Dead Hunt

her head. ‘‘Nope, he really can’t.’’
Jin ignored his coworkers. ‘‘I’m talking about making changes in the way genes’’—he seemed to be searching his brain for a word—‘‘the things that make genes function differently—when the basic DNA is still the same.’’
‘‘Not helping,’’ said Merrick.
‘‘That’s why I got the Christmas trees,’’ said Jin.
‘‘I’ve been sitting here worrying about that,’’ said Drew.
‘‘Say you have a gene for lung cancer but it is turned off—not doing anything. But because of your environment, say one full of secondhand smoke, a certain chemical group hooks onto your chromosome—like the decorations hooked onto a Christmas tree—and turns the gene on and you get cancer.
‘‘Let’s say these two identical Christmas trees were bought at the same place but taken to two different homes where they were decorated differently. The trees look different to us because of what’s hanging on them, but underneath they are just alike. That’s like two people with the same DNA who have lived in different environments.’’
Jin held a red tree ornament in one hand and a blue ornament in the other. ‘‘For two DNA sample profiles that look just alike on the base indicators, you can do an epigenetic profile, which means taking a little wider focus on the DNA structure, and see these differences,’’ he said, indicating the different colored ornaments.
The hairs on the back of Diane’s neck stood up. She glanced over at Kingsley, who looked wide-eyed.
Chad Merrick straightened up in his chair. ‘‘This has to do with Clymene or we wouldn’t be here. Are you saying that Clymene is a twin?’’
‘‘No, not a twin,’’ said Jin, grinning.
Now Diane was confused. That is exactly what she thought he was saying. So did Kingsley and the others.
David looked at her as if to say, I can’t do anything with him.
The marshals frowned at Jin.
‘‘Let me tell you what got me to thinking about this,’’ he said.
‘‘If it clears things up, go to it, son,’’ said Merrick.
‘‘Too many things didn’t add up. For one thing, why didn’t anybody in Dr. Fallon’s apartment building hear anything? Were they all drugged? Let me tell you, if the odd couple across the hall heard a life-and-death struggle going on, they would have been over there, and so would the people from downstairs. And why was Dr. Fallon drugged to make her sleep through the whole thing? You have to ask yourself that.’’
Jin paused and looked out at his audience, who were giving him their attention in hopes that it would be made clear why they were sitting there listening to him.
‘‘We study blood patterns in this unit,’’ continued Jin. ‘‘If you have enough blood, it can tell you all kinds of things, from the shape of the drops to the pattern on the walls. And Lord knows there was a lot of blood. One thing I noticed was the cast-off blood was more like a beating than a stabbing, but what we found was a cleaned-up knife.
‘‘And what about all that blood? We found no arterial spray, no spurting. Not too unusual. People can just lie there and bleed out after an attack, but what did the perp do while that was happening? Sit in Dr. Fallon’s living room and wait? Then finally, at four pints of blood on the floor, got tired of waiting and dragged the body out? Why didn’t we find more blood on the way to Dr. Fallon’s car? Even if Clymene’s heart had stopped, she would still have been leaking blood from her wounds. We only had a smear.’’
They all leaned forward, attentive now. Diane wasn’t sure where he was going, but his analysis of the crime scene was interesting.
‘‘But what really got me to thinking was, why clean the knife with kerosene—which is better than bleach, by the way, for getting rid of blood. Why clean it and then leave it in the trunk to be found alongside the blood? That made no sense. Then it hit me. They weren’t trying to hide what was on the knife, but what wasn’t on the knife.’’ Jin paused for dramatic effect.
‘‘Skin cells. It was a serrated knife. There should have been a lot of skin cells if that was the murder weapon. We found no skin cells.’’
‘‘I take your point,’’ said Garnett, ‘‘but what does this mean?’’
‘‘I’m getting to that,’’ said Jin. ‘‘All of these questions led me to go back and resample the blood and do an epigenetic profile. And low and behold...’’
Jin flipped over