Bad blood

42

“Just tell the lieutenant we’re in the Bronx,” I said to the detective who answered in the squad room. “We’re picking up Trish Quillian. Mike wants to go at her again, so we’ll bring her down this afternoon, if she’ll come with us.” I hung up the phone.

“I bet she has no idea what the connection was between her brother’s blood and her own DNA,” Mike said.

“You’re right. She was sixteen when they did the transplant. Not many people understood what DNA was back then. I would have thought that once the disease was cured, the patient eventually started producing his own blood again. Especially since all the rest of his DNA was intact.”

“Forget the science lesson. She’s got to know something more about Duke than she told us. And maybe it’s time for her to find out about Bex-and the pregnancy. More bones in her backyard than she ever meant to dig up. I’ve never been so happy to be spit at in my life.”

The quiet street had a series of attached houses. Once tree-lined, now there were twisted stumps and vestiges of dead trunks. Deep potholes rutted the roadway, and the cement in the sidewalks was cracked in many places.

“That’s the house,” I said, pointing ahead on the left at a small stucco building with brown shutters in sore need of a paint job.

“And there’s the detail,” Mike said, pulling over and parking in front of a gray Honda in which two detectives were sitting, in the event Brendan Quillian paid a visit.

I started to open my door to get out.

“Hold it, Coop. Slide down, keep your head out of sight if you can.”

I knew better than to ask what Mike had seen as he pulled down the visor above his head and opened the newspaper that was next to him on the front seat to screen his face.

“All clear. He’s crossing the street and getting into his car.”

When I heard the door slam and the engine start, I lifted my head. Trish Quillian was standing in the doorway, turning to take the mail from the box affixed to the side of the house.

“Who’d I miss?” I asked.

“Teddy O’Malley. I wouldn’t think by the way he runs me around those tunnels all night he’d have the strength to make a condolence call.”