Genesis

Chapter 15

May 8th

10:10 P.M.

Aria’s first impression of Nobu Fifty Seven was that it was the antithesis of Cipriani Downtown. Instead of noisy, crowded, claustrophobic, and brightly illuminated chaos, she was presently standing in an expansive and subdued, subtly lit barroom with a soaring ceiling some thirty feet above. Over the bar was a huge display of thirty large sake barrels. Although Aria imagined the bar had been busy earlier, it was now a calm refuge from the day with only a bit more than a half dozen customers. Behind the bar were two attentive bartenders dressed in black. It seemed unreal to her that on the same night she was visiting two trendy establishments that she never imagined she might patronize. She’d been in New York City for almost four years and had never had the urge to set foot in either one.

Finding a section of the bar with five empty seats, she took the middle one. The bar itself was an enormous slab of wood, three or four inches thick, and finished with glossy epoxy making the surface absolutely smooth. As soon as she was seated, one of the bartenders came over and placed a cocktail napkin in front of her. He then stuck out his hand and said, “Welcome to Nobu. My name is Alex. And yours?”

Aria looked at the proffered hand and then back up at the bartender’s smiling face. He was a man of medium height with a dark complexion, dark hair and eyes, and a short half-beard, giving him a mild but interesting Mephistophelian aura. Despite finding him intellectually attractive, she had no intention of shaking the hand of a stranger with whom she had no common interest other than being in the same place at the same time. “I want to eat something,” she said. “What do you recommend?”

Without a moment’s hesitation or evidence of chagrin, Alex retracted his hand and reeled off a bewildering number of possibilities. He ended his spiel with the question of whether Aria had any food allergies or strong dislikes.

“I like pretty much everything except entrails,” she said.

“Then I recommend the salmon and avocado roll and white fish with dried miso, provided you’re okay with sushi and sashimi.”

“Fine,” Aria said.

“Something to drink? Wine? Cocktail?”

“I’ll have a glass of prosecco,” Aria said. “What time do you close?”

“Midnight,” Alex said.

While she waited, she looked to either side. Everyone else at the bar was a couple. She looked back up at the ceiling. It seemed impossibly high since the room was higher than it was wide.

Her drink came first, and she took a sip. It was a good prosecco. She knew because she’d had bad prosecco. Glancing back at the entrance, Aria wondered how long she would have to wait for Madison’s arrival. She wasn’t happy being there, but she was still intrigued by Madison’s offer of providing a way to find Kera’s missing lover. She was the first to admit that she had absolutely no idea of what Madison was going to suggest. The only thing that had come to her mind was perhaps there was something significant that Madison had failed to tell her at Cipriani.

Madison arrived before the food. Aria saw her the moment she came into the restaurant. Their eyes met, and Madison came quickly over to where she was sitting.

“I appreciate your willingness to meet with me,” Madison said right off the bat. “Thank you for taking the time.”

Aria stayed silent as Madison took off a light jean jacket, draped it over a neighboring empty barstool, and sat down. Attentive as ever, Alex came over immediately to place a cocktail napkin in front of Madison. He repeated the introduction he’d given Aria, including extending his hand. In contrast to Aria, Madison shook the hand and gave her name in return. After a brief conversation, it was decided Madison was not hungry but would have a drink.

“I’ll have the same as she,” Madison said, nodding toward Aria’s glass.

“It’s prosecco,” Aria said, surprised someone would order something when she didn’t know what it was. She wondered if it meant Madison had already had enough to drink during the evening.

“Whatever,” Madison said. “I like prosecco well enough.”

“What is your suggestion about finding Kera Jacobsen’s secret lover?” Aria asked, eager to turn the conversation to business. It was at that moment when Alex brought Aria’s food. With it he provided chopsticks, a cloth napkin, several small dishes, and a small kettle-like container of teriyaki sauce. Although Madison said she wasn’t going to eat, he brought chopsticks and a napkin for her, too.

Aria tried a piece of the sushi and a piece of the sashimi, then pushed both dishes closer to Madison. “Not bad,” Aria said. “I’m starved. Try it! The sashimi is particularly good.”

Madison followed Aria’s lead. “Yum,” she said, then got down to business. “To explain what I have in mind, I have to ask you a question. Do you remember the arrest of the Golden State Killer in 2018?”

“I think so.”

“Do you remember how he was found?”

“As I recall, he was found by someone matching his DNA through one of the ancestry websites?”

“Exactly,” Madison said, becoming excited about the subject.

“Is this what you have in mind for finding Kera’s boyfriend?” Aria asked. She was immediately disappointed. She had expected at a minimum to get names of people who might have known Kera’s secrets.

“That’s exactly what I have in mind,” Madison said.

