Scott Turow - Identical

“I have quite a bit to tell you,” Dr. Yavem said, “but it will probably make the most sense if I explain my results in the order in which I performed the tests.

“Remember, Ms. Miller, I described a very basic testing protocol. The first step, in order to do things properly, was to confirm that the blood at the Kronon home had come from one of the Gianis twins. Then, assuming that was the case, we needed to confirm that they were identical twins. If so, we’d employ two different tests to prospect throughout each man’s genome for so-called copy-number variations. If we were successful in identifying a CNV, we’d then analyze the blood from the crime scene to see if we could find the same one at the same locus.

“Step one was the well-accepted part of the testing regime. Given the age of the specimens and the likelihood of contamination, we said we would try Y-STR testing first.” Clearly a practiced teacher, Yavem, as he spoke, turned now and then to Tim, who finally pointed back at Evon.

“Tell her, Doctor. She’s going to have to explain it all to me later. Very, very slowly.” Yavem laughed just a second before reverting to a somber expression.

“We had DNA specimens from a number of sources. There was the original blood from Hal and Zeus Kronon. I had a very good specimen from the water bottle that you told me Paul Gianis had drunk from. And I had fingerprints that had been positively identified as Cass Gianis’s.

“I began by analyzing the Kronons’ blood.”

“Why Zeus and Hal?” asked Evon. “Weren’t they excluded by blood type?”

“Yes, but in this case, specimen contamination was a considerable risk. That’s one of many reasons to look first at the Y chromosome. Because females at the scene present no chance of contamination. But we knew that both Hal and his father had spent quite a bit of time in Ms. Kronon’s bedroom before the police closed the scene, so I thought it would be helpful to have their Y chromosome sequenced. When you do a DNA analysis, you don’t know precisely what cells you’re analyzing. It may look like a blood drop to the naked eye, but even a single skin cell from someone else can show up in the results. So if we have a specimen large enough to test in several regions, it’s very helpful to understand what the DNA of a possible contaminating cell looks like, so you can understand a variation in results. With a father and son, you expect the same Y sequence, but we did both, basically as a way to validate ourselves. And that proved fortuitous because Hal and Zeus are not in fact genetically linked.”

Evon had one of those moments. The veins at her temples throbbed and her vision wavered. She understood why Yavem wasn’t smiling.

“Hal is not Zeus’s son?”

“Not genetically.”

Tim grabbed her arm now that he understood. His gray eyes, clouded and marked by age, swung her way and he made an indefinite sound with his mouth in a tiny o.

“I’ll flip you,” Evon said.

“Uh-uh. I ain’t telling him,” said Tim. “There’s not enough money, not in the whole entire world.”

“God,” Evon said. She took a deep breath and said, “OK,” meaning Yavem could go on.

“I then moved on to the Gianis twins. We got very good sequencing off the water bottle on Paul. So we then tried to extract DNA from some of the fingerprint lifts that were identified as Cass’s, and we succeeded at that. We didn’t get as complete a result, but there were still identifiable short segments at a number of loci.”

“What about the copy-number variations?” asked Evon.

“We weren’t looking for them at this point. That’s a whole different array of tests. We certainly confirmed that Paul and Cass are in fact monozygotic twins-identical twins from the same embryo.”

“No surprise there,” answered Evon.

“Yes, well,” said Yavem. A brief smile escaped him and he looked downward, seemingly to suppress it. “Forgive me,” he said. “Because once the Gianis Y was sequenced, there was another unexpected result. I actually hadn’t noticed. Teresa called my attention to it.” He gestured through the window toward a figure in a white coat in the lab, the woman Tim had met with.

“I hope it’s better than the first surprise,” Evon said.

“Of the same nature. Zeus Kronon was the father of the Gianis twins.”

Evon felt her jaw hanging. “Fuck,” she said, a word she spoke aloud in conversation no more than once a year.

Tim actually laughed. A few drunken wags at St. D’s had asked how Mickey Gianis, who could barely get out of bed, had fathered more children. Tim recalled one Sunday evening when Father Nik tore the head off someone at the men’s club for speaking such a malicious slur.

Evon was looking at him.

“Did you know that?” she asked.

“Of course not.”

Evon in the meantime had taken a moment to calculate.

“So that would mean that Zeus and the Gianises all share a Y chromosome?”

“Correct.”

“So the blood at the scene might have come from Zeus, too?”

“Looking solely at the Y chromosome we’d get that result. But we know there are other genetic differences between Zeus and his twins. Because Zeus is a different blood type than those men. They’re B. He’s O. Their mother must be type B. But if the twins’ Y chromosome matched the blood, we’d know it was one of theirs. We quickly concluded, however, that was not the case. Like Zeus, the blood could not have come from the Gianises either.”

A quick fear withered Evon’s heart.

“Please tell me it’s not Hal’s.”

“By all means. It is surely not Hal’s. Or Zeus’s. Or the Gianises’. Nor Hal’s mother, Hermione, for that matter.”

“The mother ?”

“Yes, none of the blood collected at the scene contains a Y chromosome.”

Evon stopped for a second, before asking how that could possibly be.

“You can be sure that we examined a dozen of those blood spots to be certain. But we got the same result each time. All the blood on the walls and window came from a woman,” said Yavem.

Lidia Gianis walks the contours of Zeus’s sloping lawn with care. She has not attended this picnic in more than twenty-five years, having sworn never to return. In Lidia’s life, there are few vows she does not adhere to. She believes in will-ee thelesee in Greek. Spirit. Will cannot turn snow to rain, or roll back the sea, but it can keep you from being simply steamrollered by fate.

Now and then Lidia reaches out to Teri for support because she has chosen a pair of wedged espadrilles. That is more heel than she is accustomed to, since Mickey, two inches shorter to start, does not care to feel as if he were a child being led around by the hand. But she approached this gathering intending to look her best, which has proven a vain effort in the breathy Midwestern heat that has left her flushed, and damp with sweat. Preparing this morning, she examined herself solemnly as she applied her makeup. Not an old lady yet, she decided, but further on the way than she would prefer. The sturdy and abundant body of her girlhood was surrendered in the course of three pregnancies, especially the last one with the twins, and her wide figure is better concealed beneath a floor-length shift. The coils of black hair, pushed back from the brow by a discreet band to create a leonine rush, are now overgrown by wires of gray that she regards like weeds. What she practiced in the mirror was the piercing black-eyed look, clever and determined, by which she knows herself.

Now, treading carefully, she carries her head high on her long neck, even though her upper body is weakened by a seasick feeling of high anxiety. The nausea reminds her just a little of the mornings during her first two pregnancies with Helen and Cleo. With the boys, she was healthy as a horse-except for the fact that she thought of killing herself every day.