Her Final Confession

Chapter Seventeen

Josie waited outside the small gray stone apartment building near Thirty-Third and Ludlow Street. She leaned against the short stone wall surrounding it and sipped a cup of coffee she’d picked up at a nearby minimarket. She had taken a taxi the twenty-two blocks from the hotel to James Omar’s apartment building, watching as the city passed her by, bustling indifferently to its own rhythm. She spotted Dr. Perry Larson sauntering down the street a few minutes later. Josie had checked out his faculty profile before contacting him to make an appointment. He appeared a bit older than his faculty photo—closer to sixty, she estimated. His silver hair blew in the breeze, and a pair of aviator sunglasses rested on his nose. He was dressed casually in a polo shirt and khakis, hands in his pockets as he strolled toward her.

He stopped a few steps away. “Detective Quinn?”

“Dr. Larson?” Josie responded.

He lifted the sunglasses onto the top of his head. Blue eyes smiled at her as he offered a hand. “Great to meet you,” he said. “I wish it were under better circumstances. It’s still so hard to believe.”

“Were you close to James?” she asked.

“James and I worked closely together on some research papers. He was a very promising scientist. Very driven. Focused. I don’t generally take on students who aren’t completely committed.”

“When’s the last time you spoke to James?” Josie asked.

Larson touched his chin. “A few days ago in the lab.”

“How did he seem to you? Was he stressed? Distracted?”

Larson shook his head. “No. He was the same as ever.”

“Did he mention taking a trip?”

“No. I’m just as baffled as you are about his trip to Denton. I have no idea what was there that would have drawn him. Like I said, James was very focused. He wasn’t interested in dating or partying. I’m not aware of any friends he had in Denton.”

“Have you ever heard of a woman named Gretchen Palmer?”

The blank look in his eyes told Josie everything she needed to know. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It doesn’t sound familiar.”

She took out her phone and pulled up the photo of the boy that had been pinned to James’s collar. “We have reason to believe this boy has some kind of connection to James. Do you recognize him?”

Larson spent a long minute studying the photo before shaking his head. “I’m sorry, no. But listen, I didn’t know James that intimately. You might have better luck with Ethan, his roommate.”

Josie put her phone back into her pocket. “I’ve tried contacting Ethan a few times now on the cell phone number the Omars gave me. It goes right to voicemail.”

Larson gave a short laugh. “That sounds about right. Ethan’s always been a bit hard to pin down. I was thrilled when James moved in with him, because James always got the rent to me on time.”

“Is Ethan your student as well?”

“Oh no, he’s studying criminology. He was a tenant of mine for a year before James joined my program. After a semester, James was looking for inexpensive housing. I introduced the two, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

“When’s the last time you spoke to Ethan?” Josie asked.

“Oh, a few weeks. Like I said, Ethan is a little… flaky. He tends to get wrapped up in his own research projects and goes off the radar. James once told me he spent a whole weekend in front of his computer—didn’t sleep for seventy-two hours. Evidently, he is quite obsessed with cold cases and serial murderers. Pleasant stuff.”

His joke fell flat. Josie moved on. “Was he a close friend of James?”

Larson motioned for them to walk up the front steps, and she followed. At the front door, Larson keyed in a code that let them into a large, tiled foyer, one wall covered in gray cubes that Josie quickly realized were mailboxes. On the other side was a community corkboard with flyers tacked to it for guitar lessons, art shows, and people seeking work as dog walkers and house cleaners.

“Ethan and James did grow quite close,” Larson answered as he took a set of keys from his pocket. He shuffled through them before finding one and sliding it into the lock of a heavy wooden door on the other side of the foyer. It creaked open before them.

Josie waved a hand around the foyer. “Do you have cameras in here?” she asked. “Inside this vestibule?”

“Why yes,” he said. “We were having some issues with packages being stolen. I had security cameras installed last year.”

“It’s always a good idea,” Josie said. “Is there any chance you would be able to review the footage—how far back does it go?”

“Six months,” Larson said. “It’s very high-quality.”

“I’ve been looking for a system for my own home. What kind do you have here?”

“I’m not sure what it’s called, but it’s made by Rowland Industries.”

“Oh,” Josie said, flashing back to her own run-ins with the security giant. “I’m familiar with Rowland Industries—their systems are very high-quality. In that case, could you review it for at least the last two weeks and see if you can find footage of the last time either James or Ethan entered and exited the building?”

