Heads You Lose - Lisa Lutz [100]
An hour later, Lacey was sitting on Brandy’s plush pink couch, tapping her foot silently on the shag carpet, waiting for Brandy and Paul to come out of Brandy’s bedroom.
“You said you had a break in the case,” Lacey finally called out. “Spill it.”
Paul and Brandy were giggling when they entered the living room and squeezed into a loveseat across from Lacey.
“You do it,” a beaming Paul told Brandy.
Brandy cleared her throat. “Paul said you got the envelope from Doc Holland, a.k.a. Doc Egan’s father, just a week ago. But Sheriff Ed seems to believe Holland was the guy in the exploding plane. I knew both of those couldn’t be true; I wanted to know if either one was. So I tested the envelope against the DNA from the crash site.”
Lacey’s foot stopped tapping and burrowed deep into the shag. She didn’t know where to start—the stolen envelope or Brandy’s sudden forensic expertise. She went with the latter. “How the hell did you get DNA from the crash site?” she finally said.
“I didn’t. My friend Max works at the crime lab,” Brandy replied.
“I see. How convenient,” Lacey said.
“What can I say? He owed me a favor. So I gave Max the envelope you received from Holland. He just called with the results.”
“I thought DNA testing took weeks,” Lacey replied.
“I put a rush on it,” Brandy replied.47
“Okay, assuming all this is true, what do we know?” Lacey asked.
“The DNA from the dead pilot and the envelope weren’t an exact match, but they were close. In fact, they indicated paternity. Turns out the pilot was the father of the envelope-licker.”
Lacey responded with a blank look.
Brandy spoke slowly, as though to a child. “That means it was Doc Holland who died in the plane crash. And it was his son, Doc Egan, who sent you the letter.”
After a long pause, all Lacey could say was, “So much for my top suspect. But we still don’t know who Doc Holland really was.”
Brandy sighed. “This is the easy part. As you learned from Ilsa Sund-strom a week ago, the real Dr. Herman Holland was born in 1921. If you’d followed up, you’d know that he lived and practiced up in Orendale until his death in 1980.”
“So?”
“So when Paul found out that the fake Holland was Egan’s dad, I did some research, starting with anyone named Egan who’d lived in Orendale. I found a Roy Egan born in 1946. He served as a medic in Vietnam and then racked up a minor police record, mostly check fraud and failure to pay child support. From 1980 on, there are no traces of the man.”
“So you’re saying Roy Egan killed the real Herman Holland and took his name?” Lacey asked.
“Well done, Lacey. That’s possible, but according to the coroner’s report, the real doctor died of natural causes. That can be faked, of course, but my best guess is that Egan Senior just recognized an opportunity when Holland died. For twenty years he had a good thing going in Mercer. Then his past caught up with him.”
“But how did Egan Junior find his father?” Lacey asked.
“No idea,” said Brandy. “With both parties dead, we’ll probably never get all the facts straight.”48
“But I still don’t get what the docs had to do with the killings of Hart, Terry, or Harry,” Lacey said.
“Join the club,” Paul replied. “Now you know everything we do.” He put a consoling hand on Lacey’s shoulder. “In terms of the investigation, at least.”
“I need a drink,” said Lacey. “I’ll be at the Timberline.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea, Lace?” Paul asked, but she was already out the door.
On the drive back to Mercer, Lacey realized that what she needed, much more than a drink, was answers. Now that she knew “Doc Holland” had died even before Hart’s body was returned to their property, the only remaining suspects she could think of were the Babalatos. She felt sick. Fat bank account or not, she had to know before she could break free of the town. She pulled into the sheriff’s station.
Inside Sheriff Ed’s office, he gave her a tentative but warm hug.
“Lacey, how you holdin’ up today?” He looked pretty rattled himself.
“So far so good,” Lacey lied.
“You here to tell me you’ve cracked the case?” he asked,