TAOS
TUESDAY NOON
THE SOUND OF HELICOPTERS RATTLED THE SILENCE OF THE SNOWY PASTURES AND penetrated through ancient adobe walls.
"World War III?" Carly asked sardonically.
Dan glanced away from his computer, where he was writing reports, and looked at her. She looked flat, exhausted, and altogether on the losing side of the war. He looked and felt the same way. That will teach me to fall in love with a glittery chain of circumstantial evidence.
"Probably the governor and the press corps heading for the ranch for the 'intimate' interview they've been promoting every fifteen minutes for the last four hours."
Carly grimaced. Dan's TV was small, but loud. She had heard every single word of every single promo for Jansen Worthy's exclusive interview with Governor Josh Quintrell at the home ranch, with hints of a breathtaking exclusive announcement, exclusively on this channel, exclusively for you.
"You're a masochist," she told Dan, gesturing at the TV
"It helps to remind me of just how wrong circumstantial evidence can be. And it reinforces the roll of coincidence and randomness in everyday life." He shook his head. "Gotta admit, it's the first time my instinct for patterns has led me so far astray. Like to a whole different universe."
"I was with you every step of the way."
He smiled crookedly at her. "Best part of the trip."
His cell phone rang. He looked at the window and switched to message text.
Open your e-mail, sweetie.
"Anything interesting?"
"I'm guessing it's the Genedyne file of test results."
"Print them, okay?"
"Now who's the masochist?" he asked.
"Except for your mother's results, they're part of the history Winifred paid for."
Dan opened his e-mail and started printing stuff that looked like nothing he'd seen before. "If you can understand this, you can be a computer programmer."
"I'll leave that to you." She collected the tests results, labeled each with the name of the person.
Carly spread the charts out on the bed. The Senator and Josh shared the same Y-DNA to the limit of testing ability. He was the Senator's son. She pulled out the mtDNA for Sylvia and Josh, compared them, and sighed. A very slight variation in haplotype number, the kind of subtle, meaningless mutation that happened in the DNA of a germ cell.
"Well, damn," she muttered.
"Hoping Cheryl was wrong?" Dan asked.
"Yes."
"She wasn't."
Carly didn't bother to answer. She lined up Sylvia's and Winifred's results and checked the haplotype number. Exactly the same. The mutation in the mtDNA had occurred in Sylvia's germ cell and was passed to her son, where it stopped. Unless it was also passed on to her daughter, Liza…
After shifting papers quickly, Carly had Liza and Sylvia together. Their haplotype sequence was precisely the same.
"Okay," Carly muttered. "One got it and one didn't, which means the mutation was limited to one egg. So Diana won't have it."
Carly put the last chart in place and looked at it.
And looked again.
Then she started twisting a strand of hair around her finger.
"What is it?" Dan asked.
She shifted some of the sheets around without answering. Then she picked up a yellow marking pen and began highlighting parts of each chart.
"Carly?"
"The haplotypes-"
"English, please," he cut in.
She looked up. "That's going to be tough. Like putting a computer program into English."
"Give it a try."
"Y-DNA, mtDNA, any DNA is just a series of sequences of compounds. The makeup and order of those compounds determines if you get a man, a woman, an elephant, or a guppy."
"Gotcha."
"Apparently there are a lot of nonsense sequences in germ cell DNA, sequences that don't appear to do anything to the final organism. Some of those nonsense sequences are called haplotypes. Every so often a mutation will occur when a sequence is being reproduced and you'll have two identical sequences where before you just had one. And if my genetics professor could hear me now, he'd be tearing out his hair with all the stuff I'm not mentioning."
"Keep skimming the surface," Dan said, smiling.
Carly blew out a frustrated breath. "The change in the sequence is passed along to the next generation. To way oversimplify, you have a haplotype 5 where you had a haplotype 4, that is, five repeats of a specific sequence instead of four, but nothing material changes in the organism that is born. It's a mutation that doesn't matter to anyone but geneticists. Still with me?"
"Just don't give me a pop quiz."
She narrowed her eyes. "Hey, you're the one who asked me to explain. I'm doing my best."
"I'm listening, Carolina May."
She looked at his intent, intensely green eyes and believed him. 'The numbers going down the right-hand column on each page of the sheets are various mtDNA haplotype sequences. Winifred's and Sylvia's and Liza's are exactly the same through all haplotype sequences. The Senator's is very different, of course. He got his mtDNA from his own mother. Josh got his from Sylvia. See this number? Then this one?"
Dan leaned down to look at a highlighted number. "It's not the same."
"Right. All the other haplotype sequences are a dead match except for that one, which means there was a mutation in Sylvia's germ cell that was passed on to her son, Josh."
"What about Liza?"
"Nope. But your mother has the same mutation."
Dan looked at the sheets, absorbing the implications of the highlighted numbers. "Is that possible?"
"Anything's possible. But this one is about as probable as two people having identical fingerprints."
"Not worth betting on."
"Not with my money."
"What do you need to sort this out?"
"I'd like to see if you have the same mutation."
"No problem." He punched up a familiar number on the cell phone. "Cheryl? Yeah, it all came through perfectly. Now we need mine for comparison." He winced at whatever she said. "Two pounds of really fine dark chocolate? A bottle of two-hundred-dollar champagne? Both. Right." He punched out.
"Bribery?" Carly asked, smiling.
"Grease makes the wheels go round."
"I'll get one of the test kits for you."
"No need." He went to his computer. "My genetic profile is already on record with the lab."
"Really? Why?"
"To make double-damn sure any remains that are found in some backwater are really mine."
"I don't like the sound of that."
"So far, so good. Gotta watch those climbing accidents, though."
Dan's e-mail pinged. He opened the file and printed it. "Here you go. Without your highlighting it all looks like the same old same old to me."
Carly grabbed the paper and looked at it. And looked again. She checked the date on the file. It had been created three years ago.
"That's because it is," she said, frowning.
"What?"
"The same old same old." Carly put Dan's genetic profile down next to Josh's.
They were identical.