California Bear by Duane Swierczynski

Author:Duane Swierczynski [SWIERCZYNSKI, DUANE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

GENE JEANIE

Jeanie stared at her violated panties, which were resting inside a plastic bag on her kitchen table, phone in hand.

God, this fucking day. She thought about a gin and tonic but reminded herself to stay on task. There’d be time for drinking later. After this particular errand.

She needed someone to run the genetic sample. There were plenty of private companies who ran DNA analyses, but none of them would be able to match the semen to a human being with a name. That was the purview of law enforcement. The only person who came to mind — aside from her husband — was her ex-husband, also a retired cop. Yes, Jeanie Hightower (née Poole) was a serial cop wife. Maybe after she and Hightower called it quits, she’d wise up and marry a dentist or a professional wrestler or a stage magician, just to change it up a little.

Yes, her ex was the best bet, but she wasn’t prepared to make that call yet.

So strange to think that this new career started as an escape from her second failing marriage. Jeanie had bought a discounted subscription to a commercial genealogy site, spit into a tube, and spent the next few weeks obsessively filling in the gaps of her family tree. She told herself that looking into her past might explain where she was headed in the future. Even then, she knew that was bullshit. This was nothing more than a glorified New York Times crossword, or a thousand-piece jigsaw of a field of fucking strawberries. Genealogy was a puzzle, and Jeanie was extraordinarily good at puzzles.

And the most reassuring thing of all: people can try to reinvent themselves, but deoxyribonucleic acid doesn’t lie. DNA is fate, and it’s destiny. Jeanie had come to believe that and embrace it. This was why she’d rededicated her life to it.

What other choice did she have? Accept the choices that led her to this point? Choices that were largely out of her control? No. DNA explained it all. We all enter this world programmed a certain way, to follow a certain pattern. It took a superhuman effort to deviate from that pattern.

So why be so hard on herself now that her second marriage wasn’t working out? Maybe she wasn’t genetically disposed to be happy or raise a family. None of that mattered now. What mattered was her clients. If she could focus on them, everything else would sort itself out. That’s what made it a business — and a calling.

Give me access to your family tree, she promised her clients, and I’ll obsessively fill in all those missing pieces that you don’t have time to fill in. Gathering clients was tough at first; there was a lot of amateur competition. But soon word of Jeanie’s prowess began to spread. In two years she had gone from a single (flaky) client to an extremely robust client list, so robust that she was paying all the bills and was even considering turning down work. This would have been unthinkable a year ago.

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