Grave Secrets

by Kathy Reichs

  I’d been there ten minutes when my cell phone sounded. I reached for it, happy for the diversion.

  It was Katy.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  “Hi, sweetie. Where are you?”

  “Charlotte. Classes are done for the year.”

  “Isn’t this a late wrap-up?”

  “I had to finish my methods class project.”

  Katy was a fifth-year undergraduate at the University of Virginia. Though bright, witty, attractive, and blonde, my daughter was uncertain what life was offering her, and had yet to settle on a game plan.

  What wasn’t life offering her? I agreed with my estranged husband on this one.

  “What were you looking at?” I asked, shifting gears to ooze forward seventeen inches.

  “The effects of Cheez Whiz on rat memory.”

  Katy’s current major was psychology.

  “And?”

  “They love the stuff.”

  “Did you enroll for next term?”

  “Yep.”

  “Home stretch?” Pete and I were bankrolling our daughter twelve semesters to allow her to discover the meaning of life.

  “Yep.”

  “Are you at your dad’s place?”

  “Actually, I’m at yours.”

  “Oh?” Katy usually preferred her childhood home to my tiny townhouse.

  “Boyd’s with me. Hope that’s O.K.”

  “Sure. Where’s Birdie?”

  I leapt forward two yards.

  “On my lap. Your cat’s not crazy about Boyd.”

  “No.”

  “He stays permanently fluffed.”

  “Is your dad out of town?”

  “Yeah, but they’re coming back today.”

  They?

  “Oops.”

  “It’s O.K.”

  “He’s got a new girlfriend.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “I think her bra size exceeds her IQ.”

  “She can’t help that.”

  “She doesn’t like dogs.”

  “She can help that.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Montreal.”

  “Are you in a car?”

  “Flashing along at the speed of light.”

  I was now rolling at twelve miles per hour.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  I told her.

  “Why not use the real skull?”

  I told her about Díaz and Lucas and the purloined skeleton.

  “I had a sociology professor named Lucas. Richard Lucas.”

  “This one’s a Hector.”

  I knew what was coming as soon as I said it. Katy adored one nursery rhyme the entire year she was four. She recited it now in a singsong voice.

  Hector Protector was dressed all in green;

  Hector Protector was sent to the queen . . .

  “Hector dissector should be hung by his spleen,” I cut in.

  “That’s bad.”

  “It’s a first draft.”

  “Don’t do a second. Poetry shouldn’t be made to suffer because you’re frustrated.”

  “Hector Protector is not Coleridge.”

  “When will you be back in Charlotte, Mom?”

  “I’m not sure. I want to finish what I started in Guatemala.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Got a summer job yet?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “Good luck.”

  Gagné called as I was turning into my driveway.

  “We’ve got a match.”

  His words made no sense.

  “What are you talking about?”

  I dived toward the underground garage.

  “We’re just bringing our mitochondrial technology online, so I decided to play around with that. Thought we might have better luck if the septic tank sample was badly degraded.”

  I depressed the button on my remote. The door rattled, rose. As I pulled into the garage, Gagné’s voice grew distant, began cutting in and out.

  “Two of your samples match.”

  “But I only gave you one.”

  “There were four samples in the package.” I heard paper rustle. “Paraíso, Specter, Eduardo, Gerardi.”

  Minos must have misunderstood my request. When I’d asked for hair, I meant that taken from the septic tank jeans. He’d included samples from all four cats.

  I could hardly get the question out.

  “Which samples match, M. Gagné?”

  Behind me, the garage door clicked, began chugging downward.

  Gagné’s answer was garbled. I strained to make out his words. My handset gave a series of beeps.

  I was listening to silence.

  19

  SLINGING MY LAPTOP AND BRIEFCASE OVER MY shoulders, I grabbed the package containing Susanne’s cast and hurried to the elevator. The doors were barely open when I shot out.

  And slammed into Andrew Ryan.

