“Where?”
“I did it at the college infirmary.”
“Do you know if he did it?”
“No.”
“Do you know, if he had, where he’d have done it?”
“No.”
“The infirmary will know where they sent the swab,” Brian said.
I nodded.
“Why do you care now?” Sarah said.
“Maybe it had something to do with his death,” I said.
“You mean someone didn’t want him to?”
“I don’t know. But he died shortly after he decided to do the DNA test.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Yes,” I said. “It is. And it’s crazy that somebody hired men to beat you up. And it’s crazy that your mother won’t do the DNA comparison. And you’re the one that saw the craziness first. You had to do what you did. Someone had to. There was something fundamentally wrong in your family. We still don’t know what. But we will.”
“I wish I’d never started all this,” she said.
“I don’t blame you. It’s a lot nastier than you expected it to be. But I’m with you. And the cops are with you. And we’ll hang in there together until we find out why.”
Sarah sat down suddenly at the conference table and folded her arms on the tabletop and put her face down on them.
“I loved him, you know,” she said.
Her voice was muffled.
“Sure, I know,” I said. “I love my father.”
“Even if he wasn’t my father. I loved him. Mostly, he was nice to me.”
“Regardless of biology,” I said. “He was your father.”
She nodded her buried head without speaking.
“I need to ask you one more question,” I said.
Sarah nodded, her face still down.
“How do you get your trust money?” I said.
“It just shows up in my checking account every month,” she said.
“Wire transfer?”
“I guess so.”
“From where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where do you have your checking account?” I said.
“Pequot Bank.”
“Here in Walford?”
“Yes. On Oak Street, right across from the student union.”
“And before you came to Taft?”
“I didn’t get it,” Sarah said. “I wasn’t old enough.”
“When does it come?”
“First of the month.”
I looked at Brian. He nodded and tapped himself on the chest.
“Okay,” I said.
She stayed the way she was. I looked at Brian. He shook his head slightly and shrugged and turned his palms up.
“Are you rooming with anyone?”
She shook her head.
“Boyfriend?”
Shake.
“Would you like to go home?”
“No.”
I didn’t blame her.
I looked at Brian. He looked at me. He smiled faintly. I nodded slowly and took a deep breath and let it out.
“I want you to come stay with Rosie and me for a while,” I said.
Sarah was silent. Her face was still down on the table, resting on her forearms. She didn’t move.
Then, without looking up, she said, “Okay.”
I looked at Brian again. He was staring up at the ceiling.
“While we’re packing,” I said to him, “maybe you could check where the infirmary sent the DNA sample.”
“Let’s have Sarah join us,” Brian said. “They’ll be more co-operative if the donor is doing the asking.”
“Okay with you, kiddo?”
She was sitting up now, looking at us.
“I guess so,” she said. “What about the school? If I don’t go to class, I’ll get in trouble.”
“I’ll talk to the school,” Brian said. “If the dean is a woman, I’ll charm her. If it’s a man, I’ll frighten him.”
Sarah almost smiled. “It’s a woman,” she said.
“Oh, good,” Brian said. “Charming is so much easier than scary.”
“It is?” I said. “I can’t usually tell which you’re being.”
Sarah actually did smile, though very slightly.
42
LifeForm Laboratory was in the rear of the second floor of an old brick building on Albany Street near Boston Medical Center. The director talked with Sarah and me in her tiny office overlooking a narrow parking lot.
“I don’t know if I can release this information,” the director said.
She was a lanky, gray-haired woman, wearing rimless glasses.
“Sarah is one of the two donors,” I said.
“But the actual testing was requested by the other donor.”
“Who is now a murder victim,” I said.
The director frowned. She looked like everyone’s stereotype of an elementary-school principal. And she clearly disapproved of people being murdered.
“Oh,” she said to Sarah, “how dreadful. Were you related?”
“He was my father,” Sarah said.
“The biological relationship may be an important part of the murder investigation,” I said. “We can do this informally, or we can come back with the police and a court order. And the cops will probably close you down while they search all the records, and the press will probably learn of it and your name will be in the paper as part of a murder investigation.”
“Are you threatening me, Ms. Randall?”
“I prefer to think of it as warning you,” I said.
She looked at me sternly. I smiled my sweet, young, blonde-girl smile. She nodded as if she was confirming something with herself.
“Well, surely,” the director said, “since this young woman is one of the donors, I don’t see a problem.”
“Thank you,” Sarah said.
The director stood, turned to her computer, and tapped the keyboard for a moment and sat back. We waited. She studied the screen.
“I’ll print this out for you,” she said, and tapped the keyboard again. “But I can tell you that it is not a match.”
I heard Sarah breathe in.
“He’s not my father?”
“You do not share his DNA.”
The printer on the top of a file cabinet began to hum, and in a moment the printout came sliding forth and the printer went silent. No one spoke for a moment.
“You’re sure,” Sarah said.
“Yes.”
“You couldn’t have made a mistake.”
“Very unlikely.”
Sarah looked at me. She was breathing quickly, as if she was a little short of breath.
“Now you know,” I said.
She nodded and didn’t say anything.
“When did Mr. Markham get the results?” I said to the director.
She looked at her computer screen.
“Five days ago,” she said.
“Two days before he died,” I said.
“Who the hell is my father?” Sarah said.
I was startled. I had begun to think of this as a murder case. But for Sarah it was still paternity-related.
“Before we’re through,” I said, “you and I will find out.”
“And is she my mother?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
The director looked uncomfortable. This was very unscientific.
“I’ll bet she isn’t,” Sarah said.
“You’re sure he received this information?” I said to the director.
She looked at her screen some more.
“Yes, we overnighted it to him, and he signed for it.”
I took the printout and folded it and slipped it into my bag. I looked at Sarah. She was still short of breath. Her face was pale, with reddish smudges on her cheekbones. She looked like she had a fever.
“Anything else you wish to ask the director?” I said to her.
She shook her head. I nodded and stood and put my hand out to the director.
“Thanks for your help,” I said.
She stood and shook my hand.
“I hope things work out,” she said, not at all sternly.
Then she looked at Sarah. “DNA is not the only thing that makes a parent,” she said, and put her hand gently on Sarah’s shoulder.