No Way Out

“Yes.”

The voice was weak to the point of bordering on non-existence.

“Could you tell us what you did then?”

Johnson hesitated for a long-time.

“I signed out a back-up reference sample of Elias Claymore.”

On his chair, next to Andi, Claymore leaned forward, sensing a glimmer of hope in his fragile defense.

“And what was the time gap between these two actions?”

Steven Johnson looked down at the worksheets, but Alex sensed that he knew the answer to this question already.

“Four minutes?”

“And what was the purpose of taking out Mr Claymore’s back-up reference sample and then putting it back four minutes later?”

Johnson started crying.

“I contaminated on the evidence sample!”

Wednesday, 26 August 2009 — 14:50

Bridget Riley and Detective Nadis had finished at the Alta Bates hospital and written up their reports at the police station. Now she was being driven over to San Francisco International Airport by Detective Nadis when a call came through on Nadis’s cell phone. He listened mostly, prompting occasionally with grunt or an “uh-huh.” When he had finished, it was hard to disguise the miserable look on his face.

“You look like you’ve just been tagged by the Grim Reaper,” she said, trying to put a humorous spin on it.

“That’s what I feel like,” Nadis replied.

“Why what is it?”

“We’ve just had the DNA report on the comparison between Louis Manning’s reference sample and the Bethel Newton evidence sample.”

“And?”

“It’s a match.”

Bridget felt a stab of shock.

“But it also matched Claymore.”

Nadis’s face screwed up.

“It’s Y-chromosome DNA. That’s not as accurate as regular autosomal DNA. They said on the TV that one in five hundred African-Americans is likely to have this same DNA. And the defense pointed out that there are something like thirty seven thousand or more blacks with that profile.”

“So Claymore can say it was Manning,” Bridget said. “And Manning will say it was Claymore. And they’ll end up both getting off.”

“Unless we get some other evidence.”

Bridget raised her eyebrows.

“We’ve got other evidence. And it points to Claymore.”

“But that smart-ass defense lawyer is poking holes in the evidence.”

“And now we’ve got to disclose this to him.”

She looked glum. Nadis tried to take it philosophically.

“Well you know what they say: ‘Shit happens!’”

Wednesday, 26 August 2009 — 14:55

As Alex took in what Johnson had just said, the boy himself just stood there sobbing covering his face with his hands.

“Would you like a few minutes to compose yourself?” asked Justice Wagner.

Johnson shook his head and struggled to continue.

“Why did you contaminate it?” asked Alex.

“What?”

It was almost like he didn’t remember where he was.

“The sample — the nail clipping sample?”

“I didn’t do it deliberately.”

“But when I asked you about taking out the reference samples, you said that you did it to contaminate the evidence sample.”

“No it wasn’t like that! I didn’t take out the reference samples to contaminate the evidence sample. I’d already contaminated it.”

“How?”

“I just sneezed.”

There was laughter in the courtroom. Justice Wagner silenced it with a steely-eyed stare.

“You sneezed.” Alex echoed. He wasn’t trying to sound incredulous, especially as he didn’t want to disrupt the flow that he had got Johnson talking. He just didn’t quite manage to keep the surprise out of his voice.

“I felt it happening, but I just couldn’t stop myself.”

“But weren’t you supposed to be wearing a mask, in order to prevent just that sort of thing?”

Johnson looked helpless, even though he had already exposed himself and could hardly say anything to make it worse.

“I was supposed to… and I was going to. I’d just thrown away the old one and was about to put on a new one. But… like you said, we’re working under so much pressure… I just forgot.”

Alex knew that this wasn’t everything however. This was going to be painful but he had to press on.

“So what happened when you sneezed? Did it blew the sample off the table? Did it blow it onto the floor?”

Alex knew that he was being rather cruel here. He was hinting at “On top of Spaghetti” Tom Glazer’s parody of “On top of Old Smokey.”

“No, but I knew it had been contaminated.”

“So what did you do?”

Johnson looked terrified.

“What do you mean?”

“You said that you checked out the back-up reference samples after you contaminated the evidence sample. Why?”

“Because I wanted to create a new one.”

A gasp went through the courtroom

“A new sample?” asked Alex.

“Yes.”

“And did you create one?”

“Yes,” Johnson answered, his timid voice barely audible.

“How?”

“Using the reference sample the suspect. I took a small quantity and ran it for 34 cycles in the Thermal Cycler for PCR.”

“But didn’t anyone see you?”

“No one was watching me. Everyone was doing there own thing. Like I said, we were all working under pressure.”

“But afterwards? Didn’t they see that it wasn’t a nail clipping with congealed blood?