A Course of Passion

41: Hard Case

The following week, a call comes in about a possible missing girl. Sonny and Fin take the lead and we manage to get the parents and the girls friend to come in to talk with us rather quickly. We get a lead on a man named Diego who was corresponding with her for a few weeks. Her friend tells us she's been acting kind of strange lately, possibly smoking and ditching school. We get nothing out of the interrogation of Diego but soon we after we stop talking to him, we get a hit on the girls possible whereabouts when her debit card gets used. Sonny calls Olivia to tell her that they found Lily's body after getting a hold of the homeless man with the car, "call the parents, talk to them with Dodds." Olivia directs me once she hangs up with him.

"Dodd's, you're with me on The I.D." I tell him when he gets back to the precinct with the others.

He drops his head as he walks past me and mutters, "sure, but shouldn't they go down to the M.E's?"

"They're sending us pictures, they'll be here within the hour." I inform him.

He sits at his desk and I leave the grab myself some water, "hey Babe." Sonny comes over to me and wraps his arms around me from behind.

"Hey you." I say back. Both our tones are low, and I know he's feeling hurt after finding the girls body, "you okay?" I turn to ask him, wrapping my arms around his neck.

He lowers his head and kisses my forehead, "yah, I'm okay. Just wanted to hold you for a moment." He kisses me again.

We stay that way for a minute when a sudden knock on the door draws our attention. We both look and Mike is opening the door "they're here." He says before closing the door behind him.

I sigh and move to the door but Sonny stops me by saying, "hey, keep an eye on him. I think this is pretty hard for him."

"Sure thing." I assure him. I meet the three of them outside the room, "Mr. and Mrs. Evan's, thank you for coming in." I say once they are seated in the interview room. I push a box of tissues over towards them and the mother takes one, quickly rubbing at her nose.

"Are you sure? Couldn't this be a mistake? Someone else? I..." She pleads with us, begging for us to have been wrong on our I.D.

Dodd's says to her lowly, "we are so very sorry for your loss."

I wait for him to continue, but he freezes up, sitting stoned face in front of them. I jump in, "if you're ready, it would... it would really help us if you'd be able to make a preliminary ID. Is that something you think you might be able to do?"

The women sniffles and pushes her head into her husbands chest who nods at us. I look to Mike, telling him to show them. He pushes the ipad with the photo of the girl towards them and Mr. Evans answers, "that's her. That's Lily. Who did this? That homeless man?"

He barely holds back his tears as Mike answers, "we're talking to him, but he's a bottles and cans guy."

They look at him strangely and I elaborate to explain, "he... he has no, um, history of violence."

"He had her ATM card. It must've been him." Mr. Evan's starts to break down.

"It doesn't matter. She's gone, Patrick." Her tone pulls his face to hers, the two of them are holding on to each other tightly, "Lily is gone." She turns from her husband towards us, "I have to see her."

"As soon as the M.E. is ready. " I tell her back and the two of them stand up quietly and leave.

I call out for Oliva to come join us and she comes out of her office, "what's going on?" She questions.

"Well, hospital security just showed that Stan was in the waiting room from 3:00 a.m. until noon, and the ER just confirmed that he was discharged at 4:00 p.m." I tell her, just getting done watching the video and off the phone with the ER.

"Our guy's still out there." Fin adds on.

Mike comes, almost out of nowhere and says, "then we go back to the pool. Re-interview everyone. Someone saw her."

Olivia spots our M.E and changes her attention to her, "Melinda, you got something?"

"I'm not sure." She starts off, but continues anyway, "we usually don't do this in New York, but I was so frustrated, I asked the lab to do a less stringent familial search."

"We'll take whatever you got." Sonny eagerly responds.

"No match. The perp's DNA wasn't in CODIS, but there was one partial match in the database. A 15% overlap."

"15%? That's closer than a stranger." I comment back, already thinking.

"A sibling?" Olivia questions.

Melinda shakes her head "that would be more of an overlap. Both samples also have an allelic dropout on the Y chromosome at the same loci."

"So the DNA in CODIS shares that dropout with the DNA from Lily's killer?" Sonny asks, shocking probably more than just me.

"Right. Now, maybe it's just a coincidence, but that and the overlap together? If I had to guess, the DNA profile in CODIS is a close male relative to the killer, maybe a half-brother."

"What's his name?" Olivia pushes.

Melinda hands us a file and we all huddle to look at the name, ready to jump on this and get a hold of the killer. The files read, "Brendan Cahill." Once Mike and Fin get to the workplace of Brendan Cahill, they learn that he is adopted and that he only knows his birth mothers name. After giving us her name, I quickly track her down and Olivia and Sonny meet her where she works. She gives us details about the father of her son and informs us that he has 2 sons. I work quickly, contacting Barba to get a subpoena and the rest of the squad brings the two brothers in to swab and interrogate.