fortunately she called ahead and learned that Analise Kim was currently off on leave. Nobody said what kind of leave, but the answer Mel was given raised enough red flags that she didn’t hang up until she had Analise’s home phone number and address. When Mel phoned there, she spoke to a Mr. Kim, who told us that his wife volunteered at the Burien Public Library Branch on Monday evenings. So we went there instead.
Walking into the library, we went straight to the lady stationed at the reference desk. It was just past seven o’clock.
“I’m looking for Mrs. Kim,” I said.
The woman smiled and nodded in the direction of one of the book stacks. “She’s over there,” the woman said. “The woman with the cart who’s shelving books.”
Partway across the room a small woman with iron-gray hair and decidedly Asian features was pushing a heavily laden wooden book cart that was nearly as tall as she was. As we approached her she pulled a Rubbermaid footstool from the bottom shelf of the cart and climbed up to return a book to a spot that was far beyond her normal reach. She was still on the stool and at my eye level when we reached her.
“Mrs. Kim?” I asked, pulling out my ID. “I’m J. P. Beaumont with the Special Homicide Investigation Team. This is my partner, Mel Soames. Ross Connors suggested we get in touch with you.”
“That didn’t take long.” She climbed off her perch, returned the stool to her cart, and shelved the next several books without needing the stool’s extra elevation. Not only did she shelve returning books, Analise straightened the spines of all the other books as she went along. Clearly the woman was a perfectionist.
“Didn’t take long?” I asked. “Sorry, I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I’ve been complaining about this for months, but as soon as I send an attorney around, well, that gets a reaction, doesn’t it.”
“Complaining about…?” Mel said.
Analise Kim moved to the next section of shelves, retrieved the stool, and once again clambered up high enough to reach the topmost shelf. She returned two books and then sorted and reshelved several that must have been put away in the wrong order.
“About the hostile work environment at the crime lab,” she said in answer to Mel’s unfinished question.
“Mrs. Kim,” Mel said, “we seem to be coming in in the middle of something. If you wouldn’t mind bringing us up to speed…”
“I like order,” Analise declared. “I like order at work, at home, and here. That’s why I come here once a week to do what I’m doing now-putting books away. I like to know that every book is where it belongs. If I don’t put a book away properly, then the next person who needs it won’t be able to find it. If books are just put away anywhere, what you have is chaos.”
I couldn’t tell if Analise Kim was giving us a glimpse into her basic philosophy of life or if this was something else.
“Some people aren’t interested in keeping things in order,” she continued. “Or in doing them in a timely fashion.” Pausing to straighten the spines of books that were less than properly aligned, she muttered, “LIFO,” almost under her breath. “That’s the way we used to do it, before…”
I glanced at Mel, who seemed to be as mystified about all this as I was. “Excuse me?” she said.
“LIFO,” Analise said impatiently, as though we were dim beyond bearing. “As in Last In First Out, as opposed to FIFO-First In First Out. LIFO is how we do things here, too. When I come in, the returned books are stacked right there under the counter. The last ones to come in go back on the shelves first. And when I get to the last stack, the one in the back, I know I’m catching up. I like that. It makes me feel as though I’m accomplishing something. Not only that, the last books that come in are often the newest and the most popular-the ones with the biggest demand-so it’s important to get them back out first thing.”
That pretty well clarified one thing. We really were talking about Analise Kim’s philosophy of life, but we also needed to get her back on track.
“To go back to what you said before. I’m assuming LIFO is how you used to do things at the crime lab, but now something has changed and you don’t do things that way anymore. Is that correct?”
“What changed is
“By ‘she,’ you mean Destry Hennessey?” Mel asked.
“Oh, no. Not her,” Analise said quickly. “But since she’s in charge, she’s the one who could have fixed it-the one who should have put a stop to it.”
“Who then?” I insisted.
“Yolanda Andrade,” Analise replied.
“One of your coworkers?”
“Not exactly. I’m just a clerk. Yolanda’s an actual DNA analyst. So even though she’s much newer, she thinks she’s better than I am and she wants everyone to do things her way. When I told her that was wrong, that’s when it started.”
“What started?” I asked.
“Yolanda likes to mess with me. She puts evidence kits back in the wrong place, just because she knows it drives me crazy. When I come to work she’ll have moved things around on my desk-my stapler; my tape holder; my pencils. She’ll put them in different places on my desk or in different drawers. Sometimes, when I put my lunch in the refrigerator in the morning, I’ll come back at noon and it’ll be on a different shelf. Or in the garbage.”
Watching Analise’s fierce dealings with unaligned library books, I could see how this kind of harassment would drive her absolutely nuts. She was someone who required order as much as she did air to breathe.
But Ross had mentioned something about evidence-handling irregularities.
“About the LIFO thing…” I suggested.
“Yolanda is supposed to develop profiles on the most recent cases,” Analise returned. “That’s the whole reason they hired her, so the newest cases could be run through those new violent offender DNA databases. But she keeps rummaging around in the old stuff. I know, because she takes kits out of cold storage and then she doesn’t return them to where they’re supposed to go.”
Mel had been quiet for a while. Now she spoke up. “What do you mean, old stuff?” she asked.
“Before the crime lab moved into the new building, they had storage facilities here, there, and the next place, and things were a mess. No one could find anything. Once we had everything gathered in one spot, it was my job to organize it. And I did. Working with years of unprocessed rape kits was no fun. I developed a system and was starting to get it organized, but then Yolanda came along and started messing around with those old evidence kits, ones from ten or fifteen or even twenty years ago. And even though I’ve tried talking to her about it, she hasn’t stopped, and Mrs. Hennessey won’t make her stop, either, probably because Yolanda is free and I’m not.”
“Free?” I asked.
“Right,” Analise said. “Someone else, I’m not sure who, is paying her wages. Mine come out of the crime lab budget. But I’ll be a lot more expensive when this is all over. I’m on leave to use up the rest of my vacation. After that, I’ll quit. Then I’m going to court.”
I made the connection then. Yolanda Andrade had to be the DNA profiler SASAC was paying for, the one I’d heard about on Friday night at the fund-raiser. When I glanced in Mel’s direction, she was grim-faced. And I knew why. If you’re going to launch a vigilante action, how much better to do it against people the cops didn’t know they were looking for. Those long-stored rape kits, with their unidentified DNA profiles, would be an open book. One of those could very well lead back to LaShawn Tompkins, for example, and to many others as well. Like to any number of ex-cons whose DNA profiles had been entered into the CODIS system or into our statewide DNA database simply because they’d been locked up in our prison system. Knowing we had stumbled into something important, I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck.
“Did she ever get any hits on those old cases?” Mel asked. Her tone was easy, conversational, but I knew she was as on edge as I was.
“I never saw any,” Analise answered. “Getting a hit is a big deal, you see. We mark them off on a board and everything. We’re at 406 right now-406 hits, that is. And once there is one, the kit is moved to a different section in the evidence room-from cold case to pending.”
“Another part of your filing system?” Mel asked.
Analise nodded.
“Tell us about it,” Mel said.
