David Kessler - No Way Out

But now Alex was planning to unleash both barrels and expose a vulnerability that he thought he had discovered in the People’s case.

He had obtained the judge’s permission to treat Steven Johnson as a hostile witness. This did not mean that he could bully or badger the witness — indeed it would have been counter-productive to do so — only that he could ask the witness leading questions directly. Thus many of his questions sounded like statements.

“Does Dr Alvarez keep a close eye on you when you work?”

“What do you mean?” asked Johnson nervously.

“Well you’re only eighteen. And you’re not a scientist, just a lab technician. Doesn’t he have to keep a close eye on you to make sure you don’t make mistakes?”

“Not at all. As a matter of fact he lets me work unsupervised.”

“Isn’t that a bit risky? I mean wouldn’t it lead to a certain amount of jealousy and conflict and interfere with good working practices?”

“Why should it lead to jealousy?” asked Johnson, sounding confused.

“Well if he lets you work unsupervised, while he keeps such a close eye on the others-”

“He doesn’t keep a close eye on the others.”

“Oh you mean all the lab assistants work unsupervised.”

Johnson suddenly realized that he had said too much,

“No. I mean… not all the time.”

“Oh I see, you mean some days he says ‘today I’m going let you all work unsupervised’ and other days he says ‘today I’m going keep a close eye on you.’ Is that right?”

“No, it’s not like that?”

“Then what is it like?”

“It depends on… the circumstances.”

“You mean on the workload?”

“Yes.”

“So when the lab’s not busy he keeps a close eye on you?”

“Yes.”

“And when it’s busy he doesn’t.”

“Yes — I mean no!” He had already realized that he had gone too far, and he knew that there was no way of covering his tracks completely. But with every answer he gave, he seemed to be digging himself in deeper. “I mean he always keeps an eye on us, but not as close as when it’s less busy.”

“But not on you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“He doesn’t keep a close eye on you at all. Is that right?”

“No. He keeps a close eye on me too.”

“But you said he lets you work unsupervised.”

“Yes, but not completely unsupervised.”

“What do you mean not completely unsupervised? Isn’t that like being a little bit pregnant?”

“I mean, he doesn’t stand looking over my shoulder but he he’d notice if I make a mis-”

“Yes Mr. Johnson?”

“If I made a mistake.”

Alex asked his next question, quietly but firmly.

“And did you make a mistake?”

“No.”

But he was squirming when he said it. The mere fact that the lawyer asked the question, and looked at him with those piercing eyes, was enough to make him squirm. He could have been innocent and had nothing to hide, but those piercing eyes would still have made him squirm.

“Were you busy that day?”

Johnson looked over at Sarah Jensen. Alex half turned and looked back and forth between the two, emphasizing Johnson’s helplessness and rubbing the jury’s collective nose in the fact that Johnson was seeking help from the prosecutor.

“The witness will answer the question,” the judge said firmly.

“We were fairly busy.”

The word “fairly” was a desperate attempt to straddle the fence — and Alex knew it. He could see right through Johnson’s attempts to stick to the safe middle ground. With “fairly busy” the witness knew that he could go either way, depending on the thrust of the next question.

“So busy that Dr Alvarez had to let you work unsupervised?

Johnson could evade no longer.

“I guess.”

“Why were you busy?”

“I don’t understand.”

He was genuinely confused, and thought he had made another blunder.

“It’s a simple enough question. Why were you busy?”

“Because… I guess… because we had a lot of work to do.”

“And not enough people to do it.”

“I guess.”

“In other words, the reason you were busy is because there wasn’t a big enough staff to handle the work load?

“Yes,” replied Johnson.

“And so, if you had a lot of work to do at the lab and not enough people to do it, you would have been under pressure to get a lot of work done in a short amount of time.”

“Yes,” Johnson admitted, his voice now weak.

Sarah Jensen rose to her feet.

“Your Honor, perhaps Defense Council is being vague and repetitious.”

“Mr Sedaka?”

“I was establishing foundation, Your Honor.”

“Well let’s say that you’ve established it. Perhaps you can now cut to the chase.”

Sarah Jensen sat.

“Mr Johnson, let me ask me this: under the circumstances that you described, did you forget to do things you were supposed to do?”

“Like what?”

“Like being careful to avoid mishandling the sample.”

“Objection Your Honor. Lacking in specificity.”

“Rephrase Mr Sedaka.”

Alex looked down at the worksheets before him.

“Before you amplified the evidence sample, what did you do?”

“I… don’t remember. I mean I’d have to check my worksheet.”

“I actually have a copy of your worksheet here.”

Alex handed two copies to the clerk who handed one to the judge and one to Johnson. The prosecution didn’t need a copy as it was they who had given a copy to the defense. Johnson took it, his hands shaking.

“Now could you look at the lines above the line in which you amplified the evidence sample from the Bethel Newton case.”

“Yes.”

“What did you do?”

“I returned a back-up copy of the Elias Claymore reference sample to cold storage.”

“And could you look at the line immediately before that.”

“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!”

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.”