It was almost ten o'clock at night, and Trotter was still at his desk. O'Shea had punched out a couple of hours before, convinced that he would not be able to find a connection between Woodrow and Lloyd Barker. His last hope was that Woodrow's business records contained some evidence of a transaction between the two.
Trotter had made a little list of the facts that were pertinent to the case, and this was one of those times when it just did not make any sense. On a legal pad, he had written:
-> W makes bad investments, may be broke?
-> W&C have a fight at restaurant, go home
-> W & C are woken up in the early morning by burglars
-> W is injured, C is killed, by burglars. But C's killer died in 2012
-> Burglars remove coins, C's body and W
-> Burglars drive to remote mountain location
-> W escapes, burglars nowhere to be found
He knew that somewhere along that timeline was something very obvious that he was missing, one little key that needed to be found in order for him to unlock the mystery. He randomly started to look through the file he had compiled on the Reeds. Their backgrounds were classic east coast, upper class WASP, Ivy League educations, and later prestigious employers for Woodrow. Looking back at every address they ever lived at, it was like a Who's Who of American Aristocracy.
Before they left New York City, they had apparently lived on Park Avenue. Trotter Googled the address and noticed that the building was facing Central Park. There was a three bedroom condo for sale for just under fifteen million dollars. Fifteen million friggin' dollars. Money you could lose simply by making one bad investment.
Earlier that evening Trotter had received a list from Neil of some of Woodrow's clean energy investments. It was a study in mismanagement, squandered opportunities or outright fraud, which more often than not resulted in Chapter 7 liquidations. Of the ten or so major investments Woodrow had made after his retirement, eight companies were already out of business, and one of the remaining two was struggling mightily. The tenth one was allegedly under investigation by the federal government for its role in a rigged bidding process.
Trotter still had to investigate if the attack on the Reed residence could somehow be related to Woodrow's bad investments. Woodrow was a victim along with many other investors, and was seemingly not to blame for the companies' misfortune. But he had been on the board of directors of most of the companies, and as such he had the power to direct the business strategy of these companies. But so far there had been no allegations that Woodrow had in any way mismanaged or otherwise negatively affected the fortunes of the companies in question.
Trotter picked up a pamphlet from the file. It was a fundraising call for the local chapter of the Leukemia Association, combined with an invitation to the annual fundraising gala. In connection with the gala, the Association published its accomplishments from the past year, along with its aspirations for the years to come. Chief among them was to lobby US congress for a federal registry of bone marrow donors.
Trotter had heard of bone marrow donations, but did not know why they were needed. Applying his newly found Google skills, he soon realized that the bone marrow made certain blood cells necessary for the immune defense system. In patients with cancer, the bone marrow made malignant cells that were killing the patient. In some cases the patient could be cured by first killing the bone marrow by irradiation, and then transplanting healthy bone marrow from a matching donor.
Woodrow Reed was a cancer survivor, Trotter recalled. After some browsing through the files, Trotter found that he had undergone chemotherapy in 2012, and received a bone marrow transplant in the fall that year. Trotter looked up at the Park Avenue condo. In 2012 the Reeds were still living in New York City. Something clicked in his head, and he pulled out the file on Travis Barker.
Travis had died in New York in October 2012. According to his California drivers' license issued less than two years before, Travis Barker was an organ donor. Trotter picked up the phone and dialed Dave Henson's mobile number. Henson picked up right away.
"Dave, got a hypothetical for you."
"Do you have to? I'm in the middle of the latest CSI episode. I've already found two significant errors in how they processed a crime scene, and one chain of custody issue that would get the case thrown out and the detective fired for cause." Henson's hobby was watching the primetime CSI shows, finding the mistakes and then pestering the production teams with letters and emails demanding a retraction on behalf of forensic scientists elsewhere.
"Sorry bub, this can't wait. I'll be quick – what happens if you DNA test someone who once received a bone marrow transplant?"
"Like a cancer patient, you mean? After irradiation?"
"Exactly."
"Well, if you do a buccal swab, there is no difference. The transplant has no effect on most of the cells of the body, including the cheek. But if you analyze a blood sample, you will initially end up with a mixed sample. Some cells of the blood will be produced by the new bone marrow from the donor, and some cells will come from the old marrow. As the years go by the latter die out, and soon you have only the donor's blood cells. So depending on how much time has passed since the transplant, you may have a mixed sample, or you may have a sample that corresponds solely to the donor's DNA profile."
"And this would be the outcome even if the donor is dead? Let's say from a motorcycle accident in 2012?" Henson took his time, as it finally dawned on him what Trotter was saying.
"Indeed. His spirit may have slipped the surely bonds of Earth, but his bone marrow and DNA profile lives on."
YOU ARE READING
Bad Blood
Short StoryA bloody crime scene. A missing collection of rare coins worth over $20 million. And the DNA evidence points to a former Army Ranger, who has been dead for over four years... These are the clues Detective Richard Trotter is stuck with after the dis...
