Blood Will Tell (12 page)

Jon stepped to the front of the room. “Tonight we're going to be talking about clues. There are five types of search clues. Can you think of one type?”

“Things you find?” Max said. “Like stuff they dropped?”

“That's right.” Jon wrote “Clue Types” on the whiteboard and then added “physical” under it. “That also includes footprints or other marks left behind.”

Nick's mouth twisted. He must be thinking about the footprint Nick had half destroyed. That and the girl's boot print were the only prints they had found in the vacant lot.

“What the people tell you,” Dimitri offered.

Jon translated this to “testimonial.”

“Documentary,” Ruby said. “Like a summit log or a trail register.”

“Someone's been reading ahead,” Jon said as he wrote it down. Ruby's face turned nearly as red as her hair.

The other two types turned out be “events”—such as the subject flashing a mirror or yelling to get attention—and “analytical”—knowing that if a subject wanted to go from A to C, he would have to go through B.

Search clues seemed like the kind of things cops would look for, too. Alexis had been following the story of the dead girl online. Police had identified her as a twenty-one-year-old college student named Lucy Hayes. She had abruptly left a bar called the Last Exit late Sunday after getting into some kind of argument.

“Sometimes being clue aware means going that extra step,” Jon said. “Say someone at a campground has gone missing. If you talk to the people in the tent next door before you even begin the search, you might hear that the lost person has been fighting with their parents. That's going to change the dynamics of the search in pretty important ways.”

Alexis half listened, her thoughts bouncing from Lucy to her mom to Bran. She hated this time of the year, when the nights seemed to last twenty hours. What if she turned out to be like her mom, going from highs to lows, ricocheting between different kinds of crazy? Maybe Bran had noticed something she hadn't yet. After all, most of the time her mom thought herself perfectly sane.

“We have to be careful not to jump to conclusions,” Jon said. “It's too easy to only look for clues that fit our theories and ignore those that don't.”

Alexis shifted in her seat and caught a glimpse of Nick's latest drawing. A guy kneeling behind a prone woman. What looked like blood on the floor. He wasn't much of an artist, so she couldn't tell if he was drawing Mariana or Lucy or something straight out of his imagination. Of course, this being one of Nick's typical drawings, there were also arrows flying through the air and a dinosaur in one corner.

When class was finally over, Alexis walked out with Nick and Ruby. Someone was waiting in the lobby.

Bran.

Her heart started beating faster. She walked over, trying to keep her expression neutral. “Hey. What are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to you.” It was hard to read his expression.

“Now?” He had hurt her, and suddenly she wanted to hurt him. “I'm kind of tired.”

“Look, it's important, okay?”

Relenting, she said good-bye to Nick and Ruby and followed him out. He didn't say anything until they were in his car. But he didn't start it.

“I need to tell you something. It's about that callout on Sunday night.”

“For Mariana?”

“Not so much that. It's what happened right after they found her.”

“What—you mean when she got hit by that poor guy in the pickup?”

“Is that how you see him?” His voice was strangled with some emotion. Anger? “That poor guy?”

“I wasn't there, but from what Ruby and Nick said, it was an accident. He might have been going a little fast, but who's going to expect some kid to just run out in front of you?”

Instead of answering, Bran sat silent. It stretched out so long Alexis was afraid to break it.

Finally, he said softly, “Do you remember I told you once that someday I would tell you why I was in TIP? It's because I did something bad. Something terrible. And it's not something I can ever take back, or fix, or make right.”

She absorbed this without saying anything. Bran? Something terrible? Those two things did not go together.

“Two years ago my parents got divorced, and we moved from Eugene to Portland. I started in the middle of the school year. It was tough. I didn't have many friends. That summer I got a job at Fred Meyer and I saved up enough to buy a car. This car.” He slapped the dash so hard she started. “This same car. A lot of people can't believe I still drive it. But it's not like I can afford to get another one.”

Alexis didn't ask why. She just nodded.

