By Paths Coincident

Chapter 29

Portland, Oregon, USA

Jenkins' Buick was the only thing making noise for the first half of the return to the last known location of Jacob Stone. Jenkins drove, looking so completely unperturbed that Eve wanted to stick a pin in him to see if he was real. Ezekiel was occupied with his phone. No surprise there. Make that two pins. Cassandra sat next to Eve in the back seat, her face making up in misery for what the others lacked. Eve wanted to hug her, but the seatbelts limited her to covering Cassandra's hand with her own and trying to infuse comfort into the clasp of her fingers. Cassandra gave Eve a tight, pre-occupied smile that did nothing to relieve the tension vibrating off her. Having her team to take care of was the only thing keeping Eve from sliding down into her own Slough of Despond. Their morale was her responsibility. But Jenkins and Ezekiel didn't seem to need her, and Cassandra was beyond her reach.

"That's the turn, right up there," Ezekiel informed Jenkins, breaking the silence and then subsiding back into it.

Jenkins turned off the highway onto the forest road. The station wagon bumped along the worn gravel on springs that had long since relaxed into retirement.

"Do we know that Jacob was the one injured?" Cassandra asked, startling them all.

"No," Eve replied, her memory transporting her back. She shivered. "The dog tracked him there, and I saw one of his popsicle sticks broken. So he was at the scene. But I don't think there was any way to tell for sure."

"So he might not have been hurt? Maybe it was someone else?"

The hope in her voice was not completely irrational. They would not know for sure until the forensic analysis was complete.

"That depends on whether Stone was the victim or the villain. What?" Ezekiel took in the shocked expressions of his teammates. "Nothing to say he went unwillingly."

"You can't seriously think Jacob has been involved in anything criminal!" Cassandra's voice rose in pitch.

"Who knows? The man's entire life is a lie. He's fooled his family for years. What makes you think he can't fool us?"

Eve thought about the man who kept art supplies in his room, who turned that room into a work of art, who used art to heal. Jacob Stone had hidden that love, that gift, from a callous world that would have despised it. That was an act of pain and fear more than it was an act of deceit and guile. Those lies had been camouflage, protecting something tender and precious with armor plating.

"No." She shook her head. "If Stone errs, he errs on the side of beauty, not ugliness. He would hide something soft, not something hard."

"But the police are going to consider whether he might have been the perpetrator or at least an accomplice if that blood turns out not to belong to him." Ezekiel shrugged.

"It would take that DNA test you mentioned to confirm whether the blood is his," Eve said to Cassandra.

"A DNA analysis," Cassandra mused. "That should take about 24 hours."

"Ha!" Ezekiel snorted. "Do you know what the backup for DNA work is in Oregon? Twelve to sixteen weeks!"

"That long?" Cassandra's voice caught between indignation and despair. "We can't wait that long!"

Ezekiel shrugged. "I might be able to push up the priority, but that won't buy us more than a week or two at most."

Cassandra frowned, her eyes ceasing to focus on him or anything seen. One of her hands traced an invisible bit of data as if she were constructing a chart or graph in the air. "I suppose they have to wait to run the serology in batches . . . and then there's the review process . . ." her voice trailed off. Suddenly she clenched her hands together and threw away her visionary work. "We need to get those DNA samples ourselves. I can do the analysis. Ezekiel Jones, world class thief, can you steal me a crime lab?"