“Yeah? Tell me about them.”
“Let’s see now.” Billy B. screwed his face up in thought. “Jehovah’s Witness. Tried to give me one of her little magazines when she asked which way to Malfourche. I told her to take a right.”
Betterton forced a chuckle at this misdirection.
“Then there was that foreign fella.”
Betterton said, as casually as possible: “A foreign fella?”
“Had an accent.”
“What country you suppose he was from?”
“Europe.”
“I’ll be doggone.” Betterton shook his head. “Whenabouts was this?”
“I know exactly when it was.” The man counted on his fingers. “Eight days ago.”
“How can you be so sure?”
Billy B. nodded sagely. “It was the day before they discovered them Brodie folk murdered.”
This was more than Betterton had hoped for in his wildest dreams. Was this all there was to being an investigative reporter? “What did the fellow look like?”
“Tall. Skinny. Blond hair, ugly little mole under one eye. He was wearing a fancy raincoat, like you see in those spy movies.”
“You remember what kind of car he was driving?”
“Ford Fusion. Dark blue.”
Betterton stroked his chin thoughtfully. He knew that Ford Fusions were very commonly used as rental cars. “Did you tell any of this to the police, Grass?”
A truculent look stole over the man’s features. “Never asked me.”
It was all Betterton could do not to leap off the porch and race to his car. Instead he forced himself to stay, make a little more conversation. “The Brodies,” he said. “Bad business.”
Billy B. obliged that it was.
“Lot of excitement around these parts recently,” Betterton went on. “What with that accident at Tiny’s and all.”
Billy B. spat thoughtfully into the dirt. “That wasn’t no accident.”
“What do you mean?”
“That FBI feller. Blew the place up.”
“Blew it up?” Betterton repeated.
“Put a bullet in the propane tank. Blew everything to hell. Shotgunned a bunch of boats, too.”
“Well, I’ll be… Why did he do that?” This was stupendous news.
“Seems Tiny and his pals bothered him and his lady partner.”
“They bother lots of folks around here.” Betterton thought for a moment. “What did the FBI want down here?”
“No idea. Now you know everything I know.” He opened a fresh beer.
The last sentence was the signal that Billy B. was tired of chatting. This time, Betterton stood up.
“Drop by again,” Billy B. said.
“I’ll do that.” Betterton walked down the steps. Then he stopped, reached into his pocket, pulled out the cigarettes.
“Keep the pack,” he said. He tossed it gently into Billy B.’s lap and made for his Nissan with as much gravity as he could manage.
He’d driven out on a hunch and now he was returning with a story that Vanity Fairor Rolling Stonewould kill for. A couple who had faked their own deaths — only to be savagely murdered. A blown-up bait shop. A mysterious place known as Spanish Island. A foreign fella. And above all, a crazy FBI agent named Pendergast.
His hand still throbbed, but now he hardly felt it. This was shaping up to be a very good day.
CHAPTER 36
New Orleans, Louisiana
PETER BEAUFORT’S CONSULTATION ROOM LOOKED more like a wealthy professor’s study than a doctor’s office. The bookcases were filled with leather-bound folio volumes. Beautiful landscapes in oils decorated the walls. Every piece of furniture was antique, lovingly polished and maintained: there was no hint of steel or chrome anywhere, let alone linoleum. There were no eye charts, no anatomical engravings, no treatises on medicine, no articulated skeletons hanging from hooks. Dr. Beaufort himself wore a tastefully tailored suit, sanslab coat and dangling stethoscope. In dress, manner, and appearance he avoided all suggestion of the medical man.
Pendergast eased himself into the visitor’s chair. In his youth he had spent many hours here, peppering the doctor with questions of anatomy and physiology, discussing the mysteries of diagnosis and treatment.
“Beaufort,” he said, “thank you for seeing me so early.”
The M.E. smiled. “You called me Beaufort as a youth,” he replied. “Do you think perhaps you’re old enough now to address me as Peter?”
Pendergast inclined his head. The doctor’s tone was light, almost courtly. And yet Pendergast knew him well enough to see the man was ill at ease.
A manila folder lay closed on the desktop. Beaufort opened it, put on a pair of eyeglasses, examined the pages within. “Aloysius…” His voice faltered, and he cleared his throat.
“There is no need for tact in this matter,” Pendergast said.
“I see.” Beaufort hesitated. “I’ll be blunt, then. The evidence is incontrovertible. The body in that grave was that of Helen Pendergast.”
When Pendergast did not speak, Beaufort went on. “We have matches on multiple levels. For starters, the DNA on the brush matched the DNA of the remains.”
“How closely?”
“Beyond any shadow of mathematical doubt. I ordered half a dozen tests on each of four samples from the hairbrush and the remains. But it isn’t just the DNA. The dental X-rays matched, as well, showing just the single small cavity in number two — the upper right second molar. Your wife still had beautiful teeth, despite the passage of time…”
“Fingerprints?”
Beaufort cleared his throat again. “With the heat and humidity in this part of the country… well, I was able to recover only a few partial prints, but what I did recover also matches.” Beaufort turned a page. “My forensic analysis shows the corpse was definitely partially consumed by a lion. In addition to the, ah, perimortem physical evidence — teeth marks and so forth on the bones— Leo panteraDNA was found. Lion.”
“You said the fingerprints were only partials. That isn’t adequate.”
“Aloysius, the DNA evidence is conclusive. The body was that of your wife.”
“That cannot be, since Helen is still alive.”
A long silence ensued. Beaufort spread his hands in a gesture of futility. “If you don’t mind me saying so, this is very unlike you. The science tells us otherwise, and you of all people respect the science.”
“The science is wrong.” Pendergast put a hand on the arm of the chair, prepared to rise. But then he caught the look on Beaufort’s face and paused. It was obvious from the M.E.’s expression that he had more to say.
“Leaving aside that question,” Beaufort said, “there’s something else you should know. It may be nothing.” He tried to make light of it but Pendergast sensed otherwise. “Are you familiar with the science of mitochondrial DNA?”
“In general terms, as a forensic tool.”
Beaufort removed his eyeglasses, polished them, put them back on his nose. He seemed oddly embarrassed. “Forgive me if I repeat what you already know, then. Mitochondrial DNA is completely separate from a person’s regular DNA. It’s a bit of genetic material residing in the mitochondria of every cell in the body, and it is inherited unchanged from generation to generation, through the female line. That means all the descendants — male and female — of a particular woman will have identical mitochondrial DNA, which we call mtDNA. This kind of DNA is extremely useful in forensic work, and separate databases are kept of it.”
“What of it?”
“As part of the battery of tests I performed on your wife’s remains, I ran both the DNA and mtDNA through a consortium of some thirty-five linked medical databases. In addition to confirming Helen’s DNA, there was a hit in one of the… more unusual databases. Regarding her mtDNA.”