Gunther didn’t bother to disguise his sigh. “Obviously not, given who it matches. But he is probably a relative. If he somehow had been able to do it, the DNA would have been a perfect match. The entire sequence is as unique as a fingerprint. One in 244 males has this particular Y-STR.”
“So it’s a relative?” Whether it was nature or nurture, Paul didn’t know, but about half the people serving time had had at least one close relative who has also served time.
“At some point even two unrelated men who have the same Y-STR probably still share a common male ancestor. Until I have a complete DNA profile that I can match to what was found on the victim, I can only give you the numbers and the probabilities as to whether your suspect might have done it. You have to look at the totality of circumstances.”
Paul thanked Gunther and hung up. Right now, this particular Y-STR test was a noose that was closing. Only Paul couldn’t believe the identity of the person caught in it. Twenty years a cop, and he could still be surprised. He sighed. And he had liked this kid.
CHAPTER 29
NICK
FRIDAY
IF YOU WERE THE KILLER
When the phone on the wall rang, Nick’s English class was taking a pop quiz.
“Must it be right now?” Mr. Dill said after listening to whoever was on the other end. “He’s taking a test.” Everyone was watching the teacher, praying that he or she would be the one. But it was Nick who won the lottery. “You’re wanted down in the office,” Mr. Dill said, adding when he started to leave, “You might want to bring your things.”
It was even more of a surprise to find Detective Harriman waiting for him. He was dressed in a rumpled black suit and an even more rumpled trench coat. Nick hadn’t seen him since the evidence search four days ago.
“Hey, man. What are you doing here?”
The office lady, Mrs. Weissig, looked from Harriman to Nick and back again. She was making no pretense of not listening.
Harriman pulled him to one side and lowered his voice. “I got to thinking about what you told me Monday. I talked to the pathologist. The time you were driving down the street was the time he believes that girl was killed. It would be good for you to come down to the police station and complete a witness statement for me.”
“But I’m not a witness,” Nick said, wishing he were. “I didn’t see anything.”
Harriman shrugged. “You could have seen something without even being aware of it, or at least aware of its significance.”
What if he had seen a key piece of evidence? Nick imagined the headlines. Maybe he’d even get some kind of award.
“And sometimes not seeing something can be nearly as good as seeing something, because it can help us rule out certain scenarios. We need what you saw—or didn’t see—on the record. I already talked to your mom so she wouldn’t worry if you were home late.”
Nick signed himself out, writing “consulting with police” under Reason for Absence. If only there were someone else in the office besides Mrs. Weissig to notice him leaving with a homicide detective.
As they drove downtown, Harriman said, “So this happened in your neighborhood, Nick. If you were the killer, where would you hide the knife?”
Six or seven blocks away from his house wasn’t exactly his neighborhood. Nick didn’t know every bush and culvert the way he would on his own block. Still, Harriman was waiting for his answer. “Maybe try storm grates? Or people’s bushes?”
Harriman nodded, but they were pretty obvious answers. When Harriman was busy circumnavigating a slow-moving truck, Nick quickly texted Alexis and Ruby with one hand to let them know about the latest development. When they got downtown, Harriman parked in one of the spaces reserved for the police, and then they walked into headquarters together. Nick held himself tall as a few officers nodded at them.
Once on Harriman’s floor, the detective led him back past a warren of cubicles to a blank, impersonal room. Nick had been here once before, to pick out the photo of a person the police thought was a killer. The room held a table and two chairs, one on wheels and one without. Harriman took the one with wheels. Nick sat down on the other and put his backpack on the floor between his feet.
Two brown cardboard boxes, about the size of small pizza boxes, lay on the far corner of the otherwise empty table. Each was printed with the word Evidence in big black letters. The preprinted lines had been filled with scribbled notes Nick couldn’t make out.
“Are you chewing gum?” Harriman pointed at the wastebasket. “Because you can’t in here.”
“I’m not.” Gum made Nick think of Ruby and her obsession with unusual gum flavors.
“Before we start, Nick, are you hungry? Thirsty?”
“I’m good.” It was weird to have Harriman being so solicitous, but it must be because Nick was key to breaking this thing open.
Harriman looked at the phone in Nick’s hand. “Would you mind turning that off while we’re talking?”
“Sure.” Nick set it to vibrate and slipped it into his pocket.
“So if you were this guy, how would you have killed her?”
Nick grimaced. “I don’t know.”
“Come on. Help me out. I’ve been thinking about it so much I can’t even think straight. How do you think you would do it?”
It was kind of flattering that the detective was looking to him for help. Nick tried to think. “I guess I would go in low.” He held out his hand, curled around an imaginary knife, and demonstrated. “Into her belly. And then up. So you could get past the rib cage.”
“Remember, Nick, you’re holding a knife. So why is she going to be standing facing you? No, she’s going to be running away, isn’t she?”
Nick was letting the detective down. “I don’t know. Then in the back, I guess.”
Harriman reached over, picked up the top evidence box and opened it. Inside was a clear plastic envelope, and inside that was a knife.
He slid the box toward Nick. “What could you tell me about a knife like this?”
