Read Fatal Hearts for Free Online Page A

don’t deserve to be subjected to. No matter how shadily—or maybe incompetently—the adoption might have been handled from this end, I can promise you that Frank and Ella believed it was completely aboveboard.”
    “I do believe that. And I also take the point I presume you were making, that someone might not have wanted his investigation to succeed. If someone went to great lengths to bury the adoption years ago, who knows what lengths they’d go to now?”
    “Exactly.” Boyd massaged his temple. “I’m sorry, I kinda sidetracked the conversation. You said a couple of folks knew about the irregularities?”
    “Yeah, two of them. To one extent or another. That would be Dr. Hayden Walsh and your brother’s landlord. But that makes sense. I gather he was pretty close to Dr. Walsh, and, of course, he met Sylvia Stratton in the course of his investigation, so she’s known from their first contact, before Josh ever took up residence.”
    “Of course. There have to be others out there who know, though. Josh has been investigating this for almost six months. Somewhere along the way, he had to have told other people.”
    Another nod from Morgan. “Seems he couched it as a clerical mistake, not a flat-out illegal adoption, or so I gather as I quietly work my way through the list of obstetricians in the city in an effort to reconstruct Josh’s search. Your brother’s standard line was that he thought the ob-gyn in question had delivered you guys, but that the birth record was inexplicably mixed up with another set of twins. That was apparently good enough for most of these guys, who had their staff check their records for the period in question. So far, they’ve all told us they didn’t deliver any twin boys who could have been you or whose records could have been confounded with you.”
    Boyd’s lips thinned. “And a doctor would never lie.”
    Morgan sighed. “There’s that. But for what it’s worth, I’ve been talking to these docs myself. I’m not holding myself out as a human polygraph, but I do tend to have a pretty good feel for when I’m being bullshitted.”
    “And you believe them?”
    “So far.”
    “You know I’m going to be out there talking to people too, right?”
    “I figured. And more power to you. If you can bring me something that lets me ramp up reasonable and probable grounds, we’ll be all over it,” Morgan said. “So long as you’re not out there showing us up.”
    Boyd nodded. “Shouldn’t be a problem.” He almost added “as long as you’re doing your job right,” but he thought better of it. From the glint in Morgan’s eyes, it appeared he didn’t have to say it out loud.
    “I hope you know what you’re doing, McBride.”
    “Well, if I don’t know what I’m doing by now, I’m in trouble.”
    “I mean, have you considered that if you go poking around, you might not like what you find?”
    Boyd just raised an eyebrow.
    “Off the top of my head, the person who might have the most to lose from your brother’s investigation might be your birth mother.”
    “The thought had occurred to me.”
    “But you’re not going to leave it alone?”
    “Would you?”
    Morgan ran a hand through his hair, which fell back into perfect place. “Just remember, be discreet. Because if I get any complaints, your officer in charge back home is going to hear from my boss. Got it?”
    “Got it.”
    Morgan flipped the file closed and stood.
    Boyd rose and extended his hand. “Thanks, man.”
    “No problem. For what it’s worth, I really want to help you out. My wife, Grace, works for the same local paper as Josh did, and she really liked your brother. Says she learned a lot from him over these last months, and she’s still really broken up about his death. Hell, I met him a couple of times over drinks, and I liked him too. Even had him and Hayden over to the house for dinner. It was a damned shame.”
    Boyd blinked. “I didn’t know. That he worked with your wife, I mean. You