“Well, I can tell you right off, it’s not going to work,” Aria said, not trying to camouflage her disappointment. “Finding the Golden State Killer was a completely different set of circumstances. They had the man’s DNA from his semen. We don’t have our perpetrator’s semen or his DNA.” Aria put down her chopsticks. She was so disappointed that she was tempted to just leave.

“That’s true, but there is a good chance we can construct his DNA.”

“Oh, please,” Aria scoffed. “What the hell do you mean, construct his DNA?”

“About a year ago my mother gave me a present of having my DNA analyzed by one of the major DNA genealogical companies. At this point I can’t even remember which one it was. I think it was Ancestry dot com, which has the largest database. But it doesn’t matter because I’ve gotten into a genealogical obsession, and I’ve had just about all the commercial DNA companies analyze me. I tell you, once you start, it becomes addictive. And it works. I’ve found ancestors going back to the eighteen hundreds who were slaves.”

“I’m happy for you,” Aria said. She checked the time on her phone. It was nearing eleven, which explained why she was suddenly feeling like she wanted to be in bed. Normally she was in bed by ten or ten thirty to read.

“The point I’m trying to make is that I have become reasonably knowledgeable about the ins and outs of genealogical DNA. It’s complicated stuff, but if you are persistent, like I am, you can figure most of it out.”

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to cut this short,” Aria said. She glanced down the bar and raised her hand with the idea of getting Alex’s attention.

“I think finding this boyfriend will be rather easy because we will have both the child’s DNA and the mother’s. That means we already have half the father’s DNA.”

Aria lowered her hand and looked back at Madison. “That might be correct,” Aria said. “But that still leaves one and a half billion base pairs that are unknown.”

“Yes, but there are some clever tricks to fill that in by using tools developed by the commercial DNA companies and aided by websites that are called open databases. Let me explain: When you send in your saliva sample to a company like Ancestry dot com, what you get back is called a kit. It is not your DNA completely sequenced, although maybe in the future it will be. But for now, it’s your particular collection of varying nucleotides at various precise locations spread through your entire genome. These precise locations are called SNPs, standing for single-nucleotide polymorphisms. It is sort of like a fingerprint in chemistry.”

“I understand all this,” Aria said with a bit more interest. Madison seemed to know what she was talking about. Aria had never thought about the idea of finding someone by figuring out what their DNA was from close relatives. She’d always thought that such a process was unidirectional, the way the Golden State Killer had been found, by having his DNA to start with.

“Of course, you know most of this stuff about DNA since you are a doctor,” Madison said. “I’m sure you know more about the nuts and bolts than I. At the same time, I can tell you’re not up on the latest about what genealogical DNA is capable of doing. These days there are some wild tricks that have been developed, particularly by companies like GEDmatch dot com. One’s called phasing, which separates the child’s DNA into DNA obtained only from the mother and DNA only from the father into new kits. There is even a really cool one that involves making a manufactured kit for the ‘evil twin,’ meaning an artificial kit of the DNA the real child didn’t get from the parents.

“But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. All you have to understand at the moment is that these new manufactured ‘phased’ kits can also be used to find ancestral matches. In Kera’s case we will only be interested in matches from the paternal side, which is why the phased kits are helpful. And if paternal matches are found that are closer than third cousins, chances are we will be lucky, especially if these matches have made the effort to construct family trees. If we end up getting even closer matches, such as siblings, half-siblings, parents, or aunts or uncles, even first cousins, it would make finding him a piece of cake.”

“Really?” Aria said, her mind in a swirl. For several beats she stared at Madison. What she was hearing was opening up a whole new possibility that had not occurred to her, and she struggled to put it into context. “This means we’ll have to have kits made for both Kera and her child by any one of the commercial DNA companies.”

“Right on,” Madison said with building enthusiasm. “And the more companies we use, the greater the chances for matches to be found. I’m going to turn you into a convert, I’m sure of it.” She let out a little laugh of satisfaction at Aria’s response. “What I’ve learned studying all this stuff is that on average a person has about 850 relations who are third cousins or closer. Just to remind you, third cousins share great-great-grandparents. Now, don’t be discouraged by thinking we’ll have to be sorting through 850 people. No way. By guessing the mysterious boyfriend’s age, we can probably halve that number. Then by excluding female matches, we can halve it again. And finally, restricting the matches to the New York City area, we’ll be halving it again.”

“So, you think we’d end up with a hundred people or so?” Aria questioned with renewed discouragement. Trying to narrow down a group of a hundred people in a city like New York would be a monumental task even for a team of professional investigators.

