was your mother’s. I know she would have wanted you to have it. It was our engagement ring.”
My eyes involuntarily teared up. I took the ring out and showed it to Mikey. He swallowed hard a few times. “I don’t remember it.”
“Neither do I,” I said, not that most children pay attention to jewelry when they are very small.
“Put it on,” Marybeth urged.
I slipped it on to my finger. It was a tiny bit loose, but not so loose that it would fall off or I would lose it. I held my hand out. The diamond sparkled.
“It’s beautiful, Dad.”
He then opened the cardboard box and handed Mikey what looked like a big wad of newspapers. Mikey unwrapped whatever was inside the old newspapers—and found a statue of a bride and groom.
“That was on our wedding cake,” my father said. He was still as handsome as the photos of them when they were young. He hadn’t gained an ounce, and his eyes were still pale blue and striking, his hair black, with touches of gray now at the temples. His skin was unlined, except for the hints of crow’s feet around his eyes and deep smile lines near his nose.
“Thanks, Dad,” Mikey said. He turned the figurine over in his hands and then showed it to Marybeth.
Then my father handed me the cardboard box itself. I peered inside. “What are these?” I asked him.
“Cards and letters she kept—letters I sent. I guess letters from her mother and sister. Birthday cards. Valentine’s Day. I couldn’t stand the idea of reading them, so I stuck them in the box and forgot about them. You’re the one who wants…you know…to figure it out. I thought you should have them.”
My father never could bring himself to say, “Your mother was murdered.” He always said she “passed away,” conjuring images of a woman who went to bed one night and didn’t wake up. And I was the one obsessed with solving her murder. I had files of evidence and theories. My very job was, on some level, chosen because it would enable me to learn more about her death.
“Dad?” I asked, “How come you never gave me these before?” I could only imagine what clues the box might yield.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I kind of thought it was disrespectful to…you know…invade her privacy like that.”
I nodded.
“Why are you giving us all this stuff, Dad?” Mikey asked.
Dad sighed. “Well, with you two living on your own, I been thinkin’ that maybe it’s time I sold the house. I’ve got the condo in Florida and the place at the Jersey shore. Been thinking I might just get a condo around here. Don’t need a big old house anymore.”
“But…” I looked at him. I’d always imagined a someday when I would come home to the house I grew up in with my own children. I mean, I wasn’t anywhere close to having kids myself, but that didn’t preclude the idea from being there. My childhood home had a treehouse in the big oak tree out back, and Mikey and I used to play catch out in the yard. Like every boy, he dreamed of the majors, until, unlike every boy, he started dreaming of hot-wiring cars. “The house?” I swallowed hard.
“I’m just rattling around in there. I mean, there’s no sign on the front lawn yet, but I figured I better finally go through her things.”
I held the box on my lap and nodded. We drank some more, watched the TV set over the bar. When Lewis and I were ready to leave, I kissed my dad goodbye and gave Mikey a hug. Lewis didn’t say anything to me as we walked to where I had parked. When we got to my car, I unlocked it and put the box in the backseat. I climbed behind the wheel, and the first thing I noticed was the glint of the diamond in the sun as I gripped the wheel.
“You okay?” Lewis asked.
I nodded. “I think so. I just don’t know why, after over two decades, my father has suddenly decided to deal with her murder.”
“Maybe he finally needs some closure. Or maybe he can finally face looking through her things. You told me she was the love of his life.”
“She was.”
I looked over my shoulder at the box in the backseat. It felt sacred. I wondered, did that box of relics contain clues that would finally let me put her ghost to rest?
Chapter 3
That Friday at the lab, a television crew watched me analyze the tiny blood sample from the victim in the Marcus Hopkins case.
The crew was part of a news magazine following our investigation of the Hopkins case from start to finish—however it turned out. They filmed me looking through my microscope, and then they taped a mini interview in which I explained how a single blood sample was better than a fingerprint, and how it could unmistakably identify a killer.
When I lectured to college students on occasion, I liked to use the analogy of a bar code, and I used it again with the film crew. Every human being has a unique bar-coded label that is our DNA. The human bar code is different from a dolphin’s. And my personal bar code is different from Lewis’s, but it shares some properties with my brother’s, just like all dresses in a department store have bar codes defining them as “clothing.” But just as a BeBe dress is inherently different from a Dior gown, my bar code isn’t exactly the same as my brother’s, and it is completely unique, unless I happen to be an identical twin—which most of us are not.
After the film crew finished taping me, I went to visit Lewis, who was staring intently out the window of his office with an expression somewhere between angry and depressed.
“What’s got you so glum?”
“I just got a call from Larry Harmon in the district attorney’s office, who was calling after he got his ass reamed by the governor.”
“And?” I sat down.
“And they want us to try to get through the backlog of rape kits. You’ve heard of Scottie Hastings. He’s up for parole.”
“Shit.” Scottie Hastings was an acquaintance-rapist. However, he had a predilection for S&M that truly turned the women’s ordeals into far beyond whatever their worst nightmares were. However, he was also very rich, heir to an immense private fortune—part of the Hastings candy empire. Plus, he had an IQ as high as Lewis’s and read law books and texts on DNA evidence for fun. His dream team hired the most expensive jury analysts money could buy—and they were worth it. He got acquitted on nearly all counts in the only case that even made it past the grand jury. He was serving the end of a short sentence for sexual battery. No one had any doubt that as soon as he got out he would resume his sick hobbies.
“What does the D.A. want you to do?”
“Jailhouse informant says the guy brags he’s got tapes. That he didn’t only rape acquaintances. I guess raping people he knew got old. So he started raping and torturing strangers. Wore a mask. The D.A. is hoping he got sloppy somewhere and we can pin a rape on him. Preferably before he’s out on the streets. The D.A. hopes there’s a match in one of those kits.”
“But the backlog is immense.”
“Yeah,
