Chapter Fifty-Four
Midge hurries along the familiar corridor toward Nap’s office, tucking her frizzled hair back under her cap. His door is open, and she can hear him on the phone as she draws near.
“Okay, that’s great,” he’s saying.
Midge peeks through the doorway. He’s behind the desk, wearing blue scrubs and reading glasses, phone pressed between his shoulder and ear as he types on his desktop computer keyboard.
Midge catches his eye and points to the hall to let him know she’ll wait till he’s finished.
He shakes his head and gestures for her to take a seat.
You sure? she mouths.
He nods. She sits.
“Okay, I’d be much obliged if you can,” he says into the phone, leaning back and picking up a pen. “And if you can’t—”
He pauses, tapping the pen in an impatient rhythm on the desk.
“Yes . . . right . . . yes. Of course you are. I understand. Busy time of year. Just let me know. All right. Much obliged. Bye, now.”
He hangs up. “Sorry about that.”
“Oh, it’s fine. Much obliged to you for inviting me over here, kind sir.”
“You can pop in anytime you like, Midge. It’s always good to see you.”
“Most people think the opposite.”
“Maybe the perps, but not the people who know and love you.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised,” she says wryly. “By the way, after this, can I take another look at the physical evidence we found with the skeleton in the pit?”
“Sure. What’s going on?”
“I’m just wondering which CD was in the Walkman. I thought I remembered, but I’m feeling a little scatterbrained.”
“It happens to the best of us.” He leans forward, eyes on the screen, typing on the keyboard. “That call you just walked in on was me doing my best to expedite the rest of the forensics tests we’re waiting on.”
“For Gordy Klatte?”
“For the Walking Man, and for the skeletal remains.”
“And . . . ?”
“And they’re not making any promises. Okay, here we go.” He turns away from the keyboard and grabs a rolling chair a few feet away, pulling it up beside his. He pats it. “Come on over here so that I can show you.”
“Sure you can’t just tell me? Autopsy photos before lunch is . . .” She wrinkles her nose.
“No photos. Just a report. This is the DNA testing on the skin particles under Gordon Klatte’s fingernails and some microscopic blood we found at the scene that didn’t belong to him. The results were entered into CODIS.”
CODIS—Combined DNA Index System—is an electronic national database of criminal offenders.
Midge goes around the desk to sit beside him, asking, “Did we get a match to Mary Beth Winterfield?”
“That’s the interesting thing.”
“It’s not a match?”
He scrolls through the report, past written paragraphs and a chart. “Oh, it’s a match. In fact, we’ve got two matches.”
“Two! One is Mary Beth, then. Who’s the other?”
“Back up, Midge. See this?” He points to the screen. “One is connected to Mary Beth. It isn’t hers.”
“What?” She glances at the cryptic codes on the screen, then at him. “Nap, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying that the genetic material under the victim’s fingernails doesn’t belong to Mary Beth Winterfield. It belongs to someone who shares significant DNA with her.”
“I don’t . . . I don’t understand.”
“It isn’t hers, Midge. It’s from a close female relative.”
“A close female relative.”
Nap nods, allowing her to digest the information.
She’s doing her best, but . . .
How is this even possible?
Gordy engaged in a physical struggle with someone before his fatal fall. It stands to reason that the genetic material under his nails belongs to the person who lured him outside in the dead of night and is responsible for his death.
If not Mary Beth, then who could it have been?
Before he died, Gordy was receiving texts from someone claiming to be Caroline.
Beverly Barrow’s doorstep camera captured someone who looked like Caroline.
Caroline is dead, so it had to be Mary Beth, unless . . .
“How close a relative are we talking about?” she asks Nap.
“Close. I won’t get into the science of it, but you’re looking at about twenty-five percent shared DNA.”
“Her daughter! Mary Beth had a child in the late nineties and she was forced to give it up for adoption. That has to be it.”
“That can’t be it, Midge. A child would share fifty percent of her DNA. Twenty-five percent is going to be a half sister, an aunt, a grandmother, a granddaughter, a niece.”
Familiar with Caroline’s family history via their childhood friendship, Midge knows that both Mary Beth’s grandmothers are long dead. There were a couple of aunts, but by marriage, not blood.
Mary Beth can’t possibly have a granddaughter . . . can she?
She might, if her child, now an adult, has become a parent. But the grandchild couldn’t possibly be old enough to have somehow found her way back to Mulberry Bay and killed Gordon Klatte.
Midge considers the other possibilities.
The oldest Winterfield sisters, twins Eve and Joanna, had children, so Mary Beth may very well have a niece. But the twins left the area years ago, and why would their children have motive to kill Gordon?
That leaves a half sister.
Could one of her oh-so-proper and judgmental parents have had a daughter from another relationship? An affair?
“I can see the wheels turning,” Nap comments. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that this doesn’t make sense. Are you absolutely positive that DNA doesn’t belong to Mary Beth herself?”
“Science doesn’t lie, Midge.”
“No, I know.”
People do, though.
Regardless of whether Gordy was actually responsible for getting Caroline pregnant, Midge believed Mary Beth killed him because she blamed him.
What else would motivate anyone—other than the unhinged Mary Beth Winterfield—to kill him?
Nothing in his background suggests that he led anything but an honorable existence, unless you consider that his high school girlfriend disappeared on prom night.
On paper, that fact would cast a shadow on Gordy’s sterling reputation, but if you know what Midge knows about it, it’s all but irrelevant.
Who else might have cared about Caroline enough to seek that level of vengeance against the man presumed to have gotten her pregnant? Who else could have been wearing Caroline’s T-I-C-K charm bracelet, found clenched in Gordy’s dead hand?
Who else might have blamed Midge, Kelly, and Talia as well? Who else might have shown up at the Barrow home looking for Kelly, left-handed and looking so much like Caroline? Who might have known about the pedestals in the woods? Who might have lured them there, calling herself Ceto?
A half sister, an aunt, a grandmother, a granddaughter, a niece.
“The DNA under the victim’s nails wasn’t just a partial match to Mary Beth Winterfield, Midge,” Nap goes on. “It was a partial match to another sample in CODIS. His name is Mason Bauer.”
Mason Bauer.
Reverend B.’s DNA was under Gordy Klatte’s fingernails.
“Mason Bauer is the DNA match?”
Nap nods. “I take it the name is familiar?”
“Yes, it’s . . . yes.”
She explains that he was the pastor of a local church back in the late 1990s, and Nap tells her what she already knows—that he was arrested on felony charges years ago in Texas but disappeared after the mistrial.
“Lucky for us, he didn’t file to expunge his genetic record from the database.” Nap taps the screen. “That’s a solid match right there.”
“So someone who matches Mason Bauer’s DNA was here in Mulberry Bay in June, someone who was with Gordy Klatte right before he died.”
“Someone who partially matches his DNA was here. A female.”
“A female—who has both Bauer’s DNA and Mary Beth’s.”
“That’s right. But the connection to Bauer is even closer. The subject shares more than thirty-three hundred centimorgans with him.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning she can only be his mother or his daughter.”
Mason Bauer’s mother, or Mason Bauer’s daughter . . .
Midge thinks of Junia Stanton.
Is she missing and endangered? Or is she the female who lured Gordy Klatte to his death? Is she related not just to Mason Bauer, but to Mary Beth Winterfield? Is she the daughter Mary Beth gave up for adoption?
No. She can’t be Mary Beth’s daughter.
Only her half sister, aunt, grandmother, granddaughter . . .
Niece.