“Meaning?”
“Meaning that Blair, for example, might never have touched the hat. He might have touched something that someone else touched, and then that person touched the hat.”
“Christ,” Punch said sourly. “What else?”
“Well,” she said. “There might be a third person’s DNA in the mixture.”
“Well, isn’t that special,” Punch groused. “Can you narrow it down a little?”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because again, the samples were so small, and they were mixed together like a, well, kind of like a soup,” she explained.
“Soup?”
“Yes. That’s a good analogy. Please understand that we’ve got the DNA of at least two males, and I feel pretty certain about the samples I’ve identified, but I’m unsure whether there is additional DNA I’m looking at.”
“Are you still working on it?”
“Of course. I’m going to attempt to use a probabilistic genotyping software program to try and sort the multiple DNA samples present,” she said.
“Probabilistic—”
“PSG for short,” she said. “It’s a software program that can look at the different profiles mixed in the sample. It employs sophisticated biological and statistical models to determine the probability that the sample contains information from a known donor.”
“Yeesh,” Punch said, then brightened. “So, you could find more of Blair’s DNA in this mixture?”
“Oh yes. Or someone else’s.”
“Okay,” Punch said, doodling on the legal pad. “But you can tell me without a doubt that Miles’s DNA is on that cap?”
“I can. It is statistically near certain.”
“And Davonte Blair’s DNA is on that hat—right?” Punch asked.
“To a degree of scientific certainty, yes.”
“But the DNA for the third person—you can’t be sure?”
“Correct,” she said.
“Do you have any ideas?” Punch asked.
“I do,” she said.
“Who?”
“Well, I think it might—might—be the case that the remaining DNA in the mixture matches that of one Ronald Norquist. You took his sample, didn’t you?”
“I did,” Punch said. “You’ll keep me updated?”
“Of course,” she said. “You’ll get a copy of my report. But any level of proof less than scientific certainty will receive only an oblique mention. I have to include all my findings for completeness, but if there is no scientific certainty it is only an educated guess, so his name will not appear. So, read the report and you’ll know.”
Jensen was on the phone with Middleton. He’d been calling him every morning for three days. “We’re dying here,” he had said. This morning Middleton had called.
“I finally got the data downloaded.”
“Can you get it to me?” Jensen asked.
“Of course.”
“Do this. Put it on a thumb drive and bag it like anything else. Then get over here and run it by me, and then we’ll sit down with Punch later and tell him what it all means?”
“I gotta clear it with my boss,” Middleton said.
“Okay,” Jensen said. “If you run into a problem, let me know, and I’ll have Punch call.”
“Call who?” Punch asked. He’d walked up behind Jensen unseen. When Jensen hung up, Punch continued. “You gonna get me something on Davonte’s phone, or what? We probably cracked the Enigma code faster than we can get into a college guy’s cell phone, for Christ’s sake.”
“What?” Jensen looked blankly at Punch.
“Never mind,” Punch said. “Where are we?”
“Middleton should be over this afternoon to show us what he’s got.”
“Good. Tell him I need it in English,” Punch said. “I talk with those computer geeks and I’m sure the expression on my face is like a cow looking at a new gate.”
“Right, boss.”
Several hours later, Punch, Jensen, and Middleton were sitting at the meeting table in Punch’s office. Middleton had brought along a laptop and was sitting between Punch and Jensen, pointing at the screen. “This”—he indicated a small, blue, teardrop-shaped icon on the screen—“is the approximate location of Davonte’s phone the early morning hours of the 6th of November.” The teardrop was superimposed over a map of Custer. “See, he is—”
“His phone is,” Punch said.
“Yeah, right. Correction, his phone is moving from here to here,” Middleton indicated. “Then, at approximately 2:45 a.m., the phone stops near here.”
“How near?”
“Hard to say.”
“How hard?” Punch pressed. “What’s the accuracy?”
“Depends.” He shrugged. “Depending on the location of towers, Wi-Fi arrangement and availability, time of day—it can range from three meters or so to maybe a hundred meters.”
“Crap.” Punch popped an antacid. “So, take me to the location closest to here,” he said, pointing to the spot on the map where Miles’s body was found. He watched as Middleton complied. “So, at 2:45 a.m., Davonte was there?”
“Well—”
“Let me rephrase: at 2:45 a.m., Davonte’s phone was within one hundred meters of that dot?”
“Yes,” he said. “And probably closer.”
“Okay. Let’s talk phone calls and texts. Whatcha got?”
“Well, I can tell you that the last text sent to Miles came from Blair’s phone and was sent at approximately 1:25 a.m.,” Middleton said.
“Jensen, does that square with what Miles’s phone showed?” Punch asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay, Jon, what else?”
“It’s really sort of a volume thing,” Middleton said. “Literally hundreds—maybe thousands—of texts between the deceased and Mr. Blair.”
“Subject?”
“Well, drugs primarily. Talking about other people. Teammates of Blair’s, I think. Toward the end, the messages got kind of contentious,” Middleton said. “Apparently, Mr. Blair owed Mr. Miles quite a bit of money. Miles wanted his money; Blair didn’t have it but promised it when he went pro—he was an athlete, I take it?”
