felt there was something special between us even when we were elementary school classmates. By the time we were lab partners in junior high... I don't know. Young girls have their fantasies. I guess I thought I was the princess and he was the prince that - someday - I'd live happily ever after with. It was dumb ... I know ... What kid decides in junior high what her destiny is? But I was happy just to be his lab partner - and he seemed happy too.
"But by the time we got to high school, so many of the other girls were dating ... or even more. Max was my lab partner...and my friend... and probably that should have been enough. I hoped maybe he just wasn't ready for boy-girl stuff yet our freshman year. By last year...well, I thought maybe he didn't really care. I thought I had to know ... one way or another ... I had to know. It was like being so close to him - needing him so much - and not having him need me the same way- like that was driving me insane. It was like Max not wanting me - like that - was ruining my plan ... ruining my destiny.
"I shouldn't have pushed him ... but I did. I told him I wanted us to start dating... that I wanted us to go to dances and stuff like the other couples did... that I wanted... commitment. I had no right to do that ... to push him like that ... and I didn't understand then what he was afraid of ... what if I'd have been more understanding and less demanding he might have actually told me. But no... I was little Miss gotta-have-a-plan, and Max wasn't going along with MY plan for MY life, so I lashed out at him. I hurt him and I enjoyed seeing his pain... making him hurt like I hurt ... and if I hadn't been the stupidest person in the world I'd have realized that doing that wouldn't have caused him any pain at all if he hadn't really cared...."
The tears welled up in Diane's eyes and she blinked them away. She remembered those days ... the darkness that had come into the soul of her son... the pain. It was the same pain she saw reflected in the tearful young girl before her. "We all make mistakes sometimes, Liz....," she said.
"Not like this one," she sobbed, "...you don't TRY to hurt someone you love. My God," said Liz, shaking her head and blinking away the tears, "... and he thought HE was the monster..."
Oh, it hadn't been a romantic love back then and certainly not sexual. It was scarcely sexual now, excepting one half-drunken mistake made on some gym floor mat that had ruined any chance she might of had of really finding happiness with him. But even so, she would always remember that first moment of seeing him - wanting so much for him to be her friend - feeling like it was just her destiny to be with him always. She shook her head slowly still not really understanding how things could have gone so badly wrong.
"I always felt there was something special between us even when we were elementary school classmates. By the time we were lab partners in junior high... I don't know. Young girls have their fantasies. I guess I thought I was the princess and he was the prince that - someday - I'd live happily ever after with. It was dumb ... I know ... What kid decides in junior high what her destiny is? But I was happy just to be his lab partner - and he seemed happy too.
"But by the time we got to high school, so many of the other girls were dating ... or even more. Max was my lab partner...and my friend... and probably that should have been enough. I hoped maybe he just wasn't ready for boy-girl stuff yet our freshman year. By last year...well, I thought maybe he didn't really care. I thought I had to know ... one way or another ... I had to know. It was like being so close to him - needing him so much - and not having him need me the same way- like that was driving me insane. It was like Max not wanting me - like that - was ruining my plan ... ruining my destiny.
"I shouldn't have pushed him ... but I did. I told him I wanted us to start dating... that I wanted us to go to dances and stuff like the other couples did... that I wanted... commitment. I had no right to do that ... to push him like that ... and I didn't understand then what he was afraid of ... what if I'd have been more understanding and less demanding he might have actually told me. But no... I was little Miss gotta-have-a-plan, and Max wasn't going along with MY plan for MY life, so I lashed out at him. I hurt him and I enjoyed seeing his pain... making him hurt like I hurt ... and if I hadn't been the stupidest person in the world I'd have realized that doing that wouldn't have caused him any pain at all if he hadn't really cared...."
The tears welled up in Diane's eyes and she blinked them away. She remembered those days ... the darkness that had come into the soul of her son... the pain. It was the same pain she saw reflected in the tearful young girl before her. "We all make mistakes sometimes, Liz....," she said.
"Not like this one," she sobbed, "...you don't TRY to hurt someone you love. My God," said Liz, shaking her head and blinking away the tears, "... and he thought HE was the monster..."
Re: Decisions AUwA (Mature) 11/14/10
She was his daughter and he was hard-wired to go to her aid. Jeff pulled her into a hug and clung to Liz - just wanting to reassure her. He felt the sobs go through her, each one tearing at his soul. He felt another presence and looked beside him where he saw a tearful Diane Evans running her hand through Liz's hair and trying to comfort her - just as Nancy would have done had she been here. He remembered that time - the darkness and bitterness that had crept in to her soul at the end of last year - the depression that had affected her all summer. He'd had no idea she felt that strongly about the Evans boy.
"Mrs. Evans ... Diane ... is right dear. We all make mistakes. Even though your teachers may have called you 'the perfect Miss Parker,' it never was completely true. Everyone makes mistakes - it isn't just you."
Liz pushed herself back and wiped some tears off her cheeks, shaking her head gently. "Not like THIS mistake," she said as she looked up into Diane's eyes. "Whoever said 'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned' certainly had ME pegged, but I swear ... I swear to God that before you came here I had no idea that Max thought that HE raped ME."
"But he swore to me...," started Diane.
"Uh-uh. I was there. Trust me, I know. But how could I be such an idiot not to make sure he knew...."
"You mean... it was consensual?" asked Diane.
"Hardly. Now that I think of it, I'm not sure that Max even knew what we ... mostly me ... were doing."
"But... how is that possible," said Jeff. He hadn't meant it to come out so judgmental and he winced internally when he saw his daughter look at him guiltily. "Liz, it's OK. Your mom and I are always going to love you, but I simply don't understand."
Liz sat down on one of the kitchen chairs and looked at her father and Diane, and started to talk.
"I told you that I was trying to punish him. I knew he wanted to be lab partners again, and purposely chose someone else just to hurt him. I hadn't really wanted to go to the football initiation but once I got there I thought that - well - I guess I thought that it was another way to show everyone - including myself - that I really didn't need Max. I knew there was alcohol in the punch - I didn't care. I was going to show everyone - especially myself - that I didn't need Max. I didn't accidentally get drunk - I planned on getting drunk," said Liz. Then she shook her head and sighed, "But then when everything started to go wrong - when I started to worry about what might happen to Kyle, who did I go to for help? Max, of course. Good old Mr. Reliable, Max."
"I don't understand?" said Jeff, "Max was at the party?"
"No, Max was at the school - working on his public service project, but I knew he'd let me in - even help me if I needed help. I knew that even though I'd treated him like crap, Max still wouldn't let me down. What I didn't realize was that I'd still act like a bitch to him when I did see him. Despite that, he did exactly what I would have known he was going to do - if I hadn't been too drunk to think."
"Liz, what did he do to you? You don't have to be ashamed - he was stronger, and you were impaired. It wasn't your fault."
Liz shook her head angrily. "You don't understand, Daddy. It WASN'T Max doing anything wrong - it was me. What Max did that pissed me off was just be Max - try to help. I was too drunk to safely do the lab work. Even measuring reagents into the machine was beyond me. Max did it for me - accompanying it by unwanted advice - like telling me I had no business driving in that condition. The fact that he was right and was being civil to me despite me treating him like dirt all semester somehow just got me madder. I remember striking out at him - tossing the alcohol drink they were giving to Kyle into his face. The next thing I remember he was even drunker than I was."
"Max got drunk? How is that possible?" asked Diane,".. I mean if it just splashed in his face?"
Liz shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe there were drugs in the drink too...whatever did it Max started staggering away ... like he didn't know what he was doing. It took me awhile to realize he was in trouble but ... I couldn't just finish and go back to the party and leave him like that ... I mean, I guess I couldn't help caring about him, even if he wasn't all that interested in me. I followed him into the gym ... by the trail of clothes he left behind. I found him almost passed out on a wrestling mat in the gym,...." Liz looked guiltily at both her father and Diane and seemed to chew for awhile on her lower lip, before continuing. "I don't know what I was thinking - maybe I wasn't thinking at all. I'd had ... fantasies... about Max, ever since ninth grade... sexual fantasies. It wasn't right - I'm not sure he even knew who I was - or even what was happening. But I ... initiated ... sex with Max and eventually his body responded.
I didn't think about it being my fertile period, but even if I had I'm not sure I would have stopped myself. I guess I just never believed in all the years that we were friends that we wouldn't always be together, and when he made it clear he wasn't interested in that sort of a relationship ... I just don't know. Maybe at some level I figured that that night would be the only part of Max's future that I would ever have.
Maybe even if I'd known I was going to get pregnant, I'd have done it anyway. But Diane... You have to believe me ... I didn't realize he actually thought he'd forced me. I'd have never let him think that if I'd known."
"You left him like that? Passed out on the mat? You didn't even talk - try to work out your problems" asked Diane.
"I left him because I had to. When we were done I grabbed my clothes and got back to the lab. The incubation time was up on the colorimeter. Max had seemed to be waking up - I knew he'd be alright. I really did want to talk, but once I saw what the test showed.... The alcohol concentration was going to be lethal for Kyle. If I had stayed and tried to work something out Kyle would have died.
So I drove off - too drunk to drive and too scared that Kyle would die to not drive. I got back to the house - got Kyle loaded in to the car somehow. The Deputy stopped us on the way to the hospital. By the time I got out of jail, I knew Max would be gone."
"But surely you talked to him about it...," said Diane.
Liz shook her head..
"I didn't think there was anything to talk about. He'd made it plain that he wasn't interested in me - and I'd basically raped him. It never occurred to me that he was so intoxicated himself he would actually think HE was the one who had forced me."
"But surely," Diane insisted, "... once he knew that you were carrying his child. Surely then the two of you talked over what you would do about the pregnancy..."
"No. Max showed up ... insisted that I get an abortion," said Liz, moving her hand to her lower abdomen without even thinking about it.
"Max INSISTED you get an abortion?" said Diane, her face clouding over with surprise ... and anger.
"It wasn't like that. He begged me to get an abortion. He even told me why eventually. Max has a secret - one that he has kept all of his life."
"I've been there his entire life - at least as much of it as he remembers. I think I'd know any secrets he had."
"That's not true. He knows more than he's told you about ... about where he came from and about at least one of his biological parents..."
"He knows where he came from.....?" Diane sat on the chair and the world seemed to spin around her. Max had never been good at lying. Somehow she'd always known - ever since that first day - that there was something he hadn't shared with her. She wanted to deny it - that Max would lie to her all these years - but her lawyers brain and mothers heart both knew that Liz was telling the truth.
"Mrs. Evans ... Diane ... is right dear. We all make mistakes. Even though your teachers may have called you 'the perfect Miss Parker,' it never was completely true. Everyone makes mistakes - it isn't just you."
Liz pushed herself back and wiped some tears off her cheeks, shaking her head gently. "Not like THIS mistake," she said as she looked up into Diane's eyes. "Whoever said 'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned' certainly had ME pegged, but I swear ... I swear to God that before you came here I had no idea that Max thought that HE raped ME."
"But he swore to me...," started Diane.
"Uh-uh. I was there. Trust me, I know. But how could I be such an idiot not to make sure he knew...."
"You mean... it was consensual?" asked Diane.
"Hardly. Now that I think of it, I'm not sure that Max even knew what we ... mostly me ... were doing."
"But... how is that possible," said Jeff. He hadn't meant it to come out so judgmental and he winced internally when he saw his daughter look at him guiltily. "Liz, it's OK. Your mom and I are always going to love you, but I simply don't understand."
Liz sat down on one of the kitchen chairs and looked at her father and Diane, and started to talk.
"I told you that I was trying to punish him. I knew he wanted to be lab partners again, and purposely chose someone else just to hurt him. I hadn't really wanted to go to the football initiation but once I got there I thought that - well - I guess I thought that it was another way to show everyone - including myself - that I really didn't need Max. I knew there was alcohol in the punch - I didn't care. I was going to show everyone - especially myself - that I didn't need Max. I didn't accidentally get drunk - I planned on getting drunk," said Liz. Then she shook her head and sighed, "But then when everything started to go wrong - when I started to worry about what might happen to Kyle, who did I go to for help? Max, of course. Good old Mr. Reliable, Max."
