Second Glance Part 27

"Nope. See the D7S820 location? He's a 10,10. But the medicine bag is an 11, (12) or an 11,11. That's not in Pike's genetic profile . . . so it couldn't be him."

Eli exhaled heavily. This would throw a wrench into his theory about the crime, because now DNA evidence placed Gray Wolf at the scene, too. But maybe Pike's staging didn't extend to the medicine pouch. Maybe, for whatever reason, Gray Wolf had worn it for some time and given it to Cecelia as a love trinket, which she ripped off her neck during the hanging . . .

"There's something else, Eli." Frankie hesitated. "It bothered me enough that I actually went back to that d.a.m.n pouch and tested at six more loci. See?"

Table 2-Typing Results KEY: Types in parentheses ( ) are lesser in intensity than types not in parentheses. KEY: Types in parentheses ( ) are lesser in intensity than types not in parentheses.

- No conclusive results ** Drop-out may have occurred due to limited amount of DNA Frankie traced the rows with a scarlet fingernail. "At not a single location did I come up with four types. In these tests, I didn't even come up with three three types." types."

"So what?"

"So, if you and I were to grab hold of something and leave our skin cells all over it, chances are that at one of fifteen spots, we'd have four separate types. I mean, you get two from your parents, and I get two from my parents, and the likelihood of us having the same types more than once or twice in a profile is pretty slim."

"You said that the DNA was hard to extract. Maybe there was some snafu."

"No. That's why I went for the extra tests." Frankie tucked her hair behind her ears. "When I see profiles of mixtures where there are only three types, or even two, they're usually between direct descendants. Since the parent always gives one allele to the offspring, the parent and offspring will always have at least one allele in common. If Cecelia Pike was Gray Wolf's daughter, this is exactly what I'd expect a mixture of their DNA to look like."

Eli shook his head. "No way. Cecelia Pike was white."

Frankie pulled another piece of paper out of her folder. "Statistically speaking," she said, "I don't think so."

NINE.

As far as Ross was concerned, Eli Rochert could go to h.e.l.l. You did not have to meet a person, flesh and blood, to know know them. Couldn't you read a diary, and feel a kinship? Sift through yellowed love letters, and bring a romance back to life? Connect two distant keyboards in an Internet chat room? Ross them. Couldn't you read a diary, and feel a kinship? Sift through yellowed love letters, and bring a romance back to life? Connect two distant keyboards in an Internet chat room? Ross had had known Lia, and the cop was wrong-if she were having an affair, he would have known. known Lia, and the cop was wrong-if she were having an affair, he would have known.

Because it would have been with him.

At this very moment, Rod van Vleet might have some hack reciting scripture around the property, trying to reduce the amount of s.p.a.ce Lia's spirit had to roam. By now, he might even have started reasoning with her, explaining that this was no longer a world where she belonged.

With a growl, Ross pushed off his bed and began to pace the small bedroom, a caged animal. He had known Lia, but he hadn't known what it was like to feel her body close around his, to have her dig her nails into his shoulders as the night began to move around them, a living thing. He had known Lia, but not enough.

These were the moments when Ross believed in G.o.d. Not a kind G.o.d or a just G.o.d, but one with a wicked sense of humor. One who punished someone who'd made an irreparable mistake by dangling the treat he wanted above all else, and then s.n.a.t.c.hing it away so that Ross would fall flat on his face.

The walls were folding in on him, and there was a knot in his throat that kept any air from getting through. He had aimlessly picked up one of Ethan's CDs from the computer hutch, and had been holding it so tightly that the plastic container had cracked. Steam rose off his skin. His skull was too tight for his brain.

"Okay," he said to no one. "Okay."

Already, it was happening-he was looking at the mirror on the dresser not as a reflection, but as a potential weapon. He could feel the seams on his wrists itching. He could picture a world he was not in.

Bursting out of the bedroom, Ross raced down the stairs past Shelby. "Where-" she began.

"Out."

He barreled past Ethan, still waking with the moon. His car peeled out of the driveway and through the winding dirt roads of Comtosook. It was five minutes before he realized where he was driving, and by the time he parked at the blockade on Otter Creek Pa.s.s, night had fully fallen.

The protesting Abenaki had gone back to camp for the night; the few reporters who had not been called back to their city papers were holed up in the Best Western in Winooski. Rod van Vleet was nowhere to be seen, thank G.o.d, nor were there any paranormal investigators with bells and whistles. The ma.s.sive excavators and cranes slept, their necks extended.

Ross crawled over the construction tape and fencing to stand in the center, where the house still partially stood, having knit itself back together after Rod van Vleet had knocked it down. The developer had given up on setting his strip mall just there; a hundred yards to the left, now, excavators were trying to dig deep enough into the frozen ground to pour concrete. Ross took a deep breath: this is where Lia once sat down to dinner, or had a morning cup of coffee. Here, she fell asleep on stagnant Sunday afternoons. She placed Spencer Pike's hand on her belly, told him she was carrying their child.

"Lia!" Her name unwound from his throat, conjuring.