  “Whoa, whoa. Where’s the fire?”

  As usual, my first reaction was irritation.

  “Nice cliché.”

  “I do my best. What’s in the box?”

  I moved to circle him, but he stepped left, blocking my path. At that moment, a neighbor entered the lobby through the front door.

  “Bonjour.” The old man touched cane to cap, nodded to Ryan, then to me.

  “Bonjour, Monsieur Gravel,” I said.

  M. Gravel shuffled to the mailboxes.

  I stepped left. Ryan stepped right. Susanne’s box filled the space between our chests.

  I heard a mailbox open, shut, then a walking stick tap across marble.

  “I have to make a phone call, Ryan.”

  “What’s in the carton?”

  “The head from the septic tank.”

  The walking stick stopped dead.

  Ryan laid both hands on the box.

  “Please, please don’t do this,” he pleaded in a loud, warbly voice.

  M. Gravel inhaled so sharply it sounded like a backfire.

  I glared at Ryan.

  Ryan smiled at me, his back to my neighbor.

  “Follow me,” I said, lips barely moving.

  Heading toward my hallway, I heard Ryan turn, and knew he was winking at M. Gravel. The irritation escalated.

  Inside my condo, I set everything on the table and picked up the portable.

  “Gagné just phoned with DNA results on feline hair I brought from Guatemala.”

  “It’s Krazy Kat.”

  “He’s found a match between two of the four samples.”

  “What four samples?”

  I explained how Minos had packaged hair from the Specter, Eduardo, and Gerardi homes, along with some that I’d taken from the Paraíso jeans. Then I hit speakerphone and punched in the lab number.

  “Which samples match?” Ryan asked.

  When the receptionist answered, I asked for Gagné.

  “That’s what I’m anxious to know. The Eduardo cat’s been ruled out.”

  “Why?”

  “Persian.”

  “Poor Fluffy.”

  “Buttercup.”

  Gagné came on the line.

  “Sorry,” I said. “You caught me underground.”

  “You sound like you’re still down there.”

  “I have you on speakerphone. Detective Ryan is with me.”

  “Ryan’s on this?”

  “All over it. Please repeat what you were saying.”

  “I was saying that I went with mitochondrial DNA. Three of the samples looked O.K., but the hairs in the packet marked ‘Paraíso’ had no root or sheath with an appropriate follicular tag to enable genomic DNA processing. You told me to test everything.”

  I had. But I’d meant Gagné could use the entire Paraíso sample, since the Guatemala forensics lab had retained hair for future testing. I had no idea Minos’s package contained other samples.

  “I could have looked for epithelial cells on the Paraíso shafts, but given the context I doubted I�
��d find much,” Gagné went on.

  “Cats have polymorphic regions in their mitochondrial DNA?” I asked.

  “Just like humans. A feline geneticist at a cancer institute in the U.S. researches this stuff, has excellent stats on population variability.”

  Ryan was holding a finger to his head, mimicked pulling a trigger. Linus Pauling he’s not.

  “What was the match, M. Gagné?”

  A paper rustled. I held my breath.

  “The sample marked ‘Paraíso’ profiled like the sample marked ‘Specter.’”

  Ryan stopped blowing smoke from his fingertip and stared at the phone.

  “Meaning they were consistent?”

  “Meaning they were identical.”

  “Thank you.”

  I disconnected.

  “You can holster your weapon.”

  Ryan dropped his gun pantomime and placed hands on hips.

  “How can he be so sure it’s a match?”

  “It’s his business to be sure.”

  “The hair’s been in a friggin’ septic tank.” Ryan’s tone oozed skepticism.

  “Do you know anything about DNA?”

  “What I don’t know I have a feeling I’m about to learn.” He raised a hand, palm out. “The five-minute version. Please.”

  “Do you know what a DNA molecule looks like?” I asked.

  “A spiral staircase.”

  “Very good. Sugars and phosphates form the handrails, and bases form the steps. How can I bring this down to your level?”

