bathroom floor. We have a good idea about her DNA, mainly important so we can exclude her. Or identify her eventually.” As if there’s no doubt she’s dead. “Then there’s a different profile from the skin cells, the sand and glue recovered from the broken window in her laundry room. And the burglar-alarm keypad. The dirty T-shirt from the laundry basket. All three have her DNA, unsurprisingly. But also a profile from someone else.”
“What about Madelisa Dooley’s shorts?” Scarpetta asks. “The blood on them.”
Aaron says, “Same donor as the three I just mentioned.”
“The killer, we think,” Lucy says. “Or whoever broke into her house.”
“I think we should be careful saying that,” Scarpetta says. “There have been other people in her house, including her husband.”
“The DNA’s not his, and we’ll tell you why in a minute,” Lucy says.
Aaron says, “What we did was your idea — going beyond the usual profile matching in CODIS and opening up the search by using the DNAPrint technology platform you and Lucy have discussed — an analysis that uses paternity and sibship indices to arrive at a probability of relatedness.”
“First question,” Lucy says. “Why would her ex-husband leave blood on Madelisa Dooley’s shorts?”
“Okay,” Scarpetta agrees. “That’s a good point. And if the blood is the Sandman’s — and to be clear, I’m going to call him that — then he must have injured himself somehow.”
“We might know how,” Lucy says. “And we’re beginning to have an idea of who.”
Aaron picks up a file folder. He takes out a report and hands it to Scarpetta.
“The unidentified little boy and the Sandman,” Aaron says. “Knowing that each parent donates approximately half of his or her genetic material to their child, we can have an expectation that samples from a parent and a child are going to indicate their relationship. And in the case of the Sandman and the unidentified little boy, a very close family relationship is implicated.”
Scarpetta looks at the test results. “I’ll say the same thing I did when we got the fingerprint match,” she says. “Are we sure there’s no mistake? No contamination, for example?”
“We don’t make mistakes. Not like that,” Lucy says. “You get only one and you’re done.”
“The boy is the Sandman’s son?” Scarpetta wants to make sure.
“I’d like references and investigation, but I certainly suspect it,” Aaron replies. “At the very least, as I said, they’re closely related.”
“You mentioned his being injured,” Lucy says. “The Sandman’s blood on the shorts? It’s also on the broken crown you found in Lydia Webster’s bathtub.”
“Maybe she bit him,” Scarpetta says.
“A very good chance,” Lucy says.
“Let’s get back to the little boy,” Scarpetta says. “If we’re implying the Sandman killed his own son, I’m not sure what I think. The abuse went on for a while. The child was being looked after by someone when the Sandman was in Iraq, in Italy, if the information we have is correct.”
“Well, I can tell you about the kid’s mother,” Lucy says. “We do have that reference, unless the DNA on Shandy Snook’s underwear came from somebody else. Maybe makes more sense why she was so hot to tour the morgue and look at his body and find out whatever you might know about the case. Find out what Marino might know.”
“Have you told the police?” Scarpetta says. “And should I ask how you got her underwear?”
Aaron smiles. Scarpetta realizes why the question could be construed as funny.
“Marino,” Lucy says. “And it’s sure as hell not his DNA. We have his profile for exclusionary purposes just like we have yours, mine. The police will need more to go on than underwear found on Marino’s floor, but even if she didn’t beat her son to death, she has to know who did.”
“I have to wonder if Marino did,” Scarpetta says.
“You saw the recording of him in the morgue with her,” Lucy says. “Sure didn’t appear to me he had any idea. Besides, he may be a lot of things, but he would never protect someone who did something like that to a kid.”
There are other matches. All pointing to the Sandman and revealing another stunning fact: The two sources of DNA recovered from Drew Martin’s fingernail scrapings are from the Sandman and someone else who is a close relative.
“Male,” Aaron explains. “According to the Italian analysis, ninety-nine percent European. Maybe another son? Maybe the Sandman’s brother? Maybe his father?”
“Three sources of DNA from one family?” Scarpetta is amazed.
“And another crime,” Lucy says.
Aaron hands Scarpetta another report and says, “A match with a biological sample left in an unsolved crime no one has connected to Drew or to Lydia or to any other case.”
“From a rape in 2004,” Lucy says. “Apparently, the guy who broke into Lydia Webster’s house and probably also murdered Drew Martin raped a tourist in Venice three years ago. The DNA profile from that evidence is in the Italian database, which we decided to search. Of course, there’s no suspect to match, because to date they can’t enter the profiles of known individuals. In other words, we don’t have a name. Just semen.”
“By all means, protect the privacy of rapists and murderers,” Aaron says.
“News accounts are sketchy,” Lucy says. “Twenty-year-old student in Venice, a summer program to study art. Out at a bar late at night, walked back to her hotel near the Bridge of Sighs and was attacked. So far, that’s all we know about the case. But since it was worked by the Carabinieri, your friend the captain should have access to the information.”
“Possibly the Sandman’s first violent crime,” Scarpetta says. “At least as a civilian. Assuming it’s true this guy served in Iraq. Frequently, a first-time offender leaves evidence and then gets smart. This guy’s smart, and his MO has evolved considerably. He’s careful about evidence, is ritualistic and much more violent, and after he finishes, his victims aren’t alive to tell. Thankfully, it didn’t occur to him he might leave his DNA in surgical glue. Does Benton know about this?” she asks.
“Yes. And he knows we’ve got a problem with your gold coin,” Lucy says, just getting to that. “DNA on it and the chain are the Sandman’s, too, and that places him behind your house the night you and Bull found the gun in the alley. I might ask what that implies about Bull. The necklace could have been his. I’ve asked that question before. We don’t have Bull’s DNA to tell us.”
“That he’s the Sandman?” Scarpetta doesn’t believe it for a minute.
“I’m just saying we don’t have his DNA,” Lucy says.
“And the gun? The cartridges?” Scarpetta asks.
“Not the Sandman’s DNA on any of those swabs,” Lucy says. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. His DNA on a necklace is one thing. Leaving it on a gun is another, because he might have gotten the gun from someone else. He might have been careful leaving his DNA or his fingerprints on it because of the story he gave — that the asshole who threatened you is the one who dropped it, when we can’t swear that guy ever came near your house. It’s Bull’s word, because it was unwitnessed.”
“You’re suggesting that Bull — assuming he’s the Sandman, which I don’t believe — might have deliberately, quote, lost the gun. But didn’t mean to lose his necklace,” Scarpetta says. “That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for two reasons. Why did his necklace break? And secondly, if he didn’t know it broke and fell off until he found it, why would he draw my attention to it? Why not just tuck it into his pocket? I could add the third rather strange thought of him having a gold coin necklace to begin with that is reminiscent of the silver-dollar necklace Shandy gave Marino.”
“It sure would be nice to get Bull’s prints,” Aaron says. “It sure would be nice to swab him. It sure bothers me he seems to have disappeared.”
“That’s it for now,” Lucy says. “We’re working on cloning him. Going to create a copy of him in a petri dish so we know who it is,” she says drolly.
“I remember not so long ago waiting weeks, months for DNA.” Scarpetta rues those days, painfully reminded of how many people were brutalized and murdered because a violent offender couldn’t be identified quickly.
“Ceiling’s at three thousand feet, vis three miles,” Lucy says to Scarpetta. “We’re VFR. I’ll meet you at the airport.”
Inside Marino’s office, his bowling trophies are silhouetted against the old plaster wall, and there is an emptiness in the air.
