False Mermaid (13 page)

Frank Cordova, standing beside her with a couple of file boxes in his arms, looked thoroughly put out. He said, “Nora, I don’t think you’ve ever met my partner—”

The woman smiled and put out her hand in greeting. “Karin Bledsoe. I’ve certainly heard your name, Dr. Gavin.”

Taking in the polite but slightly frozen smile, Nora could only presume
what else Frank’s partner had heard. No time to worry about that now. Charlie was back with the next load of files, wheeling his cart past them into the room.

“So, what are you two doing down here?” Karin Bledsoe asked, managing with her tone to make the meeting seem slightly illicit. “I thought you were working that Jane Doe case today, Frank.”

“I am. We just got an ID—Natalie Russo, one of our missing persons. I wanted Dr. Gavin to have a look at the evidence from the scene because it may have a bearing on her own case—her sister’s case, I mean.” Frank seemed inordinately uncomfortable, even considering what had just passed a few minutes before in this room. For a moment Nora couldn’t grasp the reason, until at last she felt an unexpected jolt—it wasn’t just happenstance or professional curiosity that had carried Frank’s partner all the way down here to the basement. Despite the conspicuous wedding band on Karin Bledsoe’s left hand, Nora suddenly knew that this woman was more than Frank Cordova’s work partner. And if her intuition was true, it put a whole different spin on the conversation she’d just had with him, not to mention his appearance on her doorstep last night.

Karin Bledsoe turned to Frank. “I would love to give you a hand, but I’ve got court today. That’s why I was trying to call you, Frank. Just in case you forgot. The duty officer said he saw you headed down here, so I thought I’d deliver the message in person.” She turned to give Nora a last look and another frosty smile. “So nice to meet you at last, Dr. Gavin.”

After Karin Bledsoe left, Frank wouldn’t make eye contact. He turned away to open the first evidence box, and began checking its contents against the inventory list.

“Have you and Karin been partners long?” Nora could hear the brittle note in her voice.

Frank didn’t look up. “Two years.” From his tone, she knew he wasn’t in the mood to talk about Karin Bledsoe—or anything else.

She decided not to push. Maybe after that disastrous conversation a few minutes ago, she ought to count herself lucky that Frank was willing to stay here and work with her. That his need for justice was stronger than his pride.

They worked for a long time in silence, Frank removing bagged items one by one from each box and handing them to Nora. They both knew
exactly what they were looking for: when Tríona’s body was discovered, her right shoe was missing, presumably lost at the crime scene or somewhere along the way to the parking garage. Her purse had been found in the car trunk with the body, but her cell phone—the same one Nora had tried calling from the hotel lobby—had never turned up.

The evidence collected from Natalie Russo’s grave site at Hidden Falls was mostly an odd assortment of litter. Nora counted at least a dozen cigarette butts, a couple of flattened beer cans, six sodden matchbooks, innumerable food wrappers, two used condoms, an empty spray paint can. How was it possible to focus on what was important? She watched Frank linger over a prescription pill bottle, trying to read the faded label, as she peered through evidence bags at a stone arrowhead; an ancient, corroded pocket watch; a rusty penknife. The next box contained a handful of mildewed pages that looked as though they’d been ripped from a book of poems. Nora watched as Frank flipped through the curled, black-smudged pages, looking for writing in the margin, underlined words, anything that might tell more. How was it possible to know which stories might be connected? Maybe the pill bottle and the cigarette butts were part of the same story—or perhaps the penknife and the poetry? It was also possible that these fragments were all from completely disconnected tales that overlapped only in the physical world, rubbing together in the layers of detritus left by different generations. Two hours later, they were getting near the end of their search through the evidence, with no sign of a shoe or a cell phone.

“There might be more on the way,” Frank said. “The state crime lab is still processing the rest.”

“What’s that?” Nora pointed to a manila envelope, the last item in the box.

Frank checked the label. “‘Soil and plant material.” He used his penknife to slit open the initialed seal and shook out a heap of dirt and organic material onto a large plastic tray.

Nora began to poke at the pile with a pencil. Some of the leaves were easily recognizable: cottonwood, ash and elm, buckthorn, along with loamy soil studded with many different kinds of seeds. She didn’t look up. “Frank, do you remember the stuff Buck Callaway combed from Tríona’s hair?”