"I don't understand?" said Jeff, "Max was at the party?"
"No, Max was at the school - working on his public service project, but I knew he'd let me in - even help me if I needed help. I knew that even though I'd treated him like crap, Max still wouldn't let me down. What I didn't realize was that I'd still act like a bitch to him when I did see him. Despite that, he did exactly what I would have known he was going to do - if I hadn't been too drunk to think."
"Liz, what did he do to you? You don't have to be ashamed - he was stronger, and you were impaired. It wasn't your fault."
Liz shook her head angrily. "You don't understand, Daddy. It WASN'T Max doing anything wrong - it was me. What Max did that pissed me off was just be Max - try to help. I was too drunk to safely do the lab work. Even measuring reagents into the machine was beyond me. Max did it for me - accompanying it by unwanted advice - like telling me I had no business driving in that condition. The fact that he was right and was being civil to me despite me treating him like dirt all semester somehow just got me madder. I remember striking out at him - tossing the alcohol drink they were giving to Kyle into his face. The next thing I remember he was even drunker than I was."
"Max got drunk? How is that possible?" asked Diane,".. I mean if it just splashed in his face?"
Liz shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe there were drugs in the drink too...whatever did it Max started staggering away ... like he didn't know what he was doing. It took me awhile to realize he was in trouble but ... I couldn't just finish and go back to the party and leave him like that ... I mean, I guess I couldn't help caring about him, even if he wasn't all that interested in me. I followed him into the gym ... by the trail of clothes he left behind. I found him almost passed out on a wrestling mat in the gym,...." Liz looked guiltily at both her father and Diane and seemed to chew for awhile on her lower lip, before continuing. "I don't know what I was thinking - maybe I wasn't thinking at all. I'd had ... fantasies... about Max, ever since ninth grade... sexual fantasies. It wasn't right - I'm not sure he even knew who I was - or even what was happening. But I ... initiated ... sex with Max and eventually his body responded.
I didn't think about it being my fertile period, but even if I had I'm not sure I would have stopped myself. I guess I just never believed in all the years that we were friends that we wouldn't always be together, and when he made it clear he wasn't interested in that sort of a relationship ... I just don't know. Maybe at some level I figured that that night would be the only part of Max's future that I would ever have.
Maybe even if I'd known I was going to get pregnant, I'd have done it anyway. But Diane... You have to believe me ... I didn't realize he actually thought he'd forced me. I'd have never let him think that if I'd known."
"You left him like that? Passed out on the mat? You didn't even talk - try to work out your problems" asked Diane.
"I left him because I had to. When we were done I grabbed my clothes and got back to the lab. The incubation time was up on the colorimeter. Max had seemed to be waking up - I knew he'd be alright. I really did want to talk, but once I saw what the test showed.... The alcohol concentration was going to be lethal for Kyle. If I had stayed and tried to work something out Kyle would have died.
So I drove off - too drunk to drive and too scared that Kyle would die to not drive. I got back to the house - got Kyle loaded in to the car somehow. The Deputy stopped us on the way to the hospital. By the time I got out of jail, I knew Max would be gone."
"But surely you talked to him about it...," said Diane.
Liz shook her head..
"I didn't think there was anything to talk about. He'd made it plain that he wasn't interested in me - and I'd basically raped him. It never occurred to me that he was so intoxicated himself he would actually think HE was the one who had forced me."
"But surely," Diane insisted, "... once he knew that you were carrying his child. Surely then the two of you talked over what you would do about the pregnancy..."
"No. Max showed up ... insisted that I get an abortion," said Liz, moving her hand to her lower abdomen without even thinking about it.
"Max INSISTED you get an abortion?" said Diane, her face clouding over with surprise ... and anger.
"It wasn't like that. He begged me to get an abortion. He even told me why eventually. Max has a secret - one that he has kept all of his life."
"I've been there his entire life - at least as much of it as he remembers. I think I'd know any secrets he had."
"That's not true. He knows more than he's told you about ... about where he came from and about at least one of his biological parents..."
"He knows where he came from.....?" Diane sat on the chair and the world seemed to spin around her. Max had never been good at lying. Somehow she'd always known - ever since that first day - that there was something he hadn't shared with her. She wanted to deny it - that Max would lie to her all these years - but her lawyers brain and mothers heart both knew that Liz was telling the truth.
Re: Decisions AUwA (Mature) 11/14/10
Liz nodded. "Max came to talk to me - I swear I didn't know at the time that he thought he'd raped me - what he told me was that the genes in the baby - that they weren't normal - that his genes weren't normal. He told me that I mustn't go through with the pregnancy...that the baby would be a ... a monster"
Diane looked at the girl ... the girl who if the universe was really the sort of place it ought to be would have someday been her daughter-in-law.
"Did you believe Max?"
"At first I think I hoped he was just saying that to punish me for what I did to him ... but Max wouldn't do that. I know him better than that. I believe that Max believed what he said"
"So that's why you had the abortion?"
"I didn't have an abortion. I had - well they call it a chorionic villus sampling. They do it to look for birth defects. I don't think Max would really lie, but sometimes genetic problems are recessive ... or there are treatments. I'm still waiting for the results..."
"But no testing could be one hundred percent sure...?"
"No..."
"...and they can't test for everything that might be wrong...?"
"No...."
Diane thought she knew the answer to the question she was about to ask. Lawyers often know the answers they are going to get when they interrogate a witness, but it was a question that made all the difference in the world, and she needed to hear it from the young girl's own lips.
"Liz..., you are young and healthy. You have lots of years ahead of you - lots of fertile years. You could abort this pregnancy and have other children that wouldn't have the risk Max told you about. Why didn't you?"
Liz wanted to say that she just couldn't ... that the babies inside her were already too much a part of her ... but Diane looked down at her and in the end what came out was the truth.
"Because I thought that Max hated me for what I'd done to him and ... even if there would someday be other babies ... they wouldn't be Max's babies....," said Liz, looking down at the floor and blinking the tears from her eyes.
There was only so much that a mother ... and maybe a future grandmother ... could take. Liz felt arms close around her in a soft and loving embrace and heard Diane's voice in her ear.
"I promise you, Liz, if I have to BEAT some sense into that young man, the two of you are going to be talking this over just as soon as I can get him out of jail..."
Diane looked at the girl ... the girl who if the universe was really the sort of place it ought to be would have someday been her daughter-in-law.
"Did you believe Max?"
"At first I think I hoped he was just saying that to punish me for what I did to him ... but Max wouldn't do that. I know him better than that. I believe that Max believed what he said"
"So that's why you had the abortion?"
"I didn't have an abortion. I had - well they call it a chorionic villus sampling. They do it to look for birth defects. I don't think Max would really lie, but sometimes genetic problems are recessive ... or there are treatments. I'm still waiting for the results..."
"But no testing could be one hundred percent sure...?"
"No..."
"...and they can't test for everything that might be wrong...?"
"No...."
Diane thought she knew the answer to the question she was about to ask. Lawyers often know the answers they are going to get when they interrogate a witness, but it was a question that made all the difference in the world, and she needed to hear it from the young girl's own lips.
"Liz..., you are young and healthy. You have lots of years ahead of you - lots of fertile years. You could abort this pregnancy and have other children that wouldn't have the risk Max told you about. Why didn't you?"
Liz wanted to say that she just couldn't ... that the babies inside her were already too much a part of her ... but Diane looked down at her and in the end what came out was the truth.
"Because I thought that Max hated me for what I'd done to him and ... even if there would someday be other babies ... they wouldn't be Max's babies....," said Liz, looking down at the floor and blinking the tears from her eyes.
There was only so much that a mother ... and maybe a future grandmother ... could take. Liz felt arms close around her in a soft and loving embrace and heard Diane's voice in her ear.
"I promise you, Liz, if I have to BEAT some sense into that young man, the two of you are going to be talking this over just as soon as I can get him out of jail..."
Re: Decisions AUwA (Mature) 11/16/10
"In jail?" Why is Max in jail?"
When he heard his daughter's words, Jeff knew the wheels were really in the process of coming off the bus. OK, she thought she loved the kid. Maybe she even did love Max Evans. Maybe even what she did to Max that night wasn't even all that fair to him. He hadn't been happy hearing the details of that night, but people make mistakes and it was rough being a teenager even in his time... but even so, attempting to incinerate Liz was a hell of a lot more than a mistake. Trying to put a bullet in her - even if she had done something unfair to him went well beyond the bounds of any kind of reasonable payback and maybe the kid did have some gene for insanity or something, that did not excuse what he had attempted to do to Liz.
"He's in jail because he's the one that's been trying to kill you," blurted out Jeff. The effect of that statement was rather like unleashing a wildcat in a Karmann Ghia. Suddenly there just wasn't enough room to run.
The pieces clicked into place almost immediately - the hurried departure from home - her father's insistence that not even Maria be told....
"You brought me here so I wouldn't find out..." Liz said, pushing herself out of Diane's arms and backing her father into a corner.
"We ... your mother and I ... we didn't want you upset...." Jeff managed to get out, realizing it had now gone way past upset. "Besides, we knew Mrs. Evans would be harassing you to take her son's side...."
"Harassing me? She's my lawyer. And Max's side? What idiot came up with the idea that HE would hurt me?"
"Liz, they have evidence ... a lot of evidence, that he was the one who...."
"I don't care WHAT sort of evidence they have. I don't care if they say that Max admitted to doing it, Max would never try to hurt me..."
Diane watched in amazement as the young girl - eyes burning with anger - kept her father backed against the wall - trapped in the corner of the room by an angry young lady half his size. It had been sort of like when she'd talked to Isabel. Oh, Max might make mistakes, everybody did, cut accusing the young man of intentionally doing something wrong - of evil - had generated what appeared to be an instinctive defense in both Liz and Isabel. Clearly Liz loved Max just as much as Max's sister did - although not in as sisterly a way. OK, right now the situation was an unmitigated disaster but... 'There is hope,' she told herself. Hope that somehow it would all work out alright for her son and for the young lady that she now thought of as her new daughter.
When he heard his daughter's words, Jeff knew the wheels were really in the process of coming off the bus. OK, she thought she loved the kid. Maybe she even did love Max Evans. Maybe even what she did to Max that night wasn't even all that fair to him. He hadn't been happy hearing the details of that night, but people make mistakes and it was rough being a teenager even in his time... but even so, attempting to incinerate Liz was a hell of a lot more than a mistake. Trying to put a bullet in her - even if she had done something unfair to him went well beyond the bounds of any kind of reasonable payback and maybe the kid did have some gene for insanity or something, that did not excuse what he had attempted to do to Liz.
"He's in jail because he's the one that's been trying to kill you," blurted out Jeff. The effect of that statement was rather like unleashing a wildcat in a Karmann Ghia. Suddenly there just wasn't enough room to run.
The pieces clicked into place almost immediately - the hurried departure from home - her father's insistence that not even Maria be told....
"You brought me here so I wouldn't find out..." Liz said, pushing herself out of Diane's arms and backing her father into a corner.
"We ... your mother and I ... we didn't want you upset...." Jeff managed to get out, realizing it had now gone way past upset. "Besides, we knew Mrs. Evans would be harassing you to take her son's side...."
"Harassing me? She's my lawyer. And Max's side? What idiot came up with the idea that HE would hurt me?"
"Liz, they have evidence ... a lot of evidence, that he was the one who...."
"I don't care WHAT sort of evidence they have. I don't care if they say that Max admitted to doing it, Max would never try to hurt me..."
Diane watched in amazement as the young girl - eyes burning with anger - kept her father backed against the wall - trapped in the corner of the room by an angry young lady half his size. It had been sort of like when she'd talked to Isabel. Oh, Max might make mistakes, everybody did, cut accusing the young man of intentionally doing something wrong - of evil - had generated what appeared to be an instinctive defense in both Liz and Isabel. Clearly Liz loved Max just as much as Max's sister did - although not in as sisterly a way. OK, right now the situation was an unmitigated disaster but... 'There is hope,' she told herself. Hope that somehow it would all work out alright for her son and for the young lady that she now thought of as her new daughter.