“Of course. I’m not sure exactly how to access it, but I can certainly make some calls and find out. You should know that the Omars gave me permission to let you into their apartment, particularly since we can’t get in touch with Ethan. Whatever you need, they told me, to help you solve James’s case.”

Josie was growing more and more concerned with the fact that Ethan Robinson was nowhere to be found. As Larson led her down a narrow hallway to a red door marked 19, she asked, “Dr. Larson, do you happen to have any contact information for Ethan’s family?”

Larson fingered his keyring again until he came up with the correct one. “Oh yes, of course. I can text that to you when I get back to my office if you’d like. I think it’s just him and his dad, but I’ve got his dad’s number. Like I said, a few times he was late with the rent, and his dad called me to ask me not to kick him out while they came up with the money.”

“Is Ethan from Philadelphia?”

“Oh no,” Larson said. “Portland, I think. Oregon. At least that’s where his dad lives now, as far as I know.”

Inside, the apartment was dark and smelled of stale cigarette smoke, bacon grease, and sweat. Larson flipped on the lights as they moved through the small rooms. There wasn’t much to the place. A living room, a narrow kitchen with a small alcove where a folding card table and two folding chairs sat, and then a hallway leading to a bathroom and two bedrooms. Textbooks and computer equipment littered the place. The furniture was spare and looked as though all of it had been bought at thrift shops. There was a plate and fork in the kitchen sink, a clean pan and mug in the dish rack. One end of the saggy red couch was cluttered with a balled-up blanket, a couple of dog-eared true-crime novels, and a half-finished bottle of Gatorade. The other half was pristine. The card table in the kitchen looked the same—one side clean and empty, the other beset with dirty dishes and fast-food wrappers.

“Which one of them was the neat freak?” Josie asked.

Larson laughed. “James. Here—this one is his bedroom.”

James’s bed was neatly made. No clothes on the floor. All items on his nightstand and dresser were arranged with precision. Hanging over the dresser was a framed photo of his family similar to the ones Josie had seen on his Facebook page. In the corner of the room was a small desk with a slim blue laptop on top of it. Josie gestured to it. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all,” Larson said.

Josie sat in the desk chair, opened the laptop and booted it up. As she anticipated, it asked for a password. Behind her, Larson said, “I think I can help with that.”

She switched positions with him, and after two tries, he accessed the laptop. As he ushered Josie back into the chair, she said, “I thought you said you and James weren’t close. He told you the password to his laptop?”

Larson chuckled. “I took a chance. He has a dedicated computer in my lab, and as administrator, I know the password. James likes to keep things efficient, so I figured maybe he’d use the same password for his personal laptop. I was right.”

“Well,” Josie said, turning toward the computer. “I’m glad you were able to figure it out.”

He watched over her shoulder as she searched the files and internet browser. Everything she found was obviously to do with whatever he was studying. The scientific jargon was well beyond her capabilities. She’d only taken enough science courses in college to supplement her major and enable her to graduate. “James’s mother said he was studying genetics,” Josie said.

“Actually, James was studying epigenetics,” Larson said. Josie swiveled in the chair just enough to see him.

“Is that a different field from genetics?”

Larson perched on the edge of James’s bed. “Epigenetics is more specialized. The most simplistic explanation is that epigenetics is the study of heritable alterations in gene function that don’t involve changes in the DNA sequence.”

“Meaning changes in genes?” She waved toward the laptop. “These papers he’s written and the journals he’s logged into—it’s all a little over my head.”

“Not changes to the genes themselves, but in the way they’re expressed,” Larson explained. “The mechanisms that turn the genes on and off. External factors.”

“Like lifestyle?” Josie asked.

“Yes. Again, this is all very simplistic—”

Josie smiled. “Simplistic works for me.”

“Okay, well, lifestyle choices can have a large effect on activating certain genes. So can environment. If you don’t mind me getting personal, I have to admit that I saw the Dateline last month about you and that news anchor, Trinity Payne.”

Josie suppressed a groan. Trinity had caught her at a particularly weak moment when she agreed to go on television and talk about the two of them being reunited after thirty years. But she had also known that Trinity would never let it go. It was best to get it over with. So she had done some limited press for Trinity’s sake, and Trinity had gone on to get the coveted anchor position on her network’s morning show.

“I really prefer not to discuss that,” Josie told him. “If you don’t mind.”