CHAPTER 30
NICK
FRIDAY
GOOD FOR STABBING
Nick’s pulse sped up. He reached out a hand, pulled it back. “Oh, dude. Did you find that at the crime scene?” He didn’t see any blood on the blade, but the killer could have plunged it into the earth or wiped it clean on his pants.
Harriman tilted his head and just looked at him from under his shaggy eyebrows. Nick realized he probably wasn’t allowed to ask.
He leaned over it. “I’ve got a knife a lot like this. A lot.” It looked like the combat knife Jon had told him not to carry.
“You do?”
“You know. For SAR. There’s a million things you need a knife for out in the field. You might need to cut someone’s clothes to get at an injury, or saw a branch to make a travois, or cut a rope or something.”
“Do you think this knife would be good for stabbing? Like, do you think someone could have used a knife like this to kill that girl?”
Nick regarded it. “Maybe. But I think that jagged edge on the back of the knife—the saw back—would make it hard to pull it out.” In history, they had just seen the movie All Quiet on the Western Front, which he thought might have been based on a book. In the movie, an officer had lectured a recruit carving notches into a knife blade, telling him it would make it harder to pull back out of the enemy.
Harriman was silent. Nick wondered if the movie had been wrong. He decided not to bring up the knife in his pocket. He didn’t want to get in trouble for bringing it to school.
Finally, Harriman said, “Why do you think this girl was killed?”
Nick tried to think of why. “Did they steal anything from her?”
“Not that we know of.”
“Did they rape her?”
“No. So why do you think they did it?”
“I don’t know. They’d have to be sick.” He imagined how awful it had been for that girl. Lucy. Running in the dark. Being stabbed. Being hit in th
e head. Being dragged. Being discarded like a piece of trash. Being left all alone as your life ebbed away.
“I wonder what you would say if I told you something, Nick.” Harriman was looking straight at him.
“Told me what?”
“That knife doesn’t just look like your knife.” He paused. “It is your knife.”
“Wait. Why do you have my knife?” Understanding dawned. “Do you think I’m the killer?” Nick tried to laugh, but it came out sounding broken. This couldn’t be happening to him. “I don’t even know that girl. I was never anywhere near her.”
“But you were, weren’t you, Nick? You told me yourself that you drove down that street at the time she was attacked. And yet you claimed you didn’t see her.”
Harriman was suddenly acting like they were on opposite sides. But how was that possible? Nick was in SAR. He was going to join the army. He was one of the good guys. And Harriman knew that. His scalp prickled. “Because I didn’t. How can you even think that? Why would I have told you that if I killed her?” His mouth was suddenly dry, and he forced himself to swallow.
Harriman seemed unconcerned. “Because you knew it would turn up. You knew we would look at footage from nearby security cams, probably see that you had been there. That forced you to tell the truth.”
“So if I’m honest, if I tell you the truth, then that’s just more proof that I’m lying?” He could feel his pulse in his temples and at the base of his throat, as if he had just run a mile. His phone buzzed in his pocket, but he ignored it.
Harriman kept on as if Nick hadn’t spoken. “You drove down the street and what—you saw her walking? We know she’d been drinking and she was upset. Did you offer her a ride? Because it was cold? Because you saw her crying? Because you were worried about a girl walking alone at night?” He sighed. “And then something went wrong.”
“I didn’t see her, I swear it.” Was the detective even listening? “I didn’t see her, and I didn’t hurt her.”
Harriman’s mouth twisted, and he heaved a sigh. “Everyone snaps. Everyone has a breaking point. You were coming home from SAR, all keyed up, you had your knife with you, you saw this girl, you offered her a ride, and she said no. Or she said yes and changed her mind.”
With his deep voice and wrinkled face, Harriman reminded Nick of a pit bull. Weren’t those the dogs that grabbed on and didn’t let go?
“It wasn’t me! I swear it! Bring me a stack of Bibles.” This was like those nightmares where, whatever you did, however hard you tried to escape from the killer or the kidnapper or the rising floodwaters, it failed. Tears pricked his eyes, but he blinked them back.
Harriman heaved a sigh. “Look, I like you, Nick, I really do. If you tell me the truth, then I can try to help you. You’re a minor. You may need counseling, maybe medication. Believe me, you don’t want to get sentenced to adult prison. But I can’t help you if you don’t tell the truth.”
“If you really liked me, you would believe me.”
The words just seemed to bounce off the detective. “We have your computer. We know you searched for information about Lucy Hayes online, over and over. Trying to figure out what we knew. Well, I’ll tell you what we know, Nick. We know now that you did it.” Harriman’s sad hound-dog eyes never left his face.
“How did you get my computer?”
“We searched your room.”
Nick froze. What had they found? Did his mom know?
CHAPTER 31
NICK
FRIDAY
YOU’RE NOT FOOLING US
“I’m going to give you a moment to think about things.” Harriman tapped the table with one hand. “And when I come back, you need to tell me what really happened that night.”
