ROBERT DOMINGO HAD TAKEN a swipe at someone, presumably his assailant, and as a result, there were bits of tissue under his fingernails, more than enough skin cells for Wendy Simms to run DNA tests on.
The usual tests hadn’t turned up much useful data. There was no match to anyone in the databases, although that wasn’t necessarily telling. There were far more people not in the databases than people who were, and although it would have made her life easier if everyone on earth was sampled at birth, she knew that was not only impractical but would have been an enormous violation of personal privacy.
Failing any progress there, she turned instead to one of the not-so-usual tests, a brand-new method of evaluating DNA data that had been developed recently at the University of Arizona. The idea wasn’t to match the DNA sample with any specific individual but to see what other information it could tell the careful investigator about its source.
When she had printed the results out and studied them, she grabbed for the phone and called Ray Langston.
“It’s Wendy, Ray. I found out something interesting about the Domingo suspect.”
“You have an ID for me?” he asked. She could hear the excitement in his voice and hoped what she did have wasn’t too much of a letdown.
“Not a suspect… but I think I can narrow the field a bit.”
“Narrow is good.” He managed not to sigh, but just barely. “A name and address would be better, but I’ll take narrow.”
“It’s a male,” she said. “Or he’s a male, I guess. And he’s not Native American.”
“He’s not?” He sounded as surprised as she had been.
“Nope. He’s probably blond, in fact. With blue eyes. You are definitely looking for a Caucasian. If you guys are only considering people from the reservation, I think you’re missing the boat.”
“I’m trying not to miss the boat,” Ray said.
“What?”
“Never mind. Do you have anything else for me?”
“That’s it for now, Ray. White male, blond and blue-eyed. It may not be a lot, but I bet it rules out a lot of suspects among the Paiutes.”
“That it does, Wendy. Thank you.”
Catherine had already turned into the Cameron driveway and was sitting at the front gate waiting for the loud buzz that would admit her, when her phone rang. Did Conrad Ecklie have spies watching her? Maybe he was keeping tabs on her with satellite surveillance.
It was not the undersheriff on the other end of the line, though, but Archie Johnson. “I’ve been doing some snooping around online,” he told her.
“Which is basically your job.”
“It’s like getting paid to play,” he said. He loved technology of every stripe, and if he hadn’t been employed by the crime lab, she had no doubt he would have been involved with it in some other way. “But this snooping was mostly into financial data, which is pretty dry stuff, not all that much fun at all. Still, it’s intriguing. Do you have any idea how much someone can find out about your personal financial matters if they know how to look?”
“I’d have to have money even to have personal financial matters,” Catherine answered. “Instead, I have a teenage daughter.”
“Well, let me tell you, Helena Cameron’s daughter isn’t a teenager anymore. And Helena Cameron is not the wealthiest woman in Las Vegas anymore, either.”
“Was she ever?”
“Top ten, anyway, once upon a time.”
The gate buzzed and parted in the middle, each side rolling away from the other, and Catherine inched forward until she could safely pass between them. “I’m at the house now, Archie. Talk to me.”
“Okay, here’s the short version. She did have a lot of money, mostly in investments—stocks, real estate, and such. But that’s all past tense. Her stocks have been cashed out, buildings sold, casino holdings gone. What she is left with are a few bank and money-market accounts, some small-time stocks and bonds, the stuff that was never worth much to begin with. Everything that was really valuable has been liquidated.”
“Over what time period?”
“Mostly the last five to seven years.”
“That’s interesting.”
“I don’t know if I’ve described her situation clearly enough,” Archie went on. “She’s close to bankruptcy. The estate you just drove onto? It’s in foreclosure.”
“I’ll try to finish up and get out before she’s evicted,” Catherine said. “Anything else?”
“Just that her daughter’s condo is in the same boat. Helena bought it for her, but she’s stopped making payments, and Daria hasn’t made any. The foreclosure sharks are circling there, too.”
“Thanks, Archie. This is fascinating stuff.”
“I thought you’d want to know.”
“You thought right. Now, go home—you’ve put in enough hours today.”
“I’ll go home,” Archie said. “As soon as you and everybody else from night shift goes home.”
“Then it’ll be a while. Tell you what, as long as you’re sticking around anyway, do one more thing for me…”
Catherine parked in what was fast becoming her usual spot, shaded by mature palms and facing onto the reds, yellows, pinks, and greens of the rose garden. Her hand was on the door handle when her phone rang already. Archie already? Or Ecklie this time, having observed her driving onto the estate and listened in on her phone call?
Neither, as it happened.
It was Greg, but there was a lot of background noise. “We have her, Catherine!” he shouted.
“You have who? Where are you, Greg?”
“I’m in a helicopter,” he replied, which explained the roar around him. “With Daria Cameron!”
“You found her!”
“Her and Bix Cameron, too. He’s long dead, but she’s alive. The chopper’s taking us to Desert Palm Hospital. There’s a bus bringing Bix to the morgue.”
“I guess I’ll have a lot to discuss with Helena Cameron and her people. Thanks, Greg, that’s great work.”
“No problem. I’ll talk to you again after we land, when I get a better sense of Daria’s prognosis.”
He hung up, and Catherine sat in the car for another couple of minutes, gathering her thoughts. This was going to be a very different conversation from the one she had expected to have.
When it was over and Ecklie heard about it, she hoped she’d still have a job.