Perfect Match (27 page)

“What does a bone marrow transplant do?” Patrick asks.

“Wonders, if it works. There are six proteins on all of our cells, human le ukocyte antigens, or HLA. They help our bodies recognize you as you, and me as me. When you're looking for a bone marrow donor, you're hoping for all six of these proteins to match yours. In most cases, this means siblings, h alf-siblings, maybe a cousin-relatives seem to have the lowest instance of rejection.”

“Rejection?” Patrick asks.

“Yes. In essence, you're trying to convince your body that the donor cells are actually yours, because you have the same six proteins on them. If you can't do that, your immune system will reject the bone marrow transplant, w hich leads to Graft Versus Host disease.”

“Like a heart transplant.”

“Exactly. Except this isn't an organ. Bone marrow is harvested from the pelvi s, because it's the big bones in your body that make blood. Basically, we put the donor to sleep and then stick needles into his hips about 150 times on e ach side, suctioning out the early cells.”

He winces, and the doctor smiles a little. “It is painful. Being a bone marrow donor is a very selfless thing.”

Yeah, this guy was a fucking altruist, Patrick thinks.

“Meanwhile, the patient with leukemia has been taking immunosup-pressants. The week before the transplant, he's given enough chemotherapy to kill all the blood cells in his body. It's timed this way, so that his bone marrow i s empty.”

“You can live like that?”

“You're at huge risk for infection. The patient still has his own living bl ood cells . . . he's just not making any new ones. Then he gets the donor m arrow, through a simple IV. It takes about two hours, and we don't know how , but the cells manage to find their way to the bone marrow in his own body and start growing. After about a month, his bone marrow has been entirely replaced by his donor's.”

“And his blood cells would have the donor's six proteins, that HLA stuff?” P atrick asks.

“That's right.”

“How about the donor's DNA?”

Dr. Bessette nods. “Yes. In all respects, his blood is really someone else's. He 's just fooling his body into believing it's truly his.“ Patrick leans forward. ”But if it takes-if the cancer goes into remission-doe s the patient's body start making his own blood again?”

"No. If it did, we'd consider it a rejection of the graft, and the leukemia w ould return. We want the patient to keep producing his donor's blood forever.

“ She taps the file on her desk. ”In Glen Szyszynski's case, five years after the transplant, he was given a clean bill of health. His new bone marrow was working quite well, and the chance of a recurrence of leukemia was less than ten percent.“ Dr. Bessette nods. ”I think the prosecution can safely say tha t however the priest died, it wasn't of leukemia."

Patrick smiles at her. “Guess it felt good to have a success story.”

"It always does. Father Szyszynski was lucky to have found a perfect match.

"

“A perfect match?”

“That's what we call it when a donor's HLA corresponds to all six of the pat ient's HLA.”

Patrick takes a quick breath. “Especially when they're not related.”

“Oh,” Dr. Bessette says. “But that wasn't the case here. Father Szyszynski a nd his donor were half-brothers.”

Francesca Martine came to the Maine State Lab by way of New Hampshire, wh ere she'd been working as a DNA scientist until something better came alo ng. That something turned out not to be the ballistics expert who broke h er heart. She moved north, nursing her wounds, and discovered what she'd always known-safety came in gels and Petri dishes, and numbers never hurt you.

That said, numbers also couldn't explain the visceral reaction she has the minute she first meets Quentin Brown. On the phone, she imagined him like a ll the other state drones-harried and underpaid, with skin a sickly shade o f gray. But from the moment he walks into her lab, she cannot take her eyes off him. He is striking, certainly, with his excessive height and his maho gany complexion, but Frankie knows that isn't the attraction. She feels a p ull between them, magnetism honed by the common experience of being differe nt. She is not black, but she's often been the only woman in the room with an IQ of 220.

Unfortunately, if she wants Quentin Brown to study her closely, she'll have to assume the shape of a forensic lab report. “What was it that made you loo k at this twice?” Frankie asks.

He narrows his eyes. “How come you're asking?”

“Curiosity. It's pretty esoteric stuff for the prosecution.” Quentin hesitates, as if wondering whether to confide in her. Oh, come on, F rankie thinks. Loosen up. “The defense asked to take a look at it, specifica lly. Immediately. And it didn't seem to merit that kind of request. I don't see how the DNA results here make a difference for us or for them.” Frankie crosses her arms. “The reason they were interested isn't because of th e lab report I issued. It's because of what's in the medical files.”

