THIRTY-SIX

So I had a problem. Within forty-eight hours or so, I was going to have DNA results from the semen sample found on the body of Gooch’s murdered daughter. But without anything to compare it to, it didn’t do me any good. I wasn’t in any position to get a court order for a sample of his blood just yet. And even if I did—and Gooch was in fact the killer—then the first thing he was liable to do was to run out and kill Jenny Dial and dispose of her body.

I drove back from Columbus trying to reason my way out of this box, but my mind was so muddled from lack of sleep that I could hardly think straight. In Macon I stopped at a Quik Trip and gassed up. At the counter they had a display of all kinds of snake-oil herbal supplements: echinacea, gingko biloba, kava kava. Cold pills, think pills, energy pills. I picked up a tiny plastic bag, looked at the ingredients. Caffeine and a bunch of herbs. Well, it was better than nothing.

“Throw this in, too,” I said, dropping the pills on the counter. “And a Diet Coke.”

The instructions on the little bag recommended taking two pills. I washed all four down with the Diet Coke, started driving.

When the pills hit me, I started feeling a slight tingling in my fingers. It wasn’t quite like snorting a line of crank, but the herbs were more potent than I’d expected. I tried to concentrate on the DNA question. There are quite a few ways to get DNA samples. Blood is the best source of DNA, but you can get it from semen, from hair follicles, from saliva, even from sweat. None of which helped me out, really. The problem wasn’t just the source, but the means of getting it. To get the sample, I’d need a warrant. To get a warrant, I’d have to go to the DA. If I went to the DA asking for a sample of any bodily fluid from a cop, the word was liable to get around, which was liable to tip Lt. Gooch off, which was liable to lead us right back to the one place I couldn’t allow us to go—the place where Jenny Dial ended up lying in some ditch.

My mind started flitting around as I was driving. The caffeine had given me enough energy to stay awake, but not enough to really concentrate. A thought would enter my mind, then it would flit off, then it would come back and recirculate, unaltered, unimproved. I must have been doing eighty-five as I tore through Atlanta. I shot past I-20 without even thinking. Next thing I knew I was on the north side of town, barrelling onto GA 400, the big toll road leading up toward Alpharetta. The same thoughts kept rolling around and around, and eventually I realized I wasn’t thinking about DNA at all.

I had been seized by panic, and it had nothing to do with the case. I don’t know why—well, okay, I know why—it was paranoia brought on by too many stimulants and not enough sleep, but why I fixated on that little boy, I can’t say, exactly. All I know is that I felt like something terrible was about to happen to the boy who had almost been my son, but who wasn’t anymore.

I took the Alpharetta exit, headed west, until I had driven past the grandiose sign that said ROSEMONT ORCHARDS II, A TENNIS COMMUNITY. As I pulled up in front of the big house where David and Nancy Drobysch and their son Kevin lived, a shiny gold Acura was backing out. In the front seat was a pleasant-looking woman, blond, blue eyed. The top of a child’s car seat poked up in the back.

I drove to the end of the cul-de-sac, turned, and followed the Acura down the road. I hung back a couple of hundred yards as Nancy Drobysch merged into the traffic on Old Milton Highway, a large artery with two lanes on each side of a wide turn lane. We drove a mile or so, turned into the parking lot of a bright new strip mall. As Nancy Drobysch slid into a space in front of a Kroger supermarket, I crept around the lot, finally parking in front of a nail salon.

From where I was parked, I could see Nancy Drobysch’s blond hair disappear into the Kroger. She was pushing a grocery cart with a baby’s car seat in it, but I couldn’t see the baby. I waited a minute, telling myself it was time to fire up the car and get my ass out of there. But I didn’t. I kept thinking something bad’s going to happen, something bad’s going to happen. After a minute, I got out of the car walked into the Kroger, picked up a green basket with the store logo on it, and began wandering through the fruits and vegetables. I couldn’t see Nancy Drobysch anywhere. I strolled around trying to find the weirdest fruits and vegetables. Soon I had a nice little pile in my basket: tomatillos, guava, something called conyaku, a shriveled cassava root. I looked around the store, wondering, how many of these corn-fed suburbanites ate cassava.

I ambled—as much as it’s possible to amble while flying on caffeine—over to the drink aisle, put a bottle of the most expensive wine I could find into the basket, turned the corner, and banged slap into a cart. Looking up at me from the cart was a tiny brown-skinned boy. He stared at me in surprise; then the corners of his mouth turned down, and he began to wail.

“Hey, hey, sweetness,” I said. “It’s okay. It’s all right.”

Then I looked up, and there was Nancy Drobysch, eyes narrow, jaw set. She unbuckled the boy quickly and efficiently from the car seat, picked him up, and cradled him tightly in her arms.

“What are you doing here, Mechelle?” she said. Her voice was quiet, but her tone was sharp.

I picked up a handful of the vegetables and fruits from my cart. “Tomatillos,” I said, shrugging. “Cassava root. You know. The selection of cassava in my neighborhood is miserable.”

She kept looking at me with her cool gray eyes. “David told me,” she said. “He told me you used the Web site to figure out who we are. You promised in the adoption agreement that we wouldn’t have contact. You said that’s what you wanted.”

I smiled at her, at the boy. “Really,” I said, “I’m just here. I didn’t even know—”

“Bullshit,” she said.

I felt a strange sense of dislocation then, a sort of swirling in my chest. I reached toward the boy, to stroke him, maybe, or pat him on the head. My boy. Her boy. He was still sniffling, looking at me like I was some bird of prey ready to come out of the sky at him, swoop him off to be eaten. Nancy Drobysch angled her body away from me.

“You agreed, Mechelle. You said. No contact.”

I’m not usually tongue-tied, but I just stood there, this ache in my chest so strong I could hardly breathe.

“I mean, come on,” Nancy Drobysch pursued. “I don’t know what you’re doing, but you and I both know it’s not healthy. Do you need some kind of help? Counseling? Something? Maybe David and I could help.”

“I just . . . I just wanted to see him.”

Nancy Drobysch sighed irritably. “That’s not in the cards. You know this.”

“I know, I know, I just—”

“Look, Mechelle, I don’t know how to say this. But after David found out you’d used the Web site to track us down, somebody in the neighborhood said they’d seen somebody that looked like you driving by our house.”

“Like me? Black, you mean?”

“It was you, wasn’t it?”

“No! Of course not!”

Nancy didn’t believe me, I could see it in her eyes. And there was no reason she should, either. I knew this was bad, but I was just being carried along, unable to stop myself. I reached out my hand again toward the boy.

“David went to a lawyer,” Nancy said. “I don’t know how to say this, but . . . Look, he’s going to file a restraining order on you. If you come around again . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence, but I knew where it went from there.

I smiled brightly. “Oh! I see. Okay, I see how this is going. You got the child, it’s all nice and legal, now the gloves come off.”

“Please! Mechelle. Think! Look at this from our perspective. No, no, actually that’s not right. Look at this from his perspective. Take five minutes and just think. If you just do that, you’ll see what’s right. Okay? Now we’re going.”

I didn’t move. She tried to back up. I put my hand on her cart, closed my fingers around the steel mesh. There was a brief tugging match, then suddenly a cell phone had materialized in her hand. “Police?” she said. “Hello? Yes, look I need some assistance.”

“All right, all right, all right, you made your point, girlfriend.” I set the basket of weird fruits and roots and vegetables on the floor, picked up the wine bottle, sprinted for the door.