Justice Edge (Chris Seely Vigilante Justice Book 10) Page 11

  Ooh. Ouch. Not only did that come out wrong -- he meant orgasmic, didn’t he, not quite sure what the other word even meant -- but why use any analogy remotely in the ballpark?

  Chris remembered his dad once, at a dinner party, making a comment like that to an attractive guest, who lived down the block and was pretty tight with his mom, and who had gone through about five husbands.

  His dad’s reference point wasn’t food, it was literature, and everyone had loosened up by now and his dad was quoting the woman a passage from Dostoevsky . . . Maybe that wasn’t it, the literature part, maybe his dad was relating another experience he liked to bring up, an archaeology trip he’d been a part of before Chris was born, where they visited one of the Egyptian collections . . . either way, there was the ‘orgasms of delight’ summation.

  In the dinner party case, Chris wondered if his dad was making it with the woman, or might have in the future -- and she was one of those society people who attended the opening night of the opera in full formal get-up, but otherwise wore awfully tight skirts and could swing the heck out of her hips when she walked.

  Since if you weren’t trying to subliminally lead someone on, why would you, in the middle of a stack of pancakes, angle your reaction like that?

  Gloria did seem a bit lost for words, and Chris said, “That popped out. Terrible faux pas, on my part. Very sorry about that.”

  “So you’re not trying to seduce me?” she said.

  “Wasn’t planning on it, no.”

  “I’m glad then . . . I mean, in a next lifetime, who knows.”

  And they left it at that, and Gloria refilled and re-stacked everything, and Chris said he’s going to have to walk about 20 miles to work this off . . . and the semi-serious moment had passed, and they were back joking around . . . and you really did need the Glorias of the world, didn’t you, where stuff didn’t invariably have to lead to other stuff . . . and where if that didn’t work, you’d something screwed up.

  “At any rate,” Chris said, “what I was starting you off with there, would you want to come with me and visit an old teacher?”

  “Which school?” she said, and yeah, he was forgetting obviously he could mean someone from high school, Lowell, who they both knew.

  “No, this is Marina we’re talking.”

  “Middle school?”

  “If you need to. We still called it junior high. Much stronger.”

  “Who’s your teacher?”

  “Mr. Gullickson. PE. Very tough customer, would probably be in jail today, or least bankrupt from all the lawsuits. I mean if you weren’t paying attention, he’d physically smack you. He’s not doing well, I heard.”

  “Where did you hear this?”

  “Gee. You’re giving me the 3rd degree . . . From one of those dumb Facebook groups I don’t like admitting to being in, something like We went to junior high school in San Francisco.

  “I’ve seen that one. We have our own though, Giannini. Our alumni class is pretty organized.”

  “What a surprise . . . This guy lives in Walnut Creek, Mr. Gullickson.”

  “And you’re saying he’s in ill health now? And you had a fond relationship with him?”

  “Are you kidding?” Chris said. “Like I was getting to, he kicked our asses for three years.”

  Gloria thought about this. “So you want to resolve things,” she said.

  ***

  “One more thing about my dad,” Chris said, easing the Chevy Malibu off 680 onto Ygnacio Valley Road, “he said when he was a kid, my grandparents brought them over here a few times on a Sunday, and they swam in the creek.”

  Of course there was no sign of any creek now, or walnut orchards either, what that darn town was named after . . . the dummkopfs on these planning boards, in Chris’s opinion, cheerleading every move that could transform the town into as faceless a one as possible. You had 10-story steel and glass buildings sitting where any chance for a walnut or a creek were buried long ago. Even now, there’d been a couple of huge cranes doing something, a block off the exit.

  “You sure about that time frame, your dad?” Gloria said, and admittedly Chris was not, maybe it was too late already if his dad was a kid in the ‘40s, but the story had a little pop to it.

  A couple miles east they came up on a huge medical complex and Gloria looked at Chris and he shook his head, like don’t worry I’m not dragging you into one of these places today.

