Twisted Path

by Melissa F. Miller

  He watched as her expressive face turned blank and closed. After a moment, she swallowed and spoke stiffly. “Raina was murdered the same way Giles was. He told me how he found her … laying in the bed, her skull bashed in, blood everywhere. Just … just like I found him.”

  Her pale skin went so white she looked translucent for a moment. He gripped her shoulder, afraid she was going to pass out on him.

  “Mrs. Noor?”

  “S-sorry. I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”

  He delivered the news in a flat, matter-of-fact tone. “In addition to the DNA we expected to find—yours and your husband’s—preliminary DNA results suggest the presence of Damon Tenley’s genetic matter at your husband’s death.”

  She wrinkled her forehead and shook her head. “Damon Tenley? The man who killed Raina? But … but isn’t he in jail?”

  “State prison, yes. And he is there. He didn’t break out.”

  “So, his DNA’s been there all these years?”

  “We’re not sure.”

  Another puzzled look. “But it must’ve been. You just said …”

  “The DNA experts are reviewing the results to try to figure out what’s going on. But this is one heck of a quandary, as I’m sure you can understand.”

  “Of course. I … it doesn’t make any sense.”

  That was the understatement of the decade.

  “I know. Rest assured, we have a crackerjack team working on it. Please don’t share what I’ve told you with the media or any friends or family. It could compromise our investigation.”

  She shook her head absently. “I won’t. I’m not talking to the press. And I … I’m alone now. I don’t have any family.”

  He waited a beat. “It’s very important that you don’t slip and tell a friend, Mrs. Noor.”

  She turned her brown eyes on him. “I’m not going to say anything. But, surely, you can’t think ….” She trailed off, unwilling or unable to complete the thought.

  “I’m not sure what to think. That’s why I’m heading out to Fayette to talk to the dirtbag myself.”

  “You’re going to the prison?”

  “Yes. And, I hate to rush you out, Mrs. Noor. But I made arrangements to interview Tenley this afternoon, and if I miss the appointment we’ll have to start from scratch. Bureaucracy, you know.”

  She scrambled to her feet and tensed as if she planned to bolt from the room. “Oh, of course. Yes, of course. Thank for your time.”

  “You don’t need to thank me. I’m available any time you need to talk. And if you think of anything, anything at all, call me.”

  “I will.” Her eyes darted around the room and she positioned her purse over her shoulder.

  He stood. “If you wait a second, I’ll walk you out.”

  “No, no. I’ve taken enough of your time.”

  His cell phone vibrated and buzzed in his pocket, insistent and loud. He pulled it out and silenced it. When he looked up, the widow was gone, the door swinging behind her.

  He frowned down at the text message from Martin:

  Any day now.

  He pocketed the phone and turned out the light, hoping he’d been right to share what he knew with Hope Noor.

  Chapter Six

  Hope stayed in the third floor ladies’ room, resting her forehead against the cool tile wall, until a female uniformed officer came in and asked if she was okay.

  She nodded weakly and stumbled out the door and into the hallway.

  She was very much not okay. But she needed to get out of this bland, institutional building. She needed to get home, to a fire in the fireplace, a glass of something that burned on its way down her throat, and a sedative.

  She made her way to her car and sat behind the wheel in the visitors’ lot, shaking, as wave after wave of nausea built in her stomach, threatened to spill out, and finally subsided. She rifled through her purse for a mint, a stick of gum, anything to take away the sour taste of fear in her mouth.

  She didn’t know what she’d expected to learn from the gruff homicide detective. But it surely hadn’t been that they were looking at Raina Noor’s killer as a suspect. It defied all logic and common sense. Not to mention physics.

  She managed a long, shaky breath.

  Pull it together, Hope. They’ll rerun the tests and say it was a mistake. The DNA they found was old, leftover from the first murder. Right?

  Right, she assured herself, staring at her red, swollen eyes in the compact she’d pulled from her purse during her fruitless search.

