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“Like me, or Henry?”

“If it’s you, we’ll probably get a relative match,” Smith replied. “Which is to say, we’ll get a match against your father’s DNA that says the sample belongs to a blood relative. If that’s the case, we’ll take a sample of yours to make sure.”

Elliot nodded. “How likely do you think it is that you’ll be able to find a match?”

Smith looked as uncomfortable with that question as I felt, because that really was the problem. If Gregory had known his killers, this would be a lot easier. But if they hadn’t ever been arrested for a severe enough crime that there was a DNA profile in the system—and most people, even most people with arrest records, didn’t have DNA in the system—then we were pretty much shit out of luck. We could use it to eliminate suspects, and if we got lucky, we might find the perp and be able to confirm their guilt with a match.

But we also knew we were looking for three of them—which meant that even if wehadsomeone in custody, there was a two-out-of-three chance that they weren’t going to match this particular snot sample, anyway.

“Honestly, I’m not great at odds,” was Smith’s extremely diplomatic response.

Elliot looked at me, and I squirmed.

“So pretty shit,” he said.

I sighed. I really didn’t like the fact that Elliot could read me that well—at least in the present circumstances. Because that wasn’t something you wanted the family of a victim to know. “It will likely be more help in confirming a suspect than it will in identifying them in the first place,” I admitted, which didn’t exactly say it was pretty shit, but it also didn’t say it wasn’t.

Elliot grunted, but went back to eating his burrito.

“Anything new we should know?” Smith asked him.

Elliot shook his head.

Smith finished off the last bite of sandwich, wiping his fingers on one of the napkins that had come with our food. “Do you mind if we get to work, then?” he asked Elliot.

Elliot gestured down the other hall toward the office. “Go ahead.”

I stuffed the last bite—which should have been two, but I have a big mouth—into my face, wiped my hands, and then followed Smith down the hall after shooting one last look at Elliot to see how he was doing. His expression was somber, but not overly stressed, so I guess he was taking it okay. I’d check in with him later, just in case.

Smith and I had both left our coffees in the kitchen so we didn’t contaminate anything—well, contaminate anythingmore—in the office, although I was a little regretful of that fact as I led the way down the hall and into the closed-off office.

It was chilly inside, and felt even more unlived-in. There was a very fine layer of dust on every surface, so it was clear that no one had been in here since the last time Smith and I had almost two weeks ago. I saw the same thoughts cross his face. “Let’s start with the window,” he suggested in his gravelly voice.

“Doyouknow how to gather DNA evidence?” I asked him.

His cheeks flushed. I pulled out my phone and called Mays.

“Hart!” he answered cheerfully. I hit the speaker button.

“You’re on speaker, Mays. I need your help.”

“Are we back to the snot?” he asked.

Smith snorted.

“Yeah,” I confirmed. “Detective Smith of the Shawano PD is here, too.”

“Hello, detective,” Mays brightly replied.

“And you are?” Smith asked him, a somewhat confused expression on his face.

“Seth Mays, CSI tech with the Richmond PD. Is there a particular reason you’re doing this and a technician isn’t?”

“We only have two and they’re both at a car crash,” Smith replied. “You get us.”

“That’s… unfortunate. The car crash. Well, and the fact that it means you have to put up with Hart.”

“Fuck you, Mays,” I grumbled, although loud enough that he could hear me.