Even though she wasn’t looking at his face, she could see the nod of his head peripherally. “Who has a key?”
“No one.”
He stood there, not saying anything. Micah shook her head. “No one,” she repeated. “I live by myself. No one else has keys.”
“Old boyfriend, a neighbor, someone who checks the house while you’re out of town?”
“No. None of that.”
“Parents? Siblings?”
“No.”
“Then how would someone get in?” He looked toward the house. “Doesn’t look like the door is broken.”
“I didn’t give anyone a key.”
“Do you hide one outside? For emergencies? Did you get the locks changed after you moved in?”
“No, I didn’t leave a key outside. I always thought that was an extremely stupid thing to do. And yes, I had the locks changed when I moved in here. Several years ago. I’ve never had any intruders.”
He sucked his lip, considering the information. He called past Micah to his partner. “Colter, check the back for footprints. Don’t trample any evidence.”
The younger cop, his collar pulled up high to block against the wind, nodded his agreement and went around the side of the house to the back for a look.
The first cop nodded to Micah. “Why don’t you get back in your car. Stay warm and out of the way. We’ll check this out.”
She got back into her car without argument. If the cops managed to flush a burglar out of her house, she didn’t want to be in the line of fire when it happened. She couldn’t hear what the cop was saying on his radio. She assumed he was talking to his partner around the back, or maybe relaying information back to the dispatcher. He could be asking for backup, though Micah thought that was unlikely given the fact that she wasn’t sure there was anyone in the house. It wasn’t like she had anything to steal. She lived a somewhat monastic lifestyle and, while she had a laptop and tablet and a TV, so did everyone else, and most of them had bigger and fancier ones than hers.
There was no reason a burglar would single her out. Except maybe that she was at the end of the block. Not as many neighbors to notice anything was going on. She lived by herself, so it was easy to tell whether there was anyone home or not. And her schedule was reasonably predictable, with the occasional Sunday dinner with her parents. Gone for a few hours every second Sunday or so, her house predictably empty.
The cop looked like he was going to approach the house. Micah made one sudden realization and opened the car door.
“Uh, sir? Deputy?”
He looked back at her.
“I forgot to tell you. I have a kitten. So… if you open the door… I don’t know. I wouldn’t want her to startle you, or for her to get out.”
Of course, it couldn’t be the highest priority. If they were chasing a burglar, they couldn’t be worried about a kitten. But if everything was quiet, she didn’t want the door left open for Meow to wander out. She hoped she would have the sense to stay inside and not go out wandering in the snow. But she was just a baby, and she was curious.
“Yes, ma’am,” the cop said, nodding gravely.
She felt validated that he hadn’t made a face or told her she was being crazy. Maybe it was perfectly normal for pet owners to express their concerns to the police about not letting their animals out or shooting them by mistake.
Micah watched the cop make his way slowly up beside the sidewalk, avoiding trampling the evidence of the previous visitor. His body was tense and he moved slowly like a creeping panther. Micah hadn’t seen him draw his weapon, but she could see it glinting at his side as he approached. She kept thinking about his question. What if someone else did have a key? What if there was a perfectly innocent reason for someone to be in her house?
But she knew she hadn’t given anyone else a key. And if there had been a problem with water or gas and some city worker had been required to enter, then he would have notified the police, wouldn’t he? Or there would be a big truck out in front and several other workers hanging around to let her know what was going on.
The cop got up to the door and paused. He used the radio mounted on his shoulder. Micah waited, holding her breath. She didn’t know whether he would enter first, or the cop at the back door, or if he were coordinating so they would both enter at the same time.
He tried the handle and, apparently, there was no need to break in the door. It was not locked, and he opened it, standing back, flattened against the wall, so that if he were shot at from within the house, the intruder would not be able to get a good angle on him.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Micah was tense, waiting for someone to come racing out of the house, or for the kitten to wander out the door wondering what was going on and why the door was wide open and Micah was not there.
But there was no movement.
After a few moments, the cop moved again, entering the house, swinging the door shut behind him so that the cat wouldn’t get out. Micah saw him move across the window. She couldn’t see what was going on inside but, a few minutes later, the policeman came back out. He again avoided the sidewalk and approached the car.
“House is clear, ma’am. No sign of any intruder. Any chance that you left the door unlocked?”
“No way,” Micah shook her head. “I would never do that. I always lock it.”
“You might want to invest in a burglar alarm, then. Give you a bit more security.”
“There wasn’t any sign that anyone had been in there?”
“You can take a look yourself, let me know if anything is out of place or missing. We didn’t see anything obviously suspicious.”
“Okay.” Micah climbed out of the car. Her legs were shaky and weak. She was relieved, but at the same time, let down. What was going on? She could see the footprints going up to the house. Had he vanished into thin air?
“There wasn’t anyone inside? Where did he go?”
