“She’s covering her ass,” Ollie said.
“But is it that simple?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
Unsure, I thought for a moment. Didn’t help. “Susan Forex and Phoenix Miller both tried to protect Annaliese Ruben,” I said.
“Must admire her mothering skills.” Ryan’s tone was acid.
“Even hookers hate baby killers.” Ollie’s way of agreeing.
“So why help her?” I asked.
No one had an answer to that.
“Can you really get a search warrant for Forex’s house?” I asked Ollie.
He shook his head. “Slim chance. I’d have to convince a judge that I think Ruben is there, that she’s the subject of a felony investigation in Quebec, that she’s on the run, and that we don’t have time to get an arrest warrant from Quebec.”
Phoenix Miller’s home sweet home was a two-story L-shaped affair with outdoor walkways accessing maybe thirty rooms. An enormous sign proclaimed Paradise Resort Motel in mile-high letters. A flashing arrow pointed would-be guests to a covered portico. Below it, the office door was flanked by planters luxuriant with dead vegetation.
Clearly, the place offered neither of the delights promised by its name. Total Dump would have been a more appropriate moniker. Perhaps Last Resort.
A few cars and pickups occupied a swath of concrete fronting the building. Off to the left, beyond them, were several campers and an eighteen-wheeler.
Most motels, you’d hesitate before staging a stealth strike at one in the morning. The Paradise Resort was not one of them. Office dark. No security. Not a soul in sight.
We fell silent as Ollie cruised the L. Room fourteen was at the end of the arm tangential to 111th, its entrance obscured by an iron and concrete staircase shooting to the upper level. No vehicle waited out front or at the adjacent unit.
Ollie cut the headlights, pulled into the slot facing room thirteen, and killed the engine. We got out and quietly closed our doors.
Music floated from a Mexican restaurant across a small service road fifty yards beyond the motel. Traffic whooshed in a steady stream over on Highway 16.
We approached Phoenix Miller’s room in single file. Ollie positioned himself to one side of the door. Ryan took the other, gesturing me behind him with one hand.
I noted no yellow glow beneath the door or rimming the drapes, no flickering blue radiance from a TV.
Ollie knuckle-rapped to announce our presence.
No answer.
He knocked again.
Not a sound.
He pounded with the heel of one hand.
Nothing but mariachis and the whoosh of cars and trucks.
Ryan stepped forward and inserted the key.
THE ROOM WAS DARK AND STILL.
We all paused, listening for sounds of a human presence. My nose took in disinfectant and the Meadows & Rain Febreze I use at home.
Beside me, I felt Ryan palm the wall. A switch clicked, then sallow yellow light flowed from an overhead globe double-tasking as a crypt for dead insects.
Unit fourteen was approximately the size of my bathtub. The walls were peach, the thin brown carpet stained and cigarette-burned.
My eyes circled clockwise. To our left, a battered bureau held a clunker TV with a foil-wrapped antenna. Beyond the bureau, a metal rack housed a paltry collection of garments, some on hangers, some stacked in piles on shelving below.
The bed sat opposite the door, neatly made with a red-and-white floral spread that looked like a dorm-room special from Target. A square red throw was carefully positioned on each pillow.
Beside the bed, in the room’s far left corner, a red plastic lamp occupied a white plastic nightstand. Above the bed’s wall-bolted headboard hung a cheaply framed print of a bowl of red tulips.
Ahead and to the right was a closed door I assumed led to a bath. Beside the door, in the room’s far right corner, a built-in cabinet held a microwave oven, a hot plate, and a mini-fridge.
A white plastic kitchenette set occupied the space below the room’s only window, to the right of the entrance. Miniature cacti filled a small ceramic pot at the table’s center. A red cushion covered the seat of each chair.
I felt hollow inside. Though the furnishings were cheap and shabby, it was clear that a caring hand had tried its best. The bedspread and matching pillows. The lamp. The plastic furniture. The plants. The cushions. Though barely making enough to survive, Phoenix Miller had worked to brighten the depressing little space.