  All she had to do was stay calm. Her heartbeat slowed and her pulse settled to a normal rate. She turned the key in the ignition and eased the car out of the parking space at a crawl. She didn’t quite trust herself to drive. But, as she was reminded for the umpteenth time since Giles’ death, she was alone in this world now.

  You’re doing this to yourself, she chided, as she crept into the flow of midday traffic. It was true. Becca from yoga or Oliver from the garden club or any one of her former coworkers or current neighbors would be happy to help her out.

  Hadn’t they all swooped in, their arms full of casseroles, flowers, and fruit baskets, to share their tearful, sweet stories about Giles? And still, every day, a new cascade of sympathy cards poured through the mail slot in the door and fanned out across the entryway. So many of the mourners mentioned Raina’s death, hesitantly, but determinedly. It was as if they didn’t want to offend her but couldn’t let the pair of violent deaths go unmentioned.

  She understood the impulse. She’d been thinking about Raina an awful lot since Giles’ death, herself. The residue of the grief Giles had carried with him in the years since Raina’s death overlapped with Hope’s own regret and pain. It all mixed together in her foggy brain. At least he’d had her, Hope, to help him through the aftermath.

  As she followed the strand of her grim thoughts, the car swerved across the yellow line into on-coming traffic. A blare of a horn blasted her back to the present. She jerked the wheel and yanked the car back into her lane, sweat beading on her forehead, her vision blurred and dim. She lowered the window so the cold air stung her face, clenched her jaw, and straightened her spine.

  Next time she needed to go out, she’d ask Mrs. Remmy across the street to give her a lift. She shouldn’t be driving anyway, not with the mix of tranquilizers and antidepressants—some prescribed, some scavenged from Giles’ nightstand, remnants of his own nightmare after Raina’s murder.

  For now, she just needed to make it home alive so she could curl up in bed. If she was lucky, the sleeping pills would bring her a dreamless sleep instead of one haunted by Damon Tenley’s dark, hollow eyes and thin, pale face.

  Chapter Seven

  “Pigs blow their coats twice a year.”

  Bodhi stood in the doorway to Tory Thurmont’s lab and made the pronouncement.

  She raised her head from the rows of data she was reviewing and blinked at him.

  “Pardon?”

  “Mind if I come in?”

  She made a welcoming gesture with her hand. He stepped inside and perched on a tall stool across the table from her.

  “That’s what it’s called when a pig sheds—blowing its coat.”

  “Okay? And …”

  “And pigs usually blow their coats in the summer, but for some reason Snickers is doing it now, in January.”

  She rested her pen on her desk and folded her hands in her lap. “I have so many questions.”

  “I’ll bet. Fire away.” He smiled.

  “You have a pig … named Snickers?”

  “No, I don’t have any pets. But when I got back into town last Friday, I started housesitting for a friend who has a macaw.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Pardon?”

  “You said were out of town.”

  “Oh, right. I’ve been spending a lot of time in Illinois, pretty much splitting my time between here and there. I’ve been renting my house out since … I left the office. Anyw
ay, my tenant had to travel for work, so I came back to pet sit and take care of the place for her.”

  “You’re a pretty nice landlord.”

  He shrugged. “Anyway, over the weekend, I had to take Eliza Doolittle to the vet.”

  “Eliza Doolittle …”

  “The macaw.”

  “Of course.”

  Tory grimaced and pinched the skin between her eyes together with two fingers.

  “Do you have a headache?” he asked, forgetting about his story for the moment.

  She shook her head and exhaled slowly. “It’s just tension. I’ve been staring at these numbers for hours. A story about Eliza Doolittle the macaw and a pig named Snickers is exactly what I need. It’ll be better than acetaminophen.”

  He frowned. “Still, you should get up and move around.” He crossed the room to the stainless steel sink and filled a clear plastic cup with water from the tap. “Rehydrate.”

  She took the cup two-handed, drained it, and placed it on the table. Then she stood, rolled her neck from side to side, and twisted her shoulders. “Thanks. But you can’t leave me hanging.”

