"I already did, Nick. And he says you asked for it."

They had talked to SAR? Who had they talked to? What had they said? Did everyone at school and SAR know the cops thought he was guilty?

"There's something else, Nick." Harriman was speaking so slowly that Nick got the weird feeling he didn't want to say what he was going to. Which meant Nick definitely didn't want to hear it.

"We found male DNA on Lucy's right hand. The hand without a mitten. She must have fought with the killer. We ran it through the national and state DNA databases, and there wasn't a match. But Oregon does familial DNA database searches now. It looks to see whether a relative of a convicted offender might be a match."

He paused, as if expecting a response. When Nick didn't say anything, he continued, "Which is why we're talking to you now, Nick. Because the DNA we found on her matched your dad's. Obviously, he isn't the person who killed Lucy Hayes. But someone who is a close male relative of his did."

What the h.e.l.l was Harriman talking about? He wasn't making any sense.

"Of course my dad didn't kill her. He's dead."

"Dead?" the lady cop echoed. "Your dad's not dead, Nick!"

CHAPTER 33.

NICK.

FRIDAY.

MIXED UP WITH SOMEONE ELSE.

All the air was sucked from the room. He looked at the lady cop, at her smiling white teeth and flat eyes. Then at Harriman, at his crowded mouth and shadowed gaze.

Meeker grinned at him. "The apple didn't fall far from the tree, did it, Nick?"

"What are you talking about?" He barely felt the renewed buzz of his phone in his pocket.

Meeker answered his question with a question. "You know what I've learned over the years? Bad blood runs in families, the same as anything else. I'm talking about a genetic predisposition to violence. Like father, like son." He nodded to himself. "Athletic parents have athletic kids, artistic parents have artistic kids. And violent parents have violent kids."

Why was he looking at Nick like that? "But my dad died in Iraq. He got a medal."

Harriman's face changed. His eyes widened and he started to open his mouth. But Meeker spoke before he could.

"Nick." Meeker shook his head with exaggerated slowness, lifting one side of his mouth as if Nick had just told a not-very-funny joke. "I'm not talking about what happened over in Iraq. I'm talking about your dad beating someone to death with his bare fists in a bar. And Lucy-Lucy had just left a bar. Coincidence?"

Everything inside Nick went still. It was like the world had suddenly turned to black and white. Still recognizable, but not right. Not right at all.

"What are you talking about?"

"Twelve years ago your dad killed a guy in a bar in Northeast Portland. He said something just snapped. Is that what happened to you, Nick? Did you just snap?"

"You're not making any sense. My dad was a soldier. In Iraq. You've got him mixed up with someone else."

"Your father was a soldier. That's true." Harriman leaned closer, his sad eyes never leaving Nick's face. "And a little over twelve years ago he was discharged. Two weeks after he came home, he killed a guy in a bar over what he admits was nothing. Didn't even know the other guy's name, but he still went ballistic. Left a woman a widow, two little kids without a father."

Harriman could have been talking about Nick's own family. But it wasn't true. It couldn't be true. "You're wrong. You're wrong! I've seen the medal my dad got. You must be talking about some other guy. Some other Don Walker. And he died over there. In the war. When I was four."

"No. He went to prison when you were four. Is that what your mom told you? That he died in Iraq?" When Harriman spoke next, his voice was so soft he could have been talking to himself. "Maybe he did. To her. After all, what kind of mom wants her kids to grow up knowing they're the sons of a murderer?"

Nick didn't answer. He was incapable of answering. With one hand, he braced himself on the edge of the table.

"You're saying my dad was a killer?"

"Not was, Nick. Is." Harriman's voice was oddly gentle. "He's still alive. He's in the penitentiary down in Salem."

His dad was alive? The room spun. Nick felt boneless. He turned in his chair, leaned over, and rested his head against the cool, fake wood of the table.

His mom must know. Had to know. Known and chosen to lie to him. But what about Kyle? The thing was, he could totally see Kyle lying. But his mom? She had never lied to him.

As they watched him, the cops were silent, letting the poison seep deeper into Nick's veins.

