Sight Seering

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

After leaving Destiny’s Haven, I put on my wireless headset and called Olive. This might have seemed like a weird time to call my boss, but she was so much more than that. She was my mentor, confidante, and future mother-in-law.

Er, scratch that last part. She didn’t know about my dreams of marrying her son, probably because we weren’t actually dating yet. But if I had any say in it, we would be soon. Sam was amazing: smart, kind, good-looking…and very distracting. While I was reliving the breath-taking kiss we’d shared a few weeks ago, Olive answered the phone, and I almost forgot why I’d called.

“Aly? Using the phone to call someone? Cough twice if you need me to call 911.”

Yet another reason to love her. I’d gotten into some interesting situations since we met, but she was always willing to help.

“Sorry, Olive. I’m fine, just driving. I’ve got a question for you.” Since she already knew about my search for Katrina’s killer, it didn’t take long to fill her in on the morning’s events. “I realize how gross this sounds, but if I brought you the chunk of hair, could you tell me who it belonged to?”

“No.”

Huh. I hadn’t expected that response. “Just like that? You won’t even try?”

Her voice softened. “Sorry, Aly. There are two reasons I can’t. First, my powers don’t work that way. I can’t track humans. Loose hairs, lost eyelashes, dead skin cells… I don’t know if it’s because they’re technically living beings rather than objects or because the fibers are too small, but I’ve never had any luck with them. When I was in college, I tried a few times, but nothing ever came of it.”

“Darn it. So much for taking the easy route,” I said. “You said there were two reasons you couldn’t help. What’s the other one?”

“You know who the hair came from. I’d only get a vision of that woman. That doesn’t answer your question.”

Good point. I didn’t need an image of the woman who claimed not to be Mary. I needed to know who she actually was. “Ah, well. Thanks, anyway. Guess I’ll have to go to the science lab.”

“Are you going to do a DNA test?”

“I’m going to try.” I chuckled. “Guess I should’ve signed up for genetics instead of molecular biology and chemistry. But at least I have lab access.”

To be honest, I wasn’t sure I had any idea how to do what I wanted, but after waiting so long to find Katrina’s killer and finally getting a break, I had to try.

The hair I’d gotten from Mary (it was hard not to think of her that way, although I should really start calling her Subject A or something until I knew her identity) had strong roots. That was good—I knew from my high school science classes that you couldn’t pull DNA from a loose hair on someone’s sweater. There needed to be roots attached to extract a profile. Then, to find out who this woman was, I needed to compare her information to a known entity.

Since the real Mary was my sister-in-law’s older sister, that should have been easy. They indisputably had the same mother, and therefore the same mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondrial DNA was the best way to figure this stuff out. Unfortunately, Katrina was dead. After my sister-in-law died, my brother moved all of her belongings to a storage facility in the small town where they’d lived. While searching the basement, I’d found the key, but it was two-and-a-half hours away. Even if he’d kept an old hairbrush or toothbrush—and why would he? Ew—I couldn’t get to the storage facility easily. Between school and work, there hadn’t been any way to get there without arousing Kevin’s suspicion. No access to Katrina’s DNA yet.

I did, however, have the next best thing: her son, Kyle. Half of his DNA would belong to my brother, but I should be able to extract that from the sample and compare what remained. Hopefully. With luck and maybe the kindness of a bored lab assistant. Most of my college friends were also studying biology. I wasn’t sure if any of them would have the knowledge to help without taking over and possibly ruining everything. (Okay, only one of my friends was likely to do that, but I definitely couldn’t ask her for help on this experiment.)

Turned out, I couldn’t drive straight to the lab, anyway. Despite the chaos of wrappers, Goldfish crackers, half-empty cups, and random garbage in Kyle’s car seat, there was no DNA sample. I didn’t love the idea of trying to extract his DNA from a quarter-inch of crusty milk that smelled so terrible, I paused to throw the cup in the garbage before driving home. Cups were cheap, and I couldn’t distill DNA while trying not to puke. Saliva only carried little bits of genetic material, anyway.

My brother wasn’t likely to let me take a cheek swab, and Kyle was old enough that he’d probably mention it without thinking. Hmm. Maybe I could tell my brother we were doing paternity tests for one of my courses? He probably didn't know I wouldn’t be taking genetics until next year.

I shook my head. Nah, the easiest way would be to snatch Kyle’s toothbrush or hairbrush after he went to bed for the night. I could hide it in my backpack and take it to the lab.

