*
The same two goons escort me back to the plane. No handcuffs, no blindfold, no rough stuff. When we arrive at the tarmac, I speak for the first time.
“I need my phone back.”
The “Shut the Fuck Up” Guy reaches into his pocket and tosses it to me. “Charged it for you.”
“Thank you.”
“Heard you beat up a cop.”
“No.”
“In New York City. Said so on the news. He’s in the hospital.”
“I was just trying to escape.”
“Still, my man. Props to you.”
“Yeah,” the other goon says, speaking for the first time. “Props.”
“Thank you” doesn’t seem the appropriate response, so I say nothing. We board the same plane and take the same seats. I check the incoming texts, all from Rachel, of course, getting progressively more panicky.
I text back: I’m fine. Sorry. Waylaid.
The dots start dancing. Learn anything important?
To Rachel’s credit, she hadn’t wasted time asking for a full recap or even where I’d been. Still focused.
I text: Hilde Winslow won’t lead us to Matthew.
Dead end?
More or less, yeah.
I wait for the plane to take off and get high enough for the Wi-Fi to kick in. I look behind me. My escorts are both wearing headphones and watching their phones. I call Rachel.
“What’s all that noise?” Rachel asks. “I can barely hear you.”
“I’m on a plane.”
“Wait, what?”
There is no way to continue without giving her some details, so I give her the nonthreatening sketch recap of what happened since I left her in Revere.
“How about you?” I ask when I’m done. “Anything new on your end?”
Silence—and for a moment I think that the call has dropped.
“I may have a lead,” she says. “You remember my old friend Hayden Payne?”
It takes me a few moments to place the name. “The rich guy who had the big crush on you?” And then I see it: “Oh wait. His family is involved in those corporations, right?”
“Owns them. All part of the Payne group.”
I think about that. “Another can’t-be-a-coincidence.”
“What do you mean?”
But I don’t want to derail her. “What about Hayden?”
“They had a corporate event at Six Flags. That’s where that photo was taken. I asked him to get me all the photos taken that day.”
“Can we also get a list of attendees?”
“I guess I can ask, but he said it would be in the thousands.”
“It’s a place to start.”
“It might be, yeah. Also the company didn’t rent out the whole park. Matthew could have been with someone else.”
“Still worth a try.”
“I know.”
“What else?” I ask her.
“Are you flying back to Boston?”
Answering a question by asking a question. “No.”
“Then where?”
“I’m heading to New Jersey.”
“What’s there?”
“Cheryl,” I say. “I need to talk to her face to face.”
Chapter
31
Please tell me you’re joking,” she said.
Max tried to stare her down. He wasn’t good with eye contact. Never had been. Like he said before, he felt it was overrated. Still, he persevered. Her name was Lauren Ford, and she ran the Criminal Investigations Unit for the Boston area. Right now, Lauren was the one giving off the much more fiery glare.
“I’m not good with jokes,” Max said.
“So let me make sure I got this straight.” Lauren stood behind her desk and started pacing. “You want me to authorize my lab to run another DNA test to make sure the murder victim was really Matthew Burroughs?”
“Precisely.”
“A case that’s, what, five years old?”
“More like six.”
“And where we already arrested and convicted someone.”
“That’s correct.”
“And where said perpetrator recently escaped from federal prison.”
“Again: Correct.”
“And where it’s your job, as far as I know, to apprehend him and put him where he belongs, not retry him.”
Max did not reply.
“So,” she asked, hands spread, “why do you need a DNA test on a long-deceased victim to find an escaped convict?”
“Did you run one the first time?”
Lauren sighed. “Did you hear me say ‘another DNA test’？”
“I did.”
“Does that imply we already ran one?”
“It does,” Max agreed.
“And let me explain that’s not protocol. We already had a positive ID, despite the body’s condition. People watch too much CSI. In reality, we rarely do DNA tests on murder victims. No law enforcement in the land does. We don’t do fingerprint tests either. It is only done when there is doubt about the victim’s identity. There was none here. We knew who the victim was.”
“But you still did one?”
“Yep. Because like I said before, every jury member watches too much TV. If you don’t have all the forensics and DNA, they figure you don’t know what you’re doing. So it was overkill, but we did it.”
“How?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you compare the victim’s DNA to the mother’s DNA or the father’s or…？”
“Who remembers? You realize, of course, this was a high-profile case for us?”
“I realize that, yes.”
“We didn’t make any mistakes.”
“I’m not saying you did. Look, you still have the victim’s blood on file, right?”
“Sure. I mean, it’s stored in the warehouse, but yes, we have it.”
“And we have David Burroughs’s DNA in the system.”
That was a routine matter now, Max knew. Every prisoner’s DNA is automatically added into the databank when they are convicted.
“Doing another test, opening this door in any way,” Lauren Ford said, “it’s a big deal.”
“Then keep it quiet,” Max said. “This is just between you and me.”
“Do I look like a lab tech?”
“You, me, a lab tech. You can keep it down-low.”
She frowned. “Did you really just use the term ‘down-low’？”
Max waited.
“I could just tell you to get the hell out of my office,” she said.
“You could.”
“It was a righteous bust. It was done by the book. A cop’s son—a popular cop’s son—was the perp, and we still made sure no one played favorites.”
“Admirable,” Max said.
She leaned back, started gnawing on a fingernail Max-style. “I’m going to tell you something in confidence. Because any way you look at it, this was a righteous conviction.”
“I’m listening.”
“The DNA lab back then.”
“What about it?”
“They made a few mistakes.”
“What kind of mistakes?”
“The kind where you suddenly quit your job when an internal investigation starts and move overseas.”