  You hit a T at the base of the hills and turned right into a residential neighborhood that had seen better days, but was still pleasant enough. The houses were early tracts, late 50’s early 60’s you would guess, and many of them looked like 2 bedroom jobs, with one-car garages sticking off the front, the type of situation where a lot of folks convert the thing into another room.

  There were some though, that had been spiffed up, and another story had been added, and you figured that trend was going to continue, as tech firms were vacating San Jose and moving out this way where the rents were cheaper, for now.

  Mr. Gullickson’s house wasn’t one of the new variety. Yes the outside had been painted in the last 20 years and the roof had been maintained, but that may have been it. Everything looked pretty dang original, including the windows with those metal awnings hanging over them that you’d see in the old days in real hot places like Modesto.

  Chris was thinking here goes nothing, and they rang the bell, and a very pleasant woman greeted them. She was no spring chicken herself, probably as old as Gullickson, but she had a youthful spirit and still moved pretty smooth.

  “I’m Christian,” he said, a little embarrassed by the name the last few years and he’d sort of buried it, but that’s what he was back in junior high. And he introduced Gloria, and the woman (Dolly) said, “It’s very thoughtful of you to come . . . He has his good days and bad days, naturally.” And she ushered them in.

  You expected it, but it was tough to take anyway, Mr. Gullickson looking so diminished. He’d been a towering figure back then, was supposedly in the San Francisco high school sports hall of fame, and he’d played college basketball somewhere too. Chris was placing it . . . if he was 12, 13 back then, and Mr. Gullickson was in his 50’s, which seemed about right, that’d put him mid-80s now. He was sitting on the couch watching a sporting event, Jeez, it looked like an English soccer match, the sound up pretty loud, and he was eating a sandwich on a folding TV table. He had on slippers and a robe, never the greatest sign in the middle of the day.

  “Hello sir,” Chris said. “You probably don’t remember me, but I was telling Gloria here on the way over,” (which he’d meant to but had forgotten) “how you used to challenge the whole class with those shots from half court.”

  This razed a bit of a smile out of Gullickson, and he was looking Gloria over, not worrying about Chris, but fair enough, maybe the guy was trying to place her, thinking he might have taught her one time too. Though Chris realized that back then male PE teachers didn’t teach any girls.

  “Ronald was always proud of those mid court shots,” Dolly, the wife was saying. “Weren’t you dear?”

  “Never missed one I guess,” Gullickson mumbled.

  “Before we get to that,” Chris said, “I have to ask you -- you always hated soccer. You made us play it for punishment.”

  “I still do,” Gullickson said. “But my grandkids play. I have to join the fun.”

  “Anyways,” Chris said to Gloria and then the others, “yeah, on rainy days we’d be stuck in the gym. All three years, there was one day, same scenario. You’d grab a ball, announce if you missed from half court, you’d buy the whole class milkshakes . . . But if you made it, we’d have to run Funston . . . you gave us the option, up front.”

  “Course I did,” he said. “That was the fun of it.”

  “Meaning, you asked for a show of hands, who was in, on the bet. We all went for it every time, except maybe a couple kids who were in the chess club or something, where a milkshake wasn’t worth the risk of having to run. Unlik
ely as it would be.”

  “How’d I do?” Gullickson said.

  “Well, like I’m building up to sir . . . son of a gun, but you drained the shot, all three years.”

  This got a laugh out of the old man, though it was a slightly aggressive one, and the truth was he did hit the shots the first two years, but the third year’s one clunked off the front rim. And Gullickson had been good to his word, sort of, with the rewards that time, though he sent a couple kids to the soft serve place around the corner and had them come back with cones, and not shakes.

  “I must say,” Gloria said, “we never had anything like that happen, at our school.”

  “Which one?” Gullickson said.

  “Giannini, in the Sunset.”

  “I started off there,” he said. “Marina was a better fit.”

  “Interesting,” Gloria said, “how so?”

  You didn’t necessarily want him to get started with this, and odds were it boiled down to his discipline style enjoying more free rein at Marina . . . and anyhow Chris figured he should bring up the one thing that had been bugging for 30 years, before Mr. Gullickson suddenly faded and had to to take a nap.

