“Why is the RCMP reopening this?”
She stilled, met his wolfish eyes. She’d told him about being the cradle child, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to tell anyone about the floating foot match yet. It might still prove to be an error. She broke his gaze and glanced at the underwater feed of the pig carcass covered in a cloud of sea lice. The carcass seemed bigger, rounder today. More bloated. A Dungeness crab shuffled spiderlike on long skinny legs across the seabed toward the pig. As she watched, the octopus returned, swooping into view from the top-right corner of the screen. It swamped its body over the crab. Silt exploded in a cloud as they struggled and lice scattered. She stood momentarily numb as she watched the octopus smother the crustacean to death and begin to consume it. Angie swallowed as she recalled Jacob Anders’s words.
Confidentiality, discretion—it’s a necessary and absolute cornerstone of our business.
She moistened her lips and said, “Did you hear the news about the dismembered child’s foot found five days ago?”
“I did.”
“The DNA of that foot is apparently a dead match to mine. The VPD detective on my cradle case submitted my DNA profile to the identification and disaster response unit at the coroner’s office before he retired. They got a cold hit between the two.”
A beat of silence. When Anders spoke again, she heard the subtle shift in his tone. “That is interesting. I presume they’re doing another DNA test to confirm the hit?”
“Correct.”
“Is this going to cause problems?” He nodded to the box. “With the RCMP.”
“Not for you. The evidence was mine. I provided it to a private lab for testing. Now that I’ve been asked, I’m handing over what has not been used.” She gathered the box into her arms, wincing slightly. “Thank you again—I need to get to work.”
“I’ll be in touch,” he said.
But as Angie reached his door, she turned and said, “Monozygotic twin DNA—it’s not absolutely identical, is it?”
“Identical twins come from the same fertilized egg, so they do share the same DNA. Which makes monozygotic twins indistinguishable using the standard panel of thirteen STR loci. However, as each twin embryo grows and develops in utero, and the cells continue to multiply, the replication of each twin’s DNA isn’t perfect. Minor errors or variations begin to occur so that by birth each twin’s DNA is subtly different from its sibling’s. And as life goes on, each twin is subjected to different environmental stresses, which in turn alter each one’s DNA replication. These variations can now be picked up by a newer DNA technique known as single nucleotide polymorphism, which gives the examiner a complete DNA sequence of the strand being analyzed.”
“So given changes due to environmental stresses, even my own adult DNA could potentially have minute differences from my childhood DNA?”
“Technically—” The phone on his desk started to ring. “I need to take this,” he said, reaching for the receiver. “I’ll call as soon as we start getting results.”
“Thanks again.”
Angie left his office and hurried for the building exit. She pushed through the door holding her box. Wind and rain slammed into her as she stepped into the cold air. Sheltering her box with her body, she made for her Nissan rental. Once inside the car, she started the engine and put her foot on the gas without giving it a chance to warm up. Her pulse was galloping. Even without traffic she was going to be late for work now.
Vedder and company were not going to approve of her actions on the job so far. And now she really needed to keep her job in order to run the pending test results. The first thing she was going to do the instant she found a break today was get those digitized patent finger and palm prints taken from the cradle crime scene into the automated fingerprint identification system.
CHAPTER 28
“What?” Maddocks blinked in disbelief as the person on the other end of his phone repeated the news. Maddocks killed the call and fired a hard look at Holgersen. “She’s dead,” he said, feeling numb. “Sophia Tarasov is dead. Hospital staff found her unresponsive in a pool of blood in her bed at 7:30 a.m. Coroner and pathologist are en route to the hospital now.”
Holgersen shot erect in his chair, eyes wide. “What?”
Maddocks surged to his feet, raw shock pounding through him. He grabbed his coat, shrugged into it. “Get an ident team out to the hospital. Stat. Then meet me out in the lot.”
“What . . . what about the others?” Holgersen said, coming to his feet.
“Terrified. Not saying a thing, but they’re alive.” Maddocks fished his old dog out from under the desk. “Get hold of the interpreter, too. Get her to meet us there. We know at least one of the other girls speaks Russian.” He barked the order as he made for the incident room exit. Jack-O under his arm, Maddocks strode fast toward the elevator, his mind reeling, sweat breaking out over his skin. He jabbed the elevator button. While he waited for the elevator, he placed a call to one of the first responding officers still on scene at the hospital.
“Constable Dutton,” came a male voice.
“Sergeant Maddocks here,” he said as he entered the opening elevator doors. He pressed the button for the ground floor. “I’m the lead on this. That uniform guarding the girls’ room last night—I want that officer’s name, the hours of his shift. If he’s still there, keep him there. If not, bring him in. If another uniform replaced him—or her—on a shift last night, I want that officer in, too.”
“Affirmative, sir.”
Maddocks exited the elevator and made hurriedly for Flint’s office, his shock morphing quickly into white-hot anger. He rapped on the door, opened it.
Flint glanced up sharply from his desk, his eyes flicking to the animal hooked under Maddocks’s arm.
“Sophia Tarasov,” Maddocks said. “She was found dead in a pool of blood in her hospital bed this morning. No one saw a goddamn thing. I’m on my way there now with Holgersen.”
Flint blinked and came abruptly to his feet with his typical bearing that screamed military background. He hid his surprise well. “Keep me updated from the scene. And work fast. This isn’t going to last long in our hands—we need to gather whatever we can if we want to follow through on our own successful prosecution of our local cases.”
Maddocks held his boss’s steely eyes. “The investigator from the mainland you spoke to yesterday,” Maddocks said, “from the integrated task force—”
“Yeah. They know something they’re not sharing, at least not over the phone.” His boss’s faced tightened as he spoke.
“Could that knowledge have prevented this?”
Flint met Maddocks’s glare. The man’s mouth flattened, and his eyes turned cold and hard. “I hope to hell not. But my gut is screaming maybe.”
Shit.