by Metsy Hingle
Leon’s gaze met his, and Jack knew his partner was remembering Kelly’s description of the murderer. “That’s it?” Jack asked Bobby. “You give us this song and dance about a mystery woman that you claim murdered a guy and all you can tell us is that she was wearing a black cape?”
Bobby swallowed, obviously nervous again. “She was a tall chick, kind of on the skinny side from what I could see. Oh, and she was definitely white.”
“How do you know that if you couldn’t see her face?” Jack asked.
“I saw her wrist when she reached over to toss the dough in Sly’s guitar case. She was wearing gloves, but I saw her wrist.”
“A tall white chick on the thin side who was wearing a black cape. Sound familiar, Jackson?” Leon asked him when they left the interrogation room and returned to their desks.
“There are probably a couple of hundred women in this city who fit that description,” Jack pointed out. “And probably half of them were out Halloween night.”
“Yeah. But none of them claimed to have seen the murder.”
“That doesn’t mean that Kelly did it,” Jack told him.
“Hey, Callaghan, I took a message for you,” Nuccio called out as they entered the homicide team’s room.
Just what he needed, more grief from Nuccio, Jack thought. He stopped in front of Nuccio’s desk and waited. After several seconds passed, he asked, “So you planning to give me the message?”
“Maybe he’s trying to send it to you by ESP,” one of the other guys joked.
Jack ignored the comment and waited. “What’s the message, Nuccio?”
“It was from one of the techs going over your vic’s car. He said they came up with something for you.”
“What did he say?”
“It was real technical-sounding shit, so I wrote it down. Give me a second to find it,” Nuccio told him, and dug through the mess on his desk. He salvaged a scrap of paper from beneath a coffee cup. “Here it is. He says, they found a strand of hair with a follicular tag. He said for you to call him.”
“Thanks,” Jack said, and snatched the piece of paper from Nuccio’s fingers. He stopped by Leon’s desk.
“What’s up?” Leon asked.
“The lab techs came up with a strand of hair in the vic’s car with a follicular tag, so it looks like we’ve got DNA to work with.”
“You going to the lab?” Leon asked.
“I’m on my way over there now.”
“I’m right behind you.” As Leon shoved away from his desk and the two of them exited the station house, he said, “It’s about damn time we got a break on this case.”
Only Jack wasn’t at all sure the information would prove to be the break they hoped for as he listened to the crime-scene tech explain what they’d found. “The good news is this strand of hair was pulled out near the root, so we’ve got a piece of tissue that will give us the owner’s DNA.”
Jack examined the strand of blond hair under the microscope lens and stepped aside for Leon to do the same. “And the bad news?”
“The bad news is I ran it through the system and didn’t get any hits. So if the hair did come from your killer, she doesn’t have a record.”
“She?” Leon prompted.”
“Yes. Thought I told you. The hair definitely belongs to a woman, Caucasian, possibly her early thirties.” The man glanced up from the microscope and apparently caught the look that passed between Leon and him. “You got a suspect who fits that description?”
“Maybe,” Jack conceded.
“If we bring her in for a DNA test you’d be able to tell us if she’s the one that hair belongs to, right?” Leon asked.
“Absolutely,” the tech said. “That little strand of hair is as good as a fingerprint. You get me the DNA on your suspect and I’ll tell you if we have a match.”
“Thanks for your help,” Jack said, and left.
Once they were outside, Leon told him, “The Santos woman is a blonde, Jackson, and she’s connected to this case. You know as well as I do that we need to ask her for a DNA sample. It’s procedure.”
“I know. I’ll give her a call,” Jack told him.
“Maybe it would be better if I made the call,” Leon offered. And once he got back to the station, he called Kelly at her hotel. “Ms. Santos, this is Detective Jerevicious.”
“Yes, Detective?”
“Ma’am, I need to ask if you’d be willing to come down and give us a DNA sample.”
