Chapter Callie #3
“Nah, only child. But I have a good friend who’s like a sister to me. That’s why I came back here in the first place. She needed me, and it’s my turn to be there for her.”
“That’s noble of you. Not everyone would do that. Uproot their lives.”
“She’s got a kid, the funniest, sweetest three-year-old. Most of my help is watching her, and that’s just—pleasure. I don’t have anything else in my life like that. The pure innocence. That goofiness. It’s good for me, too. Kids don’t look at you and see all of your baggage, you know?”
“The dad still in the picture?”
“Yeah. I wasn’t sure about him when they first met. He’s a lot older than we are. She moved here after she made all these plans for her life, and supported his business, had a kid young.”
“Their trips seem awesome.”
“They do, but it was his dream, you know? She was a chemistry major in college. She had wanted to be an engineer. And then she fit herself around him. He’s not a bad guy, a good dad, but I guess sometimes I wonder what would have happened if she hadn’t met him.
But then I realize, that would mean no Opal.
And that kid is like pure sunlight.” She blows out a sigh.
“Shit. That’s the first time I’ve said any of that out loud to anyone.
Maybe that makes me sound like an asshole. ”
He shakes his head. “Not an asshole. Just at ease. It’s the water.
It relaxes you. See? Maybe you are a kayaker after all.
” She hadn’t even noticed that they were almost back at the launch, until she caught sight of their cars parked side by side.
She’s surprised to realize she’s disappointed. To get back to land. To say goodbye.
On her drive home she sees so many dead deer in the backs of trucks, hooves splayed, torsos strangely concave where the hunters removed the organs.
She knows this from Jenna, who used to hunt deer along with Callie’s grandfather when she was a girl, before her mom got sick.
It helps cool the meat, taking away the insides that still pulse warm with blood.
Jenna always described hunting as peaceful, as a way of being part of the land.
But Callie can’t see it that way. It makes her stare at the thick trees with even more apprehension, to think that there are coils of intestines, the wet bags of deer stomachs, livers, kidneys, hearts in wait in those woods.
She gets a text from Healey not long after she gets home.
Got the file you’re looking for. Transferred to our department in a big batch of old cases eight years ago.
I’m working with a freelance genetic genealogist on a murder-rape from ’82.
She’s good. Her team is working on the DNA sample, pulling a profile together.
Healey sends her a link to the woman’s website next. Her name is Rebecca Nixon.
From Nixon’s headshot alone, Callie already doesn’t like her.
A mouthful of big, white veneers, highlighted hair in barrel curls.
Pictures of her on the homepage, hugging a frail woman with wooly white hair, a photo on the mantel behind them of a teenage girl in a cap and gown.
Rebecca with her eyes closed, resting her chin on the woman’s shoulder, self-satisfied, overly familiar.
Callie feels a jolt, territorial. Wants to text Healy back: You should have run it by me. But what ownership does she really have over this case? All the files were with Healy and the Cold Case guys all along. All she did was bring it to his attention. Hell, she asked him to do exactly this.
There’s a media page on Rebecca Nixon’s website. She clicks on the first video—an interview with ABC News. The correspondent asks Rebecca what it means to be working in her field at this particular time.
“What we do—it’s the Wild West, really. There are no rules.
We’re inventing an entire discipline as we go.
It’s riveting. I mean, I used to do product marketing for a cosmetics company and I taught myself the skills to solve murder cases that even the cops, with all of their tools and resources, could never figure out. ”
Callie recoils at the barb, even as she knows it is true.
Look at all of the missed opportunities and willful ignorance around the Baby Doe case.
The rumors and hearsay and facts lost to time.
DNA, on the other hand, is efficient. Can’t lie or obscure.
Below the media links, an invitation to follow Rebecca on TikTok. She wonders if Jane knows who she is.
Callie sets her phone down, rubs her temples.
This is what she had wanted, but it feels different from how she thought it might.
Out of her hands. Genetic genealogy is what got the Golden State Killer, and since then has led to the closing of hundreds of rape and murder cases that otherwise would never have been solved.
This is a good thing, of course. But she’s heard of cases in which medical DNA was accessed without permission—DNA from a woman’s pap smear used to nab her father in an unsolved double homicide from before she was born.
People using the internet to find relatives and build their family trees, only to have their DNA used to catch their favorite uncle for a thirty-year-old rape.
Families torn apart over the revelation of a long-hidden love child.
No, she knows it isn’t as simple as Nixon makes it out to be.
DNA as saving grace. The more honest take is that DNA is something that connects and destroys in equal measure, and you never know which way things are going to swing.
Except for in her case. Still just a blank space on the family tree, where her father’s name should be.