Re: Decisions AUwA (Mature) 11/17/10
"I need to go with you," said Liz, looking at Diane. "You have to get me in to the jail so I can talk to him. I have to explain to him what really happened that night..."
"Liz, I'm pretty sure that the Sheriff's office isn't going to allow that. I can get in ... because I'm his lawyer... and his mother... but you...?"
"I'm the one that got him in this mess," said Liz, "... and has him scared half to death."
"You have HIM scared half to death?" said Jeff Parker. "Look, you haven't even heard about the evidence they have..."
His words stopped at the glance from his eyes and he shrank back - knowing somehow that every thing he said was simply building a greater barrier between him and his daughter. Finally he just shook his head in sadness and resignation.
"I just...don't understand..."
His daughter's face softened then, and she moved over toward him and - suddenly - she was comforting him.
"I'm sorry, Daddy. Max didn't understand either, and look what I've put him through. I love you ... like I love Max. The least I can do is take a few minutes and try to explain - try to reassure you. You see, I was an idiot for not understanding there had been a mistake, but I'd be a worse idiot to believe that Max could try to kill me. For him even to suggest I get an abortion - I should have known that there was something terribly wrong. But I was thinking about me ... about my hopes and dreams ... not about Max ... or about what his fears must have been."
"I still don't understand..."
"Max hates to kill things ... he always has. The science project we did in sixth grade - common arthropods of Chaves county? They were bugs - Daddy, and most of them destructive ones at that. He couldn't bring himself to even kill a vinegaroon. I had to drop the bugs - all of them them - into the killing jar with the ether in it while he looked away.
Same thing in eighth grade when we had to pith the frogs before we dissected them. I had to pith two frogs. Max just couldn't bring himself to do his. Max certainly couldn't bring himself to try to burn me alive ... or shoot me, even if I did deserve it." Liz shook her head in sorrow, "God what it must have cost him for him to even suggest to me that I have an abortion. We debated that on debate squad in junior high school. The only justification he ever would accept was if the pregnancy would cause the death of the mother ... or if she was raped. I'll bet even if he had thought the children would have been born deformed he would have still wanted me to go through with it... that he'd have kept them and taken care of them ... if he only just hadn't thought he'd raped me. How could I have ever been such an ... IDIOT. I HAVE to go talk to him."
Jeff looked at his daughter - fighting to control his own fear. He'd seen that determined look once before - over twenty years ago - on the face of Nancy. Jeff hadn't been exactly at the top of the list of people that Nancy's father would have chosen as a son-in-law. If the list were expanded to include - well, all of the people on Earth - he figured that he'd have been in the top half - barely. Considering that 51% of the people on that list were women, Jeff PROBABLY would have made it in the top half.
OK, he'd been a bit of a wild-child himself as a young teenager, had a couple of DUIs, and problems with the law of his own. But he'd almost gotten it straightened out by senior year and somehow the wild-child and the daughter of the local mercantile store owner had become a couple the last two months of their senior year - for a total of three dates. Nancy's old man had made it perfectly obvious that he didn't trust Jeff, and even more obvious that he'd been glad that Jeff had been going in to the Army (at the strong suggestion of the local Magistrate judge) and that Nancy was going off to college where she would meet someone more 'appropriate.'
But the letters that got him through Boot Camp, Marine Combat training, and his specialty training (food service), kept coming (and being sent) through the year in Korea. When Jeff had finally rotated stateside, he'd planned on a month's leave back home in this same ranch house for Christmas before reporting for his last year at Yuma MCAS. What he hadn't planned was for Nancy to meet him at the airport in ElPaso, halfway through her sophomore year at UTEP, and drive him back to Roswell. They had gone out almost every night for a week - Nancy home on her own semester break - when he'd purposely come early - knowing it would give him time to talk to Nancy's dad. He'd finally gotten him alone in the living room.
Jeff had hemmed and hawed and finally asked for the old man's permission to ask Nancy to marry him. He'd explained that he had another year to go in the Marines - that if she accepted, Nancy could still go to school and they'd get married when he got out. He explained that he'd get a job in El Paso - at least until Nancy got her degree - and that he'd do his very best to make a good life for the man's daughter. The appeal had been somewhat less than successful.
The man had told him - in no uncertain terms - that his daughter could do a lot better. Jeff actually had agreed with him, but said he loved her and though she loved him and begged her father to just let Nancy make that choice. He'd been asked to leave and as he got up to go he saw Nancy standing at the foot of the stairs. That was when he'd seen that look on Nancys face as she'd looked at her own father - the one Liz was giving him right now.
She'd gone up to her father and demanded he apologize and give Jeff his blessing. He'd blustered and told her that Jeff just wasn't the right man for her - that some day she'd thank him for sending Jeff away - that he'd never be welcome in their house. She'd looked her father in the eye and told him to give her a call if he ever changed his mind - and walked out the front door - not even taking a change of clothes. They'd come up to this old ranch and talked the whole night long. The next morning they'd found a magistrate judge to marry them and he'd reported to Yuma with a new wife three days later. He'd gotten in a LITTLE trouble for that, but the Gunny had been young once too. Jeff had peeled a couple hundred pounds of potatoes on KP that night - but by the time he was done the Gunny had somehow wangled half of a small duplex in base housing for the newlyweds and filled it with furniture, linens, dishes, and silverware from the base thrift shop.
Eventually that phone call from Nancys dad came - but it hadn't been until Liz was on the way. The old man had been stubborn - but not as stubborn as Nancy or - it appeared - as their daughter. The old man had lost almost two years of the ten years he'd lived after their marriage - time with his daughter he could never get back. Jeff didn't want that to happen to him.
It wasn't that Jeff really believed that Max wasn't guilty - he no longer knew what to believe. The important thing though, was that Liz didn't believe that Max was guilty - of THAT Jeff had no doubt. Jeff had known Max as a sort of shy kid that he'd see once or twice a year - generally at some awards assembly or Science Fair where Liz was getting an award - quite often an award shared with Max. OK, the kid was a little weird and if Jeff had to guess, Deputy Pembroke was entirely justified having the kid as his primary suspect. The thing was, it didn't matter. Liz thought she knew Max Evans better than Pembroke knew him - and better than Jeff Parker knew him as well. Because of that, SHE would not accept Jeff Parker trying to interfere with her and Max, any more than Nancy accepted her fathers rejection of him.
'At this time, all you can do, Jeff,' he told himself, '...is to help her to do this safely, pray this kid is really worthy of your daughter (as unlikely as that was, that would take one hell of a special young man), and be ready to help her pick up the pieces if this all comes apart.'
"Liz, I'll help you with this all I can ... IF you take this slowly and carefully. I want you to have ALL the facts before you make any serious decisions. But once you have all the facts... well, I'll do anything I can for you. I'm sure your mom will too."
"Thank you,Daddy," she said, looking up at him with the sort of smile that would warm any fathers heart, if not his apprehensive brain.
"So, are we ready to head in to town?" asked Diane.
"Just one thing first. I need to call Doctor Bernsteins office in Albuquerque. She's the one whose lab will be doing the testing."
"Are they open at this hour?" asked Diane.
"No, I wouldn't imagine so. In fact, the test results probably won't be available today at all ... but I gave her the number of this phone to call in the results, because cell phones don't work up here. I just want to leave her a message to call me on the cell phone number rather than this land line. It'll only take a second."
Two hundred and six miles away, Dr. Rachel Bernstein heard the phone start to ring. She was looking at her results all over again, and still shaking her head, and she just let the phone ring. Then the answering machine came on and gave the standard disclaimer about emergencies and the business hours, before offering to take a message. She heard half a sentence, "This is Elizabeth Parker and I'm calling to leave a different phone number for my test results..." when she grabbed the phone and put it to her lips. "Miss Parker...don't hang up - I have some rather interesting results for you...."
"Liz, I'm pretty sure that the Sheriff's office isn't going to allow that. I can get in ... because I'm his lawyer... and his mother... but you...?"
"I'm the one that got him in this mess," said Liz, "... and has him scared half to death."
"You have HIM scared half to death?" said Jeff Parker. "Look, you haven't even heard about the evidence they have..."
His words stopped at the glance from his eyes and he shrank back - knowing somehow that every thing he said was simply building a greater barrier between him and his daughter. Finally he just shook his head in sadness and resignation.
"I just...don't understand..."
His daughter's face softened then, and she moved over toward him and - suddenly - she was comforting him.
"I'm sorry, Daddy. Max didn't understand either, and look what I've put him through. I love you ... like I love Max. The least I can do is take a few minutes and try to explain - try to reassure you. You see, I was an idiot for not understanding there had been a mistake, but I'd be a worse idiot to believe that Max could try to kill me. For him even to suggest I get an abortion - I should have known that there was something terribly wrong. But I was thinking about me ... about my hopes and dreams ... not about Max ... or about what his fears must have been."
"I still don't understand..."
"Max hates to kill things ... he always has. The science project we did in sixth grade - common arthropods of Chaves county? They were bugs - Daddy, and most of them destructive ones at that. He couldn't bring himself to even kill a vinegaroon. I had to drop the bugs - all of them them - into the killing jar with the ether in it while he looked away.
Same thing in eighth grade when we had to pith the frogs before we dissected them. I had to pith two frogs. Max just couldn't bring himself to do his. Max certainly couldn't bring himself to try to burn me alive ... or shoot me, even if I did deserve it." Liz shook her head in sorrow, "God what it must have cost him for him to even suggest to me that I have an abortion. We debated that on debate squad in junior high school. The only justification he ever would accept was if the pregnancy would cause the death of the mother ... or if she was raped. I'll bet even if he had thought the children would have been born deformed he would have still wanted me to go through with it... that he'd have kept them and taken care of them ... if he only just hadn't thought he'd raped me. How could I have ever been such an ... IDIOT. I HAVE to go talk to him."
Jeff looked at his daughter - fighting to control his own fear. He'd seen that determined look once before - over twenty years ago - on the face of Nancy. Jeff hadn't been exactly at the top of the list of people that Nancy's father would have chosen as a son-in-law. If the list were expanded to include - well, all of the people on Earth - he figured that he'd have been in the top half - barely. Considering that 51% of the people on that list were women, Jeff PROBABLY would have made it in the top half.
OK, he'd been a bit of a wild-child himself as a young teenager, had a couple of DUIs, and problems with the law of his own. But he'd almost gotten it straightened out by senior year and somehow the wild-child and the daughter of the local mercantile store owner had become a couple the last two months of their senior year - for a total of three dates. Nancy's old man had made it perfectly obvious that he didn't trust Jeff, and even more obvious that he'd been glad that Jeff had been going in to the Army (at the strong suggestion of the local Magistrate judge) and that Nancy was going off to college where she would meet someone more 'appropriate.'
But the letters that got him through Boot Camp, Marine Combat training, and his specialty training (food service), kept coming (and being sent) through the year in Korea. When Jeff had finally rotated stateside, he'd planned on a month's leave back home in this same ranch house for Christmas before reporting for his last year at Yuma MCAS. What he hadn't planned was for Nancy to meet him at the airport in ElPaso, halfway through her sophomore year at UTEP, and drive him back to Roswell. They had gone out almost every night for a week - Nancy home on her own semester break - when he'd purposely come early - knowing it would give him time to talk to Nancy's dad. He'd finally gotten him alone in the living room.
Jeff had hemmed and hawed and finally asked for the old man's permission to ask Nancy to marry him. He'd explained that he had another year to go in the Marines - that if she accepted, Nancy could still go to school and they'd get married when he got out. He explained that he'd get a job in El Paso - at least until Nancy got her degree - and that he'd do his very best to make a good life for the man's daughter. The appeal had been somewhat less than successful.