“Is that a request, Detective?” she countered, her voice cool.
“Right now, it’s a request. But if necessary, I can get a warrant. If you’d like to consult with an attorney, feel free—”
“I don’t need an attorney, Detective. And save yourself and your partner the trouble of getting a warrant. I’ll agree to a DNA test. Just tell me when and where.”
Ten
“You do realize, Detective Jerevicious, that this is a waste of my time and yours,” Kelly Santos informed him when she presented herself to the police station for the DNA test the following day.
“Detective Callaghan said the same thing, ma’am,” Leon told the woman who, as far as he was concerned, was the only viable suspect in their investigation.
“Then perhaps you should have listened to him.”
“I’d like to have, ma’am. But as I told Detective Callaghan, the quickest and easiest way to rule you out as a suspect is to run a DNA test on you and compare it to the sample we got from Dr. Gilbert’s car.”
“Where is Detective Callaghan?” she asked.
The lady was cool. But Leon thought he detected some nerves beneath that cool demeanor. “He’s with the captain. He should be here in a few minutes. If you’ll come this way, I’ll take you on back,” he instructed, and led her to a room where the lab tech would come for a swab. He opened the door for her to enter.
She stepped inside the drab gray room.
“Could I get you something to drink while you wait? Some water or maybe a soda?” Leon offered.
“A glass of water, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“No trouble at all. I’ll let the technician know you’re here,” he informed her. “Make yourself comfortable.” After closing the door, he headed down the hall. He knocked on the door and stuck his head inside. “Stuart,” he called over to the tech they’d met with yesterday. When the guy looked up from the test tubes he was fiddling with, he said, “The suspect for the Gilbert homicide is here for that DNA test.”
“Be right there. Just need to finish this test.”
Leon nodded, shut the door and stopped in the break room, where he retrieved a bottled water from the fridge. Then he headed back down to the room where the Santos woman was waiting. He paused outside for a moment and watched her. Rather than make herself comfortable, she paced the small room, reminding him of an animal caught in a pen. As he watched her, he thought of his partner’s defense of her and tried to understand it. Despite Jackson’s claim that there was nothing personal going on between them, he had seen the way Jack looked at her. Maybe nothing had happened yet, but his partner definitely wanted it to. That in itself surprised him, because this was the first time in the two years they’d been partners that he’d ever seen Callaghan let personal feelings get in the way of his job. He could understand Jackson’s attraction to her. The lady was certainly easy on the eyes. But he’d seen the other man with several women who were flat-out gorgeous—and not one of them had ever affected his partner’s judgment or interfered with his ability to do his job.
This one did.
Leon frowned, went over his conversation with Callaghan in his head. The man really did believe the woman was innocent. What was more surprising was that Callaghan bought into her claim of being psychic. Being a southern boy and having spent a considerable amount of time in New Orleans, he was no stranger to the superstitions and spiritual bents of the locals. Hell, even his Tessa had thrown away good money for a tarot card reader to fill her head with nonsense. And Lord knows
, he’d been spooked himself once when he’d had a voodoo priestess threaten him with a painful death after he’d arrested her man.
But at heart he was a practical man, Leon conceded. A man who believed in God and country and cold, hard facts. And the cold, hard facts said that the lady knew too much about the murder. She’d either done it herself or she’d been there and seen it done firsthand. Either way, she was involved and he intended to prove that to Jackson. What he didn’t believe was that the Santos woman could see the future any more than that fortune-teller last year who’d convinced his Tessa that they were going to have a baby.
Anger burned inside him as he thought about that scam artist, building up his Tessa’s hopes. They’d been down that route years ago when he was still playing ball. They’d spent a fortune on doctors, procedures and even tried in vitro, but the fact was his sperm count was nearly nonexistent. There he was, the big football stud, and he couldn’t give his wife a baby. That’s why they’d adopted. Granted, they hadn’t gotten the boys as babies, but they were their sons and they were happy with their kids. But it hadn’t stopped his Tessa from wanting to have a baby. A maternal thing, she’d claimed, this desire to hold an infant, have it nurse at her breast. It didn’t mean she loved their boys any less, she just had never stopped wanting to have a baby. And he felt like a failure because he couldn’t make it happen.
