The Last Hope

by C. C. Jameson

  “They’re identical,” said Luke over the phone while Kate manned a speed trap in a school zone.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “No, Montague’s sample and the one your sheriff sent me share the same DNA.”

  Her hunch had been right, but this made no sense. “How can that be? The first guy’s dead.”

  “They’re identical twins.”

  “Really? Twins have the exact same DNA?” she pressed.

  “Identical twins do,” Luke said.

  Kate’s mind raced, trying to make connections with all of the cases she’d read. “Do identical twins have the same fingerprints?”

  “No, fingerprints are set in the womb. They change when fetuses touch the amniotic sac. Impossible to have identical fingerprints.”

  Kate nodded although Luke couldn’t see her over the phone. “I didn’t know how fingerprints were created. Thanks, Luke. I really appreciate you checking the DNA for me.”

  She hung up and dialed the sheriff’s number. He would now have everything he needed to trace back birth records to determine the identity of his John Doe.

  After a brief phone conversation with a very grateful sheriff, Kate wondered about her uncle’s DNA. Did he have a twin he didn’t know about?

  She needed to know. It could affect his case.

  Kate looked at the time: 11:15 a.m. If she left her speed trap now, she may be able to talk to him and George when the court broke for lunch.

  As luck would have it, she managed to get a short audience with George and her uncle, but under the watchful eye of a security guard.

  “Kenny, what I’m about to ask you will seem out of the blue, but something happened that got me thinking.”

  Her uncle lifted sad eyes to her. “You know you can ask me anything.”

  “Do you have a twin brother?”

  “Of course not,” he said, frowning.

  “Maybe the two of you were separated at birth, and one of you was adopted by a different family?”

  Kenny shook his head vehemently. “No way. Mom and Dad told me the story of my birth so many times, along with seeing the black-and-white pictures of her being pregnant, of me in the nursery at the hospital, of us coming home together. I was the only baby in those pictures and Mom was one of those tiny pregnant women. No way she had two babies in there.”

  Kate let out a sigh.

  “Why do you look so disappointed?” he asked.

  “I was just hoping you had one.”

  “Why?” he said, then laughed.

  Kate relayed what she’d just learned about identical twins and the shared DNA.

  “Too bad,” he said with a strange expression on his face. He was still so very pale. Was it because he’d already accepted the inevitable verdict that was coming his way?

  But before she could ask her uncle more questions or try to reassure him somehow, a call came in for her over the radio, which forced Kate to return to her patrol car, her proverbial tail hanging between her legs.

  The following day, just after Kate finished her patrol shift, she got another call from Sheriff Wallace.

  “Montague does not have a twin,” he started, obviously irritated. “I traced his birth records: he’s an only child.”

  Kate was not sure what to say to diffuse his anger. “Maybe they gave up the twin to another family, anonymously?”

  “I checked the adoption records for the same day, for all of Massachusetts, and no newborn baby boys were adopted. Unless the parents owed their first born to a mafia goon, there was no identical twin.”

  Kate could picture the sheriff ready to throw his fist into the wall. “I don’t know what to say. Maybe check the hospital records?” she replied.

  “Not your fault,” he said, moderating his voice this time. “Well, this John Doe is a real admin nightmare. Why did he have to die in my county?” he asked rhetorically before hanging up, leaving Kate clueless as to why he’d called her in the first place.

  But the odd call made Kate think about something else. With all of the homeless deaths lately, she wondered if many of them had since been identified. She finished her end-of-shift tasks and headed to the morgue to ask.

  A short woman was busy cleaning something over the sink at the morgue, so Kate knocked and walked in through the open door. A dead body was lying on the nearest autopsy table, chest cut open with skin flaps resting on both sides of its torso. Decomposition had obviously affected that poor victim. The internal organs had been taken out and placed on a nearby tray. The smells of rotting flesh and antiseptic products merged into a weird and unpleasant odor. Kate was relieved that her stomach didn’t want to purge itself.

