Free Taboo by Casey Hill

picked up the phone and dialed Chris Delaney’s cell phone.
    When he answered, his voice sounded groggy.
    ‘Detective Delaney, it’s Reilly Steel,’ she began. When he didn’t reply immediately, she felt the need to clarify. ‘From GFU?’
    ‘Reilly, hi. What’s the matter?’
    ‘How’d you know there’s something the matter?’ she asked, faintly surprised.
    He yawned. ‘Because it’s 2.15 in the morning.’
    ‘It is?’ She peered at her watch, recalling visiting her father that morning and coming into the lab straight afterward. It only felt like a couple of hours ago. Had she really been here that long? ‘Oh hell, I’m sorry, Detective, I didn’t realize—’
    ‘Call me Chris, will you?’ She heard what sounded like him switching on a bedside lamp. ‘All this “detective” business is way too formal – especially when you’re calling me in the middle of the night.’
    ‘Sure, well – sorry for waking you … Chris. I honestly didn’t think to check the time.’
    ‘That’s OK. I’m a bad sleeper anyway. Are you still at the lab?’
    ‘Yes. There was something I wasn’t happy about so I kept at it until I could make sense of it and …’ she figured she might as well get straight to the point, ‘I’ve found something else on the Ryan case.’ She glanced again at the paper in her hand. ‘Something important.’
    ‘What did you find this time?’ Now he sounded fully alert.
    ‘Well, you know tox came back negative. But I noticed something else when the bloods came back. Something very unusual.’
    ‘OK.’ He sounded guarded now but Reilly suspected that unlike the common trace, he’d take this aspect a little more seriously.
    ‘So I did a couple more tests – different tests.’
    ‘Get to the point. What did you find?’
    ‘Both victims had the same blood type,’ she told him, clearing her throat before continuing. ‘Now, this isn’t unusual in itself until I tell you that they were both AB Negative.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘Well, only 0.6 per cent of the world’s entire population is AB Negative – the tiniest proportion imaginable. So, if finding one person of that blood type is unusual, finding two in the same place is damn near impossible.’
    ‘OK, so they’re both AB Neg,’ he said. ‘So it’s unusual. Really unusual. But it doesn’t really give us anything new, does it?’
    You bet it does , Reilly thought. ‘That’s why I ran a further test, and this time I carried out a genome scan.’
    ‘A what ?’
    ‘It’s a DNA comparison,’ she explained.
    Chris had gone very quiet. She took a deep breath. ‘Clare Ryan and that guy – the other victim? Well, according to their blood samples, they weren’t just a couple,’ Reilly paused and swallowed hard, ‘they were brother and sister.’
     
     

8
     
    ‘What the fuck?’ Kennedy was aghast. ‘What kind of sick …?’
    ‘I don’t know – maybe even they didn’t know. That’s what we’re here to find out.’
    It was the following morning, and the detectives were once again heading to the Ryan household, hoping to get some answers.
    Reilly’s recent findings were shocking, particularly in light of the pathologist’s earlier report confirming the sexual activity. It had never crossed Chris’s mind that Clare Ryan’s killer could have been a close relative – why would it? Close relatives didn’t usually end up naked in bed together. But if the dead pair were in fact, brother and sister – and more importantly knew it – well, this case had taken a very odd turn.
    ‘Well, it might be weird, but it brings the case to a fairly simple conclusion, doesn’t it?’ Kennedy said as they climbed out of the car in front of house.
    ‘What?’ Chris had tried to avoid speculating too much about what the implications of the results were but Kennedy was forcing him into it. ‘You think that they couldn’t live with the shame of incest so they took part in some kind of twisted suicide pact?’
    ‘Maybe.’