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The mother and son pointed at the menu simultaneously. They said pepperoni at the same time and then they laughed. They each had a dimple in their left cheek.
“No,” Josie said. “We’ve got Jana. She is what started all of this. Everything.”
“We literally just solved her case.”
“I’m not talking about her murder,” said Josie. “I’m talking about her. Who she was, what she wanted.”
Mettner scratched at his chin. “I’m not sure I follow.”
As the mother put in an order for two personal pepperoni pizzas, the boy wrapped his arms around her legs. Automatically, she put a hand on his head and began pushing her fingers through his thick black hair. He gazed up at her with adoration.
“Jana was a foster kid. Obsessed with science, sure, but not just any science. Genetics. That’s what Hallie said. It makes sense that you’d be interested in genetics if you never knew your biological family.”
“She couldn’t have been trying to find her biological family through Vance Hadlee.”
The mother paid for the pizzas and took her receipt. Looking down at her son, she said something to him. He made a face, and she mimicked it back at him. Again, they looked momentarily identical. When they laughed again, the dimples appeared. “No,” said Josie. “But I think she would have been much more observant of families. How they acted. What they looked like. The traits they passed from generation to generation.”
What if I told you…
Mettner followed Josie’s gaze, watching the mother and son for a moment. “Jana working as a receptionist for one of the main family doctors in their area would have given her access to a lot of biological information about local families. Okay, okay. I think I see where you’re going with this. It was something she saw or noticed or realized from working at that office that made her want to pump Vance for information. But what?”
The mother noticed them staring. Josie watched her take note of the bulky spots under their coats where their holsters rested. Then she made eye contact. Like her son’s, her irises were a light brown.
Don’t you want to know the truth?
Josie flashed to the first time she’d seen Vance Hadlee up close. She clutched Mettner’s arm. “His eyes. Mett, it was his eyes.”
“I don’t—” he began, but Josie was already dragging him back to where Cyrus and Anya were speaking, more calmly now. They both looked up, surprise registering on their faces as they saw Josie pulling Mettner by his arm.
“Anya, the eye condition that Vance has, what’s it called again?”
“Heterochromia.”
“There are different kinds,” Josie said. “The one where you have two different colored eyes.”
“Heterochromia iridum,” Anya said.
“The kind Vance has which you said was—”
“Central heterochromia.”
Cyrus held up his hands. “Wait, wait just a second. What are you—”
Cutting him off, Josie said, “Are there other kinds?”
Anya tapped her lips, thinking. Then she said, “Well, yeah. If I remember correctly, there’s also one called sectoral where basically just a section of the iris is a different color than the rest.”
Mettner took out his phone and began tapping into his internet browser search bar.
“Mathias Tobin has sectoral heterochromia,” Josie said.
Cyrus lowered his hands. “That has a name? I always thought he’d just had some kind of eye injury in childhood or something.”
“Are you sure?” asked Anya. “I never saw him that close.”
Mettner turned his phone screen toward them, showing an image of an eye with an iris that was half blue, half brown.
Cyrus said, “His isn’t as pronounced. In fact, you really have to be close to him to see it. He’s got blue eyes and in one of them, there’s just a small bit that’s brown. But his eyelashes on that side are blond.”