  She walked over and introduced herself. “Hi, I’m Officer Kate Murphy.”

  “Dr. Lisa Davis,” the brown-haired woman said with a smile. “How can I help you?”

  Kate was taken aback by the doctor’s warm welcome.

  Not many visitors?

  Dr. Davis motioned for Kate to come closer.

  “I know you’re busy,” Kate started, “but I was wondering if you have a lot of John Does down here.”

  The doctor nodded. “We always have a few, but I’d say that number has increased over the past years.” She returned her attention to the shears, scissors, and saw as she rinsed them over the sink.

  “What about the homeless deaths they talk about on the news?” Kate asked.

  “That’s the bulk of our John Does.”

  Kate scratched her chin. “Do you check their DNA?”

  “We take samples, have them analyzed, and most of them come back without matches.”

  The doctor wiped her hands and walked over to a computer monitor in the corner of the room.

  Kate followed her. “Do these samples stay in the system to be compared against future matches?”

  “No,” Lisa said, shaking her head. “The system only contains the DNA of those who were charged with a crime. Plus, they’re dead, so they’d just clog the system.”

  “Do you keep the samples you take?” Kate asked, looking around for a storage area.

  The doctor nodded. “Some morgues don’t, but here we do. The state lets each county regulate how they operate, but it’s prevented us from digging up a few graves in the past, so we find it useful to keep them, just in case.”

  “Any chance I could have the homeless samples re-analyzed?”

  “Sure, but you’ll need the required paperwork,” the doctor said before pointing at an overflowing inbox on a desk in the corner.

  “Thanks, doc. Have a great day.”

  Kate left the morgue and headed to Fuller’s office.

  She knocked on the ajar door, and the detective told her to come in. But once she stepped into his office and he saw who had knocked, he added, “Wallflower, what a surprise.” As expected, his voice was flat and his glance unfriendly.

  “Hi, Detective,” Kate said, forcing a smile.

  “What’s going on in your pretty little head?” he asked patronizingly. “Your uncle’s verdict should be out tomorrow. You can’t change anything about it.”

  “I’m not here for that,” she said firmly.

  “What are you here for?” he asked with an equally abrupt tone and a look of disdain.

  “Homeless deaths. Who’s on them?”

  Fuller let out a sigh. “Wang had the last couple of cases. Why do you care?”

  “I have a theory, and I’d like to have their DNA re-analyzed.”

  Fuller rolled his eyes. “What for? If they didn’t commit a crime before they died, believe me, they won’t commit one after they’re buried.” He laughed at his own joke, melting the tension a little.

  “Listen, I get that,” Kate started before taking a seat in front of him without his invitation to do so. “You remember Cliff Montague? The man who came forward and answered questions about the Ferguson murder?” Kate saw Fuller nod, so she continued. “There’s an unidentified corpse in Ohio whose DNA matches Montague’s. The tricky part? Birth records
prove that Montague doesn’t have a twin brother. How do you explain that?”

  Fuller leaned back in his chair and flicked his hand in the air. “Birth records are probably wrong. But where does this information come from?”

  Kate recounted her visit to Ohio, her bumping into the sheriff, and the events that had followed. “So, what if,” she continued tentatively, “with these unexplained homeless deaths on the rise… What if somehow, someone had figured out how to clone people?”

  “You mean like that sheep from years ago?” Fuller asked.

  She nodded. “Yep. I know crazy, but that’s what I’m thinking.”

  He harrumphed at her. “No way, human cloning is illegal and so is researching it.”

  Kate shook her head. “Since when do people stop when laws tell them to?”

  Fuller slapped his hand on the desk then got up. “You’re wasting your time on this.”

  “But what if?” She lifted a brow to accentuate her question.

  “What do you want? What do you expect to prove?”

  “I just want to re-analyze all unidentified homeless samples from the past couple of years and compare them to the open and closed case files we have. Best outcome, I might help solve a few cold cases; worst outcome, I’ve wasted my own time.”

