do was take care of this himself. He'd been set up by that bitch Griffen. How else could Reynolds have made a fool out of him? According to Geddes, the whole case was in the toilet and that smirking whore was going to walk. Well, she might walk away from this case, but she was never going to walk away from Charlie Deems.
When he was through with her, Abigail Griffen was going to wish she had been convicted and sentenced to death, because what he had planned for her would make dying seem like a fucking picnic.
Chapter TWENTY-FOUR
'As ,' our first witness Matthew said on Tuesday morning, 'the defense calls Tracy Cavanaugh.'
Tracy could not remember being this nervous since the finals of the NCAA cross-country championships. She knew that she was only a chain-of-custody witness, but being under oath was nerve-racking.
'his. Cavanaugh, what is your profession?'
'I'm an attorney, Mr. Reynolds.'
'What is your current position?'
'I'm an attorney in your office.'
'Have you assisted me in defending Mrs. Griffen since she retained my firm?'
'Yes, sir.'
'On September thirteenth, did I ask you to do something?'
'Yes.'
'Please tell the jury what I asked you to do.'
'You asked me to go to Mrs. Griffen's home and pick up a Pentax camera and film from her.'
'Where was the film?'
'In the camera.'
'What did you do with the film?'
'It was late evening when I picked up the camera, so I waited until morning and took it to FotoFast, a commercial developer.
The clerk took the film out of the camera and signed a receipt stating that he had done so. Then I brought you the camera.'
Matthew handed Tracy a slip of paper. 'Is this the receipt you received from the clerk?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Later, did you go to FotoFast to pick up the developed film?'
'Yes. And I had the clerk sign a second statement.'
Reynolds picked up the envelope with the photographs and Abbie's camera and walked over to Tracy.
'I am handing you what has been marked as Defense Exhibit 222. Is this the camera you picked up from Mrs. Griffen?'
'Yes,' Tracy said after examining the small black Pentax.
'I hand you Defense Exhibit 223. Is this the envelope you picked up from FotoFast?'
'Yes.'
'Did you give this envelope to me?'
'Yes.'
'Did you review the photographs?'
'No, sir.'
'Thank you.'
Tracy handed the envelope back to Reynolds. As she did, she noticed that the photographs Matthew had shown to Deems were still on the ledge in the witness box where witnesses place exhibits they are viewing. She picked them up and gave them to Reynolds to put with the other photographs.
Just before Reynolds took the photo of the shed from her, Tracy frowned.
She was certain there was something odd about the picture, but she could not figure out what it was in the brief moment she had to view the photograph.
'Nothing further,' Reynolds said as he placed the photographs in the envelope and walked to his seat. 'Mr. Geddes?'
Tracy looked at the prosecutor. He was sitting alone this morning and Tracy wondered why Neil Christenson was missing.
'No questions,' Geddes said, and Tracy was relieved to return to her seat at counsel table.
'The defense calls Dr. Alexander Shirov,' Matthew said.
Tracy wanted to look at the photograph of the shed, but Reynolds had placed the envelope with the pictures under a stack of exhibits by the time she was back at the counsel table.
When Dr. Shirov entered the courtroom, Tracy turned to look at him. She had questioned Reynolds about the identity of his expert and the results of the tests on the metal strips, because she was dying to know what he could possibly do about this seemingly incontrovertible evidence, but Reynolds just smiled and declined to name his witness or discuss the results.
Dr. Shirov walked with a slight limp and carried his notes in both hands. He was tall and heavy, a man in his mid-fifties with a slight paunch, salt-and-pepper hair and a full beard. He looked relaxed when he took the oath and he smiled warmly at the jury when he took his seat in the witness box.
'What is your profession?' Matthew Reynolds asked.
'I'm a professor of chemistry at Reed College in Portland.'
'Do you hold any other positions at Reed?'
'Yes. I'm also the director of the nuclear reactor facility.'
'What does that job entail?'
'I'm responsible for the maintenance, operation and use of the research reactor and its licensing.'
'What is your educational background?'
'I obtained a BS in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley in 1965. In 1970, I received a doctor of science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a specialty in the area of nuclear chemistry.'
'Do you have any special expertise in the use of neutron activation analysis?'
'I do.'
'Would you please explain neutron activation analysis to the jury?'
'Certainly,' Dr. Shirov said, turning toward the jury box. His smile was light and easy and his thick glasses magnified the St. Nick's twinkle in his blue eyes. Some of the jurors smiled back.
'If we take a sample of any material and place it in a source of neutronsatomic particlesthe material will absorb the neutrons and become radioactive. There are ninety-two basic elements and fourteen man-made elements. More than fifty of the basic elements emit gamma rays when they become radioactive.
We have instruments that measure how many gamma rays are given off by the material and their specific energy.
'A nuclear reactor is a source of neutrons. If I have material I want to analyze, I place it in the reactor. Once the substance is radioactive it is removed from the reactor and taken to a gamma ray analyzer, a machine that detects gamma rays and measures their energy.
The information obtained from the analyzer is printed on a magnetic disk and stored so we can analyze the data and determine what elements are present and how much of each element is present.'
'Dr. Shirov,' Matthew said, 'if you were asked to compare two items which appeared to come from the same source, what could you tell about their similarities and differences by using neutron activation analysis?'
'I could tell a great deal. You see, materials in nature contain traces of other materials. Sometimes there are large amounts of one material in the other, but other times there may only be a small amount. Neutron activation analysis is a very sensitive technique for determining the amount of minor elements that exist in a particular object.
'For example, if you filled a thimble with arsenic and thoroughly mixed it with four railroad tank cars of water, neutron activation analysis would be able to determine the amount of arsenic in a one-ounce sample of the water.
'Now, getting back to the comparison of our two samples, if the trace elements in the two are greatly different, it is possible to reach a conclusion with a high degree of certainty that they came from different sources.