  Ryan opened his mouth to object, but I cut him off.

  “Think of the bases as Legos that only come in four colors. If there’s a red Lego on one half of a step, there’s always a blue Lego on the other. Green pairs with yellow.”

  “And not everyone has the same color pattern at a particular place.”

  “You’re not as dumb as you look, Ryan. When multiple variations exist for a sequence of steps, it’s called a polymorphism. When a position has extreme numbers of variants, maybe hundreds, it’s called a hypervariable region.”

  “Like Manhattan.”

  “Did you want this in five minutes?”

  Ryan held up both palms.

  “Variations, or polymorphisms, can occur in the sequence of colors, or in the number of times those colors are repeated between any two specific steps. You with me?”

  “A particular fragment can vary in pattern or length.”

  “The first technique that was adapted for forensic DNA analysis was called RFLP, Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism. RFLP analysis determines variation in the length of a defined DNA fragment.”

  “Produces that thing that looks like a grocery store bar code.”

  “It’s called an autoradiograph. Unfortunately, RFLP requires better-quality DNA than many crime scene samples provide. That’s why PCR was such a breakthrough.”

  “Amplification.”

  “Exactly. Without going into details—”

  “But I love it when you talk dirty.” Ryan reached out and touched my nose. I brushed his hand away.

  “Polymerase Chain Reaction is a technique for increasing the amount of DNA available for analysis. A defined sequence of Lego steps is copied millions of times.”

  “Genetic Xeroxing.”

  “Except that with each round the number of copies doubles, so the increase in DNA is geometric. The drawback to PCR analysis is that fewer variable regions have been identified, and each tends to show less variation.”

  “So you’re able to use PCR with crummier DNA, but the power of discrimination is lower.”

  “Historically that’s been the case.”

  “What’s this mitochondrial stuff?”

  “RFLP and PCR—and there are other procedures—use genomic DNA, which resides in the cell nucleus. Additional bits of genetic material are found in the mitochondria, small compartments in the cell where respiration takes place. The mitochondrial genome is smaller, slightly over sixteen thousand bases, and forms a circle, not a staircase. There are two regions on that circle that are highly variable.”

  “What’s the advantage?”

  “Mitochondrial DNA is present in hundreds to thousands of copies per cell, so it can be extracted from small or degraded samples where the genomic DNA is long gone. Researchers have found mitochondrial DNA in Egyptian mummies.”

  “I doubt your septic tank was built by pharaohs.”

  “I was trying to make this understandable.”

  I thought of a better example.

  “Mitochondrial DNA was used to determine that skeletons recently exhumed in Russia were those of Czar Nicholas and his family.”

  “How?”

  “Mitochondrial DNA is only passed on through maternal lines.”

  “The whole shooting match comes from Mommy?”

  “Sorry to break that to you, Ryan.”

  “My gender knows grout.”

  “The researchers compared DNA from the Russian bones to DNA obtained from living relatives, specifically Britain’s Prince Philip.”

  “Queen Elizabeth’s hubby?”

  “Prince Philip’s maternal grandmother was Czarina Alexandra’s sister, so Alexandra and her children, and Philip, inherited their mitochondrial DNA from the mother of both Alexandra and her sister.”

  “Back to the cats.”

  “Hair cells have no nuclei, so no genomic DNA. But mitochondrial DNA is present in hair shafts.”

  “Gagné referred to epithelial cells.”

  “Saliva, skin, buccal, vaginal. You might find saliva on cat hairs as a result of grooming—e-cells are also found in urine and feces. I appreciate Gagné’s pessimism about e-cells in this case.”

  “Piss-poor chance of finding any.”

  “According to Gagné, the mitochondrial sequences from the Specter cat were identical to those from the septic tank hair.”

  “Meaning the Paraíso victim had contact with the Specter cat.”

  “Yep.”

  “And we know it wasn’t Chantale in that tank.”