“Sure—that’s how we knew her body had been moved.”

“If we compared these leaves and seeds—”

“What could that tell us? We already know Tríona was probably killed somewhere along the river.”

Nora spoke slowly: “Yes, but if Tríona was attacked near the spot where Natalie Russo was buried, she might have carried away something very specific to that site. We never had anything to compare to the material from Tríona’s hair. I’m just thinking—the leaves and seeds from a single parent plant carry the same genetic fingerprint.”

“But DNA testing takes weeks, months, you know that. The state crime lab is always backed up—”

Nora waved a hand to stop him. “The testing wouldn’t have to be done at the state lab. Do you remember Holly Blume, my friend at the University Herbarium? The forensic botanist who identified the seeds from Tríona’s hair. Her specialty is population genetics—she runs DNA profiles on plants all the time. We could ask Holly to compare the samples from the two cases, see if we can’t come up with a match on the crime scenes that way. It may be a long shot, but it’s at least worth a try.”

Thirty minutes later, Nora led Frank Cordova down an air-conditioned corridor on the eighth floor of the Biological Sciences Building on the University of Minnesota’s Saint Paul campus. She knocked on an office door, and a small, dark-haired woman answered. Holly Blume’s face brightened at the sight of her two unexpected visitors, but Nora was unprepared for her friend’s fierce embrace.

“Nora Gavin! What happened to you? You dropped off the face of the earth. We were all so worried about you—”

Nora had gone away believing that she’d lost everything, but perhaps she’d been mistaken in thinking she had lost all her friends. As Holly drew back to study her, Nora had to fight to keep her emotions in check. “I’m fine, Holly. I’ve been abroad for a while.”

“But nobody knew how to get in touch. You should have told someone where you were. I got married, Nora, had a baby.” Holly’s expression softened. “I shouldn’t scold you. I know you had good reasons for going away. Just want you to know you’ve been sorely missed.” She glanced at Frank. “Why do I get the feeling this isn’t just a social call?”

“Holly, you remember Frank Cordova—”

“Yes, of course. How are you, Detective? It’s a pity we only meet under professional circumstances. I’d ask you in to sit, but it’s a bit cramped in here—let’s go across to the Herbarium.”

Despite its impressive Latin name, the Herbarium was nothing more than a climate-controlled room full of metal cabinets, each containing specimens of pressed plants from Minnesota and all around the world. No one could enter without comprehending just how antiquarian the field of plant biology remained. Color-coded maps of county biological surveys hung on the wall. The images might be computer-generated nowadays, and the ranges of various plants tracked with GPS coordinates, but the data were still collected by human beings traveling on foot, taking samples from fields and forests and ditches. Holly gestured
for them to sit at the battered lab table at the center of the room, and sat forward herself, fingers laced together expectantly.

“What we’ve got are samples of plant material from two crime scenes,” Nora said.

Frank held up two evidence envelopes. “We think both samples may have originated from the same site at Hidden Falls Park, but we need to know whether it’s possible to prove that—beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Holly eyed the bulging envelopes. “I’m not going to promise anything, but I can certainly have a look.”

Nora asked, “Do you remember the seeds you identified from my sister’s hair?”

“Sure,” Holly said. “There were lots of different species, as I recall, pretty typical of seepage swamp: black ash and cottonwood, buckthorn, marsh marigold, Virginia creeper, touch-me-not, wood nettle. They’re all pretty common. But there was one unusual find as well, seeds from a plant called false mermaid. It’s only been documented a couple of places in Minnesota, and only outside the Twin Cities. I was sorry we couldn’t pinpoint where the seeds came from—it would have helped your case, I know.”

“We might have another chance,” Nora said. “I remember that name, false mermaid. Something to do with mythology?”

“I’m astonished that you remember,” Holly said. She pointed to a poster on the wall, photographs of a wispy-looking green plant. A corner inset showed a close-up of three wrinkled seeds. “There it is—the Latin name is
Floerkea proserpinacoides
: The genus,
Floerkea,
after the famous German botanist Gustav Heinrich Flörke, and the epithet,
proserpinacoides,
which means ‘like
Proserpinaca.
’
Proserpinaca
is a semiaquatic plant, also called ‘mermaid weed.’ The fellow who named false mermaid thought its leaves bore a strong resemblance to
Proserpinaca
. As it turns out, they aren’t genetically related, but the name stuck anyway.”