“Annaliese Ruben?” Ollie called out.
Nothing.
“Ms. Ruben?”
No response. No sounds of movement.
As at the main entrance, Ryan and I moved to one side of the closed door, Ollie to the other. Ollie reached out and turned the knob.
The bathroom was impossibly small, the fixtures crammed into a space little bigger than a locker. Fully open, the door blocked access to the tub.
Cosmetics and body lotions lined the back of the toilet. A pink nightshirt hung from a hook beside it. Red and white towels filled a bar on one wall, carefully draped and alternating by color. The plastic shower curtain was, of course, red. The tile was spotless, the mirror and sink immaculate.
“Tidy lady.” Ollie’s words were edged with condescension.
“She’s doing what she can to make this a home,” I said.
“Tough job in this shithole.”
Ollie opened the medicine cabinet and started poking through the contents. The move annoyed me. “We came to find Annaliese Ruben. She’s not here. Let’s go.”
“You in a hurry?”
“Miller is not our concern. There’s no reason to invade her privacy.”
Ollie shot me an über-patient smile but closed the cabinet.
As I rejoined Ryan in the main room, I heard the sound of the shower curtain being pushed to one side.
“Now what?” I asked when Ollie reappeared.
He checked his mobile, apparently found nothing of interest. “Now we get some sleep. In the meantime, I’ll put eyes on this place and on Miller.”
“Someone should canvass out here tomorrow, talk to the owner,” Ryan said.
“Hadn’t thought of that, Detective.”
Ryan’s jaw did that clampy thing, but he said nothing.
Ollie crossed to the makeshift closet, flipped through the hanging clothes, toed the stacks, then knelt on one knee to peer under the bed.
“Check the microwave?” Ryan tossed the key not so gently onto the bureau.
Ollie ignored the sarcasm. “Let’s roll.”
We all trooped out.
* * *
At the Best Western, Ryan registered and disappeared.
“I’ll walk you to your room,” Ollie said when I had my key.
“No, thanks.”
“I insist.”
“I decline.”
“It’s a tough town.”
“I’m inside a hotel.”
Ollie raised the handle on my carry-on. I reached for it. He swiveled the thing into pulling position and gestured for me to proceed.
Seething, I set out across the acre of lobby. Ollie followed, wheels clicking on the tile. I unlocked my door in icy silence.
“Let’s shoot for eight tomorrow,” Ollie said.
“Phone if anything breaks.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Ollie made no move to release my suitcase. Yanking the handle from his grasp, I took two steps backward and slammed the door.
The room was typical North American Motel. King bed, dresser, desk, upholstered chair. The drapes and bedding featured appropriately paired selections from the green quadrant of the color wheel. A framed print was bolted to each of the walls. Though the decor would never inspire coverage in Architectural Digest, the place was light-years upmarket from the Paradise Resort.
Not that it mattered. Face wash. Swipe at the teeth. I was out.
Minutes later, the Irish National Anthem blasted me awak
e. I shot a hand toward the nightstand. As my iPhone hit the carpet, the boys kept singing.
Groping in the dark, I found the phone and clicked on.
“Brennan.” Trying to sound alert. Pointless. It was the middle of the night.
“I hope I didn’t wake you?” The caller was female and speaking French. “It’s Simone Annoux.”
My semiconscious mind fumbled with the name. Came up blank.
“In the DNA section.”
“Of course, Simone. What’s up?”
As I switched the call to speaker, I noticed that the digits said six-twenty. Eight-twenty in Montreal. I’d been asleep almost four hours. I lay back and placed the phone on my chest.
“You submitted samples from an infant death case in Saint-Hyacinthe? When we talked, you mentioned that identity was an issue?”
