The Jodi Picoult Collection #2 Read online

  It didn’t necessarily mean that Pike had hanged his wife, but it at least meant that he’d handled that rope. Eli looked at the empty row on the chart. “What happened with the medicine pouch?”

  Frankie narrowed her eyes. “What happened is that your favorite DNA scientist nearly came here and committed a felony against the detective that begged for her help. You have no idea what a bitch this was, Eli. I would have scrapped it, if you didn’t have such a dearth of evidence to begin with.”

  “I’ll take you out to dinner.”

  “No, you’ll buy me a yacht,” Frankie said. “The first time I tested it I came up dry. I wound up taking a second cutting off the string that came in contact with the neck. I got two profiles—both similar, both consistent with a mixture.”

  “Meaning?”

  “That there was more than one or two types in most of the systems. Look at that line on the chart . . . see the spots where there are three numbers, instead of two?”

  “Yeah.” Eli frowned. “What’s up with that?”

  “You know how you get one allele from Mom and one from Dad? If you wind up with three or four, either you’re a freak, or there’s a mixture of DNA from at least two people. And given their genetic makeup, neither Cecelia Pike nor Gray Wolf can be excluded as cocontributors to this mixture.”

  Eli whistled softly. “But not Spencer Pike?”

  “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 damn 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.

  — 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 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 hell. You did not have to meet a person, flesh and blood, to 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 had 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 space 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 God. Not a kind God or a just God, 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 snatching 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 Pass, 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 God, nor were there any paranormal investigators with bells and whistles. The massive 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 grass. 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 antipsychotic 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