“See, all summer I had imagined driving it to school. How maybe people, I don't know, would think I was cooler if I had a car. On the second day of classes, I came over a hill. It had been dark at the bottom of the hill, but at the top, all of a sudden, there was the sun. Blinding me. Just when these two girls from my school decided to cross the street.”

“Oh no,” Alexis breathed.

In a broken whisper, Bran told her the rest. She saw it in her mind's eye.

Bran drives over the hill and into the sun. He squints. And then all of a sudden there they are. Right in front of his bumper.

No time to scream. No time to brake. No time to react.

A split-second later, the nearest girl and the car's bumper meet. A horrible, heavy thump rocks the car. Underneath Bran is the sound and feel of something caught and then let go.

At the same time, the other girl is sprawling over his hood. She slides up until she hits the windshield. It cracks under her weight.

Bran brakes so hard that she flies off the front of the car.

And then he is screaming.

He pulls open the car door, still screaming. Just a single word, over and over.
No. No. No.
They have to be dead. They have to be.

They lie sprawled about thirty feet apart. One in the middle of the lane. One in front of his car. Neither of them moving. Blood leaking from their mouths, their ears. It steams in the cool morning air.

He tries to find a pulse on the girl who had been on the windshield. His hand shakes so hard that at first he thinks he feels something. People have appeared, from where he doesn't know. Some adults, some kids from his school. Some run toward the girls, others phone 9-1-1, some stand stock-still, their hands across their mouths, eyes wide.

One guy comes up to him. Bran thinks he recognizes him from his math class. “What have you done? You killed them! You killed them!”

He doesn't remember much about the rest of that day. But there was a girl from TIP, and she came and sat with him. She held his hand and gave him tissues and at one point he leaned into her warm neck and wept. Then felt ashamed for weeping, because why was he allowed to cry when these two girls could never cry again?

By the time Bran was finished with his story, Alexis was crying, too, but he was dry-eyed.

“There were a lot of rumors going around. They still go around, in fact. That I was drunk. That I was texting. That I knew one of the girls and meant to hit her. They call me a killer behind my back. Sometimes to my face. It doesn't matter the police investigated and ruled it an accident.” He makes a sound like a laugh. “Sometimes it doesn't even matter to me. Because I can think of a million things I could have done so that it didn't happen. So that's why I volunteer for TIP. And that's why I've been acting strange. Because what happened Sunday night, that guy in the pickup hitting the little girl, brought it all back.”

Instead of saying something, Alexis pulled him close.

 

CHAPTER 28

PAUL

THURSDAY

DNA DOESN'T LIE

“This can't be right,” Paul said, looking up from the crime lab's printout that Rich had just triumphantly slapped in front of him. “I know this kid.”

Rich was practically dancing in Paul's cubicle. “DNA doesn't lie, my friend. You trying to tell me that it's just a coincidence? Someone you already
know
was in the area at the same time the victim was killed, and now his DNA profile turns up under her nails?”

“But it's not his full profile.”

Rich stopped his jitterbugging long enough to shrug. “We can get a court order and get that taken care of pretty quick.”

Paul waited until Rich left to call the lab. “Can you just walk me through this? I'm still kind of confused by the results.”

“I can do that,” said Gunther Schmidt, the DNA specialist. He had a precise way of speaking, perhaps because he was a scientist, or maybe because his native tongue was German. “The only DNA we found on the brick belonged to the victim. Same for her clothing items. We did find male DNA on the clippings and swabs from her right hand.”

Paul pictured it. The same hand that had lost the glove. She must have fought with her killer.

“The quantity of male DNA was very small. It was masked by the female DNA on her hands.”

Paul nodded, even though the other man couldn't see him. That all made sense. It was Lucy's hand, after all.

“To allow us to focus on just the male DNA,” Gunther continued, “we ran a newer test. It's called Y-STR typing. Remember, only males have the Y chromosome.”

“Uh-huh.” Paul closed his eyes to help him concentrate. When it came to DNA, it was all too easy to get lost in the weeds.