  “You’re right, Ryan. Cops are good at this.”

  “The victim was someone who’d been to the Specter house, or at least been in contact with their cat.”

  “Before last Christmas.”

  He looked a question at me.

  “That’s when Guimauve did a dead man’s float in the swimming pool.”

  Ryan thought a moment, then, “I think little Chan-tale knows more than she’s letting on.”

  “Someone does,” I agreed.

  “Mrs. Specter?”

  I shrugged.

  Ryan and I locked eyes, each stuck on the same thought.

  “I’ve never met the ambassador,” I said.

  “Where is he?”

  “Discussing soybean yields in Mexico City.”

  “Odd, given his daughter’s recent bust.”

  “Galiano said Specter delayed reporting Chantale’s disappearance. Once the cops were brought in, he wasn’t overly cooperative.”

  “Kitty puts things in a whole new light.”

  * * *

  Lying just west of Centre-ville, Westmount flows down the mountain in a series of heavily shaded streets. Anathema to québécois separatists, the neighborhood is known for its high concentration of English speakers and its fierce federalist loyalty. Until the island of Montreal was reorganized, and many suburbs and outlying districts were incorporated under the Communauté Urbaine de Montréal umbrella, Westmount prided itself on its independence, low taxes, efficient management, and genteel good taste.

  Westmount fought hard to prevent absorption into the new Super City. Upon losing, the citizenry drew their mink and cashmere coats about them, sniffed their affluent noses, and waited, confident that some resident lawyer would force a reversal on appeal.

  They were still waiting.

  Ryan exited the tunnel at Atwater, turned left on The Boulevard, turned right, and began climbing uphill. I watched the homes grow larger, imagine
d the expanding panorama of river and town as viewed from south-facing patios and sunrooms.

  Westmount is like Hong Kong—the higher the elevation, the better the address. The Specter home was one of the largest in upper Westmount, a towering stone fortress, complete with turret, grillework, and massive oak door. A cypress hedge prevented any view of the front of the property. That from the back must have been spectacular.

  “Nice crib,” said Ryan, sliding to the curb.

  “Mrs. Specter referred to it as a ‘little place.’”

  “Arrogantly unpretentious. Very Westmount.”

  “Mrs. Specter is from Charlevoix.”

  Ryan thumbed the bell. Somewhere inside, chimes sounded.

  “How much does an ambassador make?” he asked under his breath.

  “Less than this, I’m sure. Ambassadors usually don’t take the job for the money. They contribute money to get it.”

  We waited a full minute. Ryan rang again.

  I was shocked when Mrs. Specter answered the door. Though she’d applied lipstick and rouge, her face was the color of hospital linen. The copper hair had been yanked to the top of her head, but rogue strands spiraled around her ears and down her neck.

  “No, I’m sorry. Something has come up.” One hand floated to her chest. “I am unable to meet with you now.”

  She started to close the door, but Ryan laid a palm on the outside.

  “Please. I have had a migraine.”

  “We don’t want to bother you, Mrs. Specter.” He beamed his choirboy smile. “We’re here to see Chantale.”

  “I cannot have you pestering my daughter.” Her voice was jagged, her knuckles white on the doorknob.

  “We will be very brief,” I said.

  “Chantale is sleeping.”

  “Please wake her.”

  “She is not well.”

  “Headache?” Ryan’s voice had taken on an edge.

  “I suffer from migraines, myself,” I jumped in. “I know how you’re feeling. Please send Chantale down, then go back to bed.”

  “No, thank you.”

  The response made no sense. I took a close look. Mrs. Specter’s pupils were the size of cocktail tumblers. The ambassador’s wife had knocked back some serious painkillers.

  “Is Mr. Specter—”

  She cut me off with a wave of her hand.

  “Is your husband here, Mrs. Specter?”

  “Here?”

  “Is Mr. Specter in the house?”

  “There’s no one here.”

  “No one?”