“Basketball.” Jensen shook his head. “This is all the same stuff we had on Miles’s phone, boss.”
“I know.” Punch was tapping his fingers on the desk and thinking about calling Rebecca when Middleton continued.
“There’s another thing.”
“Yeah?”
“I think the guy was gay.”
“He was,” Punch said to Middleton, who looked surprised. “We’ve spoken with his mother and most of his friends. Everyone knew Miles was gay.”
“Oh, not him,” Middleton said. “Blair.”
“What?” Jensen said.
“Oh, yeah, a look at his phone . . . well, there’s a considerable amount of gay porn on it. Lots of sexting messages between Davonte and another guy,” Middleton said.
“Everyone look to be over eighteen?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Well, whatever turns you on, I guess,” Punch said. “No big deal.”
“And here, if you want to see. . . Miles was threatening to go public with Davonte being gay,” Middleton said. “Or at least bisexual or whatever.”
“Don’t you think it’s a possible motive, boss?” Jensen asked.
“No. It’s the twenty-first century,” Punch said. “Who cares?”
“A lot of people do,” Jensen said. “Just look at all those people marching around town. And boss, it only takes one. What if Davonte didn’t want that coming out?”
“You think he killed someone because he didn’t want it known he was gay or bisexual or whatever?” Punch shook his head. “Doesn’t make sense; people are celebrating being gay, bi, trans, whatever. I know more about people’s sex lives than I ever wanted to know.”
“I’m just saying I think we need to take a look at it,” Jensen urged.
S
am was waiting for his teleconference with Martinez to start. Martinez was always on time; the fact that he was running late was aggravating an already irritable Sam. At check-in, one of the nurses had given Sam a form Martinez used. It was loosely based on the Alcoholics Anonymous tenth and eleventh steps and would require Sam to identify his feelings since the last meeting, any thinking errors, resentments, and how he dealt with those. “Well, this is going to suck,” he said aloud.
“Why is that?” Martinez asked. Sam hadn’t seen or heard him enter the room at the far end. “What’s going on? How are you?”
“I’m screwed,” Sam said. “I went to a function with Veronica last month.”
“And?” Martinez made a note in the omnipresent spiral notebook. “How did it go?”
“Well, I got drunk and one of Veronica’s friends threatened me and I knocked him out,” Sam said.
Martinez put down the notebook and looked directly into the screen. “Give me the long version.”
For the next few minutes, Sam spoke while Martinez listened, only occasionally asking clarifying questions. Finally, Sam sat quietly, his eyes wet with tears. “I’m screwed.”
“No, you are not,” Martinez said. “Sam, you’ve been through a terrible, terrible thing. You—”
“That was more than ten years ago! I can’t go on like this. I—”
“Sam, give me a second, okay?” Martinez said. “I want to talk for just a minute about you. Just sit and listen, would you?”
“Sure,” Sam said.
“You had a terrible childhood. Your mother died, your dad was a drunk, your brother wreaked havoc. Then, you entered the army and were grievously wounded. Those kinds of injuries do not simply go away. On top of that, you lost some of your men and—”
“Five.”
“You lost five of your men—”
“Right.”
“Then,” Martinez said, holding up a hand to silence Sam, “you blamed yourself for their deaths.”
“It was my fault!”
“For the purpose of this discussion, it does not matter.”
“It matters to me!”
“Are you going to let me finish?”
“If you’ll hurry the hell up,” Sam said. He was pacing the small examining room.
“Then, and most importantly, you did not seek treatment for your condition until recently.”
“I didn’t know I had a condition until recently!”
“I’m aware,” Martinez said. “So my point is that while the salient events may have happened ten or more years ago, you’ve only recently begun to deal with the issues caused by those events. Instead, you did what has always worked for you: you set whatever was bothering you aside and you moved forward. But this time, what had always worked for you was working against you, and that condition built up in you until it was more than you could deal with. That’s what’s been going on these past few years, Sam. Your past is catching up with you. Now, you’ve got to give yourself some time to heal.”
“I don’t have time, Bob! I’ve lost my girl and my partner is pissed off at me. My business sucks right now. I’m edgy as hell. Look, can you just prescribe—”
“I could, but I’m not going to.”
“Why not? Maybe just a little something to take the edge off?”
“Because there’s virtually no way you’d take the medication as prescribed. You’d be abusing those meds in a week. I can’t have that. You don’t do anything in moderation.”
“Screw you, Bob.”
“Feel better?” Martinez asked.
“I’m trying!”
“I know. Let’s work on that,” Martinez said. “Now, I’m going to email you some workbook pages. I want you to sit down somewhere quiet and complete the sheets I assign . . .”
Moments later, Sam climbed into his truck and took a deep breath. He thought about what he and Martinez had discussed. It was all such a load of crap—workbooks, breathing exercises, prayers, meditation . . . He looked at his watch. He was meeting with the firm’s accountant in fifteen minutes, and not looking forward to it.
Punch and Jensen had been sitting in an unmarked car outside Davonte’s dorm for almost four hours and were getting squirrely. “I need to take a leak,” Jensen said.