He had boasted about his dad. Daydreamed about him. Wanted to become him. Now they thought he had. Because the truth seemed to be that his real dad was the evil shadow of the man Nick had imagined.

"I don't understand. You're saying that my dad's in jail."

"Prison," Harriman corrected, his voice still oddly gentle. "He's in prison. Has been since you were four."

"So how could you find his DNA on this girl?"

"We didn't."

The lady cop interrupted Harriman. "But we found the next best thing. A few months ago Oregon started doing familial DNA searching. If it can't find a perfect match, it looks for people who share a big chunk of the perpetrator's DNA profile. People who share DNA are usually related. One test the lab ran looked at a portion of just the Y chromosome, which only males have. In fact, it never changes as it goes down through the generations. A grandfather has the same Y-STR as a father as a son as a brother as an uncle. As long as they are all descended from the same male line."

Harriman took a piece of paper from his jacket, unfolded it, and pushed it over. It was some kind of report. Nick's eyes skimmed it. It was full of numbers and letters he didn't understand.

RESULTS OF Y-STR DNA a.n.a.lYSIS:.

In the DNA a.n.a.lysis detailed below, the following Y chromosome Short Tandem Repeat (Y-STR) loci were a.n.a.lyzed using Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR): DYS456, DYS389I, DYS390, DYS389II, DYS458, DYS19, DYS385a/b, DYS393, DYS391, DYS439, DYS635, DYS392, Y GATA H4, DYS437, DYS438, and DYS448.

Y-STR examination is male-specific, as the Y chromosome is solely inherited by males. Regions of the Y chromosome are normally identical among paternal male relatives (e.g., parent-son, full brothers, grandchild-grandparent, etc.).

Y-STR STATISTICS:.

The DNA haplotype obtained from the swabs (Items 1.6 and 34.1) is consistent with that of Eldon Walker (Item 8.1), and is found in 51 of 15,697 total individuals within the database. Applying a 95% confidence interval results in a frequency of 0.0041, which is equivalent to approximately 1 in every 244 individuals. This DNA haplotype would also be expected to be exhibited in all male paternal relatives of Eldon Walker.

"What does this have to do with anything?" Nick felt almost giddy as he focused on the last two words. "Who's Eldon Walker?"

"Your father," the lady cop answered impatiently.

"My dad's name is Don. Not El-" Only as he said it did Nick realize Don must be a nickname. "Oh." No wonder he had had trouble finding his dad when he googled him, eager for the stories his mother wouldn't tell.

Harriman spoke into his sudden silence. "Your father doesn't have any brothers, right?"

"What? No. Why?"

"And it's just you and your brother. And your brother told us he was home in bed that night. That he goes to bed early so he can work the early shift at UPS. Your mother confirmed it."

Nick thought of the empty bed, the kicked-back covers, and willed his face into a mask. He had to be careful. So careful.

Had Kyle done it? His stomach did a slow flip. How could he think that? This was his brother. Not a murderer.

Only that was what he would have said about his dad. That his dad wasn't a murderer. That he was a hero.

And Kyle had always been such a good liar. Good enough you could start to doubt yourself.

He remembered how Kyle had suddenly bolted from the room when their mom started talking about the sirens. The sound of him retching. Maybe it hadn't been the flu. Had he been remembering sinking the knife into that girl, still sickened by it?

Or had it been just the simple fear that he would be caught?

CHAPTER 34.

RUBY.

FRIDAY.

A CALCULATED RISK.

Ruby checked her phone. Again. But there were no new texts. It had been over two hours since Nick had texted her and Alexis that Detective Harriman was taking him downtown because he was a potential witness. Two hours since he last answered a text-and Nick lived on his phone.

Ruby already knew everything that Nick had seen Sunday night driving past the area where Lucy Hayes had been murdered: nothing.

So why would the police still be talking to Nick? Talking to him when he didn't know anything?

The only answer was that they must think he did know something.

Or, Ruby realized as time ticked past and Nick kept ignoring her, they must think he had done something.

