Sara knocked.
“Come in,” Harvey called out.
Sara opened the door and stepped into the office. Again, she was greeted with Harvey’s tired smile. “Hi, Sara. Hear anything from Lieutenant Bernstein?”
“Not yet. I got your message on my machine.”
“Good.”
“I guess you were calling about Bruce’s package.”
He nodded. “Jen told you about it?”
“I spoke to her an hour ago,” she replied. “Did you get it yet?”
“It came in this morning.”
“And?”
Harvey took a deep breath. “I don’t know yet, Sara. I’ve been going through the files for hours now and I still don’t know what to think.”
“Can I take a look?”
“Be my guest.” He handed her a stack of files from the top of his desk. “These are all the files from Bruce’s package. Six of them.”
“The six cured patients?”
He nodded. “There were also six containers, each containing two vials of a patient’s blood. One vial was labeled A, the other B.”
Her eyes scanned Trian’s file and then Whitherson’s. “What’s this last entry mean?”
“You mean that ‘DNA. A versus B’? I found that puzzling too.”
She flipped to the back of all six files. “It’s the last entry in all six files.”
“I know. I am not sure of the significance. It is all very strange. I assume the A and B stand for the blood vials. But I can’t imagine what DNA has to do with them.”
Sara sat back and closed her eyes. DNA. A memory came to her like a deep, hard punch. She sprang forward suddenly, nearly shouting. “Do you remember the Betsy Jackson murder case a couple of years ago?”
“The one where the husband murdered his wife with the butcher knife?”
She nodded. “The case drew nationwide attention because of its use of DNA testing. B negative blood was found at the scene — the same blood type as Betsy Jackson’s husband, Kevin. But Kevin Jackson’s attorneys claimed that many people had B negative blood and thus the evidence meant nothing.”
“I remember it now,” Harvey said. “Didn’t the DNA test prove that the blood found at the scene was a perfect match with Kevin Jackson’s?”
“Yes. When Jackson’s attorney tried to question the validity of the test, the prosecution came back with evidence that proved DNA testing was 99.7 percent accurate.”
“So what does this have to do with Bruce Grey?”
“Suppose,” she continued, “that Bruce wanted to compare the two blood samples from the same patient and see if they matched.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe he had some reason to believe that the blood in the vials labeled A would not match the blood in the vials labeled B. Maybe he thought that someone had tampered—”
“Whoa, slow down a minute, Sara. I explained to you and Lieutenant Bernstein that there were always two of us handling the blood. It would be impossible to tamper with the blood samples.”
“But there is something else to consider,” Sara said. “Eric took blood from Michael without your knowledge.”
“So?”
“So he could have done it other times. Bruce could have done it too.”
“To what end?”
“I’m not sure, but there has to be a connection here somehow. First, Bruce sends himself blood samples with instructions about DNA testing. Then Eric takes a blood sample from Michael in direct defiance of your rules.”
“So? You’re not suggesting that Eric is somehow involved in all of this, are you?”
“I am not suggesting anything,” Sara said. “The only way to know for sure is to run a DNA test on the blood samples. Where are they now?”
“The blood specimens? They’re in the lab.”
“Doesn’t Eric have a key to the lab?”
“Of course.”
Sara felt something cold prick at the base of her neck. Her voice sounded distant, hollow. “Is Eric at the clinic right now?
“Yes.”
“You saw him?”
“A little while ago. Why?”
She swallowed. “Did you ask him why he took Michael’s blood without your authority?”
“He said he needed it for treatment verification, that’s all.”
“And you believed him?”
Harvey looked at her. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“Has Eric ever done anything like this before?”
Pause. “No,” Harvey said slowly. “Never.”
She stood. “We have to get to the lab.”
“Why?”
“Eric could be in there destroying the evidence.”
“Evidence? Sara, what are you talking about?”
“The blood samples,” she urged. “Why would Bruce have mailed them out hours before he was killed unless they were important? Harvey, listen to me: somebody murdered Bruce to get that package.”
Harvey opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it.
“Damn!” He stood and ran toward the door.
“What is it?” she asked.
Harvey stopped, turned, and told her the awful truth. “Eric is in the lab right now.”
Ralph Edmund was standing over a corpse, biting down on a souvlaki, when Max stumbled into the morgue.
“Willie said you wanted to speak with me?”
Ralph looked up. The juices from the souvlaki spilled out of the pita bread, down his gloved hands and onto his arms.
“Hand me a napkin, will ya, Twitch?”
“Where are they?”
He signaled with his elbow, trying to hold back the gushing souvlaki. “Over there. Bottom drawer. Hurry —