The man had told him - in no uncertain terms - that his daughter could do a lot better. Jeff actually had agreed with him, but said he loved her and though she loved him and begged her father to just let Nancy make that choice. He'd been asked to leave and as he got up to go he saw Nancy standing at the foot of the stairs. That was when he'd seen that look on Nancys face as she'd looked at her own father - the one Liz was giving him right now.
She'd gone up to her father and demanded he apologize and give Jeff his blessing. He'd blustered and told her that Jeff just wasn't the right man for her - that some day she'd thank him for sending Jeff away - that he'd never be welcome in their house. She'd looked her father in the eye and told him to give her a call if he ever changed his mind - and walked out the front door - not even taking a change of clothes. They'd come up to this old ranch and talked the whole night long. The next morning they'd found a magistrate judge to marry them and he'd reported to Yuma with a new wife three days later. He'd gotten in a LITTLE trouble for that, but the Gunny had been young once too. Jeff had peeled a couple hundred pounds of potatoes on KP that night - but by the time he was done the Gunny had somehow wangled half of a small duplex in base housing for the newlyweds and filled it with furniture, linens, dishes, and silverware from the base thrift shop.
Eventually that phone call from Nancys dad came - but it hadn't been until Liz was on the way. The old man had been stubborn - but not as stubborn as Nancy or - it appeared - as their daughter. The old man had lost almost two years of the ten years he'd lived after their marriage - time with his daughter he could never get back. Jeff didn't want that to happen to him.
It wasn't that Jeff really believed that Max wasn't guilty - he no longer knew what to believe. The important thing though, was that Liz didn't believe that Max was guilty - of THAT Jeff had no doubt. Jeff had known Max as a sort of shy kid that he'd see once or twice a year - generally at some awards assembly or Science Fair where Liz was getting an award - quite often an award shared with Max. OK, the kid was a little weird and if Jeff had to guess, Deputy Pembroke was entirely justified having the kid as his primary suspect. The thing was, it didn't matter. Liz thought she knew Max Evans better than Pembroke knew him - and better than Jeff Parker knew him as well. Because of that, SHE would not accept Jeff Parker trying to interfere with her and Max, any more than Nancy accepted her fathers rejection of him.
'At this time, all you can do, Jeff,' he told himself, '...is to help her to do this safely, pray this kid is really worthy of your daughter (as unlikely as that was, that would take one hell of a special young man), and be ready to help her pick up the pieces if this all comes apart.'
"Liz, I'll help you with this all I can ... IF you take this slowly and carefully. I want you to have ALL the facts before you make any serious decisions. But once you have all the facts... well, I'll do anything I can for you. I'm sure your mom will too."
"Thank you,Daddy," she said, looking up at him with the sort of smile that would warm any fathers heart, if not his apprehensive brain.
"So, are we ready to head in to town?" asked Diane.
"Just one thing first. I need to call Doctor Bernsteins office in Albuquerque. She's the one whose lab will be doing the testing."
"Are they open at this hour?" asked Diane.
"No, I wouldn't imagine so. In fact, the test results probably won't be available today at all ... but I gave her the number of this phone to call in the results, because cell phones don't work up here. I just want to leave her a message to call me on the cell phone number rather than this land line. It'll only take a second."
Two hundred and six miles away, Dr. Rachel Bernstein heard the phone start to ring. She was looking at her results all over again, and still shaking her head, and she just let the phone ring. Then the answering machine came on and gave the standard disclaimer about emergencies and the business hours, before offering to take a message. She heard half a sentence, "This is Elizabeth Parker and I'm calling to leave a different phone number for my test results..." when she grabbed the phone and put it to her lips. "Miss Parker...don't hang up - I have some rather interesting results for you...."
Re: Decisions AUwA (Mature) 11/19/10
A lot of people who have never lived in the desert Southwest have no real conception of just how wide and how open the 'wide open spaces' of New Mexico really are.
An irregular shaped mass of land that was somewhat more complicated than two large rectangles shoved together, Chaves County was as large as the state of Connecticut, and at that there were three larger counties in the state. Diagonally from one end to the other was well over a hundred miles and except for the few major roads, two lane country roads were the norm - many of those unpaved crushed gravel. Police enforcement of speed limits wasn't really an issue on many of these rural - the road conditions pretty well enforced the speed limits even without benefit of police radar - or even the law enforcement officers themselves. If you could get from one end of the county to the other in less than five hours, you sure weren't driving on these roads.
There were 10 people per square mile in Chaves County, but the statistic understates the emptiness of most of the county. Of the 63,000 inhabitants of the county, 45,000 of them lived concentrated in the 30 square mile Roswell municipal area itself , with about four thousand more -total - in the three towns of Dexter, Hagerman, and Lake Arthur. After that things got real sparse.
Out in the hinterlands - where the Williams and Parker ranches were - there was almost nobody. The fact that the county road going between the two driveways was paved at all was due more to the political clout of Williams than it was to any legitimate traffic requirements. During the entire night, there had been three vehicles on it. The first had been an old flatbed truck with about two hundred hay bales on the back that were stacked skillfully to surround the 14 illegals that the driver was getting paid up to Albuquerque; the driver purposely taking the back roads to avoid the border patrol check points on the main roads. The second had been a couple of tourists in an RV from the East coast who had intended to see Carlsbad Caverns, but had made a seriously wrong turn at Vaughn and were now totally lost in the Lincoln National Forest. A Forest Ranger would be discovering them shortly though and getting them sent on their way. The third was Diane Evans' car which had made a U-turn and come back in the darkness to hide in the brush.
One of the points of this long and somewhat tedious explanation, is that the Williams ranch and the Parker ranch really were out in the middle of nowhere. Except for each other, the nearest neighbor was almost ten miles away.
The other point of this explanation is that - considering the territory - there weren't just a heck of a lot of law enforcement officers in Chaves county.
The Chaves County Sheriff's office was authorized 43 officers, and currently actually had 42. Oh sure, there were some non-uniformed support people in the department, and they certainly helped. Traffic control - on the major roads at least - was certainly assisted by the New Mexico State Police, but of tens of thousands of miles of roads in Chaves County, these guys patrolled less than five hundred miles. But if you are talking uniformed officers - the ones that really DO the normal law enforcement of the county - you are talking about 42 bodies to cover 6000 square miles, only it's a lot worse than that.
Law enforcement is a 24/7 business, and that means there are 168 hours to the week. Given training requirements, holidays, vacations, that meant it took about five bodies to fill each of those full time positions. One position - on the desk at the Roswell office of the Sheriff's department always had to be filled full time since it also oversaw the county jail, and it was even worse than that. Since prisoners came in two flavors - male and female - one of each had to be at least reasonably available if the desk officer's gender didn't match that of the incarcerated prisoner(s).
That left - in theory - somewhat less than seven other officers on duty at any given time - seven officers to cover the 6071 square miles of Chaves county, a mere 867 square miles each. The 'theory' failed, however, to account for the fact that there was an emphasis patrol going on that put a couple of cars around school zones for several hours a day, one officer on medical leave after hernia surgery, and one officer on maternity leave after giving birth. Oh sure, the schedule could be manipulated somewhat - Sunday through Thursdays you didn't expect quite as much trouble on the late night shift as you did at the start of the weekend, but barring a natural disaster or SWAT team call-up it was rare that there were any MORE than ten or eleven officers on duty at any one time and frequently as few as three or four on patrol in those 6071 square miles.
The point here being that as far as the neighbors were from the Parker and Williams ranches, the law enforcement was considerably farther away still and likely would take at least sixty minutes to get there . And unless the SWAT team was mobilized - which would take another hour or two - the firepower that could be brought to bear would be two or three deputies at best, armed not just a heck of a lot better than Williams, Abernathy, and McCarthy.
The Williams ranch itself was pretty good sized - almost four times the size of the Parker ranch. It too dated back to the homesteading days - it was the consolidation of four of the old homesteads, but it hadn't been any ancestor of Williams that had done the actual homesteading. No, Williams great-grandfather had been a banker back in the 1930s. He'd wound up picking the four properties up for little more than the unpaid taxes on the land during the Depression, and that hadn't been much money even then. With over 600 acres, Williams had plenty of room and plenty of privacy - not that the Parker homestead of 160 acres could really be described as small.
But between the trip out of the Williams ranch, the trip around the circumference of the Williams ranch on the little-used county road, and finally the trip up the ridgeline, it was nearly 6AM before Williams and McCarthy had gotten up to the ridge to talk to Abernathy and bring the man his breakfast.
"You see any evidence of any surveillance?" asked Williams.
"Nothing. Just the one building, one car. If there is anyone in there but the girl and her dad, I sure didn't see it," said Abernathy before taking a bite out of his scrambled egg sandwich and washing it down with a gulp of black coffee.
"Any patrol car traffic on the road last night at all?" asked McCarthy.
Abernathy shook his head and swallowed. "I don't think so. There was a big old truck - hay truck I think. I didn't get that good a look at it but it sure wasn't any cop car. Besides, it just kept driving. One RV came through and stopped down alongside the road. Some old codger driving who pulled out a bunch of maps while some old bitty appeared to be giving him hell. They drove on after a few minutes. One car - oh, I don't know - probably about an hour and a half or two hours ago now. I don't think it was a police car - looked more like a station wagon - but it just drove right on by without even stopping," he said before taking another bite of his sandwich.
Williams nodded his head with a smile. "Well, first we need to get back down to the road and drive along to some inconspicuous place where one of you can shinny up a utility pole and cut the telephone line. Then I'll go in first - just a neighbor being neighborly - to check things out. If it's OK, I'll give you guys a call on the walkie-talky. You guys do a last check to make sure no one is around - then you come in. Chances are the girl will recognize you from the shot you took at her at the restaurant and when she and her father are both distracted by the two of you, I pull my gun out. It's important we take them alive - at least at first. If we can set this up to look like a murder-suicide, Parker killing his daughter because she's disgraced the family name, then killing himself - hell, that'd be perfect. Even once the bodies are cleaned up, Nancy Parker will never want to see the place again. She'll be free to sell it, I'm the natural one to buy it, since my ranch already overlaps it on two sides...."
"Then we all get rich," said Abernathy.
"Yes," said Williams, then we all get rich. Of course, some of us are going to get richer than others."
"We understand," said McCarthy. "We couldn't pull this off without you, but the split is ...."
"The split is still 60% for me, 20% for each of you. You said after development costs there's at least $10 million in recoverable oil under the property."
"At least," agreed McCarthy, "... of course WE are the ones who discovered it."
"After I hired you to look on MY land," reminded Williams, "... but I'm not an unreasonable man. Anything over the first $10 million that's recovered we can split 40% for me and 30% for each of you. I'll have enough to get my political career back on track by then - no sense being greedy."
McCarthy smiled and Abernathy nodded his head in agreement. The money was certainly fair enough. They'd killed people for a lot less.
Back in Roswell, the staffing situation had other implications. It isn't always the guy who is responsible for domestic violence. Women do it too, and a certain twenty-eight year old alcoholic who'd tried to dismember her live-in boyfriend last night when she had found a condom in his wallet - the young lady herself had had her tubes tied - needed to be taken to the shower room before she was fed breakfast.
The Department rules said there had to be a female officer present to do that. Which is how one of the nine female officers in the entire Sheriff's department found herself assisting the guy on desk duty. It was only random chance that made the woman drawing the duty the same officer who had been providing protection to Liz Parker.
"Judy... I'm sort of surprised you are here," said the officer as he pushed a tray through the slot onto the floor of the cell where Max was imprisoned.
"Well, with him in here," the female officer said, "...they apparently don't think that poor little girl is at all that much risk. She and her dad are off at an old homestead ranch the guy has, somewhere east of town."
"I'm surprised the doctors let her go. Wasn't she going to have some procedure?"
"It was just some sort of a biopsy I guess. They took some cells out to run some tests on - no big deal, I guess. There was just something about - you know - the pregnancy her OB doc wanted to check out. She was out of the hospital and on her way home in less than an hour. It may be a few days until she get the results though."
The two officers were already on their way to the woman's holding cells and didn't see the young man on the bunk's eyes widen.
