The criminalist sized the man up. "Almost. One last thing. Open your mouth."
*
"You're my father?"
Breathless, nearly dizzy fro
m the news, Geneva Settle felt her heart pounding. She looked him over carefully, her eyes scanning his face, his shoulders, his hands. Her first reaction had been utter disbelief but she couldn't deny that she recognized him. He still wore the garnet ring that her mother, Venus, had given him for Christmas--when they were still celebrating Christmas. The memory she compared this man with, though, was vague, like looking at someone with bright sun behind them.
Despite the driver's license, the picture of her as a baby with him and her mother, the photo of one of his old graffiti drawings, she still would've denied the connection between them to the last, except for a DNA test that Mr. Cooper had run. There was no doubt they were kin.
They were alone upstairs--alone, of course, except for Detective Bell, her protective shadow. The rest of the police officers were downstairs working on the case, still trying to figure out who was behind the jewelry exchange robbery.
But Mr. Rhyme and Amelia and all the others--as well as the killer and everything else about the frightening events of the past few days--were, for the moment, forgotten. The questions that now consumed Geneva were: How had her father gotten here? And why?
And, most important: What does this mean for me?
A nod at the shopping bag. She picked up the Dr. Seuss book. "I don't read children's books anymore." It was all she could think of to say. "I turned sixteen two months ago." Her point, she guessed, was to remind him of all the birthdays she'd spent alone.
"I brought you those just so you'd know it was me. I know you're too old for them."
"What about your other family?" she asked coldly.
Jax shook his head. "They told me what Venus said to you, Genie."
She was pissed he was using the nickname he'd given her years ago. Short for both "Geneva" and "genius."
"She was making that up. To turn you against me. No, no, Genie, I'd never leave you. I got arrested."
"Arrested?"
"It's true, miss," Roland Bell said. "We've seen his files. He got arrested the day he left you and your mother. He's been in prison ever since. Just got out."
He then told her a story about a robbery, about being desperate to get some money to make their life better, to help her mother.
But the words were tired, exhausted. He was giving her one of the thousands of limp excuses you heard so often in the neighborhood. The crack dealer, the shoplifter, the welfare scammer, the chain snatcher.
I did it for you, baby . . . .
She looked down at the book in her hand. It was used. Who'd it been for when it was new? Where was the parent who'd bought it originally for his or her child? In jail, washing dishes, driving a Lexus, performing neurosurgery?
Had her father stolen it from a used bookstore?
"I came back for you, Genie. I've been desperate to find you. And I was even more desperate when Betty called and told me you'd been attacked . . . . What happened yesterday? Who's after you? Nobody ever told me."
"I saw something," she said dismissingly, not wanting to give him too much information. "Maybe somebody committing a crime." Geneva had no interest in the direction of this conversation. She looked him over and said more cruelly than she intended, "You know that Mom's dead."
He nodded. "I didn't know it till I came back. Then I heard. But I wasn't surprised. She was a troubled woman. Maybe she's happier now."
Geneva didn't think so. And in any case no amount of heaven would make up for the unhappiness of dying alone the way she had, her body shrunken but her face puffed up like a yellow moon.
And it wouldn't make up for the earlier unhappiness--of getting fucked in stairways for a couple rocks of crack while her daughter waited outside the front door.
Geneva said none of this.
He smiled. "You've got yourself a real nice place you're staying."
"It was temporary. I'm not there anymore."