“You’re assuming he knows,” she says. “It’s not out of the realm of possibility that he truly isn’t aware of a child.”
“You think you wouldn’t know if someone had your kid?”
“Interestingly, Will, this is a phenomenon limited to the males of the species. While we might be in a situation where we don’t who a father is, we do have a tendency to know when a kid is ours or not. Considering we give birth to them.”
“Point taken,” he says, saluting with two fingers. “Still. Something just smells wrong about this. The way he reacted. Like it was inevitable that we’d come calling.”
Now she leans back in the chair and joins his makeshift footstool. “Don’t you think that’s got a lot to do with his past? He was a suspect in a murder. Even though it turned out to be someone else, that’s gotta fracture a guy, right? He was a kid, and it went unsolved for a while. That’s hung over his head all these years.”
“Yeah. Still—”
Joey’s phone rings. “Moore. Yeah? Let’s hear it.”
She sets her phone on the desk and hits the speaker. “Tip line got a call about Cooke. Says it’s a live one.”
A girl’s quiet but excited voice plays through the speaker.
“I need to report something that might help with the Beverly Cooke case.”
“Would you like to identify yourself?”
“Nooo. Um. So. There’s this group of people who are all related. And they are related to the killer, though I don’t know who that is.”
“A group, ma’am? Can you be more specific? You know the killer’s family?”
“Um, sort of. We…all have the same dad.”
“I see. So you believe your brother is the suspect in the Cooke case?”
“Oh, no. Not my brother. A half brother. A half sibling. We all have the same donor father. I don’t know who that is, though.”
“Donor father?”
“Yes. A sperm donor. There’s a whole group of us, and apparently, one of us is the suspect in the Cooke case.”
“Ma’am, I’m going to need more information. Would you please at least give me a callback number so the detectives can contact you?”
Whispers, then the girl clears her throat. “615-555-8796. But I’d like to stay anonymous. Thank you.”
“Thank you, ma’am. We will do our very best with this information, and the detectives will probably be in touch.”
“Probably?” Osley says, reaching for the phone. “Shit, call her now.”
Moore is already dialing the number.
“That didn’t take long,” a voice says. It is not the girl’s voice from the tip line, but an older woman.
“Ma’am? Detectives Moore and Osley from Metro Nashville homicide. I understand you consented to be contacted about a tip regarding the Beverly Cooke case?”
“Yes, but I must insist that we stay out of this.”
“Understood. The suspect we’re looking for, you’re saying he’s one of a number of children, all fathered by the same sperm donor?”
“Yes. My daughter is a member of an online forum that is comprised of multiple children from the same donor, all who’ve found each other through an DNA database. One of them is apparently matched to the woman who was found in the lake.”
“Ma’am, it sure would make things easier if you could give us some concrete details. Can we come talk to you and your daughter?”
“We prefer to talk by phone. For now.”
Osley gives Moore a thumbs-up.
“Fair enough. We’re all ears, ma’am. Tell us what you can, and we’ll investigate.”
At the end of the call, they hear whispering, then a sigh from the woman they’ve been talking to.
“Fine. Here. Talk to them.”
A young woman’s voice comes on the line, tremulously excited.
“We’ve agreed to give you our information. My name is Scarlett Flynn. And if you speak to our donor, tell him I’d like to meet him.”
12
THE PAST
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
University of North Carolina
April 2001
Park Bender, lanky, lean, fraternity heartthrob, catch of the century and knew it, strolled across the campus with his backpack on one shoulder and a hand in the pocket of his North Face, trying to look cool. He had a vicious hangover, compliments of the PKA party the night before. The Pike house had been thumping; someone had passed around a dose of mushrooms at the pregame, and he always drank too much when he was tripping. After the semester he’d had so far, no one blamed him for overdoing it.
No one blamed him at all.
Because Melanie Rich was missing.
Still missing.
When the police had questioned him, the weekend she disappeared, about his perky young on-again, off-again freshman girlfriend, about the fight they’d had that Thursday night at the KD house, witnessed by Melanie’s roommates, he blew it off. He figured they’d find her sleeping off a bad drunk in one of her friends’ apartments or discover she’d gotten homesick and gone home to her parents’ place in Raleigh for the weekend. But hours became days, which stretched to weeks, and suddenly she’d been gone for two months, and the semester was ending. Everyone from the students to the media speculated about when her body would show up. There were even betting pools in some of the frat house basements with Las Vegas–style oddsmaking, though no one would admit that publicly. Odds that Melanie was dead: four to one. Odds that Park killed her? Ten to one, as of last night, which was why he’d gotten so smashed. Last weekend, they’d been riding at thirty to one. His favor among his compatriots was slipping.
When the cops finally came and took his DNA, he gave it willingly, without making a fuss or asking for a lawyer; he had nothing to hide. But after that, tired of the sideways glances and sudden ends to conversations when he came in the room, Park decided to head home the moment finals were over, instead of lingering for the end-of-semester parties.
He’d been more than relieved to be back in Nashville over winter break, something he usually avoided because it made him sad. Holidays just weren’t the same now that they were all grown and his mom was gone. He missed the excitement of Christmas Eve, he and Perry whispering under the covers, timing their descent down the big staircase so they could catch Santa coming out of the chimney. Missed the gentleness of Christmas Day, when kids and parents all had their presents and were playing before the big dinner. Missed what it was like before things fell apart.
He missed the way it was before their mom got sick and Perry bailed for Europe, and it was just him and Lindsey and his dad, who had checked out when his mom died, and the family’s descent into depression was too much to bear.
This year, though, two months after Melanie went missing, he’d thrown himself into the holidays, doing all the things his mom used to love. Put up a tree, dragged out the ornaments they’d made as kids, hung wreaths on the garage doors. Lindsey, relieved to have at least one brother around to temper their dad’s benign neglect, helped cheerfully, and even his dad seemed to pull out of his funk for a while Christmas morning.
Melanie was still missing when he got back to campus. While he was home, the police had cleared him, and the media reported his innocence, and now people weren’t quite so jittery around him. The odds, though, getting tighter and tighter as the semester went on.