Frameshift

“But—”

“How long do you keep tissue samples from autopsies?”

“Depends. Years, anyway. You know how court cases drag on. Why?”

“So you’d have samples from various unsolved murders committed in the last couple of years?”

“If an autopsy was ordered — we don’t always do one; they’re expensive.

And if the case is still unsolved. Sure, samples would still be around somewhere.”

“Can I get access to them?”

“Whatever for?”

“To see if some of them might have been misguided mercy killings, too.”

“Pierre, I don’t mean to be harsh, but, well…”

“What?”

“Well — Huntington’s. It does affect the mind, right? Are you sure you’re not just being paranoid?”

Pierre started to protest, but then just shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know.

But you can help me find out. I only need tiny samples. Just enough to get a complete set of chromosomes.”

She thought for a moment. “You ask for the damnedest things, you know.”

“Please,” said Pierre.

“Well, tell you what: I can get you the ones we’ve got here. But I’m not going to go calling around to other labs; that would raise too many eyebrows.”

“Thank you,” said Pierre. “Thank you. Can you make sure that Bryan Proctor is included?”

“Who?”

“That superintendent who was murdered by Chuck Hanratty.”

“Oh, yeah.” Helen moved over to her computer, tapped some keys. “No can do,” she said after a moment. “Says here a tenant heard the gunshot that killed him. That fixed the time of death exactly, so we didn’t take any tissue samples.”

“Damn. Still, I’ll take anything else you can get for me.”

“All right — but you owe me big-time. How many samples do you need?”

“As many as I can possibly get.” He paused, wondering how much he should take Helen into his confidence. He didn’t want to say too much, but, dammit, he did need her help. “The person I have in mind is also under investigation by the Department of Justice for being a suspected Nazi war criminal, and—”

“No shit?”

“No — which explains the neo-Nazi connection. And, well, if he murdered thousands fifty years ago, he may very well have ordered a lot more than just the handful we know about murdered today.”

Helen thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. “I’ll see what I can do. But, look, it’s almost Christmas, and that’s our busiest time for crime, I’m afraid. You’re going to have to be patient.”

Pierre knew better than to push. “Thank you,” he said.

Helen nodded. “Uh-huh.”

Two months later.

Pierre hurried in the back door of the house. He’d given up fighting the steps to the front door a couple of weeks before. It was 5:35 p.m., and he went straight for the couch, scooping up the remote and turning on the TV. “Molly!” he shouted. “Come quickly!”

Molly appeared, holding baby Amanda, who, at eight months, had acquired even more rich brown hair. “What is it?”

“I heard just as I was leaving work that the piece on Felix Sousa is on

Hard Copy tonight. I thought I’d be home in time, but there was an accident on Cedar.”

A commercial for Chrysler minivans was coming to an end. The Hard Copy spinning typewriter ball flew out at them, making that annoying thunk-thunk ! as it did so; then the host, a pretty blonde named Terry Murphy, appeared. “Welcome back,” she said. “Are blacks inferior to whites? A new study says yes, and our Wendy Di Maio is on the story.

Wendy?”

Molly sat down next to Pierre on the couch, holding Amanda against her shoulder.

The image changed to some historical footage of the UCB courtyard behind Sather Gate, with longhaired flower children strolling by and a bare-chested hippie sitting under a tree, strumming a guitar.

“Thanks, Terry,” said a woman’s voice over the pictures. “In 1967, the University of California, Berkeley, was home to the hippie movement, a movement that preached making love not war, a movement that embraced the family of man.”

The image dissolved to modern videotape footage shot from the same angle. “Today, the hippies are gone. Meet the new face of UCB.”

Walking toward the camera was a trim, broad-shouldered white man of forty, wearing a black leather pilot’s jacket with the collar turned up and mirrored aviator sunglasses. Pierre snorted. “Christ, he’s even dressed like a storm trooper.”

The reporter’s voice-over said, “This is Professor Felix Sousa, a geneticist here. There’s no peace in the wake of his research — and no love for him on the part of many of the university’s staff and students, who are branding him a racist.”

The shot changed to Sousa in one of the chemistry labs in Latimer Hall, beakers and flasks spread out on the counter in front of him. Pierre snorted again; he’d never once actually seen Sousa in any lab. “I’ve spent years on this research, Miz Di Maio,” Sousa said. His voice was crisp and cultured, his enunciation meticulous. “It’s hard to reduce it to a few simple statements, but…”