“He’s got the perfect victim pool living under his roof. Abandoned girls with low self-esteem, learning problems, probably histories of sexual activity. He impregnates them deliberately, gets a kick out of destroying the fetus. And the taxpayers pay for everything.”

“Without getting into the whole when-does-life-begin thing, Alex, he’s basically a prenatal serial killer, right? What’s the thrill?”

I thought about that. “Create and destroy. Playing God.”

“Nine girls,” he said. “And not one of them has complained.”

“He’s gentle— seductive, not coercive. Ties it in with the whole paternal intimacy thing. When he moves on to another girl, they think it’s their fault. Beth admitted being jealous. She dealt with it by escaping.”

“That place of his,” he said, “main house, converted garage, and that weird-looking cinder-block building? Lots of construction for a small lot. I was figuring dorms for the kids. But who knows what goes on there. No way Cherish couldn’t know, right?”

“Beth says Drew delighted in going around Cherish. From petty stuff like eating doughnuts on the sly to leaving her with the scut work while he took his ‘assistants’ out on the road.”

“Okay,” he said, “maybe that worked for a while, but she finally caught on.”

“And started sleeping with Barnett Malley.”

“Her own brand of sin.”

I said, “How did Daney’s greed come into the picture with Demchuk?”

“He’d been hinting around for a while about getting a cut of the action. Demchuk lent him money to put him off— small amounts he never repaid, she figures three, four grand total. Recently, though, he’s gotten pushier. Coming out and asking for his share, outright. Insisting he’s her best ‘referral source.’ Implying he might go elsewhere. Demchuk’s not the sharing type. And Daney’s timing couldn’t be worse because Demchuk’s ready to retire, wants to sell the clinic. She was figuring she’d buy him off with a screw-you payment. I told her selling the place wasn’t gonna be easy when all the bad stuff about Daney came out. Made that sound more imminent than it is. Demchuk tried to stay cool but I could tell I shook her. That’s why she was willing to deal him off. As in handing over Valerie Quezada’s aborted fetus.”

“She keeps them?”

“No, she tosses them in the trash out back, which is a health code violation. I had her fish it out and put it in dry ice, then I brought it over to the coroner’s to be stored with Kristal Malley’s tissue samples. Which is where I am now, breathing in the aroma of decomposition and drinking county coffee. No word on my DNA requisition yet, but now it looks like I’ll have another package to send to Cellmark. We get Daney’s DNA in the fetus, I’ve got a gift for the Juvey Sex Crimes unit they just started downtown.”