*
Back in the lab, she answers some email, forwards two mitochondrial profiles to the team of agents she’s been working with who are on a unique manhunt, looking for a suspect of both Asian and Scottish descent, then shelves all her projects. She gives herself an hour. She is law enforcement. She has access to all the databases. If anyone asks what she is doing, she’ll chalk it up to research.
Juliet has more leeway than most simply because she is breaking new ground with her techniques. Entranced with the idea of familial DNA to solve crimes, she set out over a year earlier to perfect the method known as DNA phenotyping. Instead of searching for an exact match in CODIS—the combined DNA index used to identify and match a criminal’s DNA with crime scene evidence—phenotyping is a more organic, environmental approach: decoding the DNA source sample itself.
The idea is simple. As Juliet told Lauren, blood doesn’t lie. Blood is its own witness. A tech can take a blood sample and within twenty-four hours have a full-blown profile of who it belongs to: white, black, blue eyes, green, blonde, brunette, red, male, female. In theory, if a witness says she was raped by a man of African descent, yet the DNA sample belongs to a white male of European descent, the police will know immediately a mistake has been made; that the witness is wrong, her memory fuzzy, or she has an agenda.
Juliet’s phenotyping method is gaining traction, too, turning profiling on its ear. It is becoming exceptionally useful in murder cases. If law enforcement officials are looking into a serial killer, and all the signs pointed to a specific type of person, the phenotype DNA can help prove or disprove their theory.
Which is all well and good, but Juliet wants to take it further. She is working on a new kind of phenotypic analysis, looking for facial features and familial traits, and applying them to the possible perpetrators of the crimes committed. She’s been matching DNA samples with the FBI’s NGI facial recognition system. So far, she’s helped the CBI close twenty cold-case murders, and she has another massive stack in her to-do pile.
She is an unconventional leader in her field. Not to mention the program she has written allows her to input DNA material into a 3-D printer and have it spit out a face. Completely unusable in court, for now, but she’s been using it to double-check her work once a suspect is caught. A third control, as it were.
Thinking of this, the idea glimmers in the back of her mind, there but not acknowledged. It is this phenotypic method she can use to narrow down Mindy’s true biological parents, should it come to that. But she can’t do it without permission from all involved, including her bosses. Working on the project behind everyone’s backs is unethical, at best; illegal at worst, and quite possibly a waste of time. There are better ways to prove her theories.
Lauren and Kyle didn’t part on good terms, but her famously private sister never let any other news leak. All Juliet knows is he was furious about the pregnancy, filed for divorce, and requested a transfer to another office, preferably as far away from Lauren as he could get. How he ended up in California was beyond her, but it worked to get him away as well as if he’d decided to join the space program and go to the moon.
Kyle wasn’t smart enough for that.
Catty, Juliet.
She racks her brain—what firm did he work for before he took off? Spencer something... Spencer Landry. That’s it. She grabs the phone and looks up the number on the web, dials it. The receptionist answers, her long vowels a dead giveaway that she’s from the north.
“Good morning, Spencer Landry and Associates. How may I direct your call?”
“I need to speak with your HR department, please.”
“Oh, I don’t think we’re hiring right now—”
“This is Juliet Ryder, CBI.”
“Oh! Well, certainly, ma’am, hold one moment.”
She bites back a laugh. Sometimes it is good to be with the CBI, even if she is using the title for nefarious purposes.
A moment later, a man’s voice comes through the phone. “This is Eres Patrone. How can I help you, Agent Ryder?”
She doesn’t disabuse him of the title. She holds a Ph.D. in microbiology and genetics and is not an agent pro forma. But Agent Ryder will get farther than Dr. Ryder.
“Good morning, Mr. Patrone. I’m looking for some information on a former employee of yours, a Kyle Noonan. I have a record of him leaving the firm in 2000 to take a position elsewhere. I was hoping you had the name of the firm he went to so I can reach out to him.”
“Wow, 2000. I wasn’t here then, but let me look into the archives and I can give you a call back. Will that work?”
“I’m in a bit of a hurry, actually. Can you put me on hold while you look? Surely a firm as advanced as Spencer Landry is all online.”
“We are, but...um, this is personal information, and I think I may need to talk to my supervisor—”
“Really, there’s no need for that,” she says, warmly now, conspiratorial. “I’m just looking for the forwarding address. You would have to send the man a final W-2. I could get a warrant, but that’s going to waste everyone’s time.”
“You do know we are a law firm, right?”
She laughs and hopes it doesn’t sound as stilted as it feels.
“All right, I was hoping not to have to do this, but here’s what’s going on. He’s my brother-in-law. He and my sister are divorced, but she’s sick, and I need to get in touch with him right away. She’s in the hospital, and I’m in charge of getting in touch with everyone. Please. I wouldn’t normally throw my title around, but I thought it was the most expedient way.”
“Oh, wow. That’s terrible. I’m sorry to hear it. But I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
“Okay, then, I’ll go get the warrant—”
“No, I mean, I can’t help you, because there’s nothing here. He transferred to our San Diego office, then he must have left the firm because his records with Spencer Landry end in 2000. I’m so sorry I can’t be more help. And I’m sorry about your sister. I hope she gets better soon.”
“Thank you, Mr. Patrone. You’ve been a great help. Have a good day.”
She hangs up the phone, mouth slightly agape. What has she just done? She’s just tried to extort personal information, without a warrant, without any probable cause, only to further her own goals. And has hit a brick wall to boot.
Serves you right for meddling, Lauren’s voice rings clear in her head. I warned you. Stay away from this.
God, now she is hearing voices. She needs sleep. She needs to take three weeks off, find a warm beach somewhere, drink fruity drinks and crisp herself in the equatorial sun, but this isn’t an option. Mindy isn’t resting; she is getting sicker and sicker. And if Lauren won’t do the right thing, damn it, Juliet will figure out a way.
She googles Kyle Noonan again, adding Spencer Landry and San Diego in the search box.
She finds nothing. But this isn’t unusual. She’s searching for information from seventeen years ago. Not everything was as plugged in then as it is now. Not every thought, word, and deed that happened every moment of every day made it onto the web back then.
Maybe she needs to do this the modern way. Social media holds all truths. She can troll Facebook for a while, see if anything pops. Lauren doesn’t have an account, but maybe Kyle does.