Page 14 of Making His Bones

I glanced at the ground with shame. My coffee sat unsipped, getting cold. “Yeah. Most of it was voluntary, but I’ll tell you, once you get started they just keep shoving your head here and there or sticking things into you that you didn’t foresee or pairing you up with, ah, random people and—ah, sorry. Didn’t mean to be so graphic.” I was referring in particular to a few Daddy Dom flicks where I hadn’t expected the other guys to be such, well, daddies. Sometimes they were barely out of their twenties, and that’s what I usually planned on. But once in awhile it sure looked like they just brought their fat old fathers or grandfathers onto the set just to save money and quench some secret lusts. Those were the times I really longed for a straight vanilla career, which I eventually got, sort of.

“No, it’s fine!” Not only had all anger dropped from Elektra, but she seemed genuinely moved by my talk. “You didn’t need to tell me all this, and yet you did. I don’t mean to say you’re an untrustworthy person, Gray. Not at all. You’ve been more than considerate to me, offering me this place, worrying about my stupid head . . . “

“That’s what I mean, Elektra. That guard who walloped you. I’m sure it occurred to you, why would he be so reactionary unless he had something nefarious to hide?”

“Well, yes, that’s why I went back there today. Only of course I didn’t go around the back door. I went inside the LP shop with my friend Janet and looked around for little signs.”

“What’d you find?”

“Nothing. We didn’t even see Bud Pitchfork. Then again, why would an owner of a record shop be hanging around? It’s just an investment.”

“I don’t want you doing that, going to that shop without me.” Was it my imagination, or did she smile smugly, with satisfaction?

“That’s very sweet that you care.”

“Well, I was once an abused kid . . . or whatever you call it.” I was acting like a hardass. But life had made me that way. It was a defensive mechanism to shrug certain things off. I knew I’d have to become more sensitive to certain feelings if I wanted to empathize with Elektra.

She sighed deeply. “I will admit to you . . . I’m trying to get every man in town to give his DNA again. We’ve had an update to the database, which is how I caught Rufus Cole. That case was bugging me for years. The death of his wife Marnie was ruled accidental at first. I hear he admitted everything the second the DNA evidence was presented to him.”

“Oh . . . yeah? Kneecap admitted killing his wife?”

“Right, so your wonderful lawyer was of no help, was he? Rufus said he took off her clothes the same way everyone does before they take a bath, inside-out, to make it look realistic. He choked her first, then stuck her under the bathwater. He’d made the water super-hot so the time of death would be messed up.” Elektra raised one eyebrow. “Not too shabby for a scum-sucking murderer.”

I was skeptical, too. “How do I know you’re telling me the truth? Maybe you want me to repeat a fucked-up story to my brothers.”

“I work for DNAnon. I’m in their ‘About Us’ section. Master’s in forensic genetics. Google it.”

I took my phone from its holster, where I’d already ignored a few calls, no doubt from Sock Monkey at the range. Elektra was telling the truth. She was head of the newly formed Forensic Genetics department, with a degree from George Washington U. What the fuck? After her daughter had been killed, she’d gone out and done that. Very impressive.

She continued, “Now parents of murdered children, such as victims of school shootings, are committing suicide. This has to be stopped. I think if the culprits know we can nail them with DNA, they might think twice.”

“Lots of former reality stars are doing the same,” I said. “Once the camera’s not on them, they can’t deal with the difference.”

“You’ve been suicidal?”

“Not me. But a couple of former stars of Sex Archipelago have killed themselves. Have . . . you been depressed?”

“Hell yeah. Why do you think I’ve been so obsessed with this one murder? I’ve solved a dozen child murders, too. I get crime scene DNA—blood, hair, semen—and look for hundreds of thousands of DNA markers. Then I upload it to GEDmatch which is a public database. We look for the culprit or any of his relatives. In Kneecap’s case, it was the culprit himself who apparently was searching for his thug relatives in Ireland. If you live in America and descend from Europeans, there’s a sixty percent chance you have a third cousin or better in that database.”

“Didn’t you have DNA from your daughter’s crime scene?”

She set her face in cool, collected rage. “Yes. But a genetic fingerprint isn’t worth shit unless you know who put it there. We uploaded it to CODIS but there were no hits.”

I thought while my stomach growled. “Ten years ago, did they test every man in town?”

Elektra looked away. “They thought I did it at first. So they delayed DNA testing.”

Fucking shitdongles. Of course they did. Didn’t they always suspect the person closest? “Oh, man. I can imagine your frustration. Or wait, maybe I can’t, because that’s never happened to me.”

She exhaled a huge lungful of air. “Thank you! I hate when people say they can imagine my grief.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, how’d you eventually get out of it?”

She spoke tightly. “When it was too late to focus on anyone else.”

“Did you have anyone in mind?”

“That’s the thing, no. I suspected some random guy waiting outside the church. If you asked around, you probably know that I lived with my former husband and his parents at a mobile home park. Delilah was ten, and it was an insulated community, or so I thought, and she was allowed to walk home after play-care. When she didn’t return for dinner, I reported her missing at 9 o’clock. Church security tape showed her walking away alone at 3:10.”