McKean S01 A Dangerous Breed Read Online Free Page A

asked, my mind reeling at the thought. “Why would he ever do such a thing?”
    “The DNA will answer your first question beyond a shadow of a doubt, Fin,” McKean replied. “As to your second question, we may never know.”
    Selkirk made a lab bench available where McKean carried out a series of DNA experiments before noon. Using samples of Border collie 106’s blood and a sample from the desert bloodstain he’d brought for comparison, he quickly demonstrated exact matches to the bloodstain’s genetic markers.
    “The bloodstain’s DNA includes every bit of the human DNA dog 106 carried, and nothing else of human origins. So I think we can safely conclude that dog 106 was adopted into a coyote pack and produced at least one litter.”
    “Safely conclude?” I remarked. “That conclusion doesn’t make me feel safe at all.”
    “Nevertheless,” McKean replied, “the tests leave no doubt in my mind that the bloodstain came from an animal that was a cross between a coyote and dog 106, an F1 hybrid.”
    “F1?” I puzzled.
    “The genetic term for the first filial generation obtained by breeding two dissimilar organisms, an exact half-and-half hybrid of its two parents’ chromosomes. As near as I can determine on short notice, the genes in the bloodstain appear to be exactly half Border collie and half coyote - with a measure of human DNA thrown in on the Border collie side.”
    Multiplying Threats
    McKean’s cell phone rang. “Sheriff Tanner, hello!” he began, and then his dark eyebrows knit. “Another murder? Where?”
    Within minutes I was driving us eastbound through farmlands surrounding the Columbia National Wildlife Refuge, on a straight gravel road that rose and fell over low hills of golden wheat and grape-laden vineyards. We stopped at an old yellow two-story farmhouse ringed by tall cottonwoods and surrounded by wide, furrowed, brown-dirt fields of newly sewn winter wheat. Half a dozen vehicles were pulled up in front of the house, including the sheriff’s car and a square white medical examiner’s van. Tanner met us on the front porch and showed us inside.
    “Arnie Ingersol and his wife Velma,” Tanner explained. “Old farm people. Knew ‘em well.’
    He led us through a living room with flowered wallpaper, an old piano and neat furniture, and then into a big bright yellow kitchen where a shocking sight stopped me in my tracks. Everywhere, human bones lay scattered on the patterned linoleum floor. Blood was everywhere too, dried and blackened after having been tracked around by -
    “Coyotes,” Tanner muttered. “Caught Velma at the sink washing breakfast dishes. Water was still running according to her son, who stopped by and found her. He’s upstairs with one of our counselors and an FBI agent.”
    McKean moved around the kitchen quickly sizing up the lay of the bones. “Is this scatter reminiscent of the bones of Nate and Tad Swanson?” he asked Tanner.
    “Yes, I suppose so. That’s what we figure, if you’re thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’. Same critters here as was at the scene with the Swanson killings. No doubt any more that it’s coyoties gone bad. We’ve decided to get the Feds into this. Something real freaky’s going on.” He led us through the house’s big pantry and along a hall and into an office with a desk, bookshelves, and more bones strewn on its Persian carpet. We had to squeeze in because the medical examiner’s team was still at work, one young woman photographing bones before a man wearing a white coat and blue rubber gloves picked them up and put them into numbered clear plastic evidence bags while a second, older woman in white clothing moved around collecting hair and fibers and flecks of the blood that had pooled and hardened on the carpet, putting them into screw-capped test tubes of the sort McKean had used.
    Tanner said, quietly, so as not to disturb the ongoing work, “There’s a pistol in the top desk drawer. Drawer’s open like Arnie went for