'She still has it inside her...,' Max thought with horror. All at once nothing else in the universe mattered. Not if his secret was discovered ... not what his parents might think ... not if he wound up dissected on some government lab someplace ... not even if what he did put Isabel at risk.
He had to get to Liz ... get to her and warn her and ... if she didn't believe ... use his own powers to kill the evil inside her. He got out of bed and went to the cell door and put his hand on the lock. There was a soft 'click' and he pushed the door open. He went out in the hall and saw a sign that indicated the woman's holding cells. Turning the other way ... and opening two more doors ... he was at the back parking lot of the sheriff's office. He put his hand on the door of the locked patrol car and it opened, and he got behind the wheel. A few seconds more and the engine was started and he was pulling out of the parking lot.
He wasn't sure exactly what to do next as he put distance between him and the jail. He hadn't slept in 36 hours and he wasn't mentating all that well really. All he knew for sure was that he needed to get to Liz ... that nothing else mattered ... nothing at all.
An irregular shaped mass of land that was somewhat more complicated than two large rectangles shoved together, Chaves County was as large as the state of Connecticut, and at that there were three larger counties in the state. Diagonally from one end to the other was well over a hundred miles and except for the few major roads, two lane country roads were the norm - many of those unpaved crushed gravel. Police enforcement of speed limits wasn't really an issue on many of these rural - the road conditions pretty well enforced the speed limits even without benefit of police radar - or even the law enforcement officers themselves. If you could get from one end of the county to the other in less than five hours, you sure weren't driving on these roads.
There were 10 people per square mile in Chaves County, but the statistic understates the emptiness of most of the county. Of the 63,000 inhabitants of the county, 45,000 of them lived concentrated in the 30 square mile Roswell municipal area itself , with about four thousand more -total - in the three towns of Dexter, Hagerman, and Lake Arthur. After that things got real sparse.
Out in the hinterlands - where the Williams and Parker ranches were - there was almost nobody. The fact that the county road going between the two driveways was paved at all was due more to the political clout of Williams than it was to any legitimate traffic requirements. During the entire night, there had been three vehicles on it. The first had been an old flatbed truck with about two hundred hay bales on the back that were stacked skillfully to surround the 14 illegals that the driver was getting paid up to Albuquerque; the driver purposely taking the back roads to avoid the border patrol check points on the main roads. The second had been a couple of tourists in an RV from the East coast who had intended to see Carlsbad Caverns, but had made a seriously wrong turn at Vaughn and were now totally lost in the Lincoln National Forest. A Forest Ranger would be discovering them shortly though and getting them sent on their way. The third was Diane Evans' car which had made a U-turn and come back in the darkness to hide in the brush.
One of the points of this long and somewhat tedious explanation, is that the Williams ranch and the Parker ranch really were out in the middle of nowhere. Except for each other, the nearest neighbor was almost ten miles away.
The other point of this explanation is that - considering the territory - there weren't just a heck of a lot of law enforcement officers in Chaves county.
The Chaves County Sheriff's office was authorized 43 officers, and currently actually had 42. Oh sure, there were some non-uniformed support people in the department, and they certainly helped. Traffic control - on the major roads at least - was certainly assisted by the New Mexico State Police, but of tens of thousands of miles of roads in Chaves County, these guys patrolled less than five hundred miles. But if you are talking uniformed officers - the ones that really DO the normal law enforcement of the county - you are talking about 42 bodies to cover 6000 square miles, only it's a lot worse than that.
Law enforcement is a 24/7 business, and that means there are 168 hours to the week. Given training requirements, holidays, vacations, that meant it took about five bodies to fill each of those full time positions. One position - on the desk at the Roswell office of the Sheriff's department always had to be filled full time since it also oversaw the county jail, and it was even worse than that. Since prisoners came in two flavors - male and female - one of each had to be at least reasonably available if the desk officer's gender didn't match that of the incarcerated prisoner(s).
That left - in theory - somewhat less than seven other officers on duty at any given time - seven officers to cover the 6071 square miles of Chaves county, a mere 867 square miles each. The 'theory' failed, however, to account for the fact that there was an emphasis patrol going on that put a couple of cars around school zones for several hours a day, one officer on medical leave after hernia surgery, and one officer on maternity leave after giving birth. Oh sure, the schedule could be manipulated somewhat - Sunday through Thursdays you didn't expect quite as much trouble on the late night shift as you did at the start of the weekend, but barring a natural disaster or SWAT team call-up it was rare that there were any MORE than ten or eleven officers on duty at any one time and frequently as few as three or four on patrol in those 6071 square miles.
The point here being that as far as the neighbors were from the Parker and Williams ranches, the law enforcement was considerably farther away still and likely would take at least sixty minutes to get there . And unless the SWAT team was mobilized - which would take another hour or two - the firepower that could be brought to bear would be two or three deputies at best, armed not just a heck of a lot better than Williams, Abernathy, and McCarthy.
The Williams ranch itself was pretty good sized - almost four times the size of the Parker ranch. It too dated back to the homesteading days - it was the consolidation of four of the old homesteads, but it hadn't been any ancestor of Williams that had done the actual homesteading. No, Williams great-grandfather had been a banker back in the 1930s. He'd wound up picking the four properties up for little more than the unpaid taxes on the land during the Depression, and that hadn't been much money even then. With over 600 acres, Williams had plenty of room and plenty of privacy - not that the Parker homestead of 160 acres could really be described as small.
But between the trip out of the Williams ranch, the trip around the circumference of the Williams ranch on the little-used county road, and finally the trip up the ridgeline, it was nearly 6AM before Williams and McCarthy had gotten up to the ridge to talk to Abernathy and bring the man his breakfast.
"You see any evidence of any surveillance?" asked Williams.
"Nothing. Just the one building, one car. If there is anyone in there but the girl and her dad, I sure didn't see it," said Abernathy before taking a bite out of his scrambled egg sandwich and washing it down with a gulp of black coffee.
"Any patrol car traffic on the road last night at all?" asked McCarthy.
Abernathy shook his head and swallowed. "I don't think so. There was a big old truck - hay truck I think. I didn't get that good a look at it but it sure wasn't any cop car. Besides, it just kept driving. One RV came through and stopped down alongside the road. Some old codger driving who pulled out a bunch of maps while some old bitty appeared to be giving him hell. They drove on after a few minutes. One car - oh, I don't know - probably about an hour and a half or two hours ago now. I don't think it was a police car - looked more like a station wagon - but it just drove right on by without even stopping," he said before taking another bite of his sandwich.
Williams nodded his head with a smile. "Well, first we need to get back down to the road and drive along to some inconspicuous place where one of you can shinny up a utility pole and cut the telephone line. Then I'll go in first - just a neighbor being neighborly - to check things out. If it's OK, I'll give you guys a call on the walkie-talky. You guys do a last check to make sure no one is around - then you come in. Chances are the girl will recognize you from the shot you took at her at the restaurant and when she and her father are both distracted by the two of you, I pull my gun out. It's important we take them alive - at least at first. If we can set this up to look like a murder-suicide, Parker killing his daughter because she's disgraced the family name, then killing himself - hell, that'd be perfect. Even once the bodies are cleaned up, Nancy Parker will never want to see the place again. She'll be free to sell it, I'm the natural one to buy it, since my ranch already overlaps it on two sides...."
"Then we all get rich," said Abernathy.
"Yes," said Williams, then we all get rich. Of course, some of us are going to get richer than others."
"We understand," said McCarthy. "We couldn't pull this off without you, but the split is ...."
"The split is still 60% for me, 20% for each of you. You said after development costs there's at least $10 million in recoverable oil under the property."
"At least," agreed McCarthy, "... of course WE are the ones who discovered it."
"After I hired you to look on MY land," reminded Williams, "... but I'm not an unreasonable man. Anything over the first $10 million that's recovered we can split 40% for me and 30% for each of you. I'll have enough to get my political career back on track by then - no sense being greedy."
McCarthy smiled and Abernathy nodded his head in agreement. The money was certainly fair enough. They'd killed people for a lot less.
Back in Roswell, the staffing situation had other implications. It isn't always the guy who is responsible for domestic violence. Women do it too, and a certain twenty-eight year old alcoholic who'd tried to dismember her live-in boyfriend last night when she had found a condom in his wallet - the young lady herself had had her tubes tied - needed to be taken to the shower room before she was fed breakfast.
The Department rules said there had to be a female officer present to do that. Which is how one of the nine female officers in the entire Sheriff's department found herself assisting the guy on desk duty. It was only random chance that made the woman drawing the duty the same officer who had been providing protection to Liz Parker.
"Judy... I'm sort of surprised you are here," said the officer as he pushed a tray through the slot onto the floor of the cell where Max was imprisoned.
"Well, with him in here," the female officer said, "...they apparently don't think that poor little girl is at all that much risk. She and her dad are off at an old homestead ranch the guy has, somewhere east of town."
"I'm surprised the doctors let her go. Wasn't she going to have some procedure?"
"It was just some sort of a biopsy I guess. They took some cells out to run some tests on - no big deal, I guess. There was just something about - you know - the pregnancy her OB doc wanted to check out. She was out of the hospital and on her way home in less than an hour. It may be a few days until she get the results though."
The two officers were already on their way to the woman's holding cells and didn't see the young man on the bunk's eyes widen.
'She still has it inside her...,' Max thought with horror. All at once nothing else in the universe mattered. Not if his secret was discovered ... not what his parents might think ... not if he wound up dissected on some government lab someplace ... not even if what he did put Isabel at risk.
He had to get to Liz ... get to her and warn her and ... if she didn't believe ... use his own powers to kill the evil inside her. He got out of bed and went to the cell door and put his hand on the lock. There was a soft 'click' and he pushed the door open. He went out in the hall and saw a sign that indicated the woman's holding cells. Turning the other way ... and opening two more doors ... he was at the back parking lot of the sheriff's office. He put his hand on the door of the locked patrol car and it opened, and he got behind the wheel. A few seconds more and the engine was started and he was pulling out of the parking lot.
He wasn't sure exactly what to do next as he put distance between him and the jail. He hadn't slept in 36 hours and he wasn't mentating all that well really. All he knew for sure was that he needed to get to Liz ... that nothing else mattered ... nothing at all.
Re: Decisions AUwA (Mature) 11/19/10
"Dr. Bernstein?" asked Liz. "What are you doing there at this hour?"
"Well, the truth is I spent the night here working .... I sort of got fixated on a rather interesting problem. That problem is - well your testing actually."
"Is there something wrong with the babies?"
"Babies?" asked Diane, looking at Jeff. Jeff nodded his head and silently mouthed the word 'twins...' Diane's eyebrows elevated momentarily, then she got a sort of sappy grin on her face as she looked back at Liz. But then the grin went away as she remembered the words... 'something wrong with them...?'
"Liz.....?"
Liz looked at Diane Evans ... and her father. This conversation involved both of them too...
"Just a minute, Dr. Bernstein. I want to put this on speakerphone. There ... can you still hear me?"
"Yes I can, Liz. By the way, please call me Rachel."
"Thank you Dr. Berns... Rachel. Is there something wrong with the tests?"
"Well, wrong is a kind of value-laden word, Elizabeth. I did some preliminary genome studies on the placental villus samples and they were both - well, certainly unusual to say the least. Linda Huntington tells me that you are quite good at biology and have been doing some reading in genetics as well for the last few weeks...."
"Yes. I've read several of the basic books about human genetics, and then two medical genetics books, your Human Molecular Genetics, and Jorde's Medical Genetics, also Emery's Elements of Medical Genetics, although I don't think I understood the third chapter....."
"Well, that chapter was poorly written, I understand he's doing a whole rewrite in the next edition but.... well, I must say I'm impressed. The med students in the class I teach at the university certainly don't do that much reading for the class I teach them."
"I've sort of had a lot of motivation lately," said Liz.
"I rather expect you have. Well, all that background will help, but I'm not just too sure how MUCH it will help, because we have a little bit of an enigma here. The biological material from the paternal donor - the father - is a little bit unusual. Actually, it's very unusual, but as to whether it's in any way harmful... that's a little bit more difficult to discern.
