Elena hesitated.
“You found something, right?”
“Yes. But I still don’t know how it connects to you. Or your daughter.”
“I’m listening.”
“Let’s start with Paige and this family tree club.”
“Okay.”
“We know that Damien Gorse visited an ancestry DNA site called DNAYourStory dot com.” She looked around as though she feared someone would overhear her. “So I asked my client to check his son Henry’s charge cards too.”
“And?”
“There was a charge to DNAYourStory. In fact, Henry Thorpe signed up for several DNA ancestry sites.”
“Wow.”
“Right.”
“So I guess I need to check Paige’s credit cards,” he said. “See if she signed up too.”
“Yes.”
“How about Aaron? Was he on the site?”
“There is no way to know, unless we find it on a charge card. Do you think you could ask the mother?”
“I could ask, sure, but I doubt she’ll help.”
“Worth a shot,” Elena said. “But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that they all sent in their samples to the same DNA site and got tested. Do you know how these tests work at all?”
“Not really.”
“You spit into a test tube and they analyze your DNA. Different sites do different things. Some claim they can look at your DNA and give you a genetic health workup — do you possess certain variants that make you more likely to get Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s?... Stuff like that.”
“Is that accurate?”
“The science seems questionable, but that’s not really important right now. At least, I don’t think it is. The basic package is probably what you’d know about if you’ve read anything about these DNA sites. It gives you an ancestry composition — like you’re, say, fifteen percent Italian and twenty-two percent Spanish, that kind of thing. It can map your ancestral migration too, like where your people first started and where they settled over time. It’s pretty wild.”
“Yeah, that might be interesting, but how does that play into this?”
“I doubt it does.”
“These tests,” Simon said. “They also tell you about your parents, right?”
“And other relatives, yes. I assume that’s why both Henry Thorpe and Damien Gorse took the test.”
“Because they were adopted,” Simon said.
“And didn’t know anything about their birth parents. That’s the key. It’s very common for adoptees to sign up for these services, so they can find their parents or learn about siblings or really, any blood relative.”
Simon rubbed his face. “And Aaron Corval might have done something like that too. To learn about his mother.”
“Yes. Or maybe to prove his father wasn’t his father.”
“You mean like maybe Aaron was adopted too?”
“It could be, I don’t know yet. One of the problems is that these DNA sites are highly controversial. I mean, millions of people have done them, maybe tens of millions. More than twelve million last year alone.”
Simon nodded. “I know a lot of people who sent in their samples.”
“Me too. Yet everyone is naturally squeamish about sending their DNA in to an internet company. So these ancestry sites are absolutists about security and privacy. Which I get. I tried every contact I know. DNAYourStory won’t tell me a thing without a warrant — and they’ve promised to fight any warrant to the Supreme Court.”
“But the connections you found—”
“—are right now tenuous at best. Two otherwise unconnected murders — different means, different states, different weapons — we can only link marginally to someone in Chicago via a few internet messages. It’s less than nothing in a court of law.”
Simon tried to absorb what she was saying. “So you think Aaron and your client and this Gorse guy — all three of these guys — could all be related?”
“I don’t know. But maybe.”
“Two of them have been murdered,” Simon said. “And the third — your client — is missing.”
“Yes.”
“Which leads to the obvious question.”
Elena nodded. “Paige.”
“Right. How would my daughter fit into your hypothesis?”
“I’ve been thinking about this a lot,” Elena said.
“And?”
“There have been cases where law enforcement has used these DNA tests to solve crimes. So maybe, don’t ask me how, Paige stumbled across a crime.”
“What kind of crime?”
Elena shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“And why would she track down Aaron Corval?”
“We don’t know that she did. We only know Paige drove to see him in Connecticut.”
Simon nodded. “So maybe Aaron Corval reached out to her first.”
“Maybe. The thing is, it’s hard to figure out the connections. My tech guy, Lou, is working on it. He figures Henry was using an encrypted messaging app like WhatsApp or Viber, so he can’t see it all. But now Lou’s thinking that maybe Henry was messaging through the ancestry site — they have their own messaging capabilities — and it just looked like a messaging app.”
Simon gave her a blank look.
“Yeah, I don’t get it either,” Elena said, waving it away. “The important thing is, Lou is still searching for names. I also have my office looking into Aaron Corval’s background — his birth certificate, anything — so we can get a handle on that. Which brings me to the big thing.”
Elena stopped and let loose a deep breath.
“What?” he said.
“I found another connection.”
There was something odd in her voice. “Between all of them?”
“No. Between Henry Thorpe and Damien Gorse.”
“What’s that?”
“They were both adopted.”
“That we know.”
“They were both adopted from the same agency.”
Boom.
“The agency is called Hope Faith.”
“Where’s it located?”
“Maine. A small town called Windham.”
“I don’t get it. Your client lives in Chicago. Damien Gorse lived in New Jersey. Yet they were both adopted out of Maine?”
“Yes.”
Simon shook his head in amazement. “So what do we do next?”
“You stay here with your wife,” she said. “I’m flying up to Maine.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The last time Elena had landed at the Portland International Jetport in Maine, she’d been traveling with Joel. Joel’s niece/goddaughter was having a weekend “theme wedding” at a rustic kids’ sleepaway camp with a native American name — Camp Manu-something, Elena couldn’t remember now — and Elena had not been looking forward to it.
For one thing, Joel’s ex-wife Marlene, a gorgeous, lithe beauty, would be there, so Elena would have to deal with the odd looks from a family who could never understand what six-two, handsome, and charismatic Joel saw in the maybe-five-foot, squat-built, and seemingly charmless Elena.
Elena didn’t quite get it either.
“It’ll be fun,” Joel had assured her.
“It’ll suck.”
“We have our own private cabin by the water.”
“We do?”
“Okay, it’s not private,” he admitted. “Or by the water. And we are in bunk beds.”
“Wow, sounds great.”
Even under the best of circumstances, the trip sounded like a nightmare. Elena didn’t like camping or nature or insects or archery or kayaking or any of the activities listed on “Jack and Nancy’s Wedding Itinerary.” It was early June. Summer camps in Maine rent themselves out for retreats and events to make a little extra cash before school is out and the children descend upon them for the summer.
But to her surprise, the weekend had been fun, after all. Elena’s side had won something called Color Wars, and her law enforcement background came in handy for her team during the day-long Capture the Flag battle. At night — and this was the memory that still haunted her, would always haunt her — Joel would procure a bottle of wine and two glasses from whatever festivities were on the agenda. He would wrap the glasses and bottle in one extra-large sleeping bag. When lights went out — again, like a real camp, someone actually blew retreat on a trumpet — Joel would slip down from the top bunk, take Elena by the hand to the soccer field, and make love to her under a crisp-blue, star-filled Maine sky.