He needed to forget about all that and do his job, Leon reminded himself, irritated that he’d allowed the Santos woman to bring back those unhappy memories. He opened the door. “Here’s your water.”
She turned around. “Thanks,” she said, and reached for the bottle of water.
As she took the bottle from him, she froze. Her eyes shot up to his face. There was something in her eyes, a softening, almost compassion. And Leon had the strangest feeling as she stared at him that she had somehow known he’d been thinking of Tessa. “Is something wrong, Ms. Santos?” he asked, his voice more abrupt than he’d intended, but he didn’t like the fact that he’d allowed himself, even for a minute, to believe in the hocus-pocus she’d been feeding his partner.
“No. It’s just that you—” She paused. “Excuse me.” She turned away from him, opened the water bottle and took a sip.
“What were you going to say?”
She looked back at him, hesitated. “She’s pregnant. She doesn’t know it yet because she hasn’t had time to pick up a pregnancy test from the drugstore. The boys have karate today and football tomorrow, and she thinks she’s crazy to even get her hopes up again, but—”
“Who are you talking about?” he asked.
“Your wife.”
Anger had him balling his hands into fists. “Listen, lady, you want to play your psychic games with Jackson and Sarge, you go right ahead. But don’t try messing with me.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that you were feeling so down and beating yourself up about Tessa—”
Leon’s head snapped back. He grabbed her by the shoulders. “How did you know my wife’s name?”
“It’s actually Theresa, but you call her Tessa,” she told him. “And no, I didn’t go check you out from when you were playing pro ball.”
Leon released his grip on her as though he’d just touched a live wire. “I don’t know how in the hell you did that—”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to pry. Honestly. Most of the time, I can block things out. But sometimes if the emotions are as strong as yours were just now, it’s harder to do and I…I’m sorry,” she murmured, and lowered her gaze.
He wouldn’t ask her. He swore to himself he wouldn’t ask, yet the question came tumbling from his lips. “What you said…about Tessa being pregnant…Never mind.”
“It’s true, Detective. She is pregnant.”
His mouth and heart hardened. “Do you know how slim the chance is of that happening, lady? The doctors said it was next to impossible.”
“But not impossible,” she pointed out.
“Give me one good reason why I should believe you?”
“I can’t. But buy a pregnancy test on your way home tonight, anyway.”
He was about to tell her that whatever her angle was he wasn’t buying it, but the door opened and in walked Callaghan.
His partner immediately went over to the Santos woman. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here earlier to meet you, but I got tied up with my captain.”
“It’s all right. Detective Jerevicious explained.”
“The lab guys know we’re here?” Jack asked.
“Yeah. Stuart over in the lab was finishing up a test. I’ll go see what’s keeping him,” Leon offered, but just then the tech tapped on the door.
Leon studied the guy as he identified himself and was introduced to Kelly. Average height and average looking, Stuart looked like what he was—a bright guy who spent his days locked in a room filled with test tubes and high-tech equipment examining evidence from crime scenes. The man’s scientific ability to untangle the evidence that they gathered had proved crucial in many of their cases. He was counting on the same thing happening now.
“I’m going to do what we call a buccal swab,” Stuart explained. He pulled on a pair of disposable gloves and held up a cotton-tipped swab. “All I’m going to do is swipe the inside of your cheek with this swab here to get a sample of your DNA. All right?”
“Yes,” she told him.
“Then if you’ll open your mouth for me,” he instructed. As she did so, he swiped the inside of her cheek. Then he dropped the swab into a plastic bag. “All done.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“Stuart, we’re going to need the results ASAP,” Jack informed the tech.
