by Karen Dionne
“Jason Weirs. He’s expecting me.”
“Ah. Jase. He’s in the back.” The young man pointed toward a set of double doors.
Goddard pushed one open and found himself in a large room that could have doubled as the set for a science-fiction movie: rows of gloved technicians wearing disposable white caps seated on lab stools working with ridiculously technical-looking equipment. Over the hum of vent fans he could hear music. Bob Marley.
The technician nearest to him was wearing headphones. Apparently he wasn’t a fan of reggae. Goddard tapped him on the shoulder, and the man pulled out one ear bud. Goddard could hear a woman singing tinnily about love.
“I’m looking for Jason Weirs.”
“Jase!” the man called. “Cop here to see you.”
Was it that obvious? Goddard was wearing a trench coat, but that was because it was raining. On the other hand, the undercover at the hospital had made him right away. No matter. Jason Weirs was expecting a cop. No harm, no foul.
“Jase!” the man called again. “Get up here. You got company.”
“Be there in a sec,” an unseen voice called back. Moments later a slight man with a halo of curly red hair appeared. Goddard guessed him to be in his mid-twenties. The technician pulled off a latex glove and shook Goddard’s hand, while Goddard tried not to stare. If he’d thought Rutz’s hair was outrageous, this kid’s could have won the mad scientist lookalike contest hands down. Goddard couldn’t decide if the young man was trying to imitate his favorite theoretical scientist or a rock star.
“Thanks for seeing me,” he said. “I’m hoping you can clarify some of what we discussed over the phone.”
“Sure thing. Happy to help.” Weirs led Goddard to his workstation and pulled up a second lab stool. Goddard hefted himself awkwardly onto it.
“Like I told you on the phone,” Weirs said as he hopped agilely onto his own, “I’m not sure what more I have to offer.” Subtext: I wish I hadn’t told you as much as I did. Too late for that. Goddard was going to get the results of the Marsee brothers’ genetics testing out of this kid if he had to—to… He tried to think of a threat to illustrate his determination that was suitably dire, and smiled. If he had to shave the kid’s head.
“I appreciate that,” he said smoothly, “and believe me, I’m not here to give you the third degree. I’m just looking to better understand the process to see how it might tie into my investigation. This whole idea of genetic testing—” he waved his arm to encompass the lab “—is fascinating to a layperson like me. At some point, we’re going need to see the Marsee brothers’ test results, but don’t worry. I’m not going to put you on the spot. We’ll get a court order for that.” The court order compelling the lab to release the results of the Marsee brothers’ genetic testing was in process—at least Goddard hoped that it was. It seemed as though the closer Oakes got to his retirement, the more erratic his cooperation became. The detectives working under him never knew if he’d approve a request or deny it. Oakes hadn’t been particularly impressed with Goddard and Linden’s “secret project got the brothers killed” theory. But Weirs didn’t need to know that. And besides, the best lies always contained an element of truth.
“Okay, well then, sure,” Weirs said, clearly relieved. “As long as you understand that I have to maintain our clients’ confidentiality, that’s great.”
“On the phone you told me that you ran both Marsee brothers’ DNA.”
“That’s right. The lab always runs familial DNA using the same technician. When there’s just one test involved, reading the results is pretty straightforward. But when there are two related test subjects, we always use the same person. Sometimes we can spot extra details that way. Anomalies. Whatever. It’s pretty interesting stuff.”
Goddard could think of a million things that would be far more interesting than reading the bars on a DNA chart, but he let it go. “Have you worked here long?”
“About ten years.”
Goddard would have guessed that ten years ago the kid was wearing diapers. It was unnerving to realize that he was fast approaching the age where he was older than most of the professionals he dealt with.
“So tell me, when a person shows up at Rockland and wants to have their genome mapped, what are they looking for?”
“Lots of different things. Some people aren’t looking for anything specific at all—it’s just curiosity. There’s this thing people do where they get the results blown up to poster size and hang them on their wall. Like a family portrait, but at the genetic level. It’s pretty cool. But most of the time, people get their genomes mapped because they’re looking for something specific. Paternity tests, or markers for disease, or chromosome abnormalities. We do more than a thousand different tests at Rockland, and more are being developed all the time.”
“Fascinating,” Goddard said again. This time, he actually meant it. No lack of new things to learn over the course of doing his job. “I understand that the Marsee brothers had their complete genomes mapped. Is it unusual to do full workups on brothers?”
“Not really. We do a lot of sibling comparisons, especially for twin studies.”
“But most genetic testing is done with a narrower focus, say to screen for a specific disease?”
“That’s right. You’d be surprised how many people want to know if they have the gene for Huntington’s or Alzheimer’s. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll develop the condition. But it’s a possibility. Some people want to be able to plan for that.”
“The Marsee brothers’ parents died from polycystic kidney disease. Is this the marker they were looking for?”
“That’s correct. Both brothers had the mutation. PKD2, the gene is called.”
Bingo. This kid may have been able to run circles around Goddard when it came to extracting and reading DNA, but when it came to extracting information from an interview subject, nobody could beat his technique. “And so for them, the fact that they had the gene meant their chances of getting the disease were very high.”
