"You're welcome."
"I haven't seen you at any of the games before," she said. "Do you come a lot?"
"Not as often as I'd like. Work, you know." Bradley pointed to the field. "Which one is Emily?"
"The center forward." She pointed to a black girl, on the other side of the field.
"I'm her friend. Kelly." She extended her hand, shook his.
"Brad," he said.
"Nice to meet you, Brad. And you're here with...?"
"Oh, my niece is at the dentist today," he said. "I didn't find out until I was already here." He shrugged.
"Nice uncle. She must really appreciate you coming. But you don't seem old enough to be the uncle of one of the girls."
He smiled. For some reason he felt nervous. Kelly was sitting very close, her thigh almost touching his. He couldn't use his PDA or his phone. Nobody ever sat close like that.
"My parents are so old," Kelly said. "My dad was fifty when I was born." She stared out at the field. "I guess that's why I like older guys."
He thought,How old is she? But he couldn't think of a way to ask her without being obvious.
She held her hands up, scrutinized them, fingers spread wide. "I just got my nails done," she said. "You like this color?"
"Yes. Very good color."
"My dad hates it when I get my nails done. He thinks it makes me look too mature. But I think it's a good color. Hot love. That's the name of the color."
"Yes..."
"Anyway, all the girls get their nails done. I mean, comeon . I was getting my nails done in seventh grade. And besides, I graduated."
"Oh, you graduated?"
"Yes. Last year." She had opened her purse and was rummaging around inside it. Along with the lipstick, car keys, iPod, and makeup cases, he noticed a couple of joints wrapped in plastic and a ribbon of colored condoms that made a crackling sound when she pushed them around.
He looked away. "So, are you in college now?"
"No," she said. "I took a year off." She smiled at him. "My grades weren't too good. Having too much fun." She pulled out a small plastic bottle of orange juice. "Do you have any vodka?"
"Not on me," he said, surprised.
"Gin?"
"Uh, no..."
"But you could get some, right?" She smiled at him.
"I suppose I could," he said.
"I promise I'd pay you back," she said, still smiling.
That was how it started.
They leftthe playing field separately, several minutes apart. Bradley went first, and he waited in his car in the parking lot, watching her walk toward him. She was wearing flip-flops, a short skirt, and a lacy top that looked like something you would wear to bed. But all the girls dressed that way these days. Her huge bag banged against her side as she walked. She lit a cigarette and then climbed into her car. She was driving a black Mustang. She waved to him.
He started his engine, pulled out, and she followed him.
He thought,Don't get your hopes up. But the truth was, he already had.
Chapter 19-21
CHapter 019
Marilee Hunter,the pedantic director of the Long Beach Memorial genetics lab, liked to hear herself talk. Marty Roberts did his best to appear interested. Marilee had a fussy, pinched demeanor, like a librarian in an old forties movie. She delighted in catching errors among hospital staff. She had called Marty to say she needed to see him, right away.
"Correct me if I'm wrong on the basics," Marliee Hunter said. "Mr. Weller's daughter obtains a postmortem paternity test that indicates she and her father do not share DNA. Nevertheless, the widow insists Welleris the father, and demands further testing. You provide me samples of blood, spleen, liver, kidney, and testes, although all have been compromised from funeral home infusation. You are looking for a chimera, obviously."
"Yes. Or an error in the original test," Marty said. "We don't know where the daughter took the blood for testing."
"Paternity tests have a nontrivial error rate," Marilee said. "Especially in online establishments. My lab does not make errors. We will test all these tissues, Marty - as soon as you provide buccal cells from the daughter."
"Right, right." He had forgotten all about that. They needed cheek cells from the daughter to compare DNA. "She may not cooperate."
"In that case," Marilee said, "we will test the son and the other daughter. But you realize these tissue tests take time. Weeks."
"Of course, yes."
Marilee opened the Weller patient file, which was stampedDECEASED . She thumbed through the pages. "Meanwhile, I can't help but wonder about your original autopsy."
Marty jerked his head up. "What about it?"
"It shows here you ran a tox screen that came back negative."
"We do a tox screen in every automobile fatality. It's routine."
"Umm," Hunter said, pursing her lips. "The thing is, we repeated the tox screen in our lab. And the result is not negative."
"Oh?" he said, controlling his voice. Thinking:What the fuck?
"It's difficult to run a tox panel after all the funeral preservatives have been infused, but we have experience dealing with that. And we determined that the deceased Mr. Weller had elevated intracellular levels of calcium and magnesium..."
Marty thought,Oh boy ...
"...along with significant hepatic elevation of ethanol dehydrogenase, implying a high blood-alcohol level at the time of the accident..."
Marty groaned inwardly. Who had done the original tox screen? Had fucking Raza sent it out? Or onlysaid that he had?