“No, no,” Madison said. “Probably less than twenty. Restricting the matches by age narrows it more than fifty percent, a lot more. And if there’s a close match like a sibling, a parent, or an aunt and uncle, then we’d be looking at a lot less than five or six people. It might only be one person. Bingo! We got the bastard.” She smiled. “All this excites me because it will hopefully provide some redemptive value. I’ll feel like I’m doing something for Kera by finding this dude, even if it’s too late to save her.”

“When do you think we can start?” Aria said. Some of Madison’s excitement was beginning to rub off on her.

“Tomorrow,” Madison said. “Why not? I’ll find out what the commercial DNA companies would like for samples since we won’t be able to send saliva, which is what they usually use.”

“I’m sure I can get body fluid or tissue samples from both the mother and the fetus. You’ll have to let me know what they want.”

“That reminds me,” Madison said. “What was the sex of the fetus?”

“It wasn’t yet definitive,” Aria said. “We estimated the age to be around ten weeks. At that stage it’s not easy to tell, since the forming penis and clitoris are around the same size until about fourteen weeks. If I had to guess, I’d say male.”

“It would be a big help if it were a male,” Madison said.

“Why is that?”

“Because the Y DNA is inherited only from the paternal side.”

“Even I know that, because it is the Y chromosome that determines the male gender. Why is that any better than the autosomal DNA for genealogy?”

“It’s not better, it’s just different and additive,” Madison said. “But mainly because it can provide a surname. If we can determine the proper family name, the field of significant matches narrows decidedly, provided there wasn’t anything to mess things up like an adoption.”

“Why would an adoption mess things up?” Aria asked.

“The surname changes but the Y chromosome doesn’t. It can really cause a problem when trying to construct family trees, and it is family trees that we’ll need to use if we don’t get a really close match right away, which we probably won’t. There’s too much chance involved.”

“Okay,” Aria said. It was progressively apparent to her that she needed to read up on genetic genealogy. She’d not known it was as complicated as it seemed to be, although as a doctor she should have. Having studied biology she knew about chromosomal recombination, which was one of the main sources for heritable diversity. “What about mitochondrial DNA?”

“If we had the father’s DNA and were trying to reconstruct the mother’s, then mitochondrial DNA would be helpful. As you know, it is only inherited along the maternal line because the sperm doesn’t contribute mitochondria. All the mitochondria come from the ovum.”

“Of course,” Aria said. She felt a twinge of embarrassment for asking her question and appreciated Madison for not calling her on it. “Obviously I need to get myself up to speed on all this genetic genealogy. Are there any particular books that you’d recommend?”

“Oh, yes,” Madison said. “There are two, actually. The one that’s more general is called The Family Tree Guide to DNA Testing and Genetic Genealogy by Blaine Bettinger. The other one, which will be more helpful for our search, is The Adoptee’s Guide to DNA Testing by Tamar Weinberg. Adoptees have been using genetic DNA to search for their natural parents from the very beginning of DNA genealogy with improving success. The other group of people who have surely benefited from genetic genealogy’s developing power are those who have been conceived with donor sperm. What this group in particular has learned over recent years will help us a lot since that is essentially what we’re doing, and there are a number of websites who might be willing to help us.”

“How are you ladies doing?” Alex asked. He’d approached and waited for an opportunity to speak. The women had been locked in conversation. “Can I get you any more food or drinks?”

“I’ve had enough,” Aria said.

“Me, too,” Madison said, although she quickly polished off the dregs of prosecco.

“How do you guys want to handle this?” Alex questioned, pointing to the glasses and the dishes in front of the women.

“I’ll take the check,” Madison said. Then, to Aria, she said, “I talked you into stopping here, so my treat.”

Aria stayed silent. If Madison wanted to pay, who was she to complain?

“What’s the quickest and easiest way to get those books you mentioned,” Aria asked while Madison was finger-signing the reader that had her credit card poked into its base.

“The quickest way is to come back with me to my apartment,” Madison said. “You can borrow mine, provided you don’t mind if they’re underlined and a bit dog-eared. I’ve read both several times.” She finished signing and handed the device back to Alex, who immediately produced a receipt.

“Thank you, ladies,” Alex said. “Come back and see us again.”

“Where do you live exactly?” Aria said to Madison.

“West Seventy-Third between Columbus and Amsterdam.”

“That’s close to me,” Aria said. “I live on Seventieth between Columbus and Central Park West.”

“That’s certainly convenient enough. Do you want to come and get the books? If you want to get a jump on genetic genealogy, I’d recommend it for sure.”

“Okay,” Aria said. “We can take a rideshare to your apartment, and I can walk home from there.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Madison said as she pulled on her denim jacket.

When they climbed out of the car in front of Madison’s apartment building, Aria said: “I’ll wait out here.” Although it was on the cool side, it was still a pleasant mid-spring night and it was still early enough for significant vehicular and pedestrian traffic particularly on the bounding avenues.

