Free Trace of Doubt by Erica Orloff Page A

thing entirely to be a cop. The Quinns are from the other side of the law. My uncle Sean’s serving life for murder. But you know all that already.”
    He smiled. “How do you know?”
    “Because I can tell you didn’t come into that meeting with me and Lewis blind. You looked into me. My family. The case. That would be how you handled it. Am I right? Thorough. Exacting.”
    I was going to say anal retentive, but decided not to. In Ben’s case, I thought his nature was about respecting the victim of the crime, being sure he left no stone unturned.
    He nodded.
    “I still don’t get why you came to the United States. Boredom? Ennui?”
    “A warrior with no war.”
    “And why take my cold case?”
    He didn’t say anything. He opened file after file, studying, memorizing—I could just see that about him. He was committing everything to memory. I was sure of it.
    A waitress came over, and I ordered a bourbon and soda. He ordered a single-malt scotch. I waited patiently while he went through each and every file.
    “My sister was killed.” He said it quietly, and it took me a minute to realize he was referring to himself, revealing something personal.
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Crime is so rare. When it happens, it’s an affront to our whole society. But justice in Japan is different. It took me six years to catch her murderer. And then I came here. I suppose I was frustrated by justice there. The process.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “She was murdered by a very rich man’s son. A billionaire. His position meant special treatment. No arrest for a very long time even though it was quite clear he killed her for fun.”
    “Rich people and celebrities get special treatment here, too.”
    “I know. But in the ideal, justice wears a blindfold.”
    “I wish it always worked that way.”
    “We must try to be impartial, to strive for the ideal.” He looked me in the eyes. “So I understand what it’s like to want to solve a case like this. Something personal.”
    “To leave the place of perpetual despair,” I said, remembering his mythology.
    “Exactly.”
    Our drinks arrived, and I sipped mine. “I feel like one day I’m going to look at those files and see something that’s been there all along. Like searching for something you’ve lost and it’s been right under your nose the whole time.”
    “Tell me about the letter you got at work.”
    “Well, there’s more now.” I took Ben through receiving the letter, the attack at the shooting range, and the letters from Andrew kept separately, as well as my mother’s first love, Daniel. I even told him about my father and the message from Marty O’Hare.
    “You must do two things. You must test your DNA against your father’s. And you must find Daniel.”
    “You think it’s a personal crime?” I asked him.
    “Statistically you know that to be so. But evil doesn’t pay attention to statistics. So, we have to check it as a process of elimination.”
    I looked at him. His face was unreadable in many ways. “After you found her killer, were you able to find peace?”
    He shut his eyes for a moment. “Peace…is something within. I am the ultimate paradox. At peace when I am at war.”
    “At war against evil.”
    He nodded. “I feel like a perpetual soldier.”
    A paradox. That was what my life was. I freed a man, but we were both imprisoned by our pasts. I was a criminalist, a scientist, who had decided to make DNA personal. And it was only a matter of time before I found out just how personal it was.

Chapter 12
    K enora called my cell phone on Friday—she had called the Foundation’s office and gotten my number. The two of us agreed to meet at an out-of-the-way bar up in Suffern, New York. Suffern was an exit off of the New York State Thruway—a town accessible to the highway. She suggested the place. It wasn’t likely she or I would run into anyone we knew.
    The bar was in a strip mall, and Irish shamrocks were painted on the windows. I walked in at eight