The 6:20 Man

CHAPTER

47

AFTER MEETING WITH CAMPBELL, DEVINE rode the train to Westchester and took a cab to the abortion clinic. There were protestors out front with graphic pictures on posterboards. They were marching and chanting.

One man confronted Devine and wanted to know if he was the father of a baby being butchered inside the “chamber of horrors,” as he termed it.

“No,” said Devine as he hurried past the man and rang the bell on the front door of the clinic. It was barred and armored and had a surveillance camera mounted in the corner.

A voice coming over a callbox said, “Yes?”

“Travis Devine. I phoned earlier. I spoke with a Dr. Tillis?”

“ID?”

He held up his driver’s license.

“Just a moment.”

He waited, glancing back at the protestors, who had to keep their distance per the law.

He heard the door buzz, and he pulled it open and shut it firmly behind him.

There was an armed guard in the small foyer, who looked at Devine suspiciously as he told him to walk through a magnetometer, then wanded and patted him down.

A woman in her forties in hospital scrubs met him in the foyer a few moments after that.

“This way,” she said.

He was deposited in a tiny, drab room, where he supposed women came to consult about having an abortion. Devine knew that this particular subject would be one in which no general consensus would ever be reached. But he could imagine people sitting here and making perhaps the most momentous and gut-wrenching decision of their lives.

A woman in her fifties walked in. She was in a dark blue dress with a long white lab coat over it; she had let her hair go gray and it hung limply to her shoulders. She had rimless glasses on a chain around her neck. Her eyes were blue and alert, and her manner efficient and professional. She introduced herself as Dr. Cynthia Tillis.

“The police have already been by, as I told you over the phone, Mr. Devine. I conveyed to them what I was legally allowed to tell and nothing more. I believe they will come back with a subpoena to compel more information and I will have to deal with that then.”

“I understand.”

“But I can’t really tell you anything. The police at least are trying to find out who killed Sara. I only agreed to see you because the fact of Sara’s abortion has now come out in the press, and you said you were a friend of hers.”

“How did she come to this clinic?”

“Sara said she had been referred by someone; she didn’t give a name. We went through everything, and the decision was made on the best way to move forward.”

“And she never mentioned who the father might be?”

“Even if she did, I could not provide that information.”

“Is that what you told the police?”

“Please, Mr. Devine.”

“Okay, did she say why she was having an abortion?”

“I can’t divulge that either.”

He looked at some pictures on the wall with accompanying medical terms. “Can you tell me how it was done?”

She began carefully, “I can generally tell you our range of procedures. Up to eleven weeks is deemed the embryonic period. Up to that point the abortion can be done by what is called medication abortion.”