“No problem. After that serial killer situation last year, we convinced the big brass to spring for a new machine that lets us process the DNA on-site and twice as fast. I’ll be able to give you the results in a few minutes.”
Once the tech left the room, Jack asked her, “That wasn’t so bad, now, was it?”
“No. But it’s a waste of your department’s time and resources because I never met Dr. Gilbert and I certainly was never in his car.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about,” Leon told her.
“No, I don’t,” she replied politely.
Jack shifted his gaze from her to him, and Leon didn’t miss his partner’s frown. Still feeling edgy and confused about the stuff she’d said about Tessa, Leon paced the room while Jack made small talk with her.
Finally there was a tap at the door. Stuart stuck his head inside. “Detectives, can I have a word with you?”
Outside in the hall, Jack asked, “So what’s the news?”
“The DNA’s don’t match.”
“Thanks, I’ll tell Kelly,” Jack said, a triumphant note in his voice and his eyes.
“Uh, Detective, you might want to hang on a second.”
“What is it?” Leon asked.
“I said the DNA’s don’t match,” Stuart explained. “But they are related.”
“What are you talking about?” Jack snapped.
“I’m saying that the person whose hair you recovered from your crime scene and Ms. Santos are blood relatives.”
“You’re wrong. There has to be some kind of mistake,” Kelly insisted as she sat down at the table with Jack, his partner and the lab technician who’d identified himself as Stuart Hennessy.
“DNA doesn’t lie, Ms. Santos,” Stuart told her.
Still feeling shell-shocked, she argued, “But it can’t be right. I don’t have any family. No parents. No siblings. No one.”
“As I said, DNA doesn’t lie. You have at least one female blood relative,” Hennessy told her, and stood.
“Thanks again, Stuart,” Jack told the man.
“Anytime.”
Kelly shoved the hair from her face as she tried to absorb what she’d just discovered. After all these years of being alone, of thinking she had no one, she had family. An ac
tual flesh-and-blood relative. A cousin? Maybe even a sister?
And that relative’s DNA has been found at a murder scene.
The reminder sent reality crashing back—along with the questions. Who was the woman? What was her connection to Kelly? And, if she were correct and this was the same woman she’d seen in the car with the gun, why had she killed the doctor?
“Ms. Santos…Kelly,” Leon amended.
Kelly dragged her attention back to her surroundings. She glanced up at the towering detective. “Yes, Detective?”
“I owe you an apology. I was pretty rough on you earlier.”
“No apology needed. You were only doing your job,” Kelly told him. Which was the truth, she reasoned. The man had been doing his job and he’d been convinced she was a killer and a fraud.
He nodded and turned his attention to Jack. “I’m going to head back to the station, see if I can clear up some paperwork so I can get home tonight at a decent hour for a change.”
“Detective, don’t forget to make that stop I mentioned,” Kelly said, and didn’t miss the cautious look that came into his eyes. While he no longer believed her to be a murderess, Detective Napoleon Jerevicious hadn’t quite made up his mind about the fraud part yet, she realized.
“I’ll catch you later,” Jack told his partner, and once the door had closed behind him and they were alone, he gave Kelly a questioning look. “What was that all about?”
“Nothing really,” she responded. She stood. “I need to go.”
“Kelly, wait.”
She paused.
“I just want to say that I’m sorry I had to put you through this…the DNA test.”
“Like I told Detective Jerevicious, you were just doing your job.”
“Yeah, but you got a little bit more than you bargained for,” he said, his voice gentle. “How do you feel about all this?”
“You mean learning that I have a sister or a cousin that I didn’t know existed? Or the fact that she might very well be a murderer?”
“Both.”
“I’m not sure. Strange. Confused,” she admitted. “All I know is I have a lot of thinking to do. Which is why I need to go.” She also had to make some decisions about finding the person responsible for killing Sister Grace.