Mercy

‘She could have done.’

‘And Burrow’s semen?’ asked Juanita.

‘Maybe they slept together.’

Juanita was trying very hard not to roll her eyes.

‘So let’s see,’ she said. ‘Dorothy Olsen sleeps with Burrow, gets his semen, stains her panties with blood and his semen, plants them under the floorboards in his apartment, takes the knife from under his pillow, wipes her blood on it and plants that too, then calls the police using a voice changer device and tips them off.’

‘That’s the theory,’ said Alex, realizing how absurd it all sounded.

‘Now all we need is motive,’ Juanita suggested, echoing Alex’s own comment at his meeting with Burrow at San Quentin.

‘There’s also the small matter of breast tissue in Burrow’s freezer,’ Nat chipped in.

‘Technically it was his mother’s freezer,’ Juanita shot back.

‘Whatever,’ Nat replied.

Alex was shaking his head.

‘What sort of DNA comparison did they do at the time?’ he asked.

‘How do you mean?’ Nat replied.

‘There are different types of DNA test. Short Tandem Repeat? Low Copy Number?’

Nat and Juanita looked at each other blankly.

‘I’ll get the file,’ said Juanita, getting up and heading for the broom closet that doubled as the file and records room.

File wasn’t exactly the word. It was several boxes full of files and ring binders. But Juanita’s filing system was so efficient and well-organized that she knew exactly where to look for it. It was the forensic evidence file, with the lab reports. There were several of these, but she found the right one almost immediately and brought it back to the office.

They huddled round it as she flicked through the file.

‘Okay, here it is,’ she said with delight. ‘They did a standard nucleic DNA test on the breast tissue.’

‘Remind me who they compared it to,’ said Alex.

Juanita’s eyes skimmed the page.

‘They compared it to…ah, yes, here it is: both to Mrs Olsen and Jonathan.’

‘That would be Dorothy’s younger brother,’ Alex said.

Juanita was reading the summary of conclusions at the end of the report.

‘Yes. Now there’s a note here that says that the test concluded that the breast tissue came from a half-sibling of Jonathan Olsen.’

‘Wait a minute,’Alex perked up,‘what does that mean?’

Juanita flipped over a few pages and carried on looking.

‘It means that they share only one common parent? They decided to make sure by doing a separate test using mitochondrial DNA. That’s DNA that’s not from the cell nucleus, but rather from non-nucleic material in the mother’s ovum. And in that test, all three of them matched exactly.’

‘But I thought mitochondrial DNA was only passed on to girls,’ said Alex.

‘No, it’s passed on to boys too,’ Juanita corrected, ‘but they can’t pass it on any further. That’s because it’s contained in the somatic cells and female germ cells, but not in the nucleus of either. Sons have their mother’s mitochondrial DNA in their somatic cells, but not in their sperm. So they can’t pass it on to the next generation.’

‘So if Jonathan, Dorothy and Esther all had the same mitochondrial DNA,’ said Alex, ‘it means that Dorothy and Jonathan are blood siblings and that Esther Olsen was their mother.’

‘That’s right,’ Juanita confirmed. ‘But the differences between Jonathan and Dorothy with the test using nucleic DNA imply that they had different fathers.’

11:39 PDT (19:39 BST) (#ulink_070fca0f-f4f1-51b0-9269-3e56fc2a415a)

Stuart Lloyd was still frozen with indecision. He had told Susan White that he would look into the matter and get back to her. She had accepted it reluctantly and put the receiver down. But he was still unsure of where to go from here.

It could just be a coincidence. The name was uncommon, but in a country of three hundred million people more than one person could have it. But Susan had said more than that. She had said that the picture they had shown on TV had looked like Dorothy. She hadn’t been sure, she admitted. It was, after all, nine years ago. But the similarity of the face plus the name? And the fact that this girl in America disappeared nine years ago.

It was too strong a coincidence to dismiss.

‘Is anything wrong, dear?’ his wife asked, entering the room.

‘Nothing,’ he replied. But he knew that his tone was unconvincing.

Elizabeth sidled up to him and put a comforting arm round him.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked gently.

He couldn’t tell her—not yet at any rate. Maybe when he was sure. But not yet.

‘Just a bit of trouble at the clinic.’

‘Complications?’

She meant medical complications. The worst thing that could happen to any private clinic was medical complications leading to death or serious damage. Even if it was covered by the insurance, a successful claim could massively push up the insurance premiums, as well as damaging the reputation of the clinic and decimating its future client base.

‘Not that sort. Just a bit of personnel wrangling.’

It was an intentional red herring but he regretted having said it. Firstly, he regretted lying to his wife on principle. Secondly, he could imagine her now having visions of a cat fight between the nurses.

He went back to the kitchen to finish his coq au vin, warming it up in the microwave. But he ate quickly, not savoring it as he had before. And as soon as he had finished, he went to the living room—a quasi space-age environment of white leather, glass and chrome. Flopping down on the couch, he switched on the 50-inch LCD TV using the remote and flipped through several news channels. At first he clicked on CNN, but then remembered that Susan White had named another channel.

His wife wasn’t a great one for TV and was quite happy to read a book while he surfed the digital channels. But his odd behavior could hardly be expected to pass without comment.

‘Why the sudden interest in American news?’ she asked.

Stuart kept his eyes glued to the screen.