When I got home and my brother asked how my visit to Destiny’s Haven went, I simply told him we were attacked by another resident and Mary seemed upset. All true. If he suspected I was hiding something, he didn’t mention it. Then I dove into my research so I’d have a plan before I got to the lab.

After Kyle went to bed for the night, I swiped his toothbrush and stuck it in my backpack. At the last minute, I decided to clean out Kevin’s hairbrush, too, just in case. If the samples were similar, I wanted the ability to exclude Kevin’s genetic material from the comparison. Assuming I could figure out how to do that.

To my great relief, when I made it to the lab, only three other students sat inside. The first was a girl I didn’t recognize, pouring some smoking liquid into multiple flasks. Not an experiment I wanted to interrupt. At the table behind her sat Brad Stephens from my Molecular Biology class, which surprised me a bit. When we’d met, he’d been very much a “no one cares about learning” member of the basketball team. The Brad I’d first met wouldn’t have been caught dead in the school science lab outside of a scheduled class. He claimed to have gone through an epiphany recently, so the sight of him hunched over a microscope made me smile.

We nodded at each other, but I didn’t go talk to him. Too much to do. The Lab Assistant overseeing the open lab time sat at a bench in the front, reading a romance novel. He hid it under a copy of National Geographic when I approached.

“I’m Porter,” he said. “Can I help you?”

After showing my student ID, I said, “I was wondering if we have a PRC machine here?”

The technique used to distill DNA from a sample was called Polymerase Chain Reaction. According to my online research, most college-level science labs would have one. It turned out I was in luck: we had two.

Porter led me to them, pointing out other items the internet assured me would be needed. “We’ve got chloroform and distilled water in that cupboard, along with the other supplies. Do not use the tap water, please. It gunks everything up, and I’ll get yelled at for not telling you.”

“No problem. Thanks for the reminder.”

He continued, “The gel you’ll need to see the DNA is on this shelf. It’s the ethidium bromide.”

That book must’ve been pretty good, because he didn’t ask what I was doing or if I needed any help. I thanked him, and he went back to the bench. A moment later, the book was nowhere to be seen, but Porter seemed very interested in something in his lap.

Before getting started, I recited the elements of the periodic table to calm my nerves and still my shaking hands. Bromine was element thirty-five, chemical symbol BR. Same color as iodine. A cooler first name than “Aluminum.” Also a key ingredient of this experiment.

Distilling DNA was a tricky business, especially considering my fear that I’d mess it up and never get another sample from “Mary.” I couldn’t exactly waltz back into Destiny’s Haven after what happened. Or, you know, rip out another chunk of her hair. I started with Kyle’s toothbrush, since I could get more DNA from that any time I convinced him to brush his teeth. Once or twice a month, surely.

To start, the machine manipulated the temperatures to replicate the DNA. This took some time. Eventually, I got it going—only needing to enlist Porter’s assistance twice. Luckily, he didn’t ask what I was doing. Then I sat down to work on other homework while the machines did their things. After a couple of hours, I had results! Not final results, just something to work with: two mitochondrial DNA samples. One from Kyle. One from the woman formerly-(currently?)-known as Mary.

The human body contains loads of genes, but luckily, I didn’t have to compare them all. That would take forever, and much of the information would be useless for my purposes. I isolated four standard DNA markers for comparison, then put one slide each on two adjacent microscopes.

If the woman I met was Kyle’s aunt, the samples would match, although with possibly some slight mutations. They shared a grandmother, not a mother, so the genetic material might not be exactly the same. Hopefully, I’d be able to tell the difference between a mutation and two non-matching samples.

For five minutes, I went back and forth, blinking, rubbing my eyes, and comparing the two slides. Then I isolated four more genetic markers and ran the tests again. And again. This needed to be right.

After about an hour of this, Porter came over. “You know, checking repeatedly doesn’t give you the results you want.”

“To be honest, I’m not sure what results I was hoping for,” I said.

“Baby daddy?” He nodded. “Happens a lot.”

It wasn’t worth trying to explain. “Uh, yeah.”

I turned back to the slides for what felt like the thousandth time. It turned out minor gene mutations weren’t an issue.

From what I could tell, the genetic markers on the samples were a match. Mary and Kyle shared a female relative.

Why had Mary lied to me? What game was she playing?