Not trusting his voice, Nick nodded. He didn’t know what to do, what to think. Harriman believes I did it. He knew Nick, had talked to him a half-dozen times, easy, and he still thought Nick was a killer. Even though there was an explanation for everything the detective had talked about, Nick hadn’t done a very good job of making things clear. He needed to calm down. To stop freaking out about whether the police had told his mom about his stash of girly magazines.
When Harriman reappeared, Nick wasn’t sure how much time had passed. There were two other people with him. One was a tall man with an athletic build. He looked Italian. The other was a young dark-haired woman towing an office chair.
“Rich Meeker,” the guy said with a curt nod. “Homicide.” He looked at Nick as if he were something he had scraped from the bottom of his shoe, then he leaned against the wall next to the door and crossed his arms.
In contrast, the woman smiled as she stretched out a slender hand. “Hello, Nick, I’m Officer Rebecca Hixon. But you can call me Rebecca.” Something about her was familiar, but Nick couldn’t quite place her.
He was not going to call her anything. When he shook her hand, he held it as lightly as possible. What if he squeezed too hard and she decided it meant he was aggressive?
She sat down in her chair. “Detective Harriman asked me to join you because he thinks he might have been overreacting a little earlier. He realized he needed another opinion. A more neutral one. He’s asked me to help him figure out the truth.”
Harriman looked down at the carpet and nodded. Maybe he had gotten in trouble for how he had treated Nick. Maybe someone on the other side of the camera Nick had spotted in the corner had told Harriman that he was crazy, that there was no way Nick could have done it.
“Okay,” Nick said. He crossed his arms, then uncrossed them, worried he looked defensive.
“Let me start by asking—did you know Lucy Hayes?” she asked.
“No. He already asked me that.”
“Have you ever seen her before?”
“No.” But she had lived in his neighborhood. What if Nick was lying and didn’t even know it? “If I have seen her, like in a crowd or something, I don’t remember it. I didn’t recognize her photo when he showed it to me.”
She nodded. “Now, this girl you may or may not have known—”
Nick interrupted. “I already said. I don’t know her.”
Her gaze flashed over to Harriman, her face unreadable. “Anyway, what I’ve heard is that she had a thing for younger guys.”
Was that true? And even if it was, would a girl like that go for someone like him? “Oh, right. Like a girl that pretty is going to be interested in me.” Couldn’t they see how ridiculous the idea was?
“We’ve also heard that she liked to tease men,” Harriman said.
The lady cop nodded. “She probably went too far this time, flaunting herself, and just set some poor guy off.”
“I’ve heard this girl was a fighter,” Harriman said. “Take what happened in the bar earlier that night. She attacked some poor guy she was convinced was her boyfriend, as well as this completely innocent girl.”
Nick stayed silent. Were they telling the truth about what had happened that night—at least as far as Lucy Hayes was concerned?
“I remember what it was like when I was sixteen.” Harriman looked up at the white tile ceiling. “Women and girls all around you, but you weren’t allowed to touch them.”
“Have you ever had a girlfriend, Nick?” the lady cop asked. She rolled closer. Too close.
He wanted to lie, but did they have ways to check? “Not really. No.” It wasn’t for lack of trying. He had kissed a girl and maybe done a little more than that playing Seven Minutes in Heaven in the coat closet at Trevor Kennedy’s party that one time last spring. But afterward, Lark Munroe wouldn’t even look at him or answer his texts, let alone talk to him.
“Did something happen that night and maybe get out of hand?” she asked softly.
Nick had known there was something about the lady cop, and now he figured out what it was. She was slender, a couple of inches shorter than him, with shoulder-length brown hair framing a heart-shaped face.
It was no accident that she was in this room. She was the same general physical ty
pe as Lucy Hayes. Did they think he would snap and stab her, too, snatch the pen tucked behind her ear and attack?
“I’m not going to dislike you.” She cocked her head. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”
Like he cared what she thought of him! Although part of him did care, or at least care what Harriman thought. “Nothing happened. I just drove down that block—that’s all! On my way home from SAR!”
“Nick, come on, you’re just fooling yourself.” Her voice was soft, reasonable. “And I don’t think that’s working. Because you’re not fooling us, that’s for sure.” She pulled the second evidence box over and opened it. Inside was a stack of pages. “We also have your drawings. They reveal a lot about you. About the way you think.”
Nick’s face flamed. It was as embarrassing as having someone walk in while you were using the bathroom. “Where did you get those?” he demanded.
“From your locker and your house.”
“You had no right to do that!” Did Mrs. Weissig know? Because if she did, soon everyone else at school would.
“I’m afraid we do, Nick. We got permission to search from both your mom and your school.” She picked up the top drawing and turned it toward Nick. It showed a woman, limp in a muscular man’s arms, her head hanging back. “Look at this girl.” She tapped her finger. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“No, she’s not. He’s carrying her because she’s hurt.” It was too embarrassing to say it was a fantasy Nick often had, a fantasy of being a hero. Of being big instead of scrawny.
“Is that how you carried Lucy? After you stabbed her?”
“What? No!”
“Then how do you explain this?” It was the drawing he had made Wednesday night in SAR. “A guy dragging a woman’s body from under the arms. With blood dripping from the back.”
“I was thinking about it. That’s all. Trying to figure out what happened.”