It was our first anniversary. Paul had brought me and two bottles of champagne up to the exquisitely beautiful Rockwood Hall Park in North Tarrytown. Had it ever gotten better for us? I doubted it. Late summer. Champagne and crickets, and just the two of us. It was the first time we'd actually tried to get pregnant.
I glanced at the pages, then back at my friend.
"What are you talking about?" I asked Bonnie. "I thought that you said all you could find was Scott's blood."
"After I scraped it off, I noticed that there was another, older stain. It turns out it was dried semen. Just enough to get a DNA signature."
I squinted at the pages. What would it take for Scott's case to stay closed? I wondered. Holy water? Pounding a stake through its heart? Shooting it with a silver bullet?
And what the hell was I supposed to say now? Bonnie seemed to be waiting for something from me.
"Why didn't you tell me about this before?" I finally got up the courage to ask.
"I tried to," Bonnie said. "But it was the morning of the Ordonez shooting, and I couldn't reach you. When I called your lieutenant the next day, he told me to shit-can it. They'd found Scott's gun on Victor Ordonez, and the case was a slam-dunk."
"So what's the problem?" I said.
Bonnie let out a sigh.
"What can I tell you, kid? The DNA isn't from Ordonez. And yeah, I'm sure."
I ran through the implications at the speed of light. They had Paul's DNA! That would be devastating for him, for both of us. And baby makes three.
"Whose is it?" I said carefully.
"We don't know," Bonnie answered.
Thank God for small mercies, I thought.
But unfortunately Bonnie wasn't done.
"But we did get a cold hit from another crime scene," she said. "How about that?"
What?! How about I shoot myself here in the Dragon Flower?
A vague and sickening dread hit the center of my chest like a punch.
"Run that by me again," I said to Bonnie.
"The Feds' CODIS database collects DNA samples from crime scenes across the country in order to ID perpetrators. It turns out, the same DNA from the semen on the blanket in your case was found at another crime scene – an armed robbery in Washington, DC. Happened nearly five years ago. The case was never closed."
The dread that had been operating in my stomach suddenly shifted its strategy for attack and caught me in a hammerlock around the throat. I was having trouble thinking, even sitting in an upright position.
No. It couldn't be. What Bonnie was saying meant that…
Paul had been involved in another crime? An armed robbery?
Chapter 96
THE WAITER CAME and Bonnie paid. Then she reached across the table and patted my shaking hands.
"I didn't mean to drop all of this on you at once, Lauren," Bonnie said. "I was as shocked as you are."
Want to bet? I thought, dropping my eyes to the table.
"An armed robbery in DC?" I whispered through the cotton that had suddenly materialized in my mouth. "You're sure about it, Bonnie?"
"The brief abstract they sent with the positive match said the DNA came from a blood sample found at an armed robbery in a DC hotel. But the case wasn't solved, and it's still open. The match means that we have anonymous secretions at two different crime scenes. Semen on the blanket used to cover Thayer. And blood in some DC hotel room."
What did that mean? Obviously, they still didn't know it was Paul's. As if that mattered, I thought, dropping my pulverized head into my hands. As if anything did at this point.
Bonnie kept talking but I barely heard what she was saying. All I could do was blink and nod. The impossible had just happened. For the first time in a while, I had actually managed to stop caring about Scott's case. I had a new distraction.
Almost five years ago Paul had committed some kind of armed robbery in a hotel room? My brain labored over that thought, then promptly went on strike.
Because that was impossible.
But DNA doesn't lie.
When I looked up, I found Bonnie staring at me, waiting for some kind of comment.
"So what does this mean?" I said, as if I didn't know the answer. "Victor Ordonez didn't kill Scott Thayer?"
Bonnie looked out the window onto crowded Mott Street. There was pain in her eyes.
"I don't know. How could I, Lauren? Maybe he just borrowed the blanket off a friend, but it definitely throws some doubt out there, doesn't it?" she said. "The kind of doubt a defense lawyer would have a field day with. Not to mention the press jackals."
I looked at the neon Chinese characters in the restaurant window. A black eel in the aquarium beside our booth batted his head against the glass as if trying to get my attention and say something. Hey, Lauren. Why don't you just run screaming out of the restaurant? Don't stop till you get to Bellevue.
Bonnie straightened the papers against the tabletop, pushed them back into the envelope, and stuffed the whole thing down into my bag.
"But I decided it's the kind of doubt this city, this department, Scott's wife, and most especially you, Lauren, don't need thrown out there."
She gestured toward my handbag.
"That's why I'm giving it to you, honey. This case was screwed for everyone involved from the word go. This is my retirement present to you. The DC detective's name and contact info are somewhere in those sheets, if you ever want to pursue it on your own. Or you can chuck it off the Brooklyn Bridge. Your choice."
Bonnie planted a big kiss on my forehead as she stood up at our table.
"One thing I've learned as a cop is that you do what you can. It's not our fault that sometimes that's not enough. Lauren, you're my friend, and I love you, and it's up to you. See you around."
Chapter 97
IT WAS A FEW HOURS LATER, and dark, when I found myself standing in Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan.
Manhattan , my father used to say before we'd start his thrice-weekly walks from this very park. The greatest treadmill in the world.
His postretirement exercise routine consisted of riding the subway here to the last stop, walking over to Broadway, and seeing how many of Manhattan 's thirteen concrete miles he could cover before he got tired and hopped on an uptown subway headed back home. All through law school, I'd go with him if I had the chance. Listen to him talk about the crimes and arrests that occurred at the countless intersections. It was on one of those walks with Dad that I decided I wanted to be a cop rather than a lawyer. Wanted to be just like my father.
And it was right here, at the beginning of one of those walks, all alone, that he died of a heart attack. As if he'd have it no other way than to pass on the streets of the city he served and loved.
I rested the FBI report against the rusted railing before me as I listened to the dark waves slap against the concrete pier.
Just when I'd completed the toughest puzzle ever, Dad, I thought.
I'd been handed an extra piece.
Story of my life recently.
"What do I do, Pop?" I whispered as tears fell down my cheeks. "I don't know what to do."
There were exactly two options, I knew.
I could toss away Bonnie's gift, like I had the rest of the evidence, and head to my new life in Connecticut, a blissful soccer-mom-to-be.
Or I could slap myself out of my denial and figure out what the hell was going on with my life, and with my mysterious husband.
I held the envelope over the railing.
This was an easy one, right?
All I had to do was release my fingers and it would be over.
I would go to the train and head north, where safety, my husband, and my new life waited.
A gust of wind picked up off the water, flapping the envelope in my hand.