Her Name Was Verona - Part 3

The resemblance was too close for coincidence, but it was not perfect.

Katie parted her hair on the left; the victim on the right. Katie was left handed and wore her watch on the right; the victim's watch was on the left arm.

A comparison of Katie's hands to the victim's convinced, the Medical Examiner, Dr. Field, that the women were identical twins but each was a mirror of the other, a phenomenon he called "reversed asymmetry". This was an odd but not unheard of natural occurrence that made him more convinced that the women were indeed sisters.

For now, the victim would be identified as Verona Johansson, but despite the coroner's confidence, the fact remained the victim was identified only as a child who left Minnesota in 1937, not as a woman killed on River Road that afternoon.

Schultz drove Katie Johansson back to her house.

Before he left he showed her the notebook he recovered at the scene. Though she only understood some of it, she was able to get the sense of it. Not unlike a number of identical twins, she and her sister shared the same academic interests. Katie was a graduate student at the U, studying mathematics. What she understood was that the notebook contained the kind of theoretical mathematics that a cryptologist would use.

Schultz promised her that he would find out what he could about her sister and left her house with the a sadness at the circumstances but the satisfaction that he had at least become her friend.

The next morning greeted Schultz with a pink return call slip floating across the center of his desk.

"Have you gotten the word on the identity of that River Road victim?" asks Field.

"Nothing other than what we had yesterday."

"You're going to love this." Field teased. "Our victim has been identified. Her name is Anne Kaplan."

Field went to explain that Ms. Kaplan was a mathematician under contract for a company called Control Data Corporation. Apparently she left during the lunch hour on a bicycle and failed to return to work. One of her co-workers recognized the bicycle on the WCCO news.

"Okay, that answers some questions."

"Not as many as it raises." countered Field.

According to her personnel records Miss Kaplan was born in 1938; Katie Johansson was born in 1933. Field contacted the Kaplan's who confirmed the birth date and when asked if their daughter was adopted, they insisted she wasn't.

Field paused for effect, "And Schultz, here is where it gets interesting. Yesterday, Miss Johansson said she was born in Two Harbors, I called Saint Louis County Health Department and they confirm that twins were born to Emily Johansson July 14, 1933."

"Do the Kaplan's know of the earlier identification?"

"Yes, but Miss Kaplan was fingerprinted by her employer in compliance with a federal contract. Just eyeballing the cards from her file and the prints we took - there will most likely be a match. Once that match is confirmed this office will determine that the identity of the victim is Anne Kaplan. Miss Johansson will have to pursue establishing her sister's identity on her own dime."

"That is going to be hard on Katie."

"Yeah, that's too bad, but what's more it's not going to be easy, there are lawyers crawling all over this thing. I've never seen anything like it. The Kaplan's hired that ACLU guy - Benz, and some attorney from her employer has been here twice. Both these guys are fighting hard to establish her identity as Anne Kaplan but for a couple lawyers both working for the same result they're damned hostile with each other."