Blood of Cain

32

Dave lifted the remote off the coffee table and pointed it at his 42-inch flat screen behind the bar. CNN was in the midst of a newscast. The anchorman finished a story about Syria and said, “Turning to news here at home, the uproar continues in the Republic Presidential Primary debates as front-runner, Senator Lloyd Logan, faces questions about his wife’s past, with new revelations coming forth that she had a daughter out of wedlock. Logan, a staunch opponent of abortion, told reporters that he defends his wife’s decision to give the baby up for adoption almost twenty years ago. In the meantime, Andrea Logan has had nothing to say publically about the situation. However, a woman who says she knew Andrea when she became pregnant, Susan Cohen, said that the former Andrea Hart never told her boyfriend at the time, a man by the name of Sean O’Brien, that she was carrying his child. It was O’Brien seen on the YouTube video with Mrs. Logan, deeply sobbing in a Starbucks, while her husband raised five-million dollars in contributions outside the door.”

The video cut to an interview. The lower third of the screen flashed her name: Susan Cohen, the former Susan Lehman. Blonde, early forties, owl eyes that seldom blinked. She said, “I knew Sean, and I knew Andrea. They were the perfect couple, really. After Andrea broke off the relationship with him, she was almost three months pregnant at the time, she never told him about the baby. When I asked her why, she just said it would make things more complicated. But in my heart-of-hearts, I believe Sean would have raised the baby by himself if he’d known about the child. It really wasn’t fair to him or the child.”

The images on screen cut to the Ponce Marina parking lot.

“Oh shit,” said Nick as he watched us get out of the Jeep.

The narrative connected with the video. “Sean O’Brien is a former homicide detective with the Miami-Dade Police Department. It’s reported he spent time in the first Gulf War, and he was the sharpshooter who was involved in taking out the al Qaeda sect in Jacksonville last year. So, how all of this will play out in Senator Logan’s bid for the White House, nobody knows. When asked for a comment, O’Brien had little to say.”

The image cut to a close-up of me with a microphone in my face when I said, “My thoughts have do with walking my dog. Now, excuse me.”

The news anchorman added, “If Sean O’Brien is a good caregiver for his dog, can it be assumed he would have been a good father had he known that his former girlfriend, the current wife of Senator Lloyd Logan, was pregnant twenty years ago?”

I looked at Dave, “Shut it off.”

Nick ran his tongue across his front teeth and said, “Lookin’ at the pictures of Andrea Logan on television, and lookin’ at you now Sean, I can see a resemblance in Courtney Burke’s face.”

I said nothing.

Dave clicked the button and the screen went to black. He said, “I wish I could turn all this media frenzy down. You said it all started when you found Courtney Burke walking down that dark road. If she’s your daughter … the daughter of Andrea Logan, too, and Courtney is arrested on murder charges … and it’s found out, the media frenzy is going to hit unimaginable heights. And then Senator Logan’s bid to become the next president of the United States comes to a screeching halt.”

I stood from the deck chair and stepped to one of the salon windows facing the main public dock. I could see the dock master shaking his head, arms crossed, speaking with reporters. He was trying to keep them off private property. How long would that last? I turned back to Dave and Nick. “There’s only one way to know if Courtney Burke is my daughter, and whether Andrea Logan is her biological mother. I need DNA samples from both. And I need to have mine analyzed.”

Dave looked at me over the glasses at the end on his nose. “There’s no way in hell that Logan’s people are going to let you within a city block of Andrea.”

“I don’t need to get to her; I already have it.”

“What?” Nick’s eyebrows arched, like two dark crescent moons. “I’m almost afraid to ask how you got it.”

“I was wearing a sports coat the day I met Andrea. There were no napkins at the table in the Starbucks. Inside the front pocket of my jacket was a clean, white handkerchief. When Andrea started crying, I handed her the handkerchief. She used it to wipe her eyes and nose. I remember seeing a smudge of her red lipstick on it, too.”

“Where is it?” Dave asked.

“In a Ziploc bag in the pocket of my jacket, and that’s hanging in the closet on Jupiter.”

Dave shook his head. “That little plastic bag and its contents could prove to be a Pandora’s Box for Senator Lloyd Logan and his two-hundred million dollar campaign to become the next president of the United States.”

Nick said, “But to get Courtney’s DNA, you got to find her. That’s not gonna be easy. In the meantime, Bandini may have put a price on her head.”

Dave said, “Carlos Bandini will be small potatoes compared to Senator Logan’s camp if this thing swirls out of the box or plastic bag. If the connection is ever close to being made that Courtney Burke is his wife’s biological child, a ‘love child’ who may have grown into a killing monster, what would they do to keep it from becoming public?”

I leaned down, picked up Max, and thought of something Courtney said on my boat, “This little dog is smart. I wish I’d had a dog when I was a little girl.”