“Endometriosis—her uterus was full of scar tissue. The etiology, or what caused it, was unknown. Could have happened in childhood—an infection masquerading as a bad stomach ache or a false appendicitis. One of those things that doesn’t show up until the woman wants to have a baby. She starts trying for a year or so, then she suspects something is wrong. We do the tests, boom, life comes apart at the seams.”

“But Linda got pregnant despite her endo—whatever you call it,” Decker said.

“Sure did. Woman had one operable tube at the time, that one was twenty-five percent occluded, seventy percent scar tissue on her uterus, and a compromised husband fertility-wise. God is a better doctor than I.”

“Let me ask you this,” Decker said. “Do you think Linda might have gotten pregnant with another, more fertile man?”

“Either one of them had a better chance with other partners. But I’ll tell you this much, Sergeant. Linda was already being inseminated with sperm other than her husband’s.”

Decker raised his eyebrows.

“No,” Meecham said. “It’s nothing like that. Luke knew about it and agreed to it. It’s called a cocktail mixture, and it’s pretty common these days. Husband’s sperm is mixed with a bunch of healthy sperm from physically matched donors. Usually, the only way to know for sure is to do a blood test. The insemination is an expensive and painful procedure, the woman experiences a great deal of cramping, bleeding, the man is dehumanized, emasculated. His sperm isn’t good enough. But Linda—and Luke—were willing to give it a try. That didn’t work. And the sperm we used was as viable as any around.”

Meecham finished a second cigarette. “That’s what we were doing when Linda called it off. We tried the cocktail about a half-dozen times when she said she’d finally had enough.”

“Did she say why she was quitting?”

“The whole gamut,” Meecham said. “The physical pain, the anguish, the toll on the marriage, the expense, the hopelessness of it all…God, I was so happy for them when Katie was born. Luke’s not the type to do anything like Lamaze—to him, birth was a woman’s affair—so she did it all by herself. And Katie wasn’t an easy delivery. Linda was thirty-eight, the labor was long. But she came through it like a trouper.”

“How did Linda come to you as a patient?” Decker asked.

“Referral from a local GP in Saugus. Last of a vanishing breed. He refers me all of his OB cases, because the malpractice insurance is too high for him.”

Meecham stopped a moment, seemed to collect his thoughts.