  “Sir,” Chris said, “I’m wondering if you really remember me. There was a baseball game against Denman. Playoff game. Jeb Caruso and Matt Fliker and Dave Horn were on that team too. You remember those guys, right?”

  Gullickson was squinting at Chris now, and you couldn’t tell if this was good or bad . . . but Chris went forward with it.

  “I was playing second, they had one guy on, their final at-bat, we were up by two runs. I make the play, I go wide and backhand it which wasn’t routine . . . but the throw to first, it kinda slipped . . . You might remember, it pulled Caruso off the bag for a second, and then he stomped around trying to find it, and wasn’t able to, and the guy was safe.”

  Gullikson was squinting worse, if that was possible. He said, “Yep. We get that one, there’s two down, we nurse it home. Instead of the flood gates opening.”

  “Yeah, well,” Chris said.

  Mr. Gullickson did start to stand up now, though he couldn’t quite make it on his own, and Dolly helped him. He said to Chris, “Fuck you bring that up for?”

  Chris didn’t have a good answer, and it did seem like time to leave, and Gullickson was working his walker, you saw the back of him heading down the hall and disappearing, and Gloria and Dolly embraced, and Dolly thanked them so much for coming.

  Gloria waited a while, until they were on 24 and passing Lafayette on the left, and she said, “What did you bring that up for?”

  Chris drove a little longer before addressing it. “No good reason.”

  “Except that,” she said, “you were hoping he had let it go.”

  “I guess either that,” he said, “or was senile enough where he didn’t even remember coaching baseball.”

  “You’re trying to make a joke, the senility -- but there’s truth to it. Correct?”

  “You carry stuff around,” Chris said, a little catch in his throat, which he hadn’t expected.

  Gloria reached over to him. “I admire you for trying,” she said.

  Chapter 12

  Mark said, “I made a list.”

  He was showered and shaved and everything smelled relatively fresh in the apartment. Which it didn’t always, especially when Mark was struggling with something. So this was a good sign.

  “We’re in business,” Mark announced. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have had you come.”

  “Gee,” Chris said. “Great news . . . I think. But you wouldn’t have had me come anyway? I mean I owe you, regardless.”

  “I would have had you send a check then. I have my pride, don’t forget.”

  Chris said he understood, and Mark opened a folder and there was a left and right page clipped to the inside, pretty organized actually, and there were a bunch of names on the left sheet and none on the right, only the heading there: Chris’s Family Tree.

  “This is weird,” Chris said. “You got family tree on the blank one, and the one with the names, you got nothing up top.”

  “Stop nitpicking,” Mark said. “See what you think.”

  And there were about 15 names on that left sheet, with other information attached. Chris said, “I feel like I’m in the twilight zone here. I’m assuming . . . these folks are all related to me?”

  “5th cousins and better,” Mark said proudly. “Keep in mind, we’re talking nearly a million genetic markers in play, with the autosomal technology.”

  “Oh.”

  “As compared to the old method -- still in play in most police crime labs, where they’re limited to about 12.”

  Chris thought he understood the concept, originally, and didn’t want to get confused with extra information, but now he might be.

  “If you could cut me to the chase,” he said.

  “Fine. I hacked ‘em out. That what the right sheet represents.”

  “Meaning . . . I have no family members left, in the Gedmatch database, you’re saying? . . . Holy Toledo, that’s a miracle!”

  And he felt like hugging Mark or something, but he stopped short . . . but man, all that worry . . . since at least Eclipse, Arizona -- actually probably way before that.

  “Well I’m glad you’re satisfied,” Mark said. “That’s my reward.”

  “What it was,” Chris said, “I was reading all these articles, how they captured the Golden State Killer, and I was blown away, like any doofus true crime buff, from the cheap seats.”

  “Until it dawned on you, they might apply it your direction,” Mark said.

  “Yeah. A wake-up call for sure . . . I don’t know what to say, man . . . I can start living like a normal fellow again.”