“Oh, there are footprints out the back door. Whoever it was entered through the front and exited through the back. Maybe just a homeless person or some curious kid? Doesn’t look like anything is damaged. Even the door itself; it doesn’t look like the door was forced or damaged. More like it was left unlocked.”
“It wasn’t left unlocked,” Micah insisted.
“Well then, maybe it was picked. That’s a possibility.”
“Wouldn’t you be able to tell?”
“Not necessarily. Some of these guys are pretty sophisticated. They can get in and out just as easily as if they had a key, don’t leave any markings around the keyhole. There are automatic picks on the market too…” He trailed off and shrugged. “I can give you some recommendations for locks that wouldn’t be so easy to pick.”
“Yeah, that would be good.” Micah felt angry and vulnerable at the same time. She hated the thought that someone had just walked into her house as if they owned the place. “Would you… are you going to go in with me?”
“Yes ma’am, of course.”
He walked up to the house with her. They both avoided the footprints, though why they did, Micah wasn’t quite sure. She didn’t think they were going to get any evidence teams out there to take pictures of the footprints that were slowly being filled in or take casts, or whatever else they might do on TV. Real life wasn’t like that. The cops would file a report indicating that they hadn’t found anything, and that would be the end of it.
Micah went inside the house with him. They had tracked snow through the house, but it was all wood floors so that a quick mop would clean it up. The kitten was sitting on the couch, stretching and looking around. She mewed silently at Micah. Micah picked her up and held her close, looking around for any damage, any sign that something had been taken or damaged.
But everything looked as she had left it. Her work was still out in her office, her computer and tablet apparently untouched. Micah looked around. She took a few pictures with her phone, but wasn’t sure why she was bothering. If she had ‘before’ pictures
, that would be one thing, but she had nothing to compare it to. Nothing to say that her tablet had been moved an inch to the right or her computer clamshell closed when she had left it open.
The cop watched her without comment. Micah continued to wander around the house, and when she had visited all of the upstairs rooms, she shook her head at him.
“I don’t see anything out of place. I don’t understand it…”
“Who can predict what people will do?” he asked with a philosophical shrug. “Be glad that nothing was damaged or stolen. Maybe he left when he saw you pull up.”
“Maybe,” Micah was doubtful. “But his footprints were already filled in quite a bit, so I don’t think so.”
He went to talk to his partner and they looked around outside for any other clues.
Chapter Twenty-Three
On her way to work, Micah was thinking about her strange intruder, trying to make sense of the burglary. But she couldn’t make anything fit. Had he walked into her house just to have a look around? Maybe he’d intended to take something, but got spooked by a neighbor and fled?
She’d never had such a thing happen before, or even heard of it happening to anyone else. She participated in her neighborhood Facebook page, and no similar incidents had been reported. It just didn’t make any sense.
Maybe it was because she was already nervous that she noticed the car behind her had made the same turn as she had three times in a row. Just someone who was heading into work, the same as she was, who happened to make the same turns as she did.
Or was it?
She hadn’t previously noticed anyone on her street who took the same route as she did to work. It seemed like something that would have stuck in her mind. It wasn’t the big city; she knew the habits of the people around her. And no one in her area went to work near EvPro.
Maybe he was a visitor or a new move-in. Things didn’t remain static over time. It wasn’t like he was right on her tail. He was back a comfortable distance. It was only a coincidence that she noticed him taking the same turns as she did. She was nervous about her burglar, so other things were setting off her alarm bells. Things that were totally unrelated.
He didn’t make the final turn to EvPro. Micah rolled her eyes and shook her head at her paranoia. Someone following her to work now? Really?
Once she was in the safety of the lab and had shed all of her winter clothing, Micah got herself a large mug of coffee, went to her office, and shut the door. She didn’t want any interruptions. She just wanted to focus on her work and not be distracted by other things. Especially not by thoughts of someone violating the sanctity of her house.
Even though she had plenty of regular work to do, Micah spent some time working on her non-work projects too. Visualizing Sara’s baby. Taking a stab at making the composite of Sweetie’s father into something recognizable.
Since the father’s DNA didn’t circulate in Sweetie’s veins like her mother’s did, there was not nearly as much epigenetic data for the father’s profile. She was working with only half the DNA and no data as to how old he was or other lifestyle choices that might help her to make the face more recognizable.
Reviewing Sweetie’s epigenome could provide a few clues about to her father. Some of those epigenetic switches were passed on to offspring, giving the child a sort of genetic memory of her parents’ experiences. Sweetie had a lot of trauma switches, indicators that would normally tell Micah that the subject had been through some very difficult life experiences. She had no way of knowing whether those switches had been turned on by Sweetie’s abandonment or were present in the genetic material passed on to her.
Well, some of them Micah could check. She referenced Mama Doe’s—Trisha Madro’ s—DNA and noted that she had a lot of the same switches as the baby. So those traumatic experiences, perhaps Trish’s own genetic record of abuse and neglect, had been passed on to her daughter. Did that mean Sweetie would have the same difficulties bonding? The same issues with school and trying to fit in with a family?
