Page 121 of I Will Find You

Max saw the call was from Lauren Ford’s office. He glanced around the room to make sure he was alone before he answered it. Sarah wouldn’t like it. As Lauren had pointed out, their job was to apprehend David Burroughs, not help clear him. Sarah would not approve.

“Hello?”

“I got something,” Lauren said.

“Is Burroughs the father?”

“That one I don’t know yet. Believe it or not, it took a while to get into the prisoner databank. But I did run the victim’s DNA through the missing kid database.”

“And?”

“And he doesn’t pop up.”

“It was a long shot, I guess.”

“No, Max—may I call you Max?”

“Sure.”

“No, Max, it’s not a long shot. The missing child databases are pretty complete. When a kid goes missing, the DNA is collected in some way the large majority of time. Not always. But most of the time. And that’s not all.”

“What’s not all?”

“I ran a description through every missing kid database. Not just DNA sites. All the missing kid sites. Put in the age, size, whatever. And to make sure I didn’t miss anything, I made the search federal. The entire United States. Got my best people on it. Because, well, if the victim isn’t Matthew Burroughs—Christ, it sounds crazy just to say that—but if Matthew isn’t the victim, then some other little boy was brutally murdered that night.”

“Agreed,” Max said. “And?”

“And nothing. No matches. Zero. No one even close.”

Max started twitching.

“You hear what I’m saying, Max?”

“I do.”

“There’s no one else. It has to be Matthew Burroughs who was in that bed.”

He gnawed on a fingernail. “You got anything else?”

“What do you mean, do I have anything else? Are you listening to me?”

“Yes.”

“Shit,” Lauren said. “You still want me to run the paternity test.”

“I do.”

“I don’t have to,” Lauren said.

“I know.”

“Shit. Fine. And then we put this to bed. Deal?”

“Deal.”

“I should have the result soon.”

Lauren hung up.

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