He stayed that way for a moment. The old Pike property had an uncommon stillness to it, an absolute lack of activity. No chipmunks skittered up trees, no birds traded secrets, no bullfrogs spied through the gra.s.s. If a paranormal investigator wanted Lia's ghost to leave, he'd have to find her first.

Ross walked back to the car in silence, thinking hard. She wasn't here; he would have felt it. And whoever van Vleet hired would be expecting a ghost-but not necessarily Lia. After all, Ross was the only one who had actually seen her.

What if he gave them a ghost, a different one, to get rid of?

He made a straight beeline for his car. He was three-quarters of a mile away from the house clearing when a single rose petal fell from a starless sky, drifting to settle in the footprint Ross had left behind.

Meredith couldn't have asked for a nicer day-seventy-five degrees, the sky a brilliant blue, and the mall not nearly as crowded as she'd expected for August. Add to this the fact that her daughter was free and clear of the anti-psychotic medicine-which had made no difference in her behavior- and there was plenty of reason to celebrate.

They were walking slowly, because Ruby was with them, and even if she was too proud to complain about her hips, Meredith had noticed the slight wince on her face with every footstep. They'd been to meet the new giant pandas at the National Zoo, to the Natural History Museum to sigh over the Hope Diamond, in the Air and s.p.a.ce Museum to touch the moon. Now, they headed toward the parking garage, each holding a soft-serve ice cream cone.

"It is my opinion," Meredith said, "that the streets of heaven are paved with chocolate."

"Which just goes to show you it can't be hot and humid there," Ruby pointed out. "Yet another gold star in the travel guide."

A family was walking toward them-tourists, from the looks of their cameras and FBI T-shirts. They split up as they pa.s.sed, funneling around Meredith and Lucy and Ruby like a river, catching together again once they'd gone by. "Mom?" Lucy said. "I've got a question." Lucy had been asking questions all day-from the bathroom habits of the dinosaurs featured in one of the museums to where the president stayed when all the tourists were invading his house. "How come you didn't marry anyone?"

Meredith stopped walking. She had explained the facts of life to Lucy at her own lab, showing her live sperm and a real egg and then the resulting embryo that turned into a human fetus. Taken in scientific terms, love had nothing to do with procreation. A father was nothing more than a donor, and that description suited Meredith just fine.

Ruby gave Meredith a pointed look over Lucy's head.

"Well. I didn't need to get married. I already had you you."

Lucy rolled her eyes. "Mom, a husband's good for more than just making a baby. Maybe if you had one you'd be at home more."

"You know why I work so hard . . ."

Lucy turned away. "It's because of me, right? No guy wanted to marry someone who already had a kid."

"Lucy, no. Hey." Meredith caught Lucy by the arm and tugged her toward the supporting wall. "Sweetheart," she began, and suddenly Lucy shrieked.

"Don't sit on him!" She backed away as pa.s.sersby turned to stare. "Mommy, what's wrong with that boy?"

She pointed, but there was no boy. "Lucy, what's the matter?"

Her eyes were wide and wild. "The boy sitting there, in the jail suit, like they wear on cartoons. And the woman who's bald, and the babies . . . they're skeletons, but they're still moving. Can't you see them?"

A man tapped Meredith on the shoulder. "Do you need help?"

"We're fine," she said brusquely, never turning away from Lucy. "Take a deep breath, and tell me what you see."

The man, intent on being a Good Samaritan, spoke again. "I'll get a guard," he said, and ran off. Meredith looked up long enough to watch him enter the building in front of them: the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

"They're the ones," Lucy whimpered, "who stayed behind."

The warrant to exhume remains from the Pike property was burning a hole in Eli's pocket, but he kept it there like a coal close to the heart, to remind him what he was doing and why. Frankie's DNA a.n.a.lysis had twisted his investigation. Presumably, if Gray Wolf was Cecelia Pike's natural father, then they were not having an affair. The medicine pouch and even the pipe might have been gifts. But Eli was still leaning toward Pike as the murderer. Gray Wolf had only just been released from prison, and immediately sought out the daughter he had never met. If Cecelia had been told of her true paternity, she might have kept it a secret from her husband- leading Spencer Pike to jump to the wrong conclusions when he found his wife keeping company with an Indian. Or maybe Pike had found out about his wife's ancestry-and afraid of what it might do to his career, had simply gotten rid of the evidence.

Either way, the Abenaki's complaint about a burial ground had been valid.

He found Az Thompson on the banks of the Winooski at dawn, pulling up muskies. The old man's thin shoulders moved beneath the fabric of his shirt as he reeled and cast. "My grandfather caught a sturgeon in Lake Champlain," Eli said, coming up behind him.

"They run in there," Az said.

"You ever get one?"

He shrugged.

"My mother used to tell me how he had to tie it to his canoe and let it pull him around until it got tired out and he could get to the shallows and club it."

"Patience is a h.e.l.l of a lure," Az agreed.

Eli watched him toss another fish into his pail. "I need your help. Turns out, Cecelia Pike was half-Abenaki."

Poking over a small container of bait, Az hesitated for only a moment. "Abenaki," he repeated softly. "Do you think the dawn's just as beautiful to the people who aren't named for it?"