Simone is a tiny woman with carrot hair, thick glasses, and the assertiveness of an earwig. Her excessive timidity results in the phrasing of most of her comments as questions. Drives me nuts.
“Yes.”
“We tried something a bit controversial. I hope that’s all right?”
“Controversial?”
“I thought you would want to know?”
“What did you try, Simone?”
“Are you familiar with BGA?”
“Ben Gurion Airport?”
“Biogeographical ancestry.”
“Tony Frudakis,” I said.
“Yes. And others. Though I believe Dr. Frudakis has abandoned this avenue of research?”
In the early 2000s, women were being murdered in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Based on an FBI profile and one eyewitness statement, investigators sought a young white male as the serial killer. With no success. Frustrated, they turned to a molecular biologist named Tony Frudakis.
At that time DNA from a crime scene or victim could be used only for comparison to samples in CODIS, the Combined DNA Index System, a database containing approximately five million profiles. If investigators had a specimen but no suspect, they could run it through the database to see if it matched a sample on file.
While CODIS is good at linking unknown suspects to individuals already entered due to criminal activity, it’s useless for predicting ancestry or physical characteristics. And that’s no accident. When the National DNA Advisory Board selected the gene markers—the DNA sequences having known locations on chromosomes—for use in CODIS, they deliberately excluded those associated with physical characteristics or geographic origins. Couldn’t risk offending any ethnic group. No comment on that political reasoning.
DNAWitness, the test Frudakis developed and used in the Baton Rouge case, employed a set of markers selected precisely because they did disclose information about physical traits. Some were found primarily in people with Indo-European roots, others mainly in people of African, Native American, or South Asian heritage.
Frudakis told the Louisiana Multi-Agency Homicide Task Force that the perp they were seeking was 85 percent sub-Saharan African and 15 percent Native American. The Baton Rouge serial killer, linked by DNA to seven victims, turned out to be a thirty-four-year-old black man named Derrick Todd Lee.
“—distribution of these genetic markers has been associated with broad geographic regions, resulting in the recognition of BGA and the use of the markers as a major genetic component in the dissection of race. But you have to keep in mind that the diversity of these markers was complicated over the eons by historic events—population migrations, for example.”
While I’d been thinking about Frudakis, Annoux had gone into lecture mode. I heard no question marks when she talked science.
“People move around,” I said.
“Yes. Paleoanthropologists believe all modern humans are descended from populations that migrated out of Africa some two hundred thousand years ago. First they settled in the Fertile Crescent. Gradually, groups splintered off in every direction; eventually, some crossed the Bering Strait to America. With distance came reproductive isolation resulting in divergence of the gene pools.”
“What does this have to do with the baby?” It was way too early for discourse on evolutionary molecular biology.
“BGA markers can be used to determine what percentage of an individual’s DNA is shared with Africans, Europeans, Asians, or Native Americans. The technique has been used in a number of high-profile criminal investigations. Shall I explain the process?”
“Keep it short.”
“The test examines for the presence of one hundred and seventy-five SNPs called AIMs, or ancestry informative markers. Are you with me?”
An SNP, or single nucleotide polymorphism, is a DNA sequence variation in which a single base varies between members of a species or between paired chromosomes in an individual. In mega-oversimplified terms, it means there are multiple forms of a “gene.” Millions of SNPs have been cataloged in the human genome. Some are responsible for diseases, such as sickle cell. Others are normal variations.
“Yes,” I said.
“Compared to other animal species, the genetic diversity exhibited by Homo sapiens is minuscule. That’s because our common links are so recent. We’re ninety-nine-point-nine percent identical at the level of our DNA. It’s that little bitty one tenth of one percent that makes us different.”
I heard a series of beeps, checked the phone screen. Ollie. Already? Though curious, I hit ignore.
