“Were they inventoried?”
“That’s the first sign that this case wasn’t taken too seriously,” Genco said. “I’ve checked everywhere for a record that the doc kept the neck organs. No luck.”
“They’d be useful because the cause of death was asphyxial?” I asked.
“Yes. A careful physician would have put the hyoid bone, the windpipes, the major pieces of the neck, in a formalin jar. They’re just not anywhere here in our archives.”
Had there been a timely arrest and a trial, the defense attorney would have been allowed to have his own expert reexamine the body parts at issue.
“And the other organs?”
Genco guided me to the door while he called for his photographer to return and his assistants to move the body. “Just wait out here while we set up. There’ll be a bag-a green plastic trash bag, probably-inside the girl’s body cavity. That should have all her other organs inside it.”
The brain and liver and uterus-everything else that had been removed for analysis during the autopsy at the time of Bex’s death-would have been stored within her since then.
Mike and I paced the basement corridor for fifteen minutes until Jerry Genco was ready to proceed. Mike would take his position at the foot of the table while Genco got to work, speaking into the recorder that dangled overhead. I waited in an office down the hall, using the time to catch up with Laura and return calls.
When Genco finished his reexamination of the body, he sent an assistant for me and I rejoined him and Mike as the aides removed the gurney with the girl from the room.
“Pretty straightforward,” Genco said. “I’d agree, from what I can see now on the front of the neck and what’s left of the strap muscles beneath, that this was a manual strangulation. There’s certainly no ligature involved.”
“Nothing like a ribbon around her neck?” Mike asked. He was still troubled by the “confession” extracted from the kid named Reuben.
“No. There isn’t any injury to the back of her neck. None at all,” Genco said. “The pathologist overlooked some other minor trauma, though.”
“How significant?” I asked.
“You tell me what isn’t significant at an autopsy.”
“Inconsistencies?”
“No. More like sloppiness. Laziness, I’d say.” Genco sketched a diagram for us. “Some minor bruising on her back-her shoulder blades. The rear of her thighs, too. I’d expect to see those things, since it figures she was lying down when she was killed. Even if she didn’t have the ability to resist, she was being pressed against the surface of the ground, and there were bound to be some rocks, stones, or twigs around.”
“The doc knew what he had,” Mike said. “Guess he thought there was no need to work overtime.”
“That’s what it looks like. I’ll go the whole nine yards,” Genco said, pointing to the trash bag. “Check the organs, too, in case he missed anything.”
It was early afternoon and Mike’s stomach was growling. “You want a sandwich, Jerry? I need some fresh air.”
“Ham and cheese.”
“Coop?”
“I’ll walk with you.”
As we started to the door, Mattie Prinzer, the newly appointed chief of forensic biology, walked in. “I heard you two were down here.”
“Hey, good to see you. I was going to stop by later on.”
“I’ll save you the trip. Thought there was something you ought to know.”
“You don’t have that ‘good news’ look all over your chops, Mattie. You making life difficult for me?”
“I know you’re a guy who likes a challenge, Mike. Is this the child? The girl from Pelham Bay Park?”
“C’mon, Mattie. You get anything off the zipper? You get a profile?”
“I hope inside that thick skull you’ve kept an open mind, Mike. You have a suspect, don’t you?”
Mike feigned indifference and tossed back the hair on his forehead. “Any one of a number of guys, Mattie. I’m in no rush.”
“You might need to think outside the box, if you’re looking for a guy.” Mattie was holding a printout of the DNA results in her hand. She placed it on the countertop near the door. “One of my techs ran this overnight, just as soon as Mercer Wallace brought it in.”
“What’s the problem?” Mike asked, bending over to study the bands that made up the unique genetic profile of a human being.
I could see where Mattie was going the minute I looked at the page.
The sex of the individual whose blood had been examined was encoded in the DNA results. A male donor’s profile was always marked by two peaks that appeared on the line-one representing the X chromosome and the other representing the Y.
“There’s only one peak,” I said to Mattie.
“Let me see,” Mike said, trying to find the telltale image on the page that looked like a hieroglyphic jumble.
“That’s it, Alex,” Mattie said. “No sign of a Y chromosome anywhere in that little speck of blood, my friend. No question whoever cut herself on that zipper is a woman.”
35
“How long have you known this?” Mike asked, his fist resting on the lab results.
“I just found out this morning. The tech didn’t want to tell me at first.”
“Why not?” Mike said, shaking his head. “We’re losing precious time.”
“She assumed it was a contaminated result,” Mattie said. “Look, that’s the problem when you aren’t exactly doing a blind test. She knew this was clothing from a female murder victim, and that the original case suspect was a male.”
“So she was surprised to have the profile come up as a woman’s?” I asked.
“Yes, surprised also when she found that it didn’t match the DNA of Rebecca Hassett, from the original samples.”
“So what did she do?” I asked.
“Figured it was her own mistake.”
Contamination was an enormous problem-an everyday issue-for forensic biologists in every lab in the country. They sneezed and coughed at their workstations, opened vials of fluids that dripped or became airborne, and, in more instances than prosecutors liked to hear, inadvertently compromised investigative results.
“You mean the tech ran the test again?”
“Of course. And compared it to her own DNA sample.”
Every person who worked in these offices had to provide his or her own genetic profile, so comparisons could be made against results obtained when contamination was suspected.
“Don’t get discouraged so easily. You know what a long shot this was,” I said.
“The last thing I expected to find was a woman’s DNA on the sweater,” Mike said.
“Mattie’s right about the blinders you let yourself wear sometimes. We knew there was no sexual assault. We should be thinking other motives, other killers-and even whether that blood was already on Bex’s sweater before the night of the murder.”
We left Genco’s office and crossed First Avenue to walk to the deli. We ate together at the counter before returning to see whether Jerry Genco had completed his careful study of Bex Hassett’s remains.
“I should know by now to expect the unexpected.”
“That DNA may have nothing to do with the case. The blood wasn’t necessarily deposited on the sweater the day the Hassett kid died.”
Mike unfolded the copy of the Post that he had paid for at the counter. The headline appeared over Brendan