  “Hmmm… a waste of time and resources for sure,” he said, sitting back down, then rocking back and forth a few times before moving his lower jaw sideways and staring at Kate. “Wallflower, your Ohio corpse story makes me curious. And the number of homeless deaths has really jumped up in recent years. I don’t believe your theory’s anywhere near plausible, but my gut tells me you may be onto something.”

  Really?

  Kate did her best to hide her excitement. She hadn’t expected anything from him at all. Finding evidence of cloning—as far-fetched as the idea seemed to Kate right now—could help her prove Kenny’s innocence and force them to re-open his case or at least send it to the Court of Appeals.

  Fuller contemplated the idea more then added, “Here’s the deal: go talk to Wang. Tell her what you told me, and she’ll show you the paperwork you’ll need to prepare for each of the corpses. I want to be clear, other than the time it takes for her to listen to this, you will not waste any of my detectives’ time,” he said with emphasis. “Any paperwork that results from that is yours to handle. The crime lab is already back-logged with hot cases. This will have to be their lowest priority. It may take weeks before they get around to these samples. Understood?”

  Kate let a smile slip through. “Thanks, Detective.”

  “Whatever.”

  Kate got up, left Fuller’s office, and then caught up with Wang in the lunchroom.

  “Detective Wang,” Kate said as she recognized the black-haired woman standing in front of the vending machine.

  Wang turned around and snickered. “Wallflower.” She shook her head. “What a ridiculous name he gave you.”

  Kate tilted her head, surprised at her comment. “Why’s that?”

  “When I first got here, I was ‘Tiny Flower,’ ” Wang said. “Fuller gives everyone nicknames that aren’t particularly original.”

  “I just thought he hated me.”

  “These two things aren’t mutually exclusive,” Wang said before pushing a button on the coffee dispenser. “So how can I help you?”

  “I just talked to Fuller and ran a theory by him. He gave me permission to request a DNA analysis on the John Does resting in the morgue as well as those from the past couple of years. He said you’d tell me what paperwork I needed to fill out.”

  “Sounds like fun,” she said and then rolled her eyes. “Come on, follow me.”

  She took Kate to a larger room. Eight desks occupied the bulk of the space, with a few plastic plants, a water cooler, and wall partitions filling the rest. Kate recognized another detective who’d worked her uncle’s case; he sat a couple of desks away. He looked up when they walked by and nodded at Wang.

  “Sit here,” Wang said, pointing to a chair placed alongside the edge of her desk. Wang then opened a tall filing cabinet and flicked through files before retrieving one. After heading to the copier, she pressed a button, waited for the machine to spit out paper, and then handed Kate a duplicated document before returning the original to the filing cabinet.

  “Treat this information as confidential,” Wang explained. “Shred this copy when you’re done, so I don’t get in trouble. This is just an example for you to use.” She grabbed a pen from her desk and circled a number in the lower left corner. “That’s the form number. You can request hard copies of this, but I recommend you look for the online version in the system. You’ll need to print three copies for each sample: one for the morgue, one for the lab, and one for you. You fill out as much information as you can, and if you don’t want these to come back to you for incompleteness, take this seriously. Did Fuller assign a case ID?”

  “No,” Kate said, shaking her head.

  “Shit. Why do you need these done?”

  Kate regurgitated her story about the Ohio body and Montague sharing identical DNA.

  “That’s not related to Ferguson’s murder though. Just use one of my John Doe cases... hold on...” She flipped through another file on her desk and wrote down “195205315” on the photocopy she’d handed Kate.

  “Okay, you’ll want to have the results compared to our state-wide DNA bank. Heck, you’ll want to know if it matches anything nationwide. Ohio isn’t exactly next door.”

  Wang finished going through the four-page form before standing up. She reached for one of her business cards. “Call me if you run into problems or if the morgue or crime lab gives you the run-around. Good luck!”

