ACTIVE AND THERESA Procopio bent their heads over his printout of the DNA results attached to Pete Wise’s email.
“You sure you don’t know how this happened?” Procopio asked. “You got a friend in the court system you never told me about?”
“Scout’s honor,” Active said. “I’m as dumbfounded as you.”
“Any guesses?”
“Can I plead the Fifth?”
“Why not? I’m in contempt of court just looking at this. At least I can plead ignorance about where it came from when I get busted.”
They resumed their scrutiny of the report. “One more time, OK? I need to make sure I got it.”
“All that matters is what it says at the top and bottom.”
“’DNA Paternity Inclusion,’ ” he read at the top. “’The alleged father is not excluded as the biological father of the child.’ ”
“And there you have it.”
“You sure? It says Pete can’t be excluded. Isn’t that theoretically true of every male on earth? And there’s no results from Brad here. It could still be him, right?”
“Read the fine print at the bottom again.”
Active bent over it. “’Based on the genetic testing results obtained by PCR analysis of STR loci, the probability of paternity is greater than nine-nine-point-nine-nine percent.’ Yeah, I’d take those odds in Vegas any time.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“So that’s why Mercer was so worried? If Pete had gotten into court with this, it would have been game over?”
Procopio shook her head. “Not hardly. Pete ordered this thing off Amazon and took the samples himself and—”
“How would he get a swab from Pudu?”
“Fuck if I know. But he did, according to this. The point is, a DNA test is only admissible if the court orders it and the samples are taken by an independent third party and tested by an approved lab.”
“And so that means…Where does it leave us, actually?”
“Oh, Mercer would have fought it like hell in court, but there’s not much doubt about it for practical purposes. Pete Wise was Helen Mercer’s baby daddy, at least for Pudu.”
“Last thing she needed was having this dragged out into public view, I guess. You want a copy?”
She stood and headed for the door. “Absolutely not. I haven’t even seen it yet.” She paused on her way out. “I’m just glad I didn’t get that damned email, too.”
Minutes later, Active stopped his Chevy before the women’s center. There was no sign of Grace outside, so he called on his cell.
“Can you come out for a minute?” he asked when she answered. “And leave your phone inside.”
He dropped his own phone into the cupholder, got out and crossed Beach Street, and leaned on the seawall rail.
“What?” she said from behind him.
He turned. “Is Sonny safe?”
“Ah. You figured it out.” She wore a quizzical grin.
He winked in acknowledgment. But he said, “Not officially, no.”
“Interesting reading, huh?”
“Very. But, again, Sonny. He does work on the computers at Chukchi Telephone and Pete did have his email with them. That’s a little close for comfort, isn’t it?”
“Terms like the Tor client were mentioned,” Grace said. “And anonymous relay servers.”
“Ah. The traffic passes through so many servers and and so much encryption, nobody can track it? Or something like that?”
“Maybe the NSA could untangle it, but Helen Mercer can’t,” Grace said.
“We may both have to lie about this.”
The grin came back. “Of course. But you’ll put it to good use, yes?”
“Absolutely.”
AT NOON, HE went through the kunnichuk and knocked on the inner door of the Mercer house. It was dead silent inside and he started to wonder if Alaska Airlines was behind schedule today. Or if Mercer had pulled a Mercer and changed her mind. No, the kunnichuk door would be locked if the place was empty.
He knocked again, waited a half-minute, and was pulling out his cell phone to call her when the knob rattled and the door opened to reveal her with a thick white towel wrapped turban-style around her head and some of the rest of her clad in a satiny bathrobe in her signature scarlet. A bathrobe short enough to display the thigh gap that had contributed to her fame in the rancid swamps of the Internet, and with nothing under, judging from how it draped off her nipples. Her feet were bare.
“Hi, Nathan. Sorry to keep you waiting.” She waved at the robe and towel. “I just got out of the shower. I didn’t have time for one before I left Juneau this morning. Your email was quite the attention-getter.”
“Again, it wasn’t mine. I was as surprised as you.”
“Mm-hmm. Well, be that as it may, come on in.” She nodded toward a sofa and a jade-topped coffee table, no doubt from the big mine on the upper Isignaq. “Did you bring a printout?”
“I think I can remember the gist of it.”
“I’ll get mine.” She vanished into the kitchen and returned with a black crocodile-skin tote, the robe swinging out a little as she set the bag on the coffee table and opened it. She met his eyes for a moment, then re-belted the robe. “Sorry. I’m a bit distracted.”
“No problem. Just tell me why we’re here.”
She sat beside him on the sofa and opened a file folder labeled “Wise.” The DNA report was on top. “Assuming you weren’t behind this leak, which I’m not conceding, how on earth did somebody do it? Get into Pete’s email and re-send all this stuff?”
“So this matches what you guys got as respondents in the suit?”
“Identical. And however it happened, why would Pete think he could get away with this?”
“With what?” he asked. “I mean, a DNA test—”
“Oh, that’s bullshit. There’s no way he could get a sample from Pudu. He forged this.”
“How would he do that?”
“I don’t know. The Internet.”
“There’s an easy way to prove it.”
“You mean a real test?”
“I had the medical examiner take a sample from Pete’s body. We can get a swab from Pudu, run the test, and it’s over. If you’re telling the truth.”
“If? Fuck you, Nathan. I oughta know if I ever slept with Pete Wise and I didn’t!”
“Then why not end this?”
“Because it’s the kind of bullshit I get all the time. If I start going along with every crazy demand some wacko bird comes up with, it’ll never end.”
“Wacko bird? Pete was a pretty straight shooter, from all I’ve heard. If he’s not the father, why would he do this?
“He had a crush on me in high school when I was coaching basketball and he never got over it. Calling the house all the time, my office in Juneau, practically a stalker. Brad got into it with him a couple times, including the night before this all happened, but it didn’t make any difference. I think he actually believed he was Pudu’s father.” She leaned back on the couch, unwrapped the towel, and raked her fingers through her hair, eyes closed. “God, this is exhausting.”
The robe slipped off of one thigh, and the top gapped open to show a pretty nice breast, suspiciously nice, considering her age and the fact she had four kids.
This time she didn’t notice, or didn’t mind. He watched the show, wondering if she was watching back from the corner of her eye.
After a couple of minutes, she shook her head as if to clear it and sat up. The robe gapped open a little more. She closed it and tightened the belt and caught his gaze with a knowing smile.
He rose from the sofa. “That’s it? This is why you got me over here?”
“That’s it. I thought you were my friend. I thought if I looked you in the eye, you’d believe me and we could get this out of our lives.” She shrugged and bit her lip.
“One more question before I go?”
“Sure,” she said in an exhausted tone. “Anything.”
“Everything you say makes sense. But none of it explains why you killed Pete Wise.”
“You still don’t believe me.”
“Of course not. Why did you do it? You wouldn’t be the the first politician with an active sex life. You won’t be the last. You could have talked your way past a love child.”
She buried her face in her hands. “Nathan.”
“Yes?”
“It was Brad. I’m sure it was Brad.”