He waved a hand. “Oh no. I didn’t mean to be intrusive. I’m simply pointing out that you have an identical twin. You probably know that identical twins share one hundred percent of their genes.”

“Yes,” Josie said.

“And yet, there are marked differences between you and Ms. Payne, aren’t there?”

Josie considered this. Early on, when they’d first met, she and Trinity had been archenemies. They approached things differently, but they also had very different jobs. Josie’s job was to solve crimes. Trinity’s job was to tell the world about things they might not otherwise be privy to. They’d often butt heads over Trinity’s insistence on reporting everything. To Josie, justice was more important than exposure. Also, Trinity had long been obsessed with being famous, whereas Josie was content to put criminals away as quietly as possible. And yet, they both had the same cutthroat approach to their goals. Josie had stopped at nothing to solve a missing girls case a few years earlier, just the way Trinity stopped at nothing to get to the heart of a good story.

“I would say there are definitely differences,” Josie agreed. “But similarities as well.”

“You won’t get away from similarities. That’s not my point. My point is that you can take identical twins whose genes are the same and put them in different environments where they experience different things and make different lifestyle choices, and their genes will express themselves differently. For example, in the research I’ve been conducting—which James was helping me with—we look at why identical twins with the same exact genes develop different health conditions. Did you know that identical twins rarely die of the same cause?”

“Uh, no,” Josie said. “I didn’t.”

He stood up and started to pace the room, hands waving excitedly. “There’s a chemical called methyl that floats around inside our cells. It attaches to the DNA in our bodies—that process, it’s called methylation. When methylation happens, it can essentially turn down or hamper the activity of certain genes or even block some genes from producing certain types of proteins in our bodies. Almost anything can affect our methylation levels—sickness, diet, smoking, alcohol or drug use, medication, external things in the environment. You and your sister have the same genes, but your DNA methylation levels are different, and that will cause changes to your gene expression that can actually be passed on to subsequent generations.”

“So you’re saying that even though our genes start out the same, if I drink more, it can affect the methylation levels in my DNA and change the way my genes behave?” Josie asked.

“More or less,” Dr. Larson said with a smile. “Imagine that every cell in your body, each one containing your DNA, is just there, waiting to be told what to do. The methyl groups in your body bind to your genes and basically tell them what to do. The methyl group tells the cell what it is—for example, ‘You’re a heart-muscle cell, here’s what you do.’ Then there are histones. They’re protein molecules that your DNA wraps itself around, and they tell the cells how much to do—in other words, they regulate the genes.”

“So between the methyl and the histones, your cells will know what they’re supposed to be doing and how much of it they’re supposed to do?”

“Again, an extremely simplistic explanation, but yes.”

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Josie said, “is there a practical use for studying this stuff?”

His eyes lit up. He clapped his hands together. “Detective Quinn, our study of epigenetics could potentially have a profound effect on our ability to prevent and treat certain diseases—even cancer. What if we can develop drugs that will manipulate the methyl groups or the histones? We could cure so many diseases.”

He looked as though he was going to launch into another lecture. Josie closed the laptop and stood up. “That is very fascinating. It sounds promising.” She pulled out her phone and checked the time. “I’m sorry, Dr. Larson, but I have to get to a meeting with a detective on the Philadelphia PD soon.”

Larson lowered his gaze sheepishly. “I’m sorry, Detective Quinn. I have a great passion for my work.”

“And I do admire that,” Josie told him, moving past him and into the hallway. “I really do appreciate your time, but I can’t be late for my next meeting.”

He followed her into the kitchen. “James had great passion for the work as well. It’s a tremendous loss. I hope you find the person who killed him.”

A photo affixed to the fridge caught Josie’s eye, nearly buried among takeout menus and class schedules. “I’ll do my best,” she mumbled. Pointing to the photo, she said, “Who is this with James?”

The photo showed James from the waist up with one arm slung around another young man with dark, shaggy hair and brown eyes. Both were smiling and sweaty. Behind them, Josie could see a partially blurred sign that read: Broad Street Run.

“Oh, that’s Ethan,” Larson said. “They ran a local marathon last year.”

Josie took her phone out and snapped a picture of the two young men. Larson walked her out, and she thanked him for his time. He tried to recruit her and Trinity for his research, citing that identical twins separated at birth were particularly useful to his project, but Josie politely declined. As she watched the professor walk away, she took her phone out and studied the photo of Ethan Robinson again, wondering where the hell he had gone.