Page 4 of 2nd Strike
The network execs sure don’t mind. Not with their top ratings.
To the outside world, Carl and family have sifted through devastation to create a perfect life.
And now his son sits in front of me, wondering who the hell he is.
“Ethan?”
Finally, he peers at me, his gaze shimmering and my heart snaps in two. “I don’t know what to do,” he says.
“Of course you don’t. That’s okay. Right now, I want you to take a breath. We’re here to help you.”
“I can’t tell my parents. I can’t. My mom is…”
This is tricky territory. Ethan is a minor and he’s asking us to withhold information from his parents. Given the situation and his father’s high-profile status, I’m fairly astounded that I am, in fact, willing to be his co-conspirator.
My logic is simple. If the press gets hold of this it will be, in short, a feeding frenzy. Reporters will gnaw the flesh off this kid’s bones and we can’t let that happen.
I lean forward. For a hundredth of a second, I pause. Reconsider what I’m about to say. I’m no rocket scientist, but I am smart.
It appears, so is Ethan.
He could run with any information I give him and that responsibility will land on me. Worse, my sister will eviscerate me. The lecture alone will wreck me.
Is it worth the risk?
I stare into his shiny eyes and hate the misery. The boy needs answers and we can help him. “Okay, bud, here’s an idea. A couple months ago we worked with a genetic genealogist.”
He blinks at me. “A what? I mean. I know what they are, but what’s the genetic part?”
“She’s basically a genealogist that’s leveled-up. She understands DNA and uses databases to find potential matches. Once she sorts those out, she starts narrowing down relatives. We solved a cold-case based on her building a family tree from a DNA analysis.”
Ethan perks up, his dark eyes widening a fraction. I have his attention. I knew I would, but the stab of guilt doesn’t stop me.
“Cool,” he says.
“Yep. On the last case she worked for us, she found our suspect through a woman who’d entered her DNA test results into a free online database. The genealogy companies charge, but the public one doesn’t.”
A publicly accessible database, GenCo, is the brainchild of a couple of amateur genealogists who wanted to provide folks with a free resource to track their heritage. As word of the site grew, more and more people uploaded their DNA results into the GenCo database. What started as a hobby for a couple of retired guys, turned into a controversial tool for law enforcement.
Now, anyone loading results could potentially link a distant relative, like the cold case we’d worked, to a crime.
Somewhere in the process, privacy laws became a gray area that might be exactly what we need to protect Ethan’s identity.
“So,” Ethan says, “anyonecan enter their results?”
They sure can.“Pretty much. Users have to be eighteen though.”
“Crap.” He shakes his head and winces. “Sorry. My mom hates when I use bad language.”
I wave that off. Heaven knows I’ve heard and said a whole lot worse. “Don’t worry about it.”
“What happened with that case? The one the genealogy lady worked on?”
“We got insanely lucky. Ann Marie entered our suspect’s profile into the public database and found a strong paternal match. We looked into all the men in the woman’s lineage and eventually found a cousin whose DNA matched what was found on the victim.”
At that, Ethan straightens up. “We could put my results in.”
“Not without your parents’ permission. You’re not eighteen.”