“Right again. I explained this to them when I sat down with them together to discuss their results. But the Marsees insisted they weren’t sick.”
“I understand the symptoms of polycystic kidney disease don’t show up until adulthood.”
“That’s true. But both brothers were well within the age range where the symptoms should have been obvious. They wanted me to look at the results again to see if I could figure out why, and long story short, in going over their genomes a second time, I discovered that the mutated gene that should have caused the disease was itself mutated, if you follow me. Genetically speaking, the brothers had the disease. But for all practical purposes, thanks to the double mutation, the potential for the disease had been cancelled out. It’s pretty exciting. I’m working on a paper.”
The young man beamed. Maybe he thought his discovery was going to put him on the fast track for a Nobel. Maybe it already had. Goddard made sure to look suitably impressed.
“Just to be sure I understand you,” he said, “you’re saying the brothers carried a double mutation—an anomaly that no one else has—that in effect cured them of polycystic kidney disease?”
“That’s the gist of it. And what’s really cool is that extracting this gene and then injecting it into others who carry the normal mutation for PKD could prevent them from developing the disease as well. The potential was enormous. I still can’t believe both brothers are dead. I know they were hoping to use their DNA to develop a treatment. But unless their relatives object, there’s no reason someone else can’t follow through. That’s the cool thing about working on the molecular level—you don’t need much of a sample.”
“What if the brothers have no living relatives?” Goddard asked. “Could someone else use their DNA to develop a cure?” Thinking that perhaps he should add the knowledgeable and enthusiastic young man with the clown hair to his suspect list.
“Really? They have no living relatives? That changes things. You can
’t just take people’s genetic material and use it without their permission, you know. Your DNA belongs to you. It is you. The laws are there for a reason. Otherwise, we’re back to grave robbing and Dr. Frankenstein. I don’t suppose there’s a will?” Said almost wistfully, as if he couldn’t bear the idea that the possibility of a cure had died with the Marsees.
“We’re looking into that. One last question. Did someone named Neil Campbell also have his genome mapped recently?”
“If he did, I really couldn’t say. Not, you know, without a court order.” Realizing he’d already said too much.
“I could get a warrant,” Goddard said smoothly, “but I wouldn’t have to bother you again if you could just take a few more minutes and look it up now.” Making it seem as though giving up the information was inevitable, and the technician’s convenience was the only issue.
“I guess I could check.” He worked the keyboard, pulled up a database, then scrolled through a list of names. “Yep, there it is,” he said, pointing. “Looks like another familial pairing.”
“Familial?”
“There are two entries for Campbell, a Neil and a Hugo.”
“Campbell’s a common name. There must be thousands in Seattle. How do you know they’re related?”
“I don’t one hundred percent, but both tests were carried out on the same day and have the initials ‘J.G.’ against them. That means both tests were carried out by the same tech, John Galloway. As I said before, we try to use one tech for familial runs. Of course, I’d have to go deeper into their records to know for sure, but again, I’m really not comfortable doing that without a warrant. Sorry.”
“That’s okay. I appreciate your time.”
Goddard shook the technician’s hand, left his card on the workstation, and stood up to leave. Or rather, he slid down. He rubbed his aching rear. How could people stand to work on lab stools all day?
As he unlocked his car door and slid in, his phone buzzed in his pocket. He flipped open the phone. Linden. Perfect timing. He hit redial and tapped his fingers against the steering wheel as he waited for her to pick up. He couldn’t wait to hear what Neil Campbell had to say.
29
Holder woke feeling as though he were walking in a dense fog. Somewhere in the distance, a trumpet was playing. Reveille. He groped to make sense of it, then came awake one degree further and realized the trumpet was the alarm on his cellphone. The alarm tone was a joke. His sister had used the same tune as his wakeup call when he was fifteen and it was her thankless job to see that he got to school on time. He’d never told her that he still used it.
He rolled over and reached out to turn off the alarm. Instead of cool plastic, his hand touched warm skin. Somebody else’s skin. He cracked open one eye.
Claire.
He raised himself up on one elbow and reached over her to shut off the phone. The phone was on a coffee table. And the table wasn’t his.
He rubbed his eyes and blinked away the sleep fog, then raised his head and looked around. Skanky living room. Smelly plaid sofa. Logic’s trailer.
Claire stretched and draped her leg across his. “Mmm,” she murmured as she snuggled in. As if two people sharing a sofa could get any closer.
Holder slid out from beneath her and sat up with her legs across his lap. He’d messed up big this time, for sure. It didn’t matter that Claire was wearing underwear and he was fully clothed. Not that he had anything against—well, anything. But he was supposed to be undercover. He was supposed to be working. He wasn’t supposed to be waking up in his target’s trailer with a mostly naked woman and absolutely zero memory of whatever had happened during the previous who knew how many hours. His head felt like a balloon that had been stuck onto his body. He wondered if he’d been drugged.