Instead of going to cla.s.s, she hid in the bathroom until the bell rang. Then she walked down the suddenly empty hall, past the office, and right out the front door. Ms. Peyton, the administrative vice princ.i.p.al, was just coming in as she was going out. Ruby took a deep breath and tried to think of a lie, but Ms. Peyton only nodded at her and walked on.

Ruby realized that everyone knew what kind of girl she was, so that was what they saw. The kind of girl who would never skip.

Did the police think they knew what kind of guy Nick was? Were there things about Nick that might make them think he was the one they were looking for?

Ruby ran down the list in her head. Nick had admitted to being in the right area at the right time. He routinely carried a knife. Judging by his doodles, he was fascinated by violence. And he was impulsive.

Ruby also knew that underneath the brazen, bragging Nick was another guy, one who was capable of unexpected kindness. Of acts of heroism even when it looked like all hope was lost. But the police wouldn't know those things.

Then she remembered the evidence search and how he had accidentally put his hand down on the only footprint they had found. She was sure Nick's dizziness had been no act. But the police wouldn't know that. From their perspective, it might seem that he deliberately destroyed evidence.

Driving seven miles over the speed limit-a calculated risk-Ruby headed to the Fred Meyer on Barbur Boulevard, where Nick's mom worked. She found her at register nine.

"Hey, Ruby, what are you doing here?" Mrs. Walker threw a smile over her shoulder. Her hands never stopped moving, sliding item after item past the scanner and then putting them in the customer's heavy black nylon bag printed with a logo, not for Fred Meyer, but for Trader Joe's. The dissonance threw Ruby for a second. Then she gathered her thoughts.

"I'm here to ask you the same thing. Why are you here? Why aren't you with Nick?"

She frowned. "Why should I be with Nick?"

"Because he's being questioned by the police about that girl's murder!" Only when Mrs. Walker's customer-an old woman in mushroom-colored shoes-whipped her head around did Ruby realize she had forgotten to modulate her voice.

Mrs. Walker froze. "You don't understand. He's helping the police. That's all."

"And just what kind of help could Nick give them? He doesn't know anything. It wouldn't take them two hours to figure that out. Unless they didn't believe him."

The old lady cleared her throat, and with a start, Mrs. Walker started pa.s.sing items across the scanner again.

"But Nick didn't do anything wrong." She put a rubber band around a carton of eggs. "So it can't hurt him to talk to the police. They told me they just needed to get a few things straightened out."

"You've got to put a stop to it immediately. Nick shouldn't be talking to them without an attorney. They wouldn't be questioning him for this long unless they thought he was a suspect."

"Nick?" Mrs. Walker laughed. She actually laughed. "But he didn't have anything to do with it. Nick won't even kill a spider."

Ruby ground her teeth in frustration. "But what if the police don't see him the same way you do? If they talk to him long enough, they could make him start thinking that he actually did. Juveniles are psychologically vulnerable to suggestive cues and coercion."

"This is my son we're talking about. I know what he's capable of. I know he didn't do anything. I'm not really worried." She turned to the older woman. "That will be $35.87."

"And I know that, too," Ruby said to her back. "And I am worried. Nick might start saying what they want to hear. You need to go down to the police station and put a stop to this right away."

Mrs. Walker bit her lip. Ruby finally seemed to be getting through to her. "The thing is, I can't leave work." She lowered her voice. "We've got a new manager, and he doesn't like me because I turned him down for a date. I think he's just looking for an excuse to fire me."

"Then call the police." Ruby held out her cell phone with the phone number already selected. "Call and tell them it's over, and I'll go get him. They'll either have to read him his Miranda rights and arrest him, or they'll have to let him go."

Someone behind Ruby cleared his throat. She whirled around. "Is there a problem here?" It was a skinny middle-aged guy with an elaborate black mustache and a red polyester vest.

"Family emergency," Mrs. Walker said. The manager looked from red-haired Ruby to blond Mrs. Walker. "Can I take five minutes after this customer?"

"You've already got someone else behind her."

"Then after that. Please?"

"This really isn't the kind of behavior I want you to make a habit of."

"I'm sorry." Mrs. Walker lifted her hands.

He grunted. "This once. But don't think I'm not making note of it."