  “I hear you,” Mark said. “Course the way I’m following it, they’re going after the cold stuff first, putting the resources in the major ones that have been stewing on their plate.”

  “Frustrating them,” Chris said. “That’s what I was kind of thinking too. But you can’t be too safe.”

  “That’s for sure,” Mark said. And Chris didn’t mention the most recent article he’d read -- no point throwing that in -- but where some police figure is telling you exactly the opposite -- that they are starting to apply to technology to the newer cases.

  “So what do we got,” Chris said, picking up the folder and scrutinizing that left column.

  “I’m stating the obvious,” Mark said. “But this is only a fraction of your complete family tree. But these are the ones that count, who were curious enough to do the Ancestry.com or 23andme thing.”

  “So just so I have it straight, one more time,” Chris said. “If someone -- like law enforcement -- happened to run across some DNA -- and they didn’t know whose it was, and they wanted to find out, so they run it through, just like you did -- and for whatever hypothetical reason the DNA happens to be mine . . . bottom line, they won’t be able to figure that out now?”

  “You’re a little long-winded there -- but correct. They get the right sheet. That’s it . . . They get stuffed, like in basketball . . . I had on the Celtics-Pacers, first round playoff . . . a guy drives the lane, goes up for the dunk, some other guy comes flying out of nowhere and blocks it. It’s normally the surest play in sports, and the dude comes away stuffed. The guy stuffed the dunk.”

  “Okay take it easy, whatever. My deal, there’s still technically a family tree in there, right? But the cops, or such, they don’t see it. Because none of those people, remaining, they didn’t submit any DNA -- so there’s nothing left for mine to match to?”

  “Correct. In fact, you got a big old family tree, were you aware of that?”

  Chris said he wasn’t, and the left column of those offenders who had submitted their DNA -- and you had to take Mark’s word for it, that these were the only ones you had to worry about, read:

  Justin Hagersham, 49, Twin Falls Idaho

  Wilson Preston Tuckenbath, 64, Meridian Plains Wisconsin

  Eliz
abeth B. (Watson) Sistrunk, 29, Bath Maine

  Henning Variface, 70, Dahlonega Georgia

  Bryce Waller, 43, Redding, California

  Hargove Dexter Sigenfuss, 78, Aberdeen South Dakota

  Cora Ellen Makin, 36, Nauvoo Illinois

  Richard R. Gentry, 22, Winthrop Washington

  Jeffrey R. Tuckenbath, 61, Cedar Key Florida

  Patrice Susan Watson, 34, Van Buren Maine

  Grayson Robert Lauerplann, 55, Silver City New Mexico

  Rose Archer Remmingon, 38, Boone North Carolina

  Monrose F. Variface, 72, Rancho Mirage California

  Frances P. R. Fergussen 84, Iowa City, Iowa

  Michael Justice 68, Pensacola, Florida

  Patricia Jaycee Sindegard, 29, Wheeling, West Virginia

  Quite a list. The final three of course, with more information added this time, were the names Mark had run by Chris over the phone when he was in the middle of battling the hack.

  But a dozen others too, none of which he recognized.

  “Jeez,” Chris said. “Not to challenge you or anything -- but are you sure these folks are connected to me?”

  “Bud,” Mark said, “one thing you don’t want to do, is insult my intelligence.”

  Chris understood -- at least intellectually. That when Mark had uploaded his profile into Gedmatch and hit Search -- and then the machine had done its thing and spewed out the matches -- that these 15 folks were scientifically linked to him, specifically -- as opposed to anyone else in the database of a million other people, even remotely, was how he understood it.

  But still. “Didn’t mean to insult anyone,” Chris said. “Wouldn’t you expect at least one Seely in there though? Or even my mom’s maiden name. Weeding?”

  “It’s a crapshoot,” Mark said. “These are the ones -- like you put it to me one time -- they happened to watch late night TV, the heritage sites being advertised, and they forked over the dough and went for it.”

  “I am thinking,” Chris said, “the one name, Makin in there, I might have heard it somewhere, our family.”