  “Right. So, pretty much from the time I got to the house, Eliza Doolittle started sneezing … a lot. I made an appointment with her vet and took her in on Saturday morning.”

  “Oh, no. Is she okay?”

  “Yeah. Turns out she’s reacting to my incense. I stopped burning it, and she stopped sneezing.”

  “And Snickers the pig factors into this tale how exactly?”

  “We met Snickers and his littermate Snowball in the waiting room. Their owner was checking out when we checked in at the front desk. I rubbed their bellies for a bit. Eliza Doolittle wasn’t impressed. She was in her cage up on the counter. She turned her head to the wall and ignored the entire scene.”

  “A bit of a diva, huh?” Tory grinned.

  “You could say that. Anyway, this morning, four days later, while she was preening, she pulled this stiff, wiry fur out of her feathers and spat it on the floor. I’ll give you three guesses what it was.”

  “Pig fur?”

  “Pig fur. Now here’s the thing. Eliza Doolittle never got close to the pigs. And the avian veterinarian has a dedicated exam room. The pigs hadn’t been in that room.”

  “Was there a technician or assistant who might have treated Snickers and Snowball?” The biologist seemed to have forgotten her headache, caught up in the avian-porcine drama.

  “It’s possible. But Eliza Doolittle preens her feathers all the time. There’s no way she’s had pig fur stuck in her plumage for a week and didn’t tend to it. She blamed me, by the way.”

  “Blamed you how?”

  “She squawked at me and called me a ‘dirty bird.’”

  Tory giggled. “Harsh. Maybe you had some fur on your hands and transferred it to her feathers when you took her out or put her back in her cage.”

  “A plausible explanation,” he agreed. “But I cleaned her cage thoroughly as soon as we got home from the vet’s office and she’s had a bath since then, too.”

  “So what’s your theory?”

  “Secondary transfer.”

  Tory thought for a moment. “An indirect transfer.”

  “Right. I must’ve left pig fur somewhere in the house—it fell off my sweater or something—and she picked it up while she was flying around.”

  “Sure, okay. As fun as this story is, does it have a point?”

  “I need a primer on secondary DNA transfer. I read some journal articles last night, but this isn’t my area of expertise.”

  “You think there was an indirect secondary transfer of Tenley’s genetic material to the crime scene?”

  “Maybe? I think it’s more plausible than this mystery partner murdering Giles and planting Tenley’s DNA at the scene. And I know it’s more plausible than Tenley actually managing to get out and murder the man. So, yes, I think it’s worth exploring.”

  She tapped her pen against her front teeth, apparently lost in thought. After a moment, she nodded, a smart bob of her head, and unearthed a white board and a marker from a drawer.

  She wrote contamination and transfer on the board in small, neat printing then shot him a knowing look. “I’m going to start with the basics. But don’t be modest. If you already know what I’m telling you, let me know, and we’ll skip it. Just so you know, I’m not buying your ‘aw, shucks, I’m just a humble forensic pathologist’ shtick. Your reputation precedes you, Bodhi.”

  “Noted. Although it’s not an act. I’m no geneticist.”

  “Contamination and transfer are both problems that, funnily enough, result from advances in analysis. They’re problems of success. In the old days, before my time, an analyst needed some thing to use to detect DNA: a drop of saliva, a speck of blood, some semen. Something tangible. But, since the late nineties, we haven’t needed bodily fluid. Trace DNA is left behind on anything a person touches. Especially if they happen to be a good shedder, we can get their DNA from a surface or an item they handled.”

  “That revolutionized forensics.”

  She sighed. “It did. But the sensitivity of the testing also opened up the Pandora’s Box of contamination and transfer. Take contamination. Contamination happens when a sample is compromised at some point between collection and testing. It’s the result of sloppy police or lab work. Someone who handled the sample adds their trace DNA to the sample because they failed to use proper procedure. Transfer is a different problem.”

  “Quick question. The Phantom of Heilbronn—contamination or transfer?”

