Nothing to Lose (J.P. Beaumont #25)(33)

After that all kinds of hell had broken loose, and I don’t doubt that a crime-lab head or two had rolled as a result. Not long ago I’d heard that Mateo’s wrongful-imprisonment lawsuit had been settled for “an undisclosed amount.” That generally translates into big bucks, in which case a few more people might have found themselves out of jobs.

As for me? My involvement in the Mateo Vega debacle probably meant that I was definitely persona non grata at the crime lab these days. Still, fools rush in where angels fear to tread. I found Gretchen’s name in my contacts list. Since she usually works swing shift, I tried calling her cell phone. She answered after two rings.

“Are you kidding me?” Gretchen demanded once she figured out who was calling. “You actually have nerve enough to call me after all the trouble you caused?”

“That’s me, all right,” I answered as cheerfully as I could, “more nerve than a bad tooth.”

To my relief, Gretchen laughed aloud at that. “You ended up taking a couple of obnoxious muckety-mucks down a few pegs, which wasn’t such a bad thing, so the grunts who have to work around here don’t mind you all that much, me included. What’s up?”

By then Harriet had returned with the banker’s box in hand.

“I’m working a case,” I said.

“Big surprise there.”

“A seventeen-year-old kid named Christopher Danielson went missing from Homer, Alaska, in 2006. Unfortunately, he was never reported as missing, not at the time he disappeared and not anytime since either. I’ve been talking to Professor Harriet Raines up here in Anchorage. She has a set of unidentified human remains that were found in the spring of 2008. It’s possible they might be a match.”

“Oh, I know Dr. Raines,” Gretchen said quickly. “We’ve worked together a couple of times. Tell her hi for me, would you?”

I held the phone away from my mouth. “Gretchen Walther from the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab says hello.” I wasn’t doing a FaceTime call, so there was no video, but I put the phone on speaker.

“Hi right back at you,” Harriet said.

“What do you need, Beau?” Gretchen asked.

“I got involved because the presumed victim’s older brother, Jared, sent me searching for him,” I continued. “My client’s name is Father Jared Danielson, and he’s a priest currently staying at a monastery in Woodinville. Professor Raines asked if I had a DNA profile for him, which I currently don’t have. I was wondering if it would be possible for me to send him by so you could collect a sample and create a profile.”

“I can’t do it for you,” Gretchen said at once, “but we have a mutual-aid agreement with the state of Alaska, and I could certainly do it for Dr. Raines. Does she have a case number on that?”

“We’re on speaker, so why don’t you ask her directly?” I suggested.

For the next several minutes, the two women talked back and forth, still on speaker, with Harriet Raines providing all the necessary details Gretchen needed to create a case file on her end. Finally Gretchen asked me for a phone number for Jared.

I started to give it to her but then thought better of it. I needed to talk to him about what Harriet Raines and I had discovered and what we suspected before anyone else did. I was the guy Jared had sent searching for Christopher, and I was the one who needed to tell him that his brother was most likely deceased.

“I’ll need to do the next-of-kin notification first,” I said, speaking from across the table. “How about if I give Jared Danielson your number and have him call you?”

“Good thinking,” Gretchen agreed. “Have him call me whenever he’s ready. I’m working swing shift tonight, so if he wants to drop by this evening, we could probably have a profile for you in short order.”

I ended the call feeling as though things had gone far better than I could have hoped. Still, phoning Jared to deliver the news wasn’t going to be easy.

“Do you want me to leave you to it?” the all-knowing Harriet Raines asked.

“No,” I told her. “I’d rather have you here in case he has questions I can’t answer.”

I glanced at the time before locating Jared’s number. I had spent far longer in Harriet’s basement lab space than I had expected, and unless she’d found refuge in a coffee shop, Twink Winkleman could well be frozen to her unheated car seat by now. Since it was already close to noon here in Anchorage, that would make it a little later in the afternoon in the Seattle area. I found myself hoping that priests had something urgent to do at this time of day so Jared wouldn’t answer the phone, but of course he did.

“Hey, Mr. Beaumont,” he said at once. “Have you found him?”

His voice sounded chipper and happy. Now was no time to remind him to call me Beau.

“I’m afraid I have some potentially bad news for you,” I replied. “I’m sitting here in Anchorage in a forensic-anthropology lab with the director, Professor Harriet Raines. She has some unidentified human remains dating from 2008 that may or may not be a match for Christopher.”

What followed was a moment of stark silence. “You’re saying Chris is dead?” Jared asked finally.

“He may be dead,” I cautioned. “We’re going to need a sample of your DNA in order to know for sure.”