  “Thanks, Detective Wang.”

  “Call me Jenny.”

  Kate smiled at Jenny before standing up and walking away from her desk, document in hand. For once in a very long time, she felt like she’d finally made some headway.

  Chapter Seventeen

  July 28, 2015

  Kate Murphy

  Roxbury Police Station, Boston

  A few days after her uncle’s guilty verdict. Kate had come to accept his fate and did her best to pretend that nothing had happened.

  “There’s no point in crying over spilled beer,” her uncle had said too many times to count. She smiled now, thinking about her aunt’s usual reply: “But clean it now or sleep on the couch for a year.”

  Kate was taken out of the past by her ringtone. She picked up her cell without looking at caller ID.

  “Hi, Kate.”

  She recognized the rugged voice. “Hi, Luke! How are you?”

  “I’m freaking swamped,” he started. “Just wanted to thank you for sending all of these samples to our team. Saw your name on the forms. Is Miss Katie afraid I’ll forget about her?” he said, teasing.

  She laughed. “I didn’t want you guys to slack off and enjoy any kind of free time.”

  “We ran five of these samples today and found matches for two of them. I thought you’d want to know.”

  Kate sat straight up at this news. “Really? That’s great. Which ones?”

  “I’m too hungry to discuss that right now,” Luke said. “Want to grab a bite?”

  “Always! You need to ask?” Kate looked at her watch: 4 p.m.

  “Can you meet me in the lab in about an hour? I’ll order some pizza.”

  “Sure,” she said. “How about ninety minutes? Traffic may be bad.”

  “Sounds good. See you then.”

  “Can’t wait.” Kate hung up, walked to her locker to change, and then joined other commuters on the busy streets.

  The security guard at the crime lab had already received notification that she was coming, so she only had to sign the register and go up to the second floor. When she arrived at the DNA lab, she found the glass doors locked. She knocked.

  Luke came out of the back office wearing his regular Dockers and a gray polo shirt. His hair was slicked back. He had removed his goggles, bu
t his regular glasses were still on. Seeing him made her heart skip a beat. She’d missed him. A crooked smile appeared on his lips when their eyes met.

  He let her in and hugged her.

  Kate felt an unstoppable grin appear on her face. “How have you been?” she asked.

  “I’ve been feeling awful. I acted like an ass,” he confessed.

  “No, it was all my fault,” she said. “I’m sorry, I should’ve trusted you, and I really shouldn’t have shown up unexpectedly at your house the other day.”

  He nodded at her. “Now you know my dirty little secret. Mom lives with me. It’s a little embarrassing.” He paused and then added, “I meant to call you and ask you out for a drink, but I figured you’d want to be alone to deal with your uncle’s verdict.”

  “You know me,” she said with a half-hearted smile. “I’m fine now. I can talk about it.”

  He motioned for her to follow him. “Come on. Pizza’s sitting in my office.”

  They chatted some more over their first slices, then got down to business.

  Kate wiped her mouth with a napkin before speaking up. “I can’t believe you found two matches. These were John Does when they died. They couldn’t find a match back then, so what did you find?”

  Luke pushed the pizza back a bit to get to his paperwork. “We haven’t done all of them yet. They’re on the back burner. Most of them are not in the system, but we found a couple that are.” He grabbed the file folder sitting on top of his inbox. “This first one,” he said as he flipped the folder open, “came back as a match to a Thorpe Pledger in California.”

  Kate furrowed her brows at this news. “Then why wouldn’t they have discovered this when the body came in?”

  Luke shrugged. “My guess? Takes a while for paperwork to get processed and entered into the database. The body must have come in first. And we’re talking about a different state here.”

  Kate took the file from him. “I guess Wang will be happy that we’ve solved one of her John Does.”

  He continued. “That’s not the weird part. Another sample came back as a match, but this time it was to an Owen Westbrook in Texas.”