“Suit yourself,” Madison said. Not having to be hospitable was preferable as she wanted to get to bed as soon as she could. Earlier in the evening she’d worried about what sleep that night was going to be like after the disturbing day, but following the conversation with Aria in Nobu and the prospect of doing something positive for Kera, her natural exhaustion had caught up with her.

Up in her one-bedroom rear apartment, Madison had to scan her sizable bookcase for the two books she’d described to Aria. Once she had both books, she returned outside to the front of her building. Aria was sitting on one of the granite blocks that lined the three steps up into the building. A man with a dog had stopped and was trying to engage her in a conversation. Madison felt sorry for the man as it was apparent things were not going well. Madison wondered if Aria ever let her guard down with anyone. She was a mystery to Madison, who’d never met anyone quite like her. Unpredictable was the word that came to mind. One minute she seemed tolerable enough, the next minute disagreeable. Madison wondered if Aria was typical of all forensic pathologists. Considering the experience she’d had that day, she wondered if they all might be a bit weird. Dealing with death on an everyday basis had to have a consequence. She couldn’t imagine doing it herself.

Aria stood, ignoring the man with the dog, and took the books from Madison. “These do look used,” she said as she quickly flipped through them.

Holding her tongue from what she initially thought to say in response, Madison said instead, “I think you’ll find them useful. And let’s talk tomorrow. I’ve got patients all day, but I’ll be able to talk in between them if that works for you. Then we can decide how we’re going to proceed.”

“Sounds good,” Aria said. “I’ll be able to have these books back to you quickly. I’m a fast reader.”

“Whatever,” Madison said with a wave of her hand. “Keep them as long as you like. As I said, I’ve read them several times.”

“Okay,” Aria said with a nod before striking off toward Columbus Avenue.

Aria walked quickly. Now that she had the books about genetic genealogy, she wanted to get home and start reading. Although she’d been initially disappointed in Madison’s suggestion about using genetic genealogy to locate the missing man, she now felt encouraged. Sensing that Kera had been an intelligent, culturally endowed, educated woman despite her appearance that day prior to the autopsy, it seemed to make sense that she would have been involved with a man with similar traits and interests. If so, it stood to reason that his relatives would be similar, and Aria surmised such people would have the means and interest to indulge in genetic genealogy. All that meant was finding him by this process would be that much easier.

As it was dog-walking time before bed, she encountered several other men who tried to engage her in conversation, using her white coat and their dog as a convenient entrée. Aria either ignored them completely or told them that she couldn’t stand dogs, which was a convenient turnoff. In less than ten minutes she was mounting the steps up the front stoop of her building.

When Aria first came to New York for her residency, she thought it best to buy herself a condominium rather than have to deal with a landlord. She’d always liked New York because the sheer number of people made it easy to ignore everyone. In medical school at Yale, she’d not had that luxury, as New Haven in comparison seemed like a small town. She’d wanted to live on the Upper West Side because of its proximity to Central Park and because it was a real neighborhood. Within a short walking distance, she had everything she needed. She didn’t own a car and didn’t want one.

The apartment she ended up buying was on a street lined with brownstones. Although they were originally single-family dwellings, many were now converted into condominiums. She was particularly drawn to 70th Street because some of the buildings were still single family, significantly reducing the congestion. Her building, strangely enough, had been painted white to cover up the many repairs that had been done on the brownstone. Her unit was on what was called the ground floor even though it was elevated from the street by the ten steps of the stoop. Beneath her was another unit whose windows were partly below ground level.

Originally Aria’s two-bedroom apartment had been the building’s parlor and formal dining room when it had been a single-family home. During the building’s conversion, the floor plan had been altered. Now as she came through the apartment’s door from the common hallway, she was in the living room/kitchen/dining area with a wood-burning fireplace. To the left was a corridor to her bedroom and the apartment’s only bathroom. Such a setup was a little unfortunate since it meant that the bedroom was exposed to street noise like ambulance sirens and drunk neighbors on summer Saturday nights. To the right from where she was standing there was a doorway in the corner that led to a final small room. When Aria had originally been shown the apartment by the Realtor, this last room had been marketed as a bedroom without a bath. Instead Aria had turned it into a study, and it was in this room that she spent most of her awake time. All in all, the apartment was a pleasant environment, particularly with its twelve-foot ceilings that magnified the sense of space.

After draping her white coat over the back of the sofa, Aria went directly into the study with the two borrowed books. One of her fortes was the ability to concentrate regardless of what was going on around her, and despite being tired from a full day’s activities, she intended to become significantly more knowledgeable about genetic genealogy.