“But that’s the mythological connection,” Nora said.

Holly smiled. “Wow—no flies on you! Proserpina was the daughter of Ceres—”

“Goddess of agriculture.”

“That’s right. When Proserpina was carried off by Pluto, god of the underworld, her mother spent ages searching for her. When she was found, Ceres interceded with Jupiter, who said Proserpina could return to earth, as long as she’d taken no food or drink during her stay in the underworld.”

Nora felt her memory trickling back. “But Pluto had offered her a
piece of fruit when she arrived, and she had eaten the pulp of a single pomegranate seed.”

Holly threw a wry look at Frank. “And here’s me, imagining myself the lone mythology geek in the room. Jupiter suggested a compromise; Proserpina got to spend half the year above ground with her mother, and half the year in the underworld with her husband-slash-captor. Now, here’s the connection to the plant world:
Proserpinaca,
as I mentioned, is semiaquatic. That means the lower part grows underwater, the upper part grows in the air. That’s how it ended up with the name mermaid weed.
Floerkea,
on the other hand, grows in seeps and marshes and other wet places, but it isn’t even semiaquatic, so that’s where the ‘false’ part comes in—sorry, I’m sure all this is
way
more than you needed to know. Back to the samples. What exactly are you looking for?”

Frank said: “We’re trying to establish a connection between two crime scenes, and what we need are a few hard facts.”

Nora jumped in: “I know you’re involved in population genetics, and I wondered if there’s any way to tell whether any of the leaves or seeds from these two samples came from the same parent plant. I know it’s a lot to ask—”

Holly considered for a moment. “In order to have any statistical credibility, you need enough material to establish allele frequencies, to say definitively that the plants in your two samples are related. I’d have to go down to the site myself to collect more samples—thirty is usually the magic number.”

Frank said: “The crime scene crews are finished up down there, but I’ll talk to the supervisor, let them know what you’ll need. They can give you a hand, if they know what to look for.”

“Even after I get the samples, you realize DNA results are going to take a few days.”

Frank said: “Unfortunately, time is the one thing we haven’t got. Our suspect is leaving the country Saturday. If we could find something before then—”

Holly stood and held up a hand. “Say no more—the sooner you two are on your way, the sooner I can get cracking.”

They were halfway down the hall when Holly stuck her head out the lab door and called after them. “I nearly forgot to say—you’ll also want to double check any clothing you might have in evidence for seeds and pollen grains. Plants are clever stowaways. They’re all about survival.”

After dropping Nora back at her apartment, Frank Cordova sat at the corner, waiting to turn east onto Summit Avenue. He happened to glance into the rearview mirror, and instead of seeing Nora, he saw a small, dark-eyed child standing in the car’s backseat. Suddenly he was that child, feeling hot vinyl upholstery burning the backs of his arms and legs, the soles of his feet as he stood looking into a pair of dark eyes that glared at him from the rearview mirror. There was no story, no context for the image, just terrible, crushing dread. And then the vision was gone; another random fragment of the past that floated briefly to the surface only to become submerged again. Frank put it out of his head. He had interviews to conduct, evidence to compare; there was no time for chasing phantoms.

But another memory surfaced: that girl’s body laid out on the table this morning, and he felt an almost electrical surge, then another. The vague fear that usually lived deep in his gut began to rise, and with it came the smell of dust, and the air of a closed-up space. He felt the unwelcome heat of someone close beside him, heard the rough breathing, the loud whisper that kept asking,
Paco, what’s the matter? Why is Papi yelling?
Stopping the questions took two hands. It also left his own ears open, but he had no choice. No one was supposed to know where they were. He cradled the back of his brother’s head with his left hand and clamped the other tight over Chago’s slobbery mouth, still mumbling beneath his fingers. He began to rock back and forth, hunching his shoulders, as if that might block his ears. He tried to drown out the noises in the next room by filling his head with a constant torrent of words:
Please
o
h please oh please oh please—Díos te salve, María, llena eres de gracia, el Señor es contigo, bendita tú eres entre todas las mujeres, y bendito es el fruto de tu vientre, Jesús. Santa María, Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros pecadores, ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte. Amén. Please oh please oh please oh please oh please oh please—
hoping somehow his hundreds of unvoiced prayers would help speed the merciful silence that always followed.