For the remainder of the week, each time Tracy entered the bull pen, Kins, Faz, and Del, or some combination of the three, would give her a look like she was an obstetrician and they were expectant fathers in a hospital waiting room. Tracy would shake her head to let them know the lab had not called. That Friday, as she worked a homeless-man stabbing case, her cell phone rang. The screen indicated no caller ID but the prefix was for a Seattle number.
“Detective Crosswhite?” the caller asked, causing a flicker of anticipation in her stomach.
“Speaking.”
“Mike Melton says I’m supposed to treat you right, and given the size of him, I don’t want him angry at me.”
ALS had an office in Burien not far from the Seattle Police Academy, about a half-hour drive from Police Headquarters. Tim Lane said he could e-mail Tracy the results so she could avoid the drive, but Tracy didn’t want to leave a paper trail on her computer. She told him she needed to talk to a witness down his way and would pick up the results. Strange as it seemed, she also didn’t want to hear the news over the phone, and Lane didn’t question her further. He might have already sensed something was up when he realized he wasn’t calling Police Headquarters but a private cell phone.
Tracy and Kins took his BMW rather than a car out of the pool. They did have a witness they needed to speak with in Des Moines, which was just next door to Burien, just in case anyone accused them of using taxpayer time to run down evidence in a case that was no longer theirs.
ALS was located in a business park that included a brewery, a fitness gym, and, apparently, a basketball club. The number of private laboratory services had exploded with the recent advancements in DNA analysis and the concomitant desire of private citizens to find out their ancestry, genetic makeup, and proclivity to get future life-threatening illnesses.
“You done it, yet?” Kins asked Tracy as he pulled into a parking space labeled in white block lettering as reserved for ALS visitors.
“What? Get my DNA profile? No. You?”
“Nah. What do I want to know that for?” Kins pushed out of the car and Tracy exited the passenger side. “My dad’s father had Alzheimer’s. I worry enough about that stuff without someone telling me I should be worrying. When they tell me they know how to cure it, that’s when I’ll want to know.”
She met him at the hood and they walked toward the entrance. “What about your ancestry or heritage? Aren’t you curious?”
“All my life I’ve grown up thinking I’m English and believed I had to tolerate tea, bland food, and cold and foggy weather. What am I going to do if I find out I’m Italian and could have been eating like Fazio all these years? Besides, you keep going back far enough and we all came from the same place anyway. Had to start with just two, right?”
“God, that means we’re related to Nolasco?” Tracy said, pulling open the glass door.
“I’m pretty sure Nolasco’s a reptile.”
Tracy told the receptionist they had an appointment to see Tim Lane, and they stepped toward chairs in a waiting room with low ceiling tiles, fluorescent lights, and rich-blue walls lined with posters spelling out the lab’s various available services.
“This place looks like the preschool we used to take the boys to,” Kins said.
Two couples sat waiting. Tracy had also read that parents were getting their genetic makeup analyzed before having children to determine if their offspring were at risk for genetic disorders such as sickle-cell anemia and Down syndrome. At forty-three, Tracy’s odds were greater than younger mothers of passing something on to her child.
A door in the corner of the room pulled open and a blond-haired man, partially balding, stepped out wearing a white lab coat over a pink dress shirt and red tie. “Detectives,” he said, giving them a 100-watt smile. “I’m Tim Lane.” They shook hands. “Come on back.”
Tracy and Kins followed Lane down a carpeted hallway. He led them into a nondescript conference room with a window that looked out over a small area of once-green lawn showing patches of brown. Lane stepped to the far side of the table, on which he’d set two manila folders.
“Mike says you’re to get the VIP treatment,” Lane said, his voice deep and rich.
“Heard you’ve been trying to recruit him. The detectives would revolt,” Tracy said.
“We worked at the crime lab together, many, many years ago,” Lane said. “I only lasted five years.”
“How’d you get into the private sector?” Tracy asked.
“I majored in chemistry and went back for my MBA. I’ve always been entrepreneurial and wanted to run my own business. With the advances in DNA and the backlog of cases at most major metropolitan crime labs, I saw an opportunity I thought I could fill. We were one of the first private labs. Now you Google ‘private DNA testing’ and you get a couple hundred thousand hits.”