First of all, the two pregnancies are - at the chromosomal level - quite normal. That is they have the right number of chromosomes and no chromosomal abnormalities at the macro level. Do you want to know the genders by the way? Some women do - some don't, because it tends to create an emotional attachment that might affect their decision to carry the pregnancies to term."
"I think I'd like to know, ...Rachel. I'm beginning to realize that ... well that process has probably already taken place."
"Well, you have one of each. At the macro level you have a perfectly normal male chromosomal pattern and a perfectly normal female chromosome pattern. It's at the genome and the gene level that something is a little different. Actually, something is quite different, but because it is sort of unique it's difficult to predict with any degree of certainty the consequences of it except in one small area.
Because we have a blood sample from you, we can sort of subtract that from the fetal genomes and get a pretty certain picture of just how much of this - I hate to call it an abnormality but I guess there aren't any better terms for it - this strangeness anyway - comes from him."
"Strangeness...?"
"Liz, I'm sure you are familiar with the term 'junk DNA'?...?"
"Yes."
"Well almost all this 'strangeness' is confined to the 'junk DNA'. In particular it seems confined to that part of the 'junk DNA' that we really do think we understand ... almost as if it had been placed there intentionally."
"Intentionally?"
"I'm sorry, it's been a long night and I did not get a lot of sleep. My mind wanders before my second cup of coffee, and I haven't yet had even my first. The point is there is something in 'junk DNA' called pseudogenes, are you familiar with the term?"
"Not really...."
"A Pseudogene is like a gene except it has lost its function. That is, maybe somewhere in our evolution there was some gene that was dreadfully important to us - perhaps it created some vitamin when we were exposed to sunlight - but now we get that through our diet instead. Or perhaps some distant evolutionary ancestor had spines like a sea urchin but we haven't used that gene for millions of years. It just sits there turned off ... and never does turn on. It looks like a gene and maybe once was a gene but now it's just sort of ... well, like a disk drive that had the address for old information deleted but was never reformatted, to use an electronic example. It truly is 'junk' that will never be reused, but something needs to fill that space to ensure the tertiary structure of the DNA itself stays normal...."
"So it has to sort of hold the real DNA in place, but it doesn't really do anything," said Liz.
"That's precisely right - except the father of these children - as I said - it would almost appear that these areas have been ... well I would almost use the word 'pruned' in some areas and a different sort of DNA substituted in these places."
"What do you mean..... different sort?"
"Well, it's different than the normal DNA pseudogene sequences certainly - not that THAT would appear to make any functional difference in most of the rest of the DNA - the tertiary structure is maintained EXACTLY as it had been. It's just that - well - that wouldn't normally be even possible - the DNA sequences just wouldn't work that way with the new DNA put in, except at the end - where the ... I guess you would call it 'splice' takes place ... there's a special - rather unique bit of DNA. It allows that attachment."
"What's unique about it?"
"Honey...that's the truly fascinating part. Do you understand how the backbone of DNA is the deoxyribose?"
"Yes..."
"Well, to make the attachment come out with the correct tertiary structure, at one small area in the sequence, the deoxyribose used is l-Deoxyribose, the mirror image of the normal d-Deoxyribose. That's the first time I'm aware of that ever being found in nature. That shouldn't be there at all and even if if it is, it shouldn't be something that should be able to continue cell division because I wouldn't think the body would have the enzymes to even handle it.
Strangely enough in the cell culture it doesn't hurt a thing. It just reproduces a true copy of the modified nucleotide - which must mean that part of the other pseudogene-looking genetic material is now coding for the enzymes needed to do this. It obviousl yworks in the cell culture and - since you got this from your ... partner .... it apparently works in him too."
"So is this a mutation?"
"Well, nothing in science is impossible, but I don't really see how. But then, I'm not sure exactly how this would EVER happen."
"So are you saying ... this was done on purpose?"
"No, of course not. We simply lack the capability to do this on purpose - at least for a few more decades, and back when your ... partner ... was born, assuming he's about your age or older, we'd have never even been able to discover the weird splicing at all."
"So....what does this mean .... for our babies I mean...?"
"That's an excellent question and I'm not at all certain I can give you a complete answer. I've done a series of metabolic tests and the only thing I found - and then I traced that back to one [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulator_gene]regulator gene[/url] and confirmed it - was interference with one area of enzyme synthesis. One of those areas of unusual DNA sort of overlaps - not really of course, but that strange mirror deoxyribose at the end sort of almost shuts off the regulator gene for a certain enzyme - alcohol dehydrogenase."
"Alcohol dehydrogenase?"
"It's an enzyme that lets us detoxify alcohol. It's not the only one. The Cytochrome P450 system can do that as well, although not as well and certainly not as quickly. Once again, it's obvious this isn't a lethal deficiency, since the cells do multiply and since of course your partner himself is alive. But even at that - man I'll bet he's a cheap drunk..."
"Cheap drunk?" said Liz into the phone, with a look of puzzlement on her face. Her father quickly added an explanation.
"He ... uh ... can't hold his liquor very well, dear."
Doctor Bernstein apparently heard, and chuckled. "In this case that's a bit of an understatement," said the doctor,"...actually, should the two of you get back together I'd suggest you wear eau de toilette and not actual perfume. I'd worry about even the trivial amount of alcohol in perfume could make him a little loopy. OK, that's a little bit of an exaggeration maybe, the perfume on you I mean. But I wouldn't want anyone to give him after shave and then expect him to be the life of the party, although actually he might be briefly - before he crashed. Eventually his Cytochrome P450 would clear the alcohol out of course."
"And the babies....?"
"Liz, I honestly don't know. I don't honestly see that there would be any problem with them other than their own hypersensitivity to alcohol, but there are multiple copies of several different sorts of totally new genes in them - and of course during the fusion of the gametes your DNA and his DNA got swapped around and ... well, it's hard to tell if that will effect anything. Basically, all I can predict with certainty is that if the fetuses go to term, you don't want them to do any drinking - at all. Basically, Liz, that's all I can give you. Perhaps if your partner could come up here - let me do some somatic testing on him - I could tell what those new genes - or pseudogenes - really do, if they do anything at all. Until then, all we have is speculation."
"Thank you, Rachel. I'll talk to my partner and see if he will cooperate."
"Well, whatever you decide, Liz, good luck to you. I'll keep these results filed away until you tell me what you want to do with them. For right now though, I need to get to bed. This was wonderfully stimulating, but I'm not twenty years old any more. Pulling 'all-nighters' is something better left to you young people."
After hanging up the phone, Liz shook her head in disgust. "It was all my fault. I tossed that alcohol in his face and practically poisoned him. None of this was his doing. He was minding his own business - just trying to help me and keep me safe - and I did all this to him."
"Liz, it isn't just your fault," said Diane,"... if Max knew about this he could have trusted his parents. We could have gotten this researched and maybe treated and ... and he could have been honest with you about the REASON he was reluctant to get in a relationship. Hell, maybe my children could have been honest with me about this."
"But what if they were scared? What if their biological mother had the same problem but didn't know what it was? Maybe she drank a beer a day or something - maybe she gave the kids a beer because she WAS impaired..."
"Oh dear," said Diane. "Maybe that DID happen. I've wondered for years what sort of a terrible parent would never even teach their children how to speak ... never toilet train them ... let a couple of five or six year-olds wander naked in the desert and never even come looking for them. I've read that 20% of people have some sort of alcohol related problems. Can you imagine if you were an alcoholic and had this disorder?"
Liz's hands went toward her abdomen protectively. "That wouldn't have to happen. If their mother taught them not to touch alcohol...."
Jeff looked at his daughter and smiled. "I think I can see the way that this decision is going, and I think I approve. I do have to ask you though Liz,... are you worried about those other gene-thingys that Dr. Bernstein was talking about?"
"Worried? A little I guess. I'm starting to think that parents are constantly worried about their children..."
"You got THAT right," said Diane and Jeff simultaneously.
Liz smiled and continued, "... but Max seems OK, and unless he tells me something really frightening when I talk to him ... I'm keeping our babies. If Max doesn't WANT to be their father I can't help that..."
"He'd BETTER want to be their father," said Diane, "... because I'm damn sure going to be their grandmother..." She put her arms around Liz and hugged her warmly, "I never had real little ones to play with. Mine were walking when I brought them home."
Jeff looked at his daughter, just praying that somehow this would all work out.
Back at the Sheriff's Office, things weren't near as pleasant. There hadn't actually been a jail break from the Chaves County Sheriff's office since the era of Billy the Kid. There wasn't an established procedure for this and the accusations were flying back and forth.
"Well how could you let him just friggin' WALK-OUT!" screamed Pemberton, "... don't you even LOCK the friggin' doors?"
"The doors WERE locked," shouted the deputy who had been on the desk. The female deputy nodded her head in agreement.
"It might have helped if the ARRESTING OFFICER had told us that this kid was an expert at picking locks," replied the female deputy.
"I still think you forgot to lock the cell door," insisted Pemberton.
"The cell door, and the door to the jail itself? And the patrol car...?," said the desk deputy, "... and we HAVE every key to the patrol car, so we KNOW he picked that lock."
"...which means that he probably had no problem unlocking the 12 gauge shotgun that was locked into the front of the car, or the M-16 that was in the trunk either," said the female deputy, "... which mean now he's armed and dangerous..."
"Well if EITHER of you had really been paying attention instead of...."
"SHUT UP!," said Jim Valenti, "... now is NOT the time for us to be fighting about ourselves. We need to get this sorted out immediately. We need to contact the state police and get them looking, we need to contact our own people out there and get them looking as well, talk to the Border Patrol too, they've got a lot of people out there, and we need to get in touch with Diane Evans..."
"The kids mom?" said Pemberton in disbelief, "...how about warning the Parkers? The girl is the one at risk..."
Jim Valenti looked at Pemberton. He wasn't at all sure the boy was any threat to Liz Parker at all, but no doubt there'd be hell to pay once Jeff Parker found out about this. "Give the Parker ranch a call and let Jeff know too," he told Pemberton.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch (I've always wanted to say that)"
"Can I hitch a ride with the two of you out to my car?" asked Diane.
"Hitch a ride? Where is your car?"
"Back by the road hidden in the bushes. I didn't want that deputy up on the ridge line to see me drive up. It was pretty plain that Deputy Pemberton didn't want me to talk to Liz, and I figured between him and you you'd prevent it if you saw me coming."
"Deputy up on the ridge line? But.... Pemberton said there wasn't going to BE any more surveillance of Liz .. that if he did that you'd use it in court to claim that the Sheriff's office didn't actually think your son was guilty."
"Daddy, I told you - Max couldn't be guilty..."
"But I saw the car - it was clear you WERE under surveillance. If it wasn't the sheriff's department...," said Diane.
"... and since Max ISN'T the guy who tried to kill me...," insisted Liz.
Jeff Parker felt fear hit him in the pit of his stomach. Not fear for himself - but fear for his daughter.
"Then it's probably the guy up on the ridge line," said Jeff.
"Well, the truth is I spent the night here working .... I sort of got fixated on a rather interesting problem. That problem is - well your testing actually."
"Is there something wrong with the babies?"
"Babies?" asked Diane, looking at Jeff. Jeff nodded his head and silently mouthed the word 'twins...' Diane's eyebrows elevated momentarily, then she got a sort of sappy grin on her face as she looked back at Liz. But then the grin went away as she remembered the words... 'something wrong with them...?'
"Liz.....?"
Liz looked at Diane Evans ... and her father. This conversation involved both of them too...
"Just a minute, Dr. Bernstein. I want to put this on speakerphone. There ... can you still hear me?"
"Yes I can, Liz. By the way, please call me Rachel."
"Thank you Dr. Berns... Rachel. Is there something wrong with the tests?"
"Well, wrong is a kind of value-laden word, Elizabeth. I did some preliminary genome studies on the placental villus samples and they were both - well, certainly unusual to say the least. Linda Huntington tells me that you are quite good at biology and have been doing some reading in genetics as well for the last few weeks...."
