Guilty As Sin

why.”

“What kind of little things?” she’d wanted to know.

Either she’d been genuinely curious about why her witnesses might have done a bit of fudging here or there, or she’d been looking to gain a tactical advantage from whatever Jaywalker might tell her. But she was young and cute, and Jaywalker, though happily married, had always been a sucker for the combination. So he’d decided to give her the benefit of the doubt.

“Oh, the business about the anonymous caller,” he’d started with. “That just doesn’t ring true. My client wasn’t dealing out in the open on his stoop. In fact, he wasn’t dealing at all until Clarence Hightower came along and twisted his arm. Next, the fact that Hightower was never charged with sale, even though he introduced St. James to Barnett for the express purpose of buying drugs. Finally, the fact that no real attempt was ever made to get to Barnett’s connection. That should have been the ultimate goal of the operation. Instead they send some overgrown Boy Scout to do the job, and then tie his hands to make sure he doesn’t find out anything.”

“So what does all that have to do with the chemist?” Shaughnessey had asked.

“Nothing,” Jaywalker had admitted. “Like I said, I’m frustrated, and I don’t know what else to do.”

That had been then.

Now it was Friday morning, and Miki Shaughnessey rose to announce that the People were prepared to call their fourth and final witness, Olga Kasmirov.

Just as not all doctors are lucky enough to be on staff at the Mayo Clinic or the National Institutes of Health, so too are there chemists in this world who don’t pull down fat six-figure salaries at DuPont or Eli Lily. Scan down the rolls of the psychiatrists who perform the half hour court-ordered evaluations for the criminal justice system, or the technicians who spend their days peering through old-fashioned microscopes at drugs bought or seized on the streets of the city, and in no time you’ll think you’ve stumbled upon a veritable roster of United Nations delegates. Except that the pay isn’t nearly as good.

So the name Olga Kasmirov barely registered on Jaywalker’s radar, any more than did her explanation two minutes into her testimony that while she’d once been a leading expert in polymer conductivity in the former Soviet Union, these days she made her living analyzing samples of white powder or green vegetation at the New York City office of the United States Chemist.

Shaughnessey’s direct examination was just that-direct and to the point. She spent a few minutes asking the witness about her education and experience, but she needn’t have bothered; Jaywalker quickly rose and offered to stipulate that the witness qualified as an expert in the analysis of controlled substances. Thanking Jaywalker for the concession, Shaughnessey moved on to the drugs bought and seized from Alonzo Barnett.

SHAUGHNESSEY: With respect to the substance from the first buy, what did you do?

KASMIROV: I emptied the powder onto a scale and determined its net weight to be 1.01 grams. We use the metric system. That comes out to about one twenty-eighth of an ounce. Then I conducted several tests for the presence of heroin hydrochloride, and the results were consistently and conclusively positive.

SHAUGHNESSEY: How about with respect to the second buy?

KASMIROV: For the second buy, I found the weight to be 26.02 grams. That’s a little less than one ounce. As before, tests for the presence of heroin hydrochloride proved positive.

SHAUGHNESSEY: And the package seized from the defendant at the time of his arrest?

KASMIROV: I found the weight to be 124.8 grams. That’s just under an eighth of a kilogram, or about 4.4 ounces. Once again, I tested for the presence of heroin hydrochloride and the results were positive.

SHAUGHNESSEY: Now, these lab reports you prepared. Were they prepared in the ordinary course of business at the lab?

Jaywalker knew the ritual, the legalese required to admit business records as an exception to the hearsay rule. The next question would be, “And was it the ordinary course of business at the lab to prepare such reports?” He rose to his feet and magnanimously stated that he had no objection to the reports being received in evidence.

The fact was, he actually wanted them in.

He needed them in.

“Received in evidence,” said the judge.

Miki Shaughnessey thanked her witness and sat down. Her entire direct examination had taken less than fourteen minutes.

Jaywalker’s cross would take considerably longer.

JAYWALKER: Good morning. Is it Ms. Kasmirov, or Dr. Kasmirov?

KASMIROV: In the Soviet Union I was Dr. Kasmirov. Here I’m not sure how it works.

JAYWALKER: But you won’t object if I call you Doctor?

KASMIROV: I won’t object.

JAYWALKER: Good. Dr. Kasmirov, in response to Ms. Shaughnessey’s questions, you essentially described performing both a quantitative analysis of the drugs you examined in connection with this case and a qualitative analysis. Correct?

KASMIROV: That is correct.

JAYWALKER: In other words, how much the substances weighed and what they contained.

KASMIROV: Correct.

JAYWALKER: Let’s talk about the weights first, okay?

KASMIROV: Okay.

JAYWALKER: Starting with the first buy. You found that its net weight was 1.01 grams. Can you tell us how close that was to weighing exactly one gram?

KASMIROV: It was off by only one one-hundredth of a gram. In other words, if it was supposed to be a gram, it was off by about one percentage point.

JAYWALKER: And skipping to the third quantity of drugs you analyzed. That you found to weigh 124.8 grams. If that was supposed to be an eighth of a kilogram, how close was it?

KASMIROV: Well, a kilogram is a thousand grams. An eighth of that would be 125 grams. So 124.8 would be off by only two-tenths of a gram. I would need a calculator or paper and pencil to compute the margin of error.

JAYWALKER: Here. [Hands calculator to witness]

KASMIROV: It comes out to.00016, or sixteen-thousandths. That’s a small fraction of one percentage point.

JAYWALKER: In other words, very, very close.

KASMIROV: Yes.

JAYWALKER: So close as to suggest that whoever had measured it out used a very sophisticated scale. Would you agree?

KASMIROV: I would agree, yes.

JAYWALKER: Now let’s go back to the one we skipped, the second buy. There you found the net weight to be 25.8 grams. Correct?

KASMIROV: Correct.

JAYWALKER: Assume for a moment that that buy was supposed to have been one ounce. Can you tell us how close it actually was?

KASMIROV: Well, an ounce contains 28.35 grams, rounded off to two decimal points. The difference would have been 2.55 grams.

JAYWALKER: In other words it was more than two and a half grams short?

KASMIROV: Yes.

JAYWALKER: And the margin of error?

KASMIROV: May I use the calculator?

JAYWALKER: Of course.

KASMIROV: More than nine percent off, almost ten.

JAYWALKER: Where did it all go?

KASMIROV: Some might have been lost during field-testing.

JAYWALKER: But only a tiny bit, right?