McNichol sat back down, his lecture done. Jude was intrigued by all that he had heard, but he was at a loss to figure out what all of it had to do with him. He turned a page in his notebook — a sign that he wanted to get down to business — took a sip of coffee, which was now cold, and looked the medical examiner in the eye.
"Mr. McNichol… Dr. McNichol. All this is very interesting. But if you don't mind, what does it have to do with the two swatches of hair I left with you?"
"Background, my boy. Background. Without my little lecture — and I'm sorry if I went on a bit there — but without it you would not be able to understand what it is that I did and how I reached the conclusion I did."
"And what is that?" prodded Jude.
"As you might expect, all of this research has implications in my own little pond," he said with a false tone of self-deprecation. "The forensic sciences have grown by leaps and bounds in recent years, and we are doing things we never thought possible back when I was in medical school."
"Yes. Please get to the point."
"The point is, I did a straightforward DNA analysis, in which I compared the two samples of hair. DNA, as you know, is a matching of gene sequences that permits us to establish whether or not two specimens come from the same person. The likelihood of error is greatly reduced when compared to fingerprinting. We are usually able to establish ownership within margins that defy coincidence."
"Yes, I know. And you found…?"
"Well, very simply, I found that the DNA matched perfectly. The chance that such a match would occur in two different people in this case is approximately one in four hundred thousand, which is to say, negligible. So that finding leads inescapably to the conclusion that the two hair samples came from the same person."
"Or," said Jude slowly, "they could come from identical twins — correct?"
"Yes, of course. Identical twins do not have the same fingerprints, since fingerprints form in a late stage of fetal development. But they do have the same genetic makeup, and so any DNA specimens from identical twins would form a perfect match. But in this case, I ruled out twins."
"What? Why?"
"Well, that takes us back to the telomeres. We have recently developed and refined a subset of DNA testing called RFLPS, which stands for restriction fragment length polymorphism. The procedure can differentiate between organisms by analyzing patterns derived from cleavage of their DNA. We can look at the length of the telomeres to come up with an estimate of the age of the person. It's not exact, mind you, but the technique is sufficiently sophisicated to establish a difference in ages between two samples. And that's what I was able to do here."
"And what was that? Dr. McNichol, please, tell me the conclusion."
"One sample — in the bag you marked A — came from a person who is five years younger than the sample in bag B. Give or take a year."
"But… but," Judd stammered. "That's not possible."
"Exactly. That's not possible if they were from identical twins. How could you have identical twins of different ages? And so I reached my conclusion, which you may feel free to print in your newspaper, provided of course that you do end up doing a story, and that conclusion is…"
"Yes."
"That the two swatches came from the same person, which I assume is you. You gave me two more or less identical samples of your hair, except that one was about five years younger. So you cut it off five years ago and preserved it."
Jude fell silent.
"What I can't fathom," said McNichol, "is why you would have saved it — surely you didn't have the foresight five years ago to know that you would be doing this kind of article."
Very slowly, Jude closed his notebook. He thanked McNichol for the work he had done, shook his hand and said he might be in touch with him if he had further questions. McNichol asked Jude when he thought the article would run, and Jude replied that he had no idea.
On the way out, a receptionist was sitting at the front desk that had been empty earlier. She was a young woman with sharp eyes who looked intelligent. Jude approached her and asked her the name of the agency that occupied the office.
"A number of agencies share the space — federal, state and local. It's spillover space."
"Law enforcement agencies?"
"Why, yes."
"Including the FBI?"
"Yes, the FBI among others. Why do you ask?"
He didn't answer, and when she demanded to know his name, and why he was there, he didn't answer that, either. Instead, he went to the elevator bank and, as luck would have it, got there just as the doors opened.
Jude called Tizzie from a phone booth on Astor Place and tried to keep calm. He didn't want his voice to sound as worried as he, in fact, was. She did not answer right away. He checked his watch — after five. The secretary would be gone. Was she still there? With each ring, he began tapping the side of the booth with a knuckle, and soon he was urging her to hurry—"C'mon, c'mon. Pick up."
Finally, she did.
"Tizzie. Listen. Skyler's missing. I came down to his place and he's not there. The super said he cut out."
"Why? Where would he go?"
"No idea. The super didn't know — he's not very helpful. At first he thought I was Skyler, and he started yelling at me for going down the fire escape. He said I almost wrecked it, it was illegal to use it, that he didn't want me there anymore. Then I told him we were brothers and my younger brother was a little slow and did he know where he went, but he didn't know anything. Except he said Skyler was scared of something. He said he looked like he was running away."
"What could he be running away from?"
"God only knows, but he was clearly spooked. We can talk about that later. I've got so much to tell you — you won't believe it. Some things are falling into place. But in the meantime, I've got to find Skyler. I'm going to go look for him. Can you wait over at my place, in case he calls? I think he's got the number, at least I hope so."
"Certainly."
"And keep your eyes peeled when you go in. Maybe he'd go there — if he's really scared I don't think so, he'd be afraid they'd look for him there. But you never know."
"Jude. Who are 'they'?"
"Later."
"Don't be so mysterious. You're acting strange, and you sound really upset."
"I'll tell you everything, but not now. I've got to get going."
Tizzie said she'd go right over.
Jude hailed a cab and told the driver to take him to Central Park.
"Whereabouts?"
That was just the problem — Jude hadn't the slightest idea. And since the park ran from Fifty-ninth Street to One hundred and tenth, he didn't have a hope in hell of launching any kind of thorough search. He told the driver to leave him off at Seventy-second and Fifth. He'd just have to take his chances.
He leaned back in his seat. Now, where would I go, if it was me? After all, it almost is me, for Christ's sake. There ought to be some kind of advantage in being… so closely related.
He could not bring himself to use — even in his own inner monologue — the word that had leapt to mind after his talk with McNichol.
In the holding cell of the Seventeenth precinct, Skyler was allowed more than the traditional single phone call. After all, he was not, strictly speaking, arrested.
He had been brought in with all of the construction workers, burly men who had been screaming and cursing at the demonstration, but who had turned notably passive once they were in police custody, herded into a van. On the way to the station house, they'd joked with the cops and exchanged small talk, regular guys out on an adventure. Skyler, sitting in a corner of the van and staring through the wire mesh at the streets whizzing by, had been petrified. He had no idea of what was happening or where he was going or why. His leg throbbed and his head ached, and when he touched the wound on his scalp, he felt his hair caked in blood.