“The Y-STR test looks at certain locations on the Y chromosome that are passed down undiluted from each man's father. Since it never mixes with the mother's DNA, it never changes except in the rare case of a random mutation. That means all the males in a family have exactly the same Y-STR profile: fathers, grandfathers, sons, uncles, brothers, and so forth.”

“So my brother and my dad and me—there's a part of our DNA that's identical?” The idea was slightly creepy. Didn't you want to be different from your family, to make your own path?

“Exactly so.” Gunther made a small chuckle at his own pun. “And under Oregon state law, we are now allowed to do a familial search if there is no perfect full DNA match in the system. So we found a match for the Y-STR from the victim's hand.”

“So that means the person whose Y-STR matches did it?”

Gunther didn't bother to disguise his sigh. “Obviously not, given who it matches. But he is probably a relative. If he somehow had been able to do it, the DNA would have been a perfect match. The entire sequence is as unique as a fingerprint. One in 244 males has this particular Y-STR.”

“So it's a relative?” Whether it was nature or nurture, Paul didn't know, but about half the people serving time had had at least one close relative who has also served time.

“At some point even two unrelated men who have the same Y-STR probably still share a common male ancestor. Until I have a complete DNA profile that I can match to what was found on the victim, I can only give you the numbers and the probabilities as to whether your suspect might have done it. You have to look at the totality of circumstances.”

Paul thanked Gunther and hung up. Right now, this particular Y-STR test was a noose that was closing. Only Paul couldn't believe the identity of the person caught in it. Twenty years a cop, and he could still be surprised. He sighed. And he had liked this kid.

 

CHAPTER 29

NICK

FRIDAY

IF YOU WERE THE KILLER

When the phone on the wall rang, Nick's English class was taking a pop quiz.

“Must it be right now?” Mr. Dill said after listening to whoever was on the other end. “He's taking a test.” Everyone was watching the teacher, praying that he or she would be the one. But it was Nick who won the lottery. “You're wanted down in the office,” Mr. Dill said, adding when he started to leave, “You might want to bring your things.”

It was even more of a surprise to find Detective Harriman waiting for him. He was dressed in a rumpled black suit and an even more rumpled trench coat. Nick hadn't seen him since the evidence search four days ago.

“Hey, man. What are you doing here?”

The office lady, Mrs. Weissig, looked from Harriman to Nick and back again. She was making no pretense of not listening.

Harriman pulled him to one side and lowered his voice. “I got to thinking about what you told me Monday. I talked to the pathologist. The time you were driving down the street was the time he believes that girl was killed. It would be good for you to come down to the police station and complete a witness statement for me.”

“But I'm not a witness,” Nick said, wishing he were. “I didn't see anything.”

Harriman shrugged. “You could have seen something without even being aware of it, or at least aware of its significance.”

What if he
had
seen a key piece of evidence? Nick imagined the headlines. Maybe he'd even get some kind of award.

“And sometimes
not
seeing something can be nearly as good as seeing something, because it can help us rule out certain scenarios. We need what you saw—or didn't see—on the record. I already talked to your mom so she wouldn't worry if you were home late.”

Nick signed himself out, writing “consulting with police” under
Reason for Absence.
If only there were someone else in the office besides Mrs. Weissig to notice him leaving with a homicide detective.

As they drove downtown, Harriman said, “So this happened in your neighborhood, Nick. If you were the killer, where would you hide the knife?”

Six or seven blocks away from his house wasn't exactly his neighborhood. Nick didn't know every bush and culvert the way he would on his own block. Still, Harriman was waiting for his answer. “Maybe try storm grates? Or people's bushes?”

Harriman nodded, but they were pretty obvious answers. When Harriman was busy circumnavigating a slow-moving truck, Nick quickly texted Alexis and Ruby with one hand to let them know about the latest development. When they got downtown, Harriman parked in one of the spaces reserved for the police, and then they walked into headquarters together. Nick held himself tall as a few officers nodded at them.