  She smirked. “You’re no geneticist, but you just happen to know about the Phantom of Heilbronn, huh? That debacle was an example of contamination. For years, German police chased a female serial killer. Her DNA was linked to an array of crimes, including six murders, drug deals, robberies, break-ins, you name it. She committed crimes all over the country and in other parts of Europe. The only problem?”

  “She didn’t exist.”

  “Right. Well, she does exist. She just wasn’t a criminal. She was a factory worker who packaged the cotton swabs used to collect DNA samples and left traces of her own genetic material on the swabs she handled. I know I just said contamination happens during collection and testing. I guess the Phantom of Heilbronn is the exception that proves the rule. That contamination happened at the very beginning of the process, during manufacturing. Which means, I suppose, it could happen even earlier. Maybe some day a cotton picker’s DNA will turn up at a crime scene.”

  “So that’s contamination. How’s transfer different?”

  “Unlike contamination, which is the direct, accidental addition of extraneous DNA, transfer’s unavoidable. We all leave pieces of ourselves behind. Studies show that we shed more than fifty million skin cells every day, and each cell leaves behind some trace DNA. Then there’s sneezing, kissing, you name it. The world is awash in unseen genetic material.”

  “This is what you were talking about yesterday at the meeting, right? The studies with the good shedders who touched the same item?”

  “That’s part of it. That’s primary transfer. A husband kisses his wife before she leaves for work. Now his DNA is on her lips. That’s the DNA we want to find at crime scenes. The problem is secondary transfer, which happens when a person’s DNA is detected on something he or she hasn’t touched.”

  “Like Eliza Doolittle having pig fur in her feathers. She didn’t touch Snickers.”

  “Right. But someone or something that did touch the pig transferred the fur to her. In the husband and wife example, let’s say the wife has lunch with her old college roommate later in the day and they kiss each other on the cheek. Now the roommate has her friend’s husband’s DNA on her face. If she, heaven forbid, is attacked and strangled on her way home from lunch, maybe the attacker leaves behind his DNA. But maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he wears gloves. The crime scene team swabs her face and neck and gathers a sample. Now, the husband’s DNA from that innocent kiss hours earlier ma
kes him a suspect.”

  “What about the wife? Her DNA is there, too, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Some people are bad shedders. They don’t leave much, if any, genetic material in their wake.”

  He was silent for a moment, considering all the possible permutations. “How long can DNA survive? What if the lunch date happened a day or more after the kiss? Would the husband’s DNA still show up?”

  “Unlikely. Presumably the wife’s brushed her teeth or drank some liquids in the interim. But under the right conditions, on the right surface, DNA could survive for years.”

  “Wait. Then it’s still possible that Tenley’s DNA has been in Noors’ bedroom ever since Raina’s murder?”

  She lifted her shoulder. “Yes, it’s possible. But none of Raina’s DNA turned up on the new samples. I tend to think Detective Martin’s got it right. If the house was thoroughly cleaned, I wouldn’t expect a ticking time bomb of Tenley’s DNA to be nestled in place all these years.”

  He ran through a series of possible explanations in his mind and landed on one that seemed plausible. “So if one of the responding officers had been out to the prison earlier in the day, he or she could’ve touched something that had Tenley’s DNA on it and brought it with them to the Noors’ house.”

  “Sure. Or it could even be a case of tertiary transfer. A police officer who didn’t respond to the scene might’ve been at SCI-Fayette and picked up Tenley’s DNA. That person could’ve transferred it to a squad car that a responding officer later drove. Or they could’ve touched the buttons on the same vending machine as Martin or Gilbert or drank from the same water fountain as Fred Froelich. The possibilities are endless.”

  “So you think it’s a case of transfer?”

  She frowned, her mouth a thin line. “I hope that’s what it is. It’s the explanation least likely to set off a firestorm of in-fighting or to help Tenley weasel out of his sentence. But it’s going to take some legwork to prove. And I need to rule out an error first.”

  He rested a hand on her shoulder. “I can start running down the possible vectors who might’ve had contact with Tenley’s DNA. You focus on the science.”