"Yes. I've read several of the basic books about human genetics, and then two medical genetics books, your Human Molecular Genetics, and Jorde's Medical Genetics, also Emery's Elements of Medical Genetics, although I don't think I understood the third chapter....."
"Well, that chapter was poorly written, I understand he's doing a whole rewrite in the next edition but.... well, I must say I'm impressed. The med students in the class I teach at the university certainly don't do that much reading for the class I teach them."
"I've sort of had a lot of motivation lately," said Liz.
"I rather expect you have. Well, all that background will help, but I'm not just too sure how MUCH it will help, because we have a little bit of an enigma here. The biological material from the paternal donor - the father - is a little bit unusual. Actually, it's very unusual, but as to whether it's in any way harmful... that's a little bit more difficult to discern.
First of all, the two pregnancies are - at the chromosomal level - quite normal. That is they have the right number of chromosomes and no chromosomal abnormalities at the macro level. Do you want to know the genders by the way? Some women do - some don't, because it tends to create an emotional attachment that might affect their decision to carry the pregnancies to term."
"I think I'd like to know, ...Rachel. I'm beginning to realize that ... well that process has probably already taken place."
"Well, you have one of each. At the macro level you have a perfectly normal male chromosomal pattern and a perfectly normal female chromosome pattern. It's at the genome and the gene level that something is a little different. Actually, something is quite different, but because it is sort of unique it's difficult to predict with any degree of certainty the consequences of it except in one small area.
Because we have a blood sample from you, we can sort of subtract that from the fetal genomes and get a pretty certain picture of just how much of this - I hate to call it an abnormality but I guess there aren't any better terms for it - this strangeness anyway - comes from him."
"Strangeness...?"
"Liz, I'm sure you are familiar with the term 'junk DNA'?...?"
"Yes."
"Well almost all this 'strangeness' is confined to the 'junk DNA'. In particular it seems confined to that part of the 'junk DNA' that we really do think we understand ... almost as if it had been placed there intentionally."
"Intentionally?"
"I'm sorry, it's been a long night and I did not get a lot of sleep. My mind wanders before my second cup of coffee, and I haven't yet had even my first. The point is there is something in 'junk DNA' called pseudogenes, are you familiar with the term?"
"Not really...."
"A Pseudogene is like a gene except it has lost its function. That is, maybe somewhere in our evolution there was some gene that was dreadfully important to us - perhaps it created some vitamin when we were exposed to sunlight - but now we get that through our diet instead. Or perhaps some distant evolutionary ancestor had spines like a sea urchin but we haven't used that gene for millions of years. It just sits there turned off ... and never does turn on. It looks like a gene and maybe once was a gene but now it's just sort of ... well, like a disk drive that had the address for old information deleted but was never reformatted, to use an electronic example. It truly is 'junk' that will never be reused, but something needs to fill that space to ensure the tertiary structure of the DNA itself stays normal...."
"So it has to sort of hold the real DNA in place, but it doesn't really do anything," said Liz.
"That's precisely right - except the father of these children - as I said - it would almost appear that these areas have been ... well I would almost use the word 'pruned' in some areas and a different sort of DNA substituted in these places."
"What do you mean..... different sort?"
"Well, it's different than the normal DNA pseudogene sequences certainly - not that THAT would appear to make any functional difference in most of the rest of the DNA - the tertiary structure is maintained EXACTLY as it had been. It's just that - well - that wouldn't normally be even possible - the DNA sequences just wouldn't work that way with the new DNA put in, except at the end - where the ... I guess you would call it 'splice' takes place ... there's a special - rather unique bit of DNA. It allows that attachment."
"What's unique about it?"
"Honey...that's the truly fascinating part. Do you understand how the backbone of DNA is the deoxyribose?"
"Yes..."
"Well, to make the attachment come out with the correct tertiary structure, at one small area in the sequence, the deoxyribose used is l-Deoxyribose, the mirror image of the normal d-Deoxyribose. That's the first time I'm aware of that ever being found in nature. That shouldn't be there at all and even if if it is, it shouldn't be something that should be able to continue cell division because I wouldn't think the body would have the enzymes to even handle it.
Strangely enough in the cell culture it doesn't hurt a thing. It just reproduces a true copy of the modified nucleotide - which must mean that part of the other pseudogene-looking genetic material is now coding for the enzymes needed to do this. It obviousl yworks in the cell culture and - since you got this from your ... partner .... it apparently works in him too."
"So is this a mutation?"
"Well, nothing in science is impossible, but I don't really see how. But then, I'm not sure exactly how this would EVER happen."
"So are you saying ... this was done on purpose?"
"No, of course not. We simply lack the capability to do this on purpose - at least for a few more decades, and back when your ... partner ... was born, assuming he's about your age or older, we'd have never even been able to discover the weird splicing at all."
"So....what does this mean .... for our babies I mean...?"
"That's an excellent question and I'm not at all certain I can give you a complete answer. I've done a series of metabolic tests and the only thing I found - and then I traced that back to one [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulator_gene]regulator gene[/url] and confirmed it - was interference with one area of enzyme synthesis. One of those areas of unusual DNA sort of overlaps - not really of course, but that strange mirror deoxyribose at the end sort of almost shuts off the regulator gene for a certain enzyme - alcohol dehydrogenase."
"Alcohol dehydrogenase?"
"It's an enzyme that lets us detoxify alcohol. It's not the only one. The Cytochrome P450 system can do that as well, although not as well and certainly not as quickly. Once again, it's obvious this isn't a lethal deficiency, since the cells do multiply and since of course your partner himself is alive. But even at that - man I'll bet he's a cheap drunk..."
"Cheap drunk?" said Liz into the phone, with a look of puzzlement on her face. Her father quickly added an explanation.
"He ... uh ... can't hold his liquor very well, dear."
Doctor Bernstein apparently heard, and chuckled. "In this case that's a bit of an understatement," said the doctor,"...actually, should the two of you get back together I'd suggest you wear eau de toilette and not actual perfume. I'd worry about even the trivial amount of alcohol in perfume could make him a little loopy. OK, that's a little bit of an exaggeration maybe, the perfume on you I mean. But I wouldn't want anyone to give him after shave and then expect him to be the life of the party, although actually he might be briefly - before he crashed. Eventually his Cytochrome P450 would clear the alcohol out of course."
"And the babies....?"
"Liz, I honestly don't know. I don't honestly see that there would be any problem with them other than their own hypersensitivity to alcohol, but there are multiple copies of several different sorts of totally new genes in them - and of course during the fusion of the gametes your DNA and his DNA got swapped around and ... well, it's hard to tell if that will effect anything. Basically, all I can predict with certainty is that if the fetuses go to term, you don't want them to do any drinking - at all. Basically, Liz, that's all I can give you. Perhaps if your partner could come up here - let me do some somatic testing on him - I could tell what those new genes - or pseudogenes - really do, if they do anything at all. Until then, all we have is speculation."
"Thank you, Rachel. I'll talk to my partner and see if he will cooperate."
"Well, whatever you decide, Liz, good luck to you. I'll keep these results filed away until you tell me what you want to do with them. For right now though, I need to get to bed. This was wonderfully stimulating, but I'm not twenty years old any more. Pulling 'all-nighters' is something better left to you young people."
After hanging up the phone, Liz shook her head in disgust. "It was all my fault. I tossed that alcohol in his face and practically poisoned him. None of this was his doing. He was minding his own business - just trying to help me and keep me safe - and I did all this to him."
"Liz, it isn't just your fault," said Diane,"... if Max knew about this he could have trusted his parents. We could have gotten this researched and maybe treated and ... and he could have been honest with you about the REASON he was reluctant to get in a relationship. Hell, maybe my children could have been honest with me about this."
"But what if they were scared? What if their biological mother had the same problem but didn't know what it was? Maybe she drank a beer a day or something - maybe she gave the kids a beer because she WAS impaired..."
"Oh dear," said Diane. "Maybe that DID happen. I've wondered for years what sort of a terrible parent would never even teach their children how to speak ... never toilet train them ... let a couple of five or six year-olds wander naked in the desert and never even come looking for them. I've read that 20% of people have some sort of alcohol related problems. Can you imagine if you were an alcoholic and had this disorder?"
Liz's hands went toward her abdomen protectively. "That wouldn't have to happen. If their mother taught them not to touch alcohol...."
Jeff looked at his daughter and smiled. "I think I can see the way that this decision is going, and I think I approve. I do have to ask you though Liz,... are you worried about those other gene-thingys that Dr. Bernstein was talking about?"
"Worried? A little I guess. I'm starting to think that parents are constantly worried about their children..."
"You got THAT right," said Diane and Jeff simultaneously.
Liz smiled and continued, "... but Max seems OK, and unless he tells me something really frightening when I talk to him ... I'm keeping our babies. If Max doesn't WANT to be their father I can't help that..."
"He'd BETTER want to be their father," said Diane, "... because I'm damn sure going to be their grandmother..." She put her arms around Liz and hugged her warmly, "I never had real little ones to play with. Mine were walking when I brought them home."
Jeff looked at his daughter, just praying that somehow this would all work out.
Back at the Sheriff's Office, things weren't near as pleasant. There hadn't actually been a jail break from the Chaves County Sheriff's office since the era of Billy the Kid. There wasn't an established procedure for this and the accusations were flying back and forth.
"Well how could you let him just friggin' WALK-OUT!" screamed Pemberton, "... don't you even LOCK the friggin' doors?"
"The doors WERE locked," shouted the deputy who had been on the desk. The female deputy nodded her head in agreement.
"It might have helped if the ARRESTING OFFICER had told us that this kid was an expert at picking locks," replied the female deputy.
"I still think you forgot to lock the cell door," insisted Pemberton.
"The cell door, and the door to the jail itself? And the patrol car...?," said the desk deputy, "... and we HAVE every key to the patrol car, so we KNOW he picked that lock."
"...which means that he probably had no problem unlocking the 12 gauge shotgun that was locked into the front of the car, or the M-16 that was in the trunk either," said the female deputy, "... which mean now he's armed and dangerous..."
"Well if EITHER of you had really been paying attention instead of...."
"SHUT UP!," said Jim Valenti, "... now is NOT the time for us to be fighting about ourselves. We need to get this sorted out immediately. We need to contact the state police and get them looking, we need to contact our own people out there and get them looking as well, talk to the Border Patrol too, they've got a lot of people out there, and we need to get in touch with Diane Evans..."
"The kids mom?" said Pemberton in disbelief, "...how about warning the Parkers? The girl is the one at risk..."
Jim Valenti looked at Pemberton. He wasn't at all sure the boy was any threat to Liz Parker at all, but no doubt there'd be hell to pay once Jeff Parker found out about this. "Give the Parker ranch a call and let Jeff know too," he told Pemberton.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch (I've always wanted to say that)"
"Can I hitch a ride with the two of you out to my car?" asked Diane.
"Hitch a ride? Where is your car?"
"Back by the road hidden in the bushes. I didn't want that deputy up on the ridge line to see me drive up. It was pretty plain that Deputy Pemberton didn't want me to talk to Liz, and I figured between him and you you'd prevent it if you saw me coming."
"Deputy up on the ridge line? But.... Pemberton said there wasn't going to BE any more surveillance of Liz .. that if he did that you'd use it in court to claim that the Sheriff's office didn't actually think your son was guilty."
"Daddy, I told you - Max couldn't be guilty..."
"But I saw the car - it was clear you WERE under surveillance. If it wasn't the sheriff's department...," said Diane.
"... and since Max ISN'T the guy who tried to kill me...," insisted Liz.
Jeff Parker felt fear hit him in the pit of his stomach. Not fear for himself - but fear for his daughter.
"Then it's probably the guy up on the ridge line," said Jeff.
Re: Decisions AUwA (Mature) 11/20/10
He drove the patrol car south – without any real plan except to get separation from the Sheriff's office. You couldn't honestly say he calmed down even then – he was hovering just short of panic – not for himself but for her. But blind panic is never a good strategy and even Max knew that.
