lean muscle—but I’ve got firearms, a great leveler. Even as we spoke, a .38 Special was resting peacefully in its holster in my bottom desk drawer.
This had never worried Bailey in the past, so I don’t know why I thought it would now. And it didn’t. Unperturbed, Bailey continued, “We got DNA on the spot of blood on the back of the passenger seat. It’s Melissa. So now it’s nailed down. They can’t claim ‘it could just be anybody, including the robber.’ ” She dropped the lab report on my desk.
“Not as good as finding her body, but better than nothing, I guess. How big’s the spot?”
Bailey held up her right thumb.
I sighed. “That’s it?”
It was good, don’t get me wrong. Especially because it was in a car that only Melissa drove, and it was on the passenger side. But a spot that small could be explained away as a random accident: So she cut herself, big deal. It happens. I wanted a piece of evidence that was a slam-dunk. This wasn’t it.
Bailey added, “And we haven’t had any of those BS ‘sightings’ for the last four months.”
That was true. The raft of phone calls we’d initially gotten from people who’d claimed to have seen Melissa in the weeks after her car had been found abandoned had largely dried up. The defense always loved to point to these folks to show the jury that there was reason to believe the victim was still alive. Most of them were either looking for their fifteen minutes or channeling their victim “sightings” through tinfoil hats. But in this case all things worried me.
“That doesn’t mean they couldn’t still come crawling out of the woodwork at trial.” I picked up the lab report. “And, of course, our DNA expert Albert Kwan can’t say when the blood on the seat was deposited.”
“Look, I’m a detective, not a magician. What do you want me to do? Go to the morgue and get you a body?”
“Gee, I didn’t think you’d want to. But if you’re up for it, I’m in.”
Bailey glared at me, then continued, “And I talked to Kwan. You’re right, he can’t say exactly when the blood got there, but he
“Yeah, that’s cool, but—”
“But what? What innocent explanation is there for her blood to be on the back of the passenger seat?” Bailey demanded. “It’s not like she would accidentally cut herself and then drip blood near the bottom like that.”
I held up my hand. “You’re preaching to the choir, Keller.
“His
“And whose family, even if we lose this case, will have lawyers who’ll know how to tie up all that money in litigation until the guy’s in assisted living.” I had no doubt the defense would find a way to get that little nugget in front of the jury so they could argue that the defendant had no motive to kill Melissa. Of course, I planned to take every opportunity I could to point out that he didn’t have the legal sophistication to anticipate any of that. But all the defense had to do was raise a reasonable doubt; they didn’t have to prove what Saul knew. It was yet another stumbling block in this obstacle course of a case. Dwelling on it wasn’t making me feel any better, so I did a quick mental review of my to-do list, searching for a reason to get optimistic. I remembered we hadn’t heard back from our criminalist. “Did Dorian turn in her report yet?”
Bailey pulled out her cell and tapped the screen, then scrolled for a moment. “She said it’d be done today. Why don’t we head over there? We’ve got to get out and see the family anyway.”
Melissa had a large and loving family who wanted minute-by-minute updates on the case. We’d been checking in whenever we could, but Saul had hired Ronnie O’Bryan, a street fighter of an attorney who believed in jamming the prosecution into trial as fast as possible. I’d told him we wouldn’t have all the evidence reports in until the first day of trial, and that some might even come in after that. He didn’t care. If I didn’t have the reports, that meant I couldn’t prepare either. I had to admit, it was a pretty effective strategy. If I’d had the stomach to be a defense attorney, I’d sure as hell have used it. And just as he’d intended, I was running at double speed, flogging my experts in an effort to get the most critical work done in time. But with the trial just two days away, the Gibbons family’s anxiety was mounting by the second. They needed some TLC.
I looked out the window of my office on the eighteenth floor of the Criminal Courts Building, trying to gauge whether I’d need to bring my sweater. It was a beautiful day: the sky was piercingly blue and the downtown air had been whipped clean by the hot, gusty Santa Ana winds that’d blown through last night. My walk from my room in the Biltmore Hotel to the courthouse this morning was pleasant enough, but that’d been hours ago. By now, the July sun had been radiating for more than five hours. I figured it was easily ninety degrees out there. Still, Bailey liked to crank the AC in the car, and I knew Dorian kept her office at meat-locker temperature. I grabbed the sweater.
The sprawling brick-colored building that houses the Scientific Investigation Division of the LAPD is just south and east of downtown Los Angeles, about a ten-minute ride from the courthouse. Bailey made the trip in less than five minutes. L.A. is a lot easier to navigate when you don’t have to worry about speeding tickets.
As we rode the elevator up to Dorian’s office, I braced myself for the encounter. Dorian Struck was one of the few veteran female criminalists, and she’d processed more crime scenes in her twenty-three years on the job than even the most seasoned detectives had ever seen. No one was better at the gig, and I was always glad to have her on a case. But she was a prickly pear who didn’t like to be rushed, and I’d rushed her. More accurately, I’d pestered Bailey into rushing her. The moment we stepped out of the elevator, I spotted Dorian’s short, square frame standing next to a young male criminalist whose head was bent over a microscope.
When we got to within five feet of her, she looked up. “Didn’t I tell you I’d call when the report was done?” She glared at Bailey.
Happy to be out of the line of fire, and to see Bailey in the center of it, I stepped back to watch the show. Bailey shot me a narrow-eyed glance before responding. “Yeah, but you also said the report would be done today. So I thought I’d save you the trouble.”
Dorian turned on her heel and headed toward her office, grumbling. “You want to save me some trouble, stay in your cop shop and wait for the report like everyone else.”
Her small, Spartan office was the picture of anal-retentive obsession. No paper out of place, no pens or paper clips lying around, no open books. Most of us have family photos or fun prints on our office walls. Dorian’s were covered—neatly, to a T-squared perfection—with crime scene photos that centered on a gloved hand (Dorian’s, of course) pointing to evidence: bloodstains, spent bullets, spent casings, paint chips, you name it. There was even one of a disembodied head. Dorian’s only nod to sentimentality was a photograph of Indiana Bones—a cadaver dog shown in the act of alerting to a mound of loose dirt. Dorian tapped her computer into life and hit some keys, and the printer whirred, then spit out two pages. Bailey took them and I leaned over her shoulder to see, ignoring her irritated glance.
I read aloud from the report: “ ‘… found evidence of wipe marks throughout the interior of the car… a cleanser was used.’ ” This was good stuff, but as always I wanted more. “If the wipe marks were still detectable, then that must mean he’d cleaned the car shortly before we found it, right?”
“First of all, I’m not saying it’s a ‘he’ or a ‘she’ or an ‘it’ who did the wiping. That’s your problem. Second of all, I’m not saying anyone ‘cleaned’ the car. I’m saying exactly what you read in my report: there were wipe marks that appeared to be associated with a cleanser.”
It was the heaven and the hell of Dorian. She never stretched her findings. She reported literally what she saw and not one thing more. It was a great credibility booster but a minefield for the unwary prosecutor. So far, I’d managed to avoid that pitfall by making it a point to feel around for the parameters of Dorian’s opinion before we walked into court.
“Can you say anything about what kind of cleanser was used?” I asked.
“I can say there was bleach in it, but that’s about it.”
“Can you say that bleach is a particularly effective way to get rid of blood?”
“As opposed to what? Armor All? Your spit? No.”
“Okay, thanks, Dorian.” I’d been warned. But then I remembered the blood drop. I looked at Bailey, who picked up on my thought.
“If the car was wiped down, then how come there was still a visible drop of blood on the back of the passenger seat?” Bailey asked.
