Deadline

“Okay.”

“So the RANC in Savannah is a Bureau buddy of mine, former New Yorker, big baseball fan named Cecil Knutz.”

“‘Rank’?”

“Resident Agent in Charge. Top dog in the resident agency there.”

“Okay.”

“Anyway, Knutz saw the report from CODIS. Wesson’s DNA got a hit, a match.”

“He was already in the system?”

“He was. Has been for a while, in fact.”

Headly paused to take a sip of his drink. Realizing that was a tactic used to build suspense, Dawson said, “I’m on pins and needles.”

He set down his glass and leaned toward Dawson. “Captain Jeremy Wesson’s DNA matched that which we retrieved off a baby blanket found inside the Golden Branch house.”

That wasn’t a mere hook. It was a grappling hook that found purchase in the center of Dawson’s chest. Dumbfounded, he stared at Headly.

Headly said, “Before you ask, there’s no possibility of mistake. The match was ninety-nine-point-nine-and-down-to-the-nth-degree identical. In other words, the recently obtained sample and the one from 1976 came from one and the same individual. We got Flora’s DNA that day, too. We know she mothered the child whose DNA was on the baby blanket. And Jeremy Wesson’s age fits. Indisputably, he was Flora and Carl’s son.”

Dawson stood up, paced a few steps, then turned back to Headly. As though reading the myriad questions racing through Dawson’s mind, he said, “Judging by your expression, I see that I don’t need to spell out the significance of this to you.”

Although Gary Headly had enjoyed a distinguished career, to his mind all his accomplishments had been overshadowed by what he perceived as his one failure—to bring Carl Wingert and Flora Stimel to justice. It had plagued his career, and now it was contaminating his retirement.

That was a cruelty that his godfather didn’t deserve, and it made Dawson angry. “This Knutz, why’d he tip you to this?”

“He knows my interest. Worked with me when I investigated one of their jobs in Tennessee in the late eighties. He’s aware of my impending retirement and notified me only as a courtesy to a colleague. He was careful not to divulge too much, but he did tell me that he’s been digging into Jeremy Wesson’s background looking for a link to Carl and Flora.”

Dawson raised his brows in silent query.

“Nothing. Jeremy Wesson’s birth certificate—a copy he used to enlist—is from Ohio. Says he was born to and reared by Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So Wesson. He graduated high school in the town where he grew up. Earned a degree at Texas Tech. Joined the Marines. His history looks commonplace until he wigged out and got mixed up with a redneck’s wife.”

“No leanings toward domestic terrorism?”

“None apparent.”

“What’s Knutz’s take?”

“He advised me to leave it alone. The Bureau has bigger fish to fry these days. Nobody really gives a shit about Carl and Flora anymore. The consensus is that they’re probably dead. That burglary at the armory in New Mexico was the last crime attributed to them. That was in ’96.”

“Seventeen years ago. A lot can happen in that amount of time.”

“Doesn’t mean they’re dead.”

“But with no indication that they’re still alive, it’s logical to assume otherwise.”

“Logic and assumption be damned. I want to know, don’t you?”

“At this late date, what possible difference does it make?”

“It makes a hell of a difference to me!”

Dawson sliced the air with his hands. “Okay. I get that. But this decorated Marine, who might have been their son—”

“He was. I know it.”