“Because … she wanted to impress him, show him she could do it.”
Victor points at me. “You really are my star pupil.” He thinks for a minute. “It’s too bad we can’t get a sample of Chuck’s DNA, because then we could settle your theory once and for all.”
Victor stops and gives me a wide-eyed look.
Which is funny, because I’m giving him the very same look.
Two great minds …
Both of our heads swivel to the counter next to the sink and land on one plain, gleaming, half-full glass of water.
We leap up and make it to the sink in a matter of steps. Neither of us touches the glass, but we both know it contains the chief’s DNA.
“Looks like we’ll get to test your theory after all.” Victor returns to the table and slides my notebook over to me. “Clean page, write this down: today’s date … gel test. Samples one through four. We’ll label them the same as Peters’s. That glass on the counter will be CC.”
Victor shoves all the crap to one side of the table and grabs an unread newspaper from our recycling stack. He unfolds it, covering half of the table. “My lab table has a stainless steel top, easy to clean and sanitize,” he explains, “but out in the field we use newspapers. Here’s a lesson for you: An unread newspaper is sterile. Want to know why?” He doesn’t wait for my answer but keeps talking. “Because printing presses get up to about one hundred and thirty degrees. That’s enough to kill most bacteria.”
“Wow, that’s news to me.” I giggle.
Victor groans.
I peer into his open briefcase. “You carry around the stuff to run DNA in your briefcase?”
“I do for certain things, like the agarose gel and buccal swabs. But the rest of this stuff I picked up at the superstore on the way home. They sell everything there.”
“So, it’s just normal stuff?”
“Pretty much.” Victor reaches into the bag and pulls out a brick-sized chunk of green foam, which he sets in the middle of the table. “Like floral foam, for example.”
“You’re going to use that?”
“It makes a perfect test tube rack.”
I peer over the edge of his shopping bag. “You found test tubes at the superstore?”
He smiles. “The buccal swabs come with their own tubes.”
“Oh. Good to know.”
He ticks a list off on his fingers. “But I will also need rubbing alcohol, tape, a sharp craft knife, some aluminum foil, and, oh yeah, baking soda and a pitcher.”
While I gather the requested items from various places in the kitchen, Victor twists open an unused swab kit. He then retrieves the glass we saw Chief Culson drink from. He hoists it to me and we nod to each other—a silent confirmation that we agree this was the chief’s glass.
Victor vigorously runs the swab along the rim of the glass, first along the inside and then the outside. When he’s finished, he drops the swab into the test tube. He lines up each of the samples by sticking them into the block of floral foam.
“Okay, these samples are in the same order of Miss Peters’s test.”
I give him a raised-eyebrow look. “There has to be more to it than that.”
“There is. I’m just going to power through. Stop me if you have questions, or you can just sit back and watch.”
I prop one leg up on the chair to rest my notebook against. “Best show in town.”
He shakes some baking soda into the pitcher and then sloshes in some distilled water from a bottle in his shopping bag.
“How much did you put in? That didn’t look very precise,” I say.
“It doesn’t have to be. I’m just making an alkaline buffering solution.” He rummages to the bottom of his shopping bag and retrieves a small testing kit for home aquariums. He scoops a bit of the buffering solution into the kit, adds a few drops of something red, and shakes it. Then he holds it up to the light and analyzes the results. “Close enough,” he mutters. He puts the lid on the pitcher and hands it to me. “Stick this in the fridge and put the alcohol in the freezer.”
Victor upends his shopping bag over the table, dumping out the rest of his purchases. It’s a bizarre assortment. A small plastic container about the size of half of a sandwich, and a smaller plastic soap dish, with a flimsy, hinged lid. Two small spools of electrical wire: one red, one black. Two packages of alligator clips, some wire strippers, six 9-volt batteries, and a bottle of meat tenderizer.
“Guess what this is?”
“Junk on sale that you couldn’t resist?”
Victor chuckles. “I like the sense of humor. It’s cute. This, my star pupil, is our electrophoresis chamber. Or it will be once we build it. Now pay attention. You don’t want to miss anything.”
36
Fifty percent of human DNA is identical to the DNA of a banana.
—VICTOR FLEMMING
Victor’s right. I don’t want to miss any of this.
“I don’t know how much you know about running gel,” he says. “So I’ll just skim the basics.”
“Pretend I don’t know anything. Tell me everything.” I scoot my chair in close.