Page 112 of I Will Find You

“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.”

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