I Will Find You(78)

“Then where?”

“I’m heading to New Jersey.”

“What’s there?”

“Cheryl,” I say. “I need to talk to her face to face.”





Chapter

31



Please tell me you’re joking,” she said.

Max tried to stare her down. He wasn’t good with eye contact. Never had been. Like he said before, he felt it was overrated. Still, he persevered. Her name was Lauren Ford, and she ran the Criminal Investigations Unit for the Boston area. Right now, Lauren was the one giving off the much more fiery glare.

“I’m not good with jokes,” Max said.

“So let me make sure I got this straight.” Lauren stood behind her desk and started pacing. “You want me to authorize my lab to run another DNA test to make sure the murder victim was really Matthew Burroughs?”

“Precisely.”

“A case that’s, what, five years old?”

“More like six.”

“And where we already arrested and convicted someone.”

“That’s correct.”

“And where said perpetrator recently escaped from federal prison.”

“Again: Correct.”

“And where it’s your job, as far as I know, to apprehend him and put him where he belongs, not retry him.”

Max did not reply.

“So,” she asked, hands spread, “why do you need a DNA test on a long-deceased victim to find an escaped convict?”

“Did you run one the first time?”

Lauren sighed. “Did you hear me say ‘another DNA test’?”

“I did.”

“Does that imply we already ran one?”

“It does,” Max agreed.

“And let me explain that’s not protocol. We already had a positive ID, despite the body’s condition. People watch too much CSI. In reality, we rarely do DNA tests on murder victims. No law enforcement in the land does. We don’t do fingerprint tests either. It is only done when there is doubt about the victim’s identity. There was none here. We knew who the victim was.”

“But you still did one?”

“Yep. Because like I said before, every jury member watches too much TV. If you don’t have all the forensics and DNA, they figure you don’t know what you’re doing. So it was overkill, but we did it.”

“How?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you compare the victim’s DNA to the mother’s DNA or the father’s or…?”

“Who remembers? You realize, of course, this was a high-profile case for us?”

“I realize that, yes.”

“We didn’t make any mistakes.”

“I’m not saying you did. Look, you still have the victim’s blood on file, right?”

“Sure. I mean, it’s stored in the warehouse, but yes, we have it.”

“And we have David Burroughs’s DNA in the system.”

That was a routine matter now, Max knew. Every prisoner’s DNA is automatically added into the databank when they are convicted.

“Doing another test, opening this door in any way,” Lauren Ford said, “it’s a big deal.”

“Then keep it quiet,” Max said. “This is just between you and me.”

“Do I look like a lab tech?”

“You, me, a lab tech. You can keep it down-low.”

She frowned. “Did you really just use the term ‘down-low’?”

Max waited.

“I could just tell you to get the hell out of my office,” she said.

“You could.”

“It was a righteous bust. It was done by the book. A cop’s son—a popular cop’s son—was the perp, and we still made sure no one played favorites.”

“Admirable,” Max said.

She leaned back, started gnawing on a fingernail Max-style. “I’m going to tell you something in confidence. Because any way you look at it, this was a righteous conviction.”

“I’m listening.”

“The DNA lab back then.”

“What about it?”

“They made a few mistakes.”

“What kind of mistakes?”

“The kind where you suddenly quit your job when an internal investigation starts and move overseas.”

Silence.

“Shit,” Lauren said. “Are you telling me it’s not the kid?”

“I’m telling you,” Max said, “to run the test. And while you’re at it? Run the DNA through all the missing person databases. If the dead boy wasn’t Matthew Burroughs, we have to find out who he is.”

*



Rachel’s car is allowed on the tarmac, one of the perks, I guess, of flying private. After we deplane, the two goons shake my hands with much gusto.

“Bygones?” the STFU guy asks me.

“Bygones,” I say.

I get in Rachel’s car. She looks at the plane and says, “The perks of criminality.”

“Yep.”

We start driving.

“You wanting to see Cheryl,” Rachel says to me. “Is this about that fertility clinic?”