Group O secretor
PGM type 1 subtype 1 + 1 +
ESD 1
GLO 1
ACP BA
I couldn’t resist a smile. “So they don’t match.”
“Nope.”
“How about the fetus?”
“Okay, now on the fetus… Well, to back up a little, you know that a fetus is a product of its parents.”
Murphy sighed.
“Meaning that if you have one parent and the fetus, you can get a vague notion of the missing parent’s makeup. You can also therefore exclude people who do not fit that vague makeup. Which leads me to this.” And he slid the third sheet toward us:
Mother
Group A
PGM 2
subtype 2 + 2 +
ESD 1
GLO 1
ACP B
Fetus
Group B
PGM 2 — 1
subtype 2 + 1 -
ESD 1
GLO 2 — 1
ACP B
Father
Group B or AB
PGM 1–1, 1 + 1 — , 2 + 1 — , or 2–1 -
– -
ESD 1 or 2 — 1
GLO 2 or 2 — 1
ACP B, BA or CB
We both stared at it; Kees saved us from asking any idiotic questions. “To summarize that in English, Davis is neither the semen depositor men alnor the father of the fetus. But neither is the real semen depositor the father, so now you’ve got three men.”
“Davis, the man who attacked her, and the father.”
Kees made a steeple of his fingers. “No. Davis, the depositor, and the father. If Beverly’s guess is right-that the semen was brought to the site and deposited artificially-then Davis could have been the one who attacked her. After all, you still have all that physical evidence against him.”
“Oh, come on,” Murphy said. “I don’t buy that crap about the semen being poured all over her like salad dressing. People don’t do that.”
“Perhaps not, but other possibilities exist. There might have been two attackers-Davis and the depositor-and you only got Davis.”
Murphy rubbed his forehead.
“Or even, to humor Beverly once again, the father and Davis might have been in cahoots and the semen secured from some innocent third party and, once again, artificially placed.”
“Come on.”
Kees laughed, enjoying his devil’s advocacy. “If push came to shove and I were placed on the witness stand and a very sharp lawyer asked me, ‘Dr. Kees, since all you could get from the sample in the mouth was Group O secretor, doesn’t that mean it could have been Davis’s semen, even though the other sample was not?’ I would have to answer yes. I would also have to concede that in cases of gang assault such evidence is not rare.”
“Meaning that Davis might have deposited one of the semen samples?”
“It’s possible. I told you I couldn’t give you answers-just information. Now I have to admit I tend to agree with Captain Murphy. People usually do the simplest thing in these situations. They are rarely operating at their highest mental capacity. Chances are Davis was framed by a man who sexually assaulted the young woman and then killed her, or the other way around. But I’m afraid what I’ve given you doesn’t prove that-it merely suggests it.”
There was a long silence in the room. I have to admit, the joy I’d felt at hearing the semen wasn’t Davis’s had vanished. I’d seen enough lawyers at work to know that the information we’d just received didn’t even warrant a reopening of the case, much less a retrial. My only consolation was that Frank looked as down as I was. Several days ago, he would have been grinning from ear to ear.
Kees, on the other hand, was still smiling. “I feel I ought to add at this point that that,” and he pointed at the three sheets of paper, “is not the only thing I found.”
We both looked at him, Murphy obviously peeved.
“One of the reasons all this took a little longer than I planned was that I ran the semen by a couple of extra tests. One of them came up with the fact that the depositor was taking a drug called prednisone at the time he ejaculated.
“It’s a common prescription drug, a glucocorticoid, to be exact. Pharmacists sell it for its anti-inflammatory properties to treat everything from asthma to arthritis to poison ivy. Now thon a ere is a large family of glucocorticoid drugs. Prednisone is cheaper than most of the others, but it is more potent and far likelier to cause side effects. As such, I would doubt it was administered for something minor like poison ivy; I’d guess it was more like arthritis or asthma.”
“It sounds like you’re saying the depositor was an old man in a wheelchair.”
“For the arthritis, you may be right. That is mostly found among the elderly. But asthma is something else. A lot of young and otherwise healthy people suffer from it.”
He got up from his chair and stood by the window, looking out.
“I’m also inclined to think it was either one or the other of those because they’re long-term ailments, and indications are that the depositor had been taking this medicine for four weeks or more.”
“What indications?”
He hesitated a moment. “Understand that all this gets into the speculative. I mean, I have certain scientific indices to go by, but my conclusions are really my own.”
“All right.”
“During the testing, I found both a slightly lower sperm count and a lower amount of the body’s naturally produced hydrocortisone. Now the first is no real indication of anything-tight pants can knock off sperm-but the second, taken with the first and coupled to the presence of prednisone, is a red flag for Cushing’s syndrome.”
Neither Frank nor I moved or said a word. Both of us felt that in his understated way, Robert Kees was about to make us a gift.
“I almost hate to tell you this, because it’s so thin, but I do feel I’ve let you down a little with the other stuff. But take it all with a giant grain of salt.” He cleared his throat. “If you take prednisone for a month or more, chances are you’ll start to bloat-retaining fluids you normally pass to the outside. Usually, that’s where it stops, but every once in a while-and I’m talking rarely here-you develop Cushing’s. You become weak and overweight, with a rounded, pinkish moon face; you bruise easily, suffer from occasional delirium and depression, and any psychological disorders can become exaggerated. But the most telling thing about Cushing’s, at least physically, is the emergence of a kind of buffalo hump high on the back.”
“You mean the guy’s a hunchback?” Murphy asked.
I put my hand on his forearm to quiet him.