“I'm not following you.”

“You know the way the DNA report says that the chances of randomly selecti ng an unrelated individual who matches this genetic material are one in si x billion?”

Quentin nods.

“Well,” Frankie explains, “you just found the one.” It costs approximately two thousand dollars of taxpayer money to exhume a bo dy. “No,” Ted Poulin says flatly. As the attorney general of Maine, and Quen tin's boss, that ought to be that. But Quentin isn't going to give up withou t a fight, not this time.

He grips the receiver of the phone. “The DNA scientist at the state lab says we can do the test on tooth pulp.”

“Quentin, it doesn't matter for the prosecution. She killed him. Period.”

“She killed a guy who molested her son. I have to change him from a sexual p redator into a victim, Ted, and this is the way to do it.” There is a long silence on the other end. Quentin runs his fingertips along t he grain of wood on Nina Frost's desk. He does this over and over, as if he i s rubbing an amulet.

“There's no family to fight it?”

“The mother gave consent already.”

Ted sighs. “The publicity is going to be outrageous.” Leaning back in his chair, Quentin grins. “Let me take care of it,” he offers. Fisher storms into the district attorney's office, uncharacteristically flu stered. He has been there before, of course, but who knows where the hell t hey've ensconced Quentin Brown while he's prosecuting Nina's case. He has j ust opened up his mouth to ask the secretary when Brown himself walks out o f the small kitchen area, carrying a cup of coffee. “Mr. Carrington,” he sa ys pleasantly. “Looking for me?”

Fisher withdraws the paperwork he's received that morning from his breast pocket. The Motion to Exhume. “What is this?”

Quentin shrugs. “You must know. You're the one who asked for the DNA recor ds to be rushed over, after all.”

Fisher has no idea why, in fact. The DNA records were rushed over at Nina's behest, but he'll be damned if he lets Brown know this. “What are you tryi ng to do, counselor?”

“A simple test that proves the priest your client killed wasn't the same guy who abused her kid.”

Fisher steels his gaze. “I'll see you in court tomorrow morning,” he says, and by the time he gets into his car to drive to Nina's home, he has begun to understand how an ordinary human might become frustrated enough to kill.

“Fisher!” I say, and I'm actually delighted to see the man. This amazes me-e ither I have truly bedded down with the Enemy, or I've been under house arre st too long. I throw open the door to let him in, and realize that he is fur ious. “You knew,” he says, his voice calm and that much more frightening for all its control. He hands me a motion filed by the assistant attorney gener al.

My insides begin to quiver; I feel absolutely sick. With tremendous effort I swallow and meet Fisher's eye-better to come clean eventually, than to not co me clean at all. “I didn't know if I should tell you. I didn't know if the in formation was going to be important to my case.”

“That's my job!” Fisher explodes. “You are paying me for a reason, Nina, and it's because you know on some level, although apparently not a conscious on e, that I am qualified to get you acquitted. In fact, I'm more qualified to do that than any other attorney in Maine . . . including you.” I look away. At heart, I am a prosecutor, and prosecutors don't tell defense attorneys everything. They dance around each other, but the prosecutor is a lways the one who leads, leaving the other lawyer to find his footing. Always.

“I don't trust you,” I say finally.

Fisher fields this like a blow. “Well, then. We're even.” We stare at each other, two great dogs with their teeth bared. Fisher turns away, angry, and in that moment I see my face in the reflection of the windo w. The truth is, I'm not a prosecutor anymore. I'm not capable of defending myself. I'm not sure I even want to.

“Fisher,” I call out when he is halfway out the door. “How badly will this h urt me?”

“I don't know, Nina. It doesn't make you look any less crazy, but it's also going to strip you of public sympathy. You're not a hero anymore, killing a pedophile. You're a hothead who knocked off an innocent man-spriest, no l ess.” He shakes his head. “You're the prime example of why we have laws in the first place.”

In his eyes, I see what's coming-the fact that I am no longer a mother doin g what she had to for her child, but simply a reckless woman who thought sh e knew better than anyone else. I wonder if camera flashes feel different o n your skin when they capture you as a criminal, instead of a victim. I won der if parents who once fathomed my actions-even if they disagreed with the m-will look at me now and cross the street, just in case faulty judgment is contagious.