Eli understood that the old man wasn't expecting an answer. "I know there should be some kind of-well, isn't there a ceremony? A place you can . . . move her and her daughter?"

Az looked up. "What's going to happen to the property?"

"I don't know," Eli admitted.

The answer seemed to satisfy the old man. "I'll take care of them," he said.

"Not those," Ross said to the clerk at the Gas & Grocery, a green-haired teen in overalls with so many piercings along her eyebrows and nostrils that he wondered if she took on water when she showered. "The Merits."

He paid for the cigarettes, watching the girl make change. Ross tore open the package to light a smoke and inadvertently knocked his book of matches onto the floor. It landed near the shoe of the man waiting in line behind him, who bent down to pick it up. "Thanks," Ross said, and then the man straightened. "Curtis?"

His former employer's lips thinned. "Ross."

"What are you you doing here?" doing here?"

"The same thing you are, I imagine. Looking for a ghost."

Ross's knees went weak. Rod van Vleet had indeed found himself someone to get rid of a spirit . . . and Ross had been the one to give him the lead. "Curtis, listen-"

"No, you listen, you son of a b.i.t.c.h. You signed a non-compete clause when you started working for us, and don't think I won't ride you all the way to court if you decide to show me up. You are an amateur amateur, Ross. You have no idea how to run a show like this."

The inside of Ross's mouth was as dry as dust. "This isn't a show."

"It will be." Curtis jabbed a finger into Ross's chest. "I'm going to find that ghost, and I'm going to get rid of it, and the whole d.a.m.n thing's going to win me my time slot." He shoved past Ross, thrust a dollar bill at the clerk, and took a stale bagel from a basket on the counter before slamming outside.

"He's got issues, huh?" the clerk said, and she clicked her tongue ring against the ledge of her bottom teeth.

"Yeah." Ross lit his cigarette, inhaled, and stepped onto the porch of the Gas & Grocery. It was so bright out he found himself squinting. From here, past the 1950s-style gas pumps and the antique Moxie sign, you could see the edge of the town green, with its requisite white church. You could just make out the hill that was the quarry and the valley that became Lake Champlain. This was the world Lia had known.

He would need mirrors, and fishing line. Speakers, and batteries, and Shelby's laptop. If Curtis wanted to oust a ghost, he'd give him one.

It just wouldn't be Lia.

Duley Wiggs had been twenty years old and a policeman for eight days when Cecelia Pike was murdered. Now, he was in the early stages of Alzheimer's and living in the Northeast Kingdom with his daughter Geraldine. "Some days are better than others," she told Eli, standing at the sliding-gla.s.s door that opened out to the patio where Duley sat in a wheelchair. "And then some days he can't figure out what you do with a spoon."

She looked, to Eli, like a teabag that had been used several times over, to the point where it had lost all flavor. "I appreciate your letting me talk to him."

"You can talk as much as you want," Geraldine said, shrugging. "But he confuses everything. I'd take whatever he tells you with a grain of salt the size of Lot's pillar."

Eli nodded and then followed her outside. "Daddy?" she said loudly, as if the old man was deaf too. "Daddy, there's a man here to see you. Detective Eli Rochert, from Comtosook. Remember when you used to live in Comtosook?"

"You know, I used to live in Comtosook," Duley said. He smiled, his face cracking like porcelain. He shook Eli's hand.

"Hey, Duley." Eli had worn his dress uniform, in the hopes of jogging the memories even more. "I have a few questions to ask you."

"Miranda, why don't you leave us two men alone?" Duley said.

"I'm Geraldine, Daddy." She sighed, and then retreated back to the house.

Eli sat down. "I was wondering if you might remember any murder cases from your time on the job in Comtosook."

"Murder? Oh, yeah, sure. We had a lot of murders. Well, no, it wasn't murders exactly. It was burglaries. Yes, I do recall those. A rash of them in the forties that turned out to be two teenagers, who fancied themselves to be Bonnie and Clyde."

"But the murder cases . . ."

"There was one," Duley said. "I don't suppose anyone could ever forget something like what happened to Cissy Pike. I knew her personally. We went to school together. She was younger than me by a couple of years. Pretty thing, and smart, too. Got it from her father. He was an astronaut."

"He was a professor, Duley."

"That's what I said!" The old man frowned, annoyed. "Listen, will you?"

"Yes. Right. Sorry. So . . . you were talking about her murder . . ."

"She was married to some bigwig at the university. Pike. Had a reputation around town for being a little holier-than-thou, if you get my meaning. But he treated Cissy like she was a queen. When we got there-to the house, after he called us-well, I'd never seen a grown man weeping like a baby." He shook his head. "And then to have him turn the gun on himself, right before our eyes . . ."

"Duley," Eli said gently, "Spencer Pike didn't commit suicide."

"Suicide? Oh, that's right, now. That was a hostage thing up at the post office in the late fifties." He rubbed his forehead. "Sometimes . . . sometimes it all just slides together up there."

"I understand." Eli twirled his hat on his hand. Maybe this hadn't been such a great idea.

"The medical examiner, he wanted to do an autopsy on the baby."