Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(117)

Bruno cowered back into his seat. “Ah, yeah. Whatever, man. Just drive the car.”

Kev sat next to him, likewise grim, since his lady, too, had committed the unspeakable crime of driving back to Seattle with Liv, Miles, and Sveti. Davy and Connor both looked complacent, their own lady wives being safely at home in Seattle with assorted offspring.

Bruno was nervous. It had been painful enough to leave Lily in Tam’s fortress. Now she was a sitting duck in a hospital emergency room. The timing of this catastrophe was so bad. Meteorsflying-out-of-the-sky-to-hit-you-on-the-head bad. Bad with surgical precision.

“Aaro’s with her,” Davy said, reading his mind. “Aaro’s no idiot.”

Bruno declined to comment, not being personally convinced of that yet. Then Kev’s cell phone buzzed. His brother stared at it, puzzled.

“I don’t know this number,” he said. “Never seen it before.”

“Things are too strange not to answer it,” Bruno said. “Pick it up.”

Kev shrugged, clicked the button. “Yeah? . . . Yes, I am . . . ah. I see. How did you get this number? . . . Oh.” He turned, gave Bruno a look that made his stomach turn to gelid slush. “Yeah, he is here,” he said reluctantly, after a long, painful pause.

Kev passed him the phone. “For you,” he said. “Detective Petrie.”

Bruno winced and held it his ear. “Hey, Petrie. What’s up?”

“I can’t believe you have the nerve to ask that, you son of a bitch.”

Bruno was taken aback. “What? You’re pissed because I didn’t come in for questioning? I told you, man. I was running for my life. Still am. That’s the only reason I blew you off. Don’t take it personally.”

“Blew me off? You think this is something personal? That I got my feelings hurt? That takes self-absorbed to a whole new level. You’re wanted for triple homicide, Ranieri, and that’s just for starters. I got the warrant signed two days ago. It’s in the Law Enforcement data system, the NCIC database. We are after your ass. Just so you know.”

Bruno jerked upright. “It was self-defense. I told you.”

“Was it self-defense to turn your phone off for five days, too?”

Bruno rubbed his eyes. “You’ve been trying to call me?”

Petrie made a derisive sound. “So where were you?”

Bruno paused. “I was out digging up skeletons from my past.”

“Ah. How nice for you. Sounds like good exercise.”

“Oh, it was,” Bruno assured him.

“Got a whole closet full of those, do you?”

“Pretty much,” Bruno admitted.

“No cell coverage out there in skeleton country?”

“Nope,” Bruno said.

“Well, then, I’ve got a few more for your collection. I arranged for genetic testing, for those bodies from the crime scene outside the diner. I also had the cadaver of Aaro’s little friend tested, since he was so emphatic about her being involved, and the guy who shot himself on Wygant, the one I mistook for you. I got those samples fast-tracked, and compared to the sample of your DNA that we had in our database, as well as whatever bodily fluid of yours that the criminalists scraped off the crime scene—blood, vomit, what have you. And I got some preliminary results back today.”

Bruno waited. “Well?” he prompted. “And?”

Petrie was silent. “You really don’t know? You have no idea?”

The slush inside Bruno’s belly hardened into ice. It was another one of those icebergs. Secrets, hanging huge below the surface of dark water. “Stop being coy. Were they in the system? Who are they?”

“No,” Petrie said. “We didn’t ID them. They’re John and Jane Does. Why don’t you help me ID them, Ranieri? Come on. Give it up.”

“Me? Why me? What are you hinting at? Out with it!”

The car had gone silent.

“They’re your brothers. And your sister,” Petrie said.

Bruno sat there. Mouth wide. A sledgehammer had thwacked into his thorax.

“What?” he choked out. “How? Who?”

“The girl. The suicided guy, on Wygant Street, the one who looks like you. And one of the three dead guys on the street. There’s this thing called the siblingship index. The stiffs share so much genetic material with you, the probability that they are your full brothers and sisters is overwhelming. Or double cousins. That is, if your mother’s sibling had offspring with your father’s sibling. The lab tech explained. It’s the number of genetic markers that match up.”

“My mother didn’t have any siblings,” Bruno said.

“Well, then. Back to scenario A. Full brothers and sisters, then.”

“But I don’t.” Bruno felt lost. “I can’t. Those people, the guys I fought—they were younger than me. Aaro’s girlfriend was in her early twenties. My mother’s been dead for eighteen years. I never knew who my father was. I was twelve when she died. She was nineteen when she had me. She didn’t have any other children. I would have noticed.”

“You think? That’s fascinating. The jury will eat it up. The story of your deprived single-parent childhood, how it led to the savage murders of your unacknowledged, unnoticed brothers and sister. Your defense lawyer will have lots to work with. The insanity plea will be cake.”