“The preferred terms are DNA profiling, or DNA typing,” she said mildly. “It’s not really like fingerprinting.” She faced me. “What all this means, Deputy, is that the two skeletons you found are identical twins. The DNA tells us that. While identical twins have different fingerprints, genetically they’re indistinguishable. But the boys don’t appear to be related to Max and James Yarnell.”
She shuffled her papers and pulled out another sheet.
“This is a case where there wasn’t enough nuclear DNA in the remains. So we used the mitochondrial DNA. There’s many more copies of that in a cell. One big limitation is that it’s passed down by the mother.”
“So,” I said, “these might be the Yarnell twins, but they had a different mother from Max and James Yarnell?”
Hawkins coughed loudly. “You’re reaching, Mapstone. You never said this cattle baron had more than one wife.”
“Actually, we’re talking about the cattle baron’s son. Morgan Yarnell was the father of the twins. But, yeah, he was only married once. Still…”
“You were wrong, Mapstone, admit it,” O.J. Simpson said. I ignored him.
“He’s right,” Boswell said, “this outcome could be explained by a different mother. Otherwise, we can’t say a lot with certainty, because we were able to get such a small sample from the bones. It wasn’t enough for an RFLP, which would be more conclusive.” She leafed through sheets of paper in her lap that looked like large bar codes.
“Hawkins,” I started.
“Please don’t.” He held up his hands. He took a moment. The stress radiated off him like a cloud from a damaged Soviet nuclear reactor. He leaned back in the chair and it creaked loudly, even though it was the newest high-tech metal and non-allergenic upholstery. I was amazed to see such life in him.
“Gentlemen, this is a matter of case clearance. This is a matter of resources. Do you know how many new homicides we have in this city every year?”
He glanced at me with baleful pale eyes. “Excluding the county and those strangler murders. But this department has had to detach twenty detectives to help the sheriff on that. And we’ve got thirty more working on the Grand Avenue Sniper. Resources are too tight to be wasting time on some history project!”
It all had the ambiance of a nasty faculty meeting when someone’s tenure was at stake. I mischievously recalled making love with Lindsey in a world without small men enforcing the rules of bureaucracies.
Hawkins said: “We’re fucked. Do you understand that? We inconvenienced a very powerful man with friends on city council. The media is expecting this to be the bones of the Yarnell twins. Now we have nothing.” Media-are, I thought. I couldn’t stop correcting freshman papers. Nobody spoke for what seemed like a minute.
“We have a mystery,” I said finally.
I swear the pathologist smiled a little.
“I’ve dug into some very old crimes before. And, let me tell you, it makes the clearance rate suck at first.”
He exhaled dramatically. “You’re a sheriff’s deputy,” he sputtered. “You’re not really even that. We went on this very expensive snipe hunt based on your, what? Intuition? Knowledge of historical trivia? Do you have any idea how much DNA fingerprinting costs?”
He filled me with sudden malice. I wanted to say: You pale, little badge-toting turd. I used to flunk your moron daughter when she had to take a history class to keep up her volleyball scholarship. And she would have done anything-anything, Gus-to just scoot by with a D.”
I said, “We still have to find out who the bones belong to. You can assign a new team to the case.” I looked over the two detectives, who gave me sour frowns. “Or let me keep going. We know these are twins. We know they were found in a building owned by Yarneco. The pocket watch has the Yarnell brand on the cover. Maybe there is a different mother. Maybe there’s something about the family we don’t know, such as an adoption…”
“Maybe, maybe, Jesus!” Hawkins said. “This was supposed to be simple.”
I started to speak but he cut me off. “Max Yarnell is very angry over all this, and he doesn’t want to be bothered about it any more.” Hawkins seemed to catch himself. In a lower voice, he said, “Of course, that won’t impede our investigation. No favoritism here. But you, Mapstone, you are done now.”
“Fine.”
We all just sat there. He ran his hands across his paperwork, made a note, signed a form. He looked up and we were all waiting. Then he remembered some dialogue from TV cop shows. “Get the hell out of here,” he moaned. “All of you!”
18
I took the back door into Peralta’s office suite and sat on his sofa while he finished an interview with a blonde TV reporter.
“So it’s okay for you to plant stories,” I said when she and her cameraman had gone.
He walked over to his little refrigerator and pulled out a Diet Coke. He didn’t offer me anything. “I didn’t used to date that one. Anyway, I’m the boss. So why are you here? Progress?”
“I’d call it that. The DNA test came back. Unfortunately, it doesn’t match the two living Yarnell brothers.” I ran through the information from the meeting, cheating off my notes for the technical stuff. Peralta swayed back and forth in his desk chair, slurping from the soft drink.
“So it’s inconclusive, but we’re probably not going to get anywhere unless the Yarnell brothers cooperate, and that’s not going to happen. So I’m on to the next case.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” The chair was at a dead stop.
“Whoa, what?”
“What the hell do you mean, you’re on to the next thing. You haven’t fixed this goddamned thing yet.”
I sank deeper into the thin cushions of the sofa. I had come into the room on the wings of liberation. I should have known it wouldn’t go down that way.
“It’s a city case.”
“So?”
“You know, a city. This one is called Phoenix. It has a police department, a good one, despite Lieutenant Hawkins. The bodies were found in a building inside the city limits. City police departments tend to frown on interference from the sheriff’s office.”
“So?”
I tossed my notebook aside. “I can’t believe you!”
“Chief Wilson still wants you on the case.” He stood, mountainous behind the desk.
“How can he still want me on the case when the meeting just finished up five blocks from here?”
“He knows. He does. And I want you on the case. Anyway, the kidnapping happened in the county. The old geezer’s hacienda was in the county back then.” He sat back down, looking pleased with himself.
The idea of spending more time in Hawkins’ office made my stomach hurt. “Why do you care?” I demanded. “Never mind, I know. When are you going to catch this guy?”
“That’s just what little Rachel there wanted to know. And I had to be patient and diplomatic with her. I don’t have to with you.” After a pause, he added, “It set us back that Lindsey had to go for a few days.”
“Well, it was obviously for nothing important.” The mention of Lindsey’s name instantly made me miss her more. I said, “Why do you need her anyway? Cut her some slack. She just lost her mother.”
“She wanted this job,” he said. “And she’s getting along really well with Patrick Blair. Not my business, Mapstone, but she really likes him. He really likes her.” My stomach manufactured a tidal wave of bile.
He looked at me mildly. “Mapstone, you used to have such a good attitude, when you were a young deputy.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“That was before you got your mind pickled in shit working around all those eggheads,” he said. “Your case doesn’t seem that hard to me.”
Everything I wanted to say would have just made him angry, meaning even more determined to keep me where I was.