He checked the time. Almost noon. The party last night had been a late one. Snatches of the previous evening came back: Logic trying to get him to take a hit off the meth pipe, Ridgeback itching to beat him into a pulp. Claire pretending to be his girlfriend and saving him from the beating. Maybe Ridgeback had gotten back at him by slipping him a roofie. It was possible. The trailer was a regular pharmacy.
Holder’s jacket was on the floor. He reached down and dug through the pockets for his lighter and a cigarette. The rain beating against the front windows sounded like gunshots, more sleet than rain. It looked like there was a full-on storm coming. A shaft of light slicing through a crack in the curtains stabbed his eyeballs like daggers. He shut his eyes.
“Baby?”
“Darlin’.” His tongue felt thick. Like it didn’t belong to him. He’d definitely been drugged.
He slid her legs off his lap and stood up, arms out for balance. Congratulated himself when he remained standing. “You hungry? I’m gonna see if there’s anything to eat in this dump. I make a mean huevos habaneros”.
“A what?”
“An omelet with hot sauce.”
“Oh.”
He went around the breakfast counter into the kitchen. Moving around made him feel better. Plus the nicotine helped. He picked up a coffee pot to fill it with cold water. The pot was so stained it looked like it was made of brown glass instead of clear. He added an extra scoop to hide the bitter taste the crud was going to leach into the brew and turned on the pot. Checked the fridge. The shelves were fully stocked, a happy surprise—until he remembered the size of Logic’s moms.
Holder whipped up the eggs with a teaspoon of water and dumped them into a hot iron pan.
“Smells good, baby,” Claire said from the living room.
“How do you like your coffee?”
“Cream and two sugars.”
Like they were playing house. Only Claire wasn’t his wife or even his girlfriend and it was somebody else’s house. He carried two steaming cups into the living room, then went back for the plates. Balanced them on his good arm like a waiter and put them down in the space she’d cleared on the coffee table between the platters of last night’s half-eaten hot dogs and Logic’s meth pipe and stash tin. A milk crate filled with tangled game controllers at one end of the coffee table, piles of dirty laundry on the other. Logic’s moms might’ve cleaned the place sometime during the last century. Or not.
Claire leaned over the coffee table and forked a mouthful of eggs. “Mmm,” she said between bites. The same sound she’d made when she woke up beside him. Seems his ranking on the pleasure scale was the same as a plate of scrambled eggs.
“I was thinking about Hugo,” she said when she finished. She sat back on the couch with her legs tucked beneath her and picked at a scab on her knee. “What’s going to happen to him now?”
“CPS prob’ly scooped him up. They’ll be lookin’ for a foster moms.”
“I wish I could take him. He’s so little and cute.”
Holder s’posed that was so. There’d been a couple of times when he was at Campbell’s trailer, playing the part of Logic’s crewman, where the little guy was hanging around watching the grownups and sucking his thumb.
“I’d take him if Campbell doesn’t make it. Somebody needs to take care of him. I could be a good mother. I have a kid, you know.”
Holder did not know.
“He stays with my mom. Because of his asthma. Wait—I have a picture.” She got up and crossed the room and came back carrying her purse. Opened her wallet and handed Holder a school photo.
“Cute.” Dark hair, big eyes, wide face like his moms; maybe five or six years old. He handed it back. “So what you doin’ hangin’ here? Wouldn’t you rather be home wakin’ up with your kid?”
Her face shut down. She stuffed the photo back in her wallet. Holder supposed he shouldn’t have offered an opinion. It was none of his business where she woke up or what she did. It was just that the picture of the little boy got to him. Something about his expression reminded Holder of himself. He’d grown up on the streets, and it hadn’t exactly been a party. This boy had a moms. All she had to do to be there for him was to go home.
“
I’ve only been doing crank a month or so,” Claire said, almost defensively, looking across the room at nothing and picking at her knee. It struck Holder how young she was, how young she still looked, despite the drugs. Still a teenager. He had to play this carefully. “Before that I was only smoking weed and drinking. I ran into an old friend I used to hang with when I went to another school, and I found out he was a dealer. Pretty soon, I started selling weed for him. To get money for beer. I liked drinking best. I didn’t want to get into crank. I wanted to keep things safe. I heard stuff, you know? Then one night, I was so drunk, I was sick. My dealer said a line of crank would sober me up, so I tried it, and it did. I asked if I could get some more, and he said sure. I kinda wanted to see what it was about by then anyway, you know? ’Cause everyone would talk about it. After that, I could drink as much as I wanted to because that line would sober me up. Got a smoke?”
Holder shook a cigarette from the pack and handed it to her. She lit it and took a long drag.
“I know people think I’m just a crankhead, or a bag whore. That I’ll do anything for a hit. But they don’t understand. When you’re tweaking, it’s the most amazing feeling in the world. You have all this energy, you feel like you can do anything. Like you’re big and powerful. Everything is brighter and better, like you’re living in a fairytale, only the fairytale is real. Once you’ve experienced that, all you want is to go back again and again.”
She shrugged. Picked up the glass pipe from the coffee table, tore open one of Logic’s magic packets, and poured the powder in.