There were 6000 square miles in Chaves county. Three thousand of those square miles were east of Roswell so knowing Liz was east of town didn't help all that much, assuming the ranch that Liz was at was actually IN Chaves county at all. The ranch was 160 acres – not small – but 160 acres was a quarter of a section – and a section was a mile square. So with 3000 square miles out there and a quarter square mile to look for, doing this randomly really wasn't an option.
But tired, scared, and desperate, Max finally asked himself, 'What would mom do? What would Liz do...?' They say that a guy looks for a gal with some of the attributes of his mother, and in at least one respect Diane Evans and Liz Parker were the same. They both did their research when they had a problem rather than running around in blind panic. So Max took a couple of deep breaths and tried to get his panic under control – and then decided were to go to get that information. They'd be expecting him – and looking for him - at home, but there was a place they probably wouldn't where he could get access to a computer.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch:
Jeff grabbed the telephone and heard a dial tone, but two digits in to dialing 9-1-1 the phone went abruptly dead. He banged his hand down on the receiver several times but couldn't get another dial tone.
"Dammit - it just went dead," he said.
"Is there some other way we can get a message through?" asked Diane.
"If there is, I haven't figured it out," said Jeff, "... and I've been coming here since I was three months old. The nearest neighbor is the Williams ranch - and there's a lot of open territory between here and there. Hell, there's an awful lot of open territory between the ranch and the shed we use as a garage for that matter."
He walked to a gun case and unlocked it, pulling out a single shot 22 with half a box full of shells, and a 12 gauge double barrel shotgun with a carton and a half of shells.
"We use the 22 mostly for plinking. It has a mile range, but with open sights we'll be lucky to hit anything much past a hundred yards or so ... and it isn't much for stopping power even up close. The shotgun we use on rattlesnakes but it will kill an elephant at close range - even with this birdshot. Past thirty or forty yards, though, if you hit someone with it you are going to mainly piss them off. I guess the question is... do I run the gauntlet to get to the car and hope to get out of here without getting me or the engine of the car picked off? Or do I stay behind these log walls and wait for him ... or them ... to come to us?"
"My vote would be to stay in here and let them come to us. Sooner or later the Sheriff's department will try and get in touch with you. For that matter, I left several messages for Isabel telling her I was coming here. I wouldn't be surprised if she was calling your wife right now ... or even the Sheriff's department."
Jeff picked up the 22 rifle and the half-box of shells. "Well, that gets my vote too." He looked at his daughter, "Well dear, looks like you have the deciding vote..?"
"Deciding vote?" asked Liz. "You've already got two of you voting to hole up here. How does that make me the deciding vote?"
Diane looked at the young lady who she had decided was going to be her daughter-in-law even if she had to personally march Max to the altar in front of that double-barreled shotgun.
"Easy," she said with a grin, "...you are voting for three."
Liz looked back at her, her own mouth returning a smile, " Well then, it sounds like it's five to nothing in favor of staying put...."
Back at the podchamber:
Even an Ice Princess ... well, make that an EX-Ice Princess, has to come up for air sometime.
"Mmmmm," said Isabel, before she finally pulled her lips away from his. Her eyes went briefly to the screen and noted something new was going on. "What's it doing now?"
"It says it's computing the first of three tests."
"Can you explain that in English," Isabel asked.
"Unfortunately, that WAS English," he said, smiling at her. "it means it's checking for data integrity before letting the program boot. It makes sense I guess, .... no one would want an artificial intelligence that had a screw lose or something ... but I don't know what we are going to do for the next couple hours while we wait, because that's how slow the status bar is moving..."
She hugged him close and brought her lips toward his...
"Improvise, Alex, improvise...," she said as their lips met again.
At the Sheriff's office, things weren't going all that well:
"I can't get anyone but the answering machine at the Evans place," said Pemberton, "... so I left Mrs. Evans a message that told her her son had escaped custody and if she heard anything from him she should convince him to give himself up. I had even LESS luck with the Parker Ranch. I called the number three times - and double checked to make sure I got it right. The line is out of service."
"Out of service? That's a little worrisome," said Jim Valenti.
"Well, we've got a couple of cars out in that direction. I'd like to tell one of them to go check, but we need them both for roadblocks if we are going to bottle up even the major roads going east. Otherwise if he goes that way, he could be into Lincoln County and then down 70. Once he gets there he heads south and we lose him for good at the Mexico border."
"Well, Jeff Parker DOES need to be told," Jim said, "... and I'm a LITTLE concerned about him being out of touch like this."
"Well, if nothing else, this pretty much establishes the Evans kid's guilt, so it's not like we need to worry about any other suspects ... and the kid would still be ninety minutes away from the Parker ranch, even if he WAS going there and DID know where the ranch was, which according to Jeff Parker he almost certainly doesn't."
"Tell you what," said Jim, "... let's you and I drive out there and tell him..."
"But the kid?"
"That's what they make police radios for..."
"The Parker ranch is out of range I think."
"So grab one of the sat-phones. That's what they are for...."
Meanwhile, less than seven city blocks away:
You wouldn't think it would be easy to hide a police cruiser in the center of a town, but you could do it if you knew where. Behind the football scoreboard it was pretty well concealed, and a quick lope across the football field itself brought him to the back of the gymnasium. It was almost an hour until the first class and – Max hoped – there would be no one to witness him as he entered the back door to the locker room. He felt a brief twinge of pain as he passed the wrestling and exercise room – remembering the crime he'd committed that had started this horrible chain of events.
It took only a few minutes to get to the computer in the science lab – the same one where Liz had come for his assistance. The Chaves tax assessor's office website lit up with two hits for 'Parker.' One was the building the Crashdown was in, the other was 'Parker Family Trust.' It was on the edge of Chaves County, almost to Lincoln county, and when he saw that the trustee for the trust was Jeff Parker, that clinched it. He quickly printed off a map to the tax parcel and then sneaked back to the gym and out through the locker room. Sixty seconds later he was heading out of town going east.
Unknown to Max though, his entry into the gymnasium had not gone entirely unobserved.
There were 6000 square miles in Chaves county. Three thousand of those square miles were east of Roswell so knowing Liz was east of town didn't help all that much, assuming the ranch that Liz was at was actually IN Chaves county at all. The ranch was 160 acres – not small – but 160 acres was a quarter of a section – and a section was a mile square. So with 3000 square miles out there and a quarter square mile to look for, doing this randomly really wasn't an option.
But tired, scared, and desperate, Max finally asked himself, 'What would mom do? What would Liz do...?' They say that a guy looks for a gal with some of the attributes of his mother, and in at least one respect Diane Evans and Liz Parker were the same. They both did their research when they had a problem rather than running around in blind panic. So Max took a couple of deep breaths and tried to get his panic under control – and then decided were to go to get that information. They'd be expecting him – and looking for him - at home, but there was a place they probably wouldn't where he could get access to a computer.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch:
Jeff grabbed the telephone and heard a dial tone, but two digits in to dialing 9-1-1 the phone went abruptly dead. He banged his hand down on the receiver several times but couldn't get another dial tone.
"Dammit - it just went dead," he said.
"Is there some other way we can get a message through?" asked Diane.
"If there is, I haven't figured it out," said Jeff, "... and I've been coming here since I was three months old. The nearest neighbor is the Williams ranch - and there's a lot of open territory between here and there. Hell, there's an awful lot of open territory between the ranch and the shed we use as a garage for that matter."
He walked to a gun case and unlocked it, pulling out a single shot 22 with half a box full of shells, and a 12 gauge double barrel shotgun with a carton and a half of shells.
"We use the 22 mostly for plinking. It has a mile range, but with open sights we'll be lucky to hit anything much past a hundred yards or so ... and it isn't much for stopping power even up close. The shotgun we use on rattlesnakes but it will kill an elephant at close range - even with this birdshot. Past thirty or forty yards, though, if you hit someone with it you are going to mainly piss them off. I guess the question is... do I run the gauntlet to get to the car and hope to get out of here without getting me or the engine of the car picked off? Or do I stay behind these log walls and wait for him ... or them ... to come to us?"
"My vote would be to stay in here and let them come to us. Sooner or later the Sheriff's department will try and get in touch with you. For that matter, I left several messages for Isabel telling her I was coming here. I wouldn't be surprised if she was calling your wife right now ... or even the Sheriff's department."
Jeff picked up the 22 rifle and the half-box of shells. "Well, that gets my vote too." He looked at his daughter, "Well dear, looks like you have the deciding vote..?"
"Deciding vote?" asked Liz. "You've already got two of you voting to hole up here. How does that make me the deciding vote?"
Diane looked at the young lady who she had decided was going to be her daughter-in-law even if she had to personally march Max to the altar in front of that double-barreled shotgun.
"Easy," she said with a grin, "...you are voting for three."
Liz looked back at her, her own mouth returning a smile, " Well then, it sounds like it's five to nothing in favor of staying put...."
Back at the podchamber:
Even an Ice Princess ... well, make that an EX-Ice Princess, has to come up for air sometime.
"Mmmmm," said Isabel, before she finally pulled her lips away from his. Her eyes went briefly to the screen and noted something new was going on. "What's it doing now?"
"It says it's computing the first of three tests."
"Can you explain that in English," Isabel asked.
"Unfortunately, that WAS English," he said, smiling at her. "it means it's checking for data integrity before letting the program boot. It makes sense I guess, .... no one would want an artificial intelligence that had a screw lose or something ... but I don't know what we are going to do for the next couple hours while we wait, because that's how slow the status bar is moving..."
She hugged him close and brought her lips toward his...
"Improvise, Alex, improvise...," she said as their lips met again.
At the Sheriff's office, things weren't going all that well:
"I can't get anyone but the answering machine at the Evans place," said Pemberton, "... so I left Mrs. Evans a message that told her her son had escaped custody and if she heard anything from him she should convince him to give himself up. I had even LESS luck with the Parker Ranch. I called the number three times - and double checked to make sure I got it right. The line is out of service."
"Out of service? That's a little worrisome," said Jim Valenti.
"Well, we've got a couple of cars out in that direction. I'd like to tell one of them to go check, but we need them both for roadblocks if we are going to bottle up even the major roads going east. Otherwise if he goes that way, he could be into Lincoln County and then down 70. Once he gets there he heads south and we lose him for good at the Mexico border."
"Well, Jeff Parker DOES need to be told," Jim said, "... and I'm a LITTLE concerned about him being out of touch like this."
"Well, if nothing else, this pretty much establishes the Evans kid's guilt, so it's not like we need to worry about any other suspects ... and the kid would still be ninety minutes away from the Parker ranch, even if he WAS going there and DID know where the ranch was, which according to Jeff Parker he almost certainly doesn't."
"Tell you what," said Jim, "... let's you and I drive out there and tell him..."
"But the kid?"
"That's what they make police radios for..."
"The Parker ranch is out of range I think."
"So grab one of the sat-phones. That's what they are for...."
Meanwhile, less than seven city blocks away:
You wouldn't think it would be easy to hide a police cruiser in the center of a town, but you could do it if you knew where. Behind the football scoreboard it was pretty well concealed, and a quick lope across the football field itself brought him to the back of the gymnasium. It was almost an hour until the first class and – Max hoped – there would be no one to witness him as he entered the back door to the locker room. He felt a brief twinge of pain as he passed the wrestling and exercise room – remembering the crime he'd committed that had started this horrible chain of events.
It took only a few minutes to get to the computer in the science lab – the same one where Liz had come for his assistance. The Chaves tax assessor's office website lit up with two hits for 'Parker.' One was the building the Crashdown was in, the other was 'Parker Family Trust.' It was on the edge of Chaves County, almost to Lincoln county, and when he saw that the trustee for the trust was Jeff Parker, that clinched it. He quickly printed off a map to the tax parcel and then sneaked back to the gym and out through the locker room. Sixty seconds later he was heading out of town going east.
Unknown to Max though, his entry into the gymnasium had not gone entirely unobserved.
Last edited by greywolf on Tue Nov 30, 2010 11:50 am, edited 1 time in total.