Did Micah herself carry similar scars from her biological mother’s past? Was that what made her feel different? Or was that only influenced by Micah’s lived experience?
She stared at the flat composites of Papa Doe, hoping for inspiration. What made him tick? What kind of relationship had he had with Trisha? Had they been teenage lovers, seeking solace in each other? Or had he been older? A father figure, an abuser, or a john?
She wished there were some way to identify him. But they wouldn’t know who he was until they found Trisha Madro.
❋
Micah looked up in irritation at the knock on her door. She had been closeted in her office for most of the day without any interaction with others, and her boss or coworkers might need to talk to her face-to-face instead of sending her emails she could handle without having to be social.
“Yes?”
The door opened a few inches. It was Veronica Clang.
“Hey, really sorry to disturb you, Micah…” Veronica gave a little shake of her blond bob. A tell that she really didn’t feel sorry about the interruption? Or just a nervous gesture because she knew Micah didn’t like to be disturbed if her door was closed. “But you might want to turn on the local news.”
Micah frowned. The news? She turned back toward her computer and maximized the browser. She typed in the news URL and waited for it to load. There was a live stream, so she clicked on it, waited for it to finish buffering, and then watched the live coverage of a reporter at the Sweetgrass Hills, not far from where the baby had been found.
“There is no word from the police yet as to the identity of the remains,” the reporter announced with an inappropriate smile, “but speculation is rampant as to whether this has anything to do with the abandoned baby, known locally as ‘Sweetgrass Doe.’”
Micah stared at the screen. Remains?
She glanced back at Veronica. “Thank you,” she acknowledged, “I’ll keep an eye on this.”
Veronica nodded and hurried away again.
Micah watched the TV station play random bits of reports that all added up to nothing.
Eventually, Micah’s hand moved to her phone without any conscious thought of what she was going to do once it was in her grasp. She barely took her eyes from her computer to dial.
It took a few more times than usual for Bellows to answer. “Micah. Shall I assume you’re watching the news coverage?”
“Yes.”
“Phone hasn’t stopped ringing since they broke the story. Sorry about that, I like to keep my inside people informed before a discovery makes it to the press.”
“Is it…?”
“There won’t be any confirmation until the medical examiner has had a chance to examine the body and to send a DNA sample your way, so it can be confirmed, but it looks like… it’s Trisha Madro.”
“Oh, no.”
If Micah hadn’t already been sitting, her knees would have given way. She experienced a moment of dizziness as she tried to process the grim news.
“Yeah. Sorry to have to tell you this way.”
“What happened? Just preliminary, I know. To be confirmed by the medical examiner.”
“She was discovered at the bottom of a crevasse. The position of the body would suggest that she fell. Wandering around in the dark after abandoning the baby…”
Micah’s mind flipped through scenarios. Trisha hadn’t really meant to abandon Sweetie. She had just put her down while she was looking around. In the dark and cold. In the middle of the night. Maybe it had still been daylight, in the early afternoon, and she thought she would be safe. She was looking for something… she had seen something… Micah tried to fill in the cracks, but couldn’t find an explanation that made sense.
Had Trisha been out of her mind? Traumatized by an unattended birth or terrified of being responsible for another human being, had she been so distressed that she hadn’t known what she was doing?
“Are you okay, Micah?”
Micah s
wallowed. “Thanks, Frank. You’ll let me know as you hear anything else?”
“Sure. We’ll be trying to get everything wrapped up. I know this still isn’t direct confirmation that Trisha Madro was the baby’s mother, but I can’t think of any reason she would be out there if she was not.”
“Yes,” Micah agreed. There was no chance Trisha Madro had just been a look-alike for the baby’s mother and had happened to die so close to her. “Will you make sure the medical examiner sends a blood sample our way so that we can directly confirm that she’s Sweetie’s mother? Just to tie up any loose ends?”
“Will do,” he agreed. “Sorry to have it end this way.”
Micah nodded. “Me too.”
But would it have been better to find Trisha Madro out partying somewhere? Or crashed in a warehouse or homeless shelter? Would that have been a more satisfying resolution than finding out she had died near her baby? She had abandoned Sweetie, but her own death suggested that it had not been a cold and callous act.
And now she could do no more harm.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Micah did her best to concentrate on her work and finish up what she needed to that day but, in the end, she just ended up going home. If someone had a complaint that she wasn’t working as hard as she should be, she could claim that she was sick. The way that her head was pounding and her stomach was twisting, it wouldn’t be a lie.
She was looking forward to being home, cuddling with the kitten, and maybe going to bed early or having a nap. She just wanted to shut the whole world out.
It seemed unfair that Sweetie was alone in the world. It was bad enough that she had been abandoned, but now fate had seen her orphaned as well. Unless Micah was able to provide the information needed to track down the father, which seemed unlikely. Having so little of his genome was crippling.
Even though she had already talked to Deputy Bellows, she found herself calling him again in the car.
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