Fisher exhales heavily. “I can't keep them from exhuming the body.”

“I know.”

“And if you keep hiding information from me, it will hurt you, because I wo n't know how to work with it.”

I duck my head. “I understand.”

He raises his hand in farewell. I stand on the porch and watch him go, huggi ng myself against the wind. When his car heads down the street, its exhaust freezes, a sigh caught in the cold. With a deep breath I turn to find Caleb standing not three feet behind me. “Nina,” he says, “what was that?” Pushing past him, I shake my head, but he grabs my arm and will not let me go. “You lied to me. Lied to me!”

“Caleb, you don't understand-”

He grasps my shoulders and shakes me once, hard. “What is it I don't unders tand? That you killed an innocent man? Jesus, Nina, when is it going to hit you?”

Once, Nathaniel asked me how the snow disappears. It is like that in Maineinstead of melting over time, it takes one warm day for drifts that are thi gh-high in the morning to evaporate by the time the sun goes down. Together we went to the library to learn the answer-sublimation, the process by whi ch something solid vanishes into thin air.

With Caleb's hands holding me up, I fall apart. I let out everything I have b een afraid to set free for the past week. Father Szyszynski's voice fills my head; his face swims in front of me. “I know,” I sob. “Oh, Caleb, I know. I t hought I could do this. I thought I could take care of it. But I made a mista ke.” I fold myself into the wall of his chest, waiting for his arms to come a round me.

They don't.

Caleb takes a step back, shoves his hands in his pockets. His eyes are red-rimmed, haunted. “What's the mistake, Nina? That you killed a man?” he asks hoarsely. “Or that you didn't?”

“It's a shame, is what it is,” the church secretary says. Myra Lester shakes her head, then hands Patrick the cup of tea she's made him. “Christmas Mass just around the corner, and us without a chaplain.”

Patrick knows that the best road to information is not always the one that'

s paved and straightforward, but the one that cuts around back and is most often forgotten as an access route. He also knows, from his long-lapsed day s of growing up Catholic, that the collective memory-and gossip mill-most o ften is the church secretary. So he offers his most concerned expression, t he one that always got him a pinch on the cheek from his elderly aunts. “Th e congregation must be devastated.”

“Between the rumors flying around about Father Szyszynski, and the way he was killed-well, it's most un-Christian, that's all I have to say about it.” She sniffs, then settles her considerable bottom on a wing chair in the rectory office.

He would like to have assumed a different persona, now-a newcomer to Biddef ord, for example, checking out the parish-but he has already been seen in h is capacity as a detective, during the sexual abuse investigation. “Myra,” Patrick says, then looks up at her and smiles. “I'm sorry. I meant Mrs. Les ter, of course.”

Her cheeks flame, and she titters. “Oh, no, you feel free to call me whatever you like, Detective.”

“Well, Myra, I've been trying to get in touch with the priests that were visit ing St. Anne's shortly before Father Szyszynski's death.”

“Oh, yes, they were lovely. Just lovely! That Father O'Toole, he had the mo st scrumptious Southern accent. Like peach schnapps, that's what I thought of every time he spoke. . . . Or was that Father Gwynne?”

“The prosecution's hounding me. I don't suppose you'd have any idea where I could find them?”

“They've gone back to their own congregations, of course.”

“Is there a record of that? A forwarding address, maybe?” Myra frowns, and a small pattern of lines in the shape of a spider appears o n her forehead. “I'm sure there must be. Nothing in this church goes on with out me knowing the details.” She walks toward all the ledgers and logs stacked behind her desk. Flipping through the pages of a le ather-bound book, she finds an entry and smacks it with the flat of her hand . “It's right here. Fathers Brendan O'Toole, from St. Dennis's, in Harwich, Massachusetts, and Arthur Gwynne, due to depart this afternoon as per the Se e of Portland.' Myra scratches her hair with the eraser of a pencil. ”I supp ose the other priest could have come from Harwich, too, but that wouldn't ex plain the peach schnapps."

“Maybe he moved as a child,” Patrick suggests. “What's the Sea of Portland ?”