“—according to Frudakis, and others agree, about one percent of that one tenth of one percent differs as a function of our history. His method mines that point-oh-oh-one percent to find distinctive differences that determine genetic ancestry. Several companies are now doing this type of analysis, some for genealogical purposes, others to aid in forensic investigations. Sorenson Forensics has a program called LEADSM. I have a very dear friend there who—”
“The Saint-Hyacinthe baby’s genetic markers were compared to those found in specific reference populations?” I was eager to finish the call and get back to Ollie.
“Yes? The results suggest she is seventy-two percent indigenous American and twenty-eight percent Western European.”
That got my attention. “The baby’s parents are aboriginal?”
“One or the other might have been categorized as such. Race is such a complex—”
“Thank you so much. This is really very helpful. Sorry, but I have to take another call.”
I disconnected and dialed Ollie. He answered on the first ring.
“It’s Brennan. You phoned?”
“Good morning, starshine. Sorry to wake you.”
“I was up.” I told him about Annoux’s report. “The approach is a bit controversial.”
“Why’s that?”
“Racial DNA profiling?”
“Right. So Ruben is Indian.”
“Native American. She or the child’s father.”
“Or both.”
“Yes. Why did you try to reach me?”
“I have good news.”
“You netted Ruben?”
“Not that good. I just got a call from Susan Forex. She’s unhappy with her latest boarder and wants her gone.”
“Why not simply kick her out?”
“The lady refuses to budge.”
The implication struck home.
“Better than a warrant,” I said.
“Better than a warrant,” Ollie agreed.
IN THE LATE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, SPURRED BY COMPETITION in the fur trade, the Hudson’s Bay Company expanded westward into the Canadian interior, establishing a string of posts along the major rivers. One was built on the North Saskatchewan, at what is now Edmonton. E-town was also a player in the Klondike gold rush of the 1890s, and in the post–World War II oil boom.
Today Edmonton is the capital of Alberta province. She has an impressive legislature building, a university, a conservatory, a living-history museum, and a gazillion parks. These attractions draw thousands of tourists. But nothing can compete with the mall.
Encompassing over six millio
n square feet and containing more than eight hundred stores, West Edmonton Mall is North America’s largest and the fifth largest in the world. And the big gorilla isn’t all about shopping. The complex also has a giant water park, a man-made lake, a skating rink, two mini-golf courses, twenty-one movie theaters, a casino, an amusement park, and countless other delights.
Susan Forex lived a stone’s throw away. A very short throw.
Ollie, Ryan, and I pulled into the neighborhood at seven-forty-five. Ollie had purchased coffee and donuts, and we’d breakfasted in the car. I dislike jelly-filled, which most of them were, so I shamelessly grabbed all three chocolate-glazed.
High on sugar and caffeine, I checked out the ’hood. The houses were closely packed and all of a type, some fronted by large porches, others having little more than a stoop. Each had a flower bed or shrubbery hiding the foundation and a small patch of lawn running to the sidewalk. Here and there a bicycle or pull toy lay abandoned in the grass.
Ollie slid to the curb in front of a two-story number with gray siding and black shutters. The front steps were on the left. A covered porch ran sideways, across the front.
“Very Brady Bunch.”
I couldn’t disagree with Ollie’s take. The setting wasn’t what I’d expected.
“Pretty lady likes to get away from the job,” Ollie added.
“Most of us do,” Ryan said.
“Bet the neighbors are clueless about her line of work.”
“You talk cop shop over the backyard fence?” Ryan’s tone was totally flat.
“I live in a condo.”
“You get my meaning.”
“My job isn’t sucking off johns in an alley.”
“Mon Dieu, we’re judgmental.”
“My bad. Forex probably organizes the annual homeowners’ picnic.”
“She might.”
“Only if it’s held during daylight.”
“The beauty of self-employment. You control your own hours.”
“Nice image. Forex and the prossie posse serving up coleslaw.”
I’d had my fill of the hostile repartee. “What do you know about this boarder?”
“Her name’s Aurora Devereaux. She’s new in town and so far has managed to stay under the radar.”