“It does appear that way,” Aria said, choosing initially to remain standing rather than sitting down. “I wanted again to bring you up to date with my progress or, sadly enough, the lack of it. A lot has been accomplished, but I’m afraid we’ve hit up against that brick wall we spoke about earlier.”
—
I’m sorry to hear,” Laurie said. She took her hands away from supporting her head and sat back, studying Aria. To her there seemed to be a subtle change in the woman’s projected persona, with less of the in-your-face defiance than she’d exhibited on previous occasions. “What’s the latest?”
“First let me show you some family trees,” Aria said. She reached across the desk with the two that she’d brought and positioned them in front of Laurie. “The first one, as you can see, is of the Thompson family, which is the genetic family of the fetus we found at Kera Jacobsen’s autopsy, going all the way back to a great-great-grandfather. That takes it back to the late eighteen hundreds. And just so you know, the fetus was male.”
“Interesting!” Laurie said while studying the Thompson family tree, as Aria took a seat in the desk chair facing her. “So, you believe the surname of the individual you are calling Lover Boy is Thompson.”
“That was what was thought initially,” Aria said. “Unfortunately, that’s where the genealogical brick wall plays an unwelcome role. As you can see from the Thompson family tree, Eric Thompson is thefather of Lover Boy. But today, when Eric Thompson was called, he wasn’t all that cooperative, but he was cooperative enough to deny absolutely that he had any other children other than the three you see on the family tree with his wife, Clara.”
“I hope you weren’t the one who spoke with him,” Laurie said.
“No, I wasn’t,” Aria said. “It was one of the principals of GenealogyDNA. But what difference would it have made if it had been me?”
“Early in my career as a medical examiner I learned the hard way that doing my own investigating can be dangerous if there’s strong emotion or potential criminality involved.”
“Oh, for shit sake,” Aria said. “That’s the last thing on my mind.”
“I thought the same way until I managed to almost get killed by some organized-crime people,” Laurie said. “It’s just a word to the wise. You can take it or leave it.”
“Whatever,” Aria said with a wave of her hand. “The brick wall is that it seems that Lover Boy was adopted, ergo has a different surname than that which his Y chromosome would suggest.”
“Okay,” Laurie said. “I understand. Adoption can cause a break in a family tree, and in this instance it means that it’s the end of using genetic genealogy to find the father of the fetus. I’m still impressed. There’s no doubt genetic genealogy will be useful to forensics.”
“It was my fear it was the end, too,” Aria said. “But GenealogyDNA had more to offer, and that was to create a family tree of the fetus’s paternal grandmother. That’s this one. You understand who the fetus’s paternal grandmother would be?”
“I think so,” Laurie said. “She would be Lover Boy’s mother.”
“Exactly,” Aria said. “The thought was that maybe Eric Thompson wasn’t lying when he said he only had three children. There’s a definite possibility he could have sired a son as a young teenager and never knew about it. Although that is not the rule, we all know it happens.”
“True,” Laurie said.
“So GenealogyDNA put their entire team into seeing what theycould find out about the paternal grandmother’s side of the family. With a bit of luck, they did find a distant match, but while trying to follow up on that, they struck gold, as they called it. Like pennies from heaven, they came across a thirtysomething woman named Patricia Hanna, who’d just uploaded her genealogical kit and who turned out to be a half-sibling with Lover Boy. That meant that her mother, Diane Hanna née Carlson, was Lover Boy’s mother and the fetus’s paternal grandmother.”
“I see that,” Laurie said, studying the second family tree. She then looked up at Aria. “So, did someone try to call her?”
“I called her,” Aria said. “But I didn’t try to talk to her over the phone. I wanted to do it in person, which I did. In fact, I just came from her posh Fifth Avenue apartment overlooking the park.”
“Good grief,” Laurie said. “I hope you weren’t misrepresenting yourself as a medical examiner.” The idea of Aria out in the field, visiting well-connected people and perhaps posing as a representative of the NYC OCME, could have disastrous legal ramifications besides being possibly risky. Issues surrounding out-of-wedlock pregnancy and adoption were potentially emotionally explosive even with today’s mores.
“Absolutely not,” Aria said. “I was representing myself as a resident in Pathology at NYU.”
“What happened?” Laurie asked, with rising concern. “Were you well received, I hope?”
Aria laughed hard enough to need a minute to regain control even though her laughter wasn’t completely mirthful. “Sorry,” she said. “No, I was not well received. Well, that’s not entirely correct. Initially, I was well received, but that changed one-hundred-and-eighty degrees when I got around to bringing up the issue that I was there to talk about, namely that she had had a son with a man named Eric Thompson some fifty years ago.”
“I can imagine how that went over,” Laurie said with a sense of dread, suddenly regretting that she’d encouraged Aria to follow up on the Kera Jacobsen case. Knowing what she did about city politics, she started to worry whether she was going to hear about this episode from the mayor’s office. There was little doubt in her mind that if there was a formal complaint followed by an investigation, the incident would be traced back to the OCME.
“She went ballistic,” Aria said. “She practically threw me out into the street.”
“I’m not surprised,” Laurie said with a sense of alarm. “Will I be hearing any fallout from this? Did you mention the OCME or anything about Kera Jacobsen’s death?”
“No! Don’t worry,” Aria said. “I didn’t involve the OCME or Kera Jacobsen in any way. If you want to know, I concocted a story about me being the product of a sperm donation with the source of the sperm being her unacknowledged son, and I was just trying to find out something about my heritage. I made an effort for the news to be as benign as possible, maybe even a little complimentary because if it were true, she’d be my grandmother. But it didn’t work. The bitch of a woman who apparently thinks of herself as a socialite is a total fake who’s had enough plastic surgery to make her lips look like a fish.”
“Okay,” Laurie said, trying to calm herself. With the concern of having her surgery the next day, she was having trouble dealing with this new, potential problem and Aria in general. “Perhaps we should try to think of how we might mitigate any fallout. How angry would you guess Mrs. Hanna was? Do you think there’s any chance she’ll be vindictive enough to possibly have you investigated or censured?”
“Certainly not,” Aria said with a wave of her hand. “And her overreacting guarantees it. She knows that if she were to make any kind of stink, like complaining to someone about my visit, the truth would come out. She doesn’t want that. She wants the whole issue just to go away so it doesn’t mar her fake life. There’s no doubt in my mind, and there shouldn’t be in yours, either.”