“Well, go, but hurry up. Need you here if he shows up, damn it!” Punch barked.
“Where am I gonna go?”
“It’s a college campus. Must be six hundred acres. Think you can find a tree?”
“Isn’t that against the law?”
Punch looked sourly at Jensen. “It is, but who’s going to cite you? Seriously, go find a bush or just go here. But hurry and get back!”
Punch sat alone in the car, watching the dorm. He absolutely did not want to do this. The case was not ready, and he’d told that to Lucas and Nice in no uncertain terms.
“I don’t have enough,” he’d told them repeatedly.
“You don’t understand,” Lucas had countered. “We’ve got assholes from all over the country tearing this town apart. We’ve got to arrest someone—right, wrong, or indifferent.”
“That’s not how it is supposed to work!” Punch had protested.
“I don’t care how it is supposed to work,” Rebecca Nice had said. “I just know that if we don’t do something, we’re going to watch this town get torn in half.”
Now, as he quaffed antacids and waited for Jensen to return, Punch knew that things were about to take a turn. Whether for better or worse, he didn’t know. A few minutes later, Jensen came back, breathing heavily. “He’s coming!”
“From where?”
“From that other dorm over there.” Jensen pointed.
“The back door is locked, right?”
“Yeah, Jeb told me he locked it with a chain, so we’d be able to see. We’ve got to let him know when we’ve got Davonte, though, so he can unlock it. He says it’s a fire hazard.”
“Don’t let me forget. I don’t want to—”
“There!” Jensen pointed, and the two men scrambled out of the car and jogged the short distance from the parking lot to the front door, where they intercepted a startled Davonte.
“What the hell?” he said.
“Mr. Blair, you’re under arrest,” Punch said, hoping the young man would cooperate. “Suspicion of murder.”
“You gotta be bullshitting me, man.”
“No bullshit. Please turn around and put your hands behind you.”
“What if I don’t?”
“Mr. Blair, momentarily, you are going to be in custody,” Punch explained. “In fact, a lawyer would say you have been seized at this point. This can be done easily, or we can do it the hard way.” He looked up at the big man, hoping Davonte would go easily.
“What do you have now that you didn’t have before?” Davonte asked Punch.
“Well, among other things, eyewitness statements placing you near the scene, more stuff from your phone, cell phone tower locations, and—best of all—your DNA on Miles’s hat. Altogether, enough.”
“This is bullshit,” Davonte said, turning around.
Punch quickly affixed the handcuffs, taking a deep breath when they were emplaced. “Come on over to the car. I’m going to read you your rights, then I’m going to give you a ride to the detention center.” Davonte, escorted by Punch and Jensen, made his way to the car before being seated and advised of his rights. “Any questions?” Punch asked.
“Yeah, one.”
“What’s that?”
“You dumb cops ever get tired of arresting the wrong dude? I heard you arrested some soldier a while back for something he didn’t do.”
Neither Jensen nor Punch answered, but Jensen mouthed, “Ouch!” as they got into the car and headed for the jail.
11
The Custer Bugle had been in Bill Gordon’s family for generations. As readership dwindled he had taken on more and more responsibilities, and today, he was on deadline for an editorial he was writing regarding school funding. He was focuse
d and typing when Penrose burst into his office. “Oh my God, Bill!” she said. “Do you have a minute?”
“Absolutely, Sarah.” He sat back in his chair and removed his readers. “What’s up?”
“Sounds like they’ve made an arrest in the Miles kid’s murder.”
“Good. Have a seat.” He gestured to the chair on the other side of his desk. “I’m glad. It’s creepy, having someone like that running around.”
“Yes, of course. But you know what’s better?” She looked at him expectantly.
“What’s that?”
“The guy they’ve arrested? He’s black! And an athlete!”
Gordon looked at Sarah closely. “So . . .”
“So, there are just so many angles we can take with this story,” she said. “We’ve got black versus white, black versus gay, straight versus gay, athlete versus gay, and probably some I haven’t even thought of!”
“Sarah, a young man is dead,” Gordon said. “That’s tragedy enough. I’m not certain that we need—or want—any angles.”
“Yes, he’s dead. And there is nothing we can do about that. What we can do, and what we should do, is to highlight the why of his death.”
Gordon looked at Penrose for another long moment. Her lips were pursed, and she was rocking in her chair. “Don’t you think, Sarah, that before we get to the why, we first report the who, the what, the when, the where, and the how as we get the facts?”
“Oh, I’ll get all that, of course,” she said. “But the story in this case is the why.”
“Just out of curiosity, why do you think that?”
“This is Wyoming! The kid was gay!”
“Where’s the suspect from?”
“Detroit,” she said. “I think a suburb, actually. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that Miles—a young gay man—was killed by an African-American man.”
“Allegedly. And what do you have supporting the homophobic angle?”
“A lot.”
“Really?”
“Well, I don’t exactly have it yet, but my sources are telling me that Davonte did not like gay people.”
“And how do they know?”
One and Done (Sam Johnstone Book 2) Page 12
