David Kessler - No Way Out

This was a very clever way to forestall subsequent objections — especially from the defense. There were pros and cons to both courses of action, and if the judge ruled unilaterally, they could lodge an exception for the record and then if the verdict went against them, they could appeal on the grounds that they had opposed the judge’s ruling. This way Justice Wagner was effectively giving the parties themselves the right to decide — albeit camouflaged under the guise of seeking agreement between the parties.

Of course they might still not agree. But the defense would have to make its position known. That meant they would have to make up their own minds where they stood in the face of this dilemma.

“What if can’t come to an agreement?” asked Alex.

“Then I’ll have to make a decision. But I will ask both parties to state their positions for the record — including their fallback position.”

Alex knew that he had to play for time. And he had to get some answers before he committed himself to a position that could land his client in prison for the rest of his life.

“Your Honor, these test results were the first time we were apprised of even the existence of Louis Manning, let alone his potential involvement in the case. As Your Honor may or may not know, Louis Manning — assuming that it is the same Louis Manning — was arrested for attempting to rape my… for attempting to rape a reporter who was covering this trial. Now he appears — somehow — to have become a credible suspect in this case. So much so, that the police or the DA decided to compare his DNA to the evidence sample. Before we are able to make a rational decision as to whether we would prefer to continue or start afresh, we would like to file a discovery motion for everything the prosecution has on Louis Manning as it pertains to criminal convictions and the reasons why his DNA was tested in this case.”

Sarah Jensen looked panic stricken.

“Your Honor that’s a pretty tall order at short notice.”

“We’ve wasted enough time on this. I see no reason why you can’t provide the arrest report and his record by, say, five PM tomorrow. And to give the defense the opportunity to study the material we will reconvene at ten O’clock on Wednesday morning.”

Victor Alvarez was at his desk in the corner office of forensic science lab when a tired and haggard looking young man walked in.

“Dr Alvarez? My name is Paul Greenberg. I’m the night Systems Administrator at the Ventura government building. I’m here about the LDIS server.”

“What is it?” asked Alvarez tensely. When the Systems Administrator on the graveyard shift walks, bleary-eyed, into the office of a Technical Leader at the forensic lab, it’s obvious that there’s a problem.

“It looks like somebody’s hacked in to database.”

Alvarez went into damage control model.

“Snooping or sabotage?”

“They deleted a file and replaced it with another.”

“Which file?”

“The new evidence sample from the Elias Claymore case.”

“Mother of God! How did they do it?”

There was a long pause before Greenberg spoke again.

“It looks like they used my ID.”

“ Your ID?”

“Yes.”

“But how did they get it?”

“I’m still working on that. What I can tell you is that according to the user-log, they also downloaded Elias Claymore’s reference sample.”

“But wouldn’t they have needed your password?”

Again the embarrassed pause.

“Yes they did. But like I said, I don’t know how they got it.”

“Can’t you undelete the over-written file?” asked Alvarez.

“It’s not as simple as that. The original file hasn’t just had its title deleted: it’s been double-deleted — physically over-written.”

“Is that normal?”

“No it isn’t normal. But it’s been done. It looks like someone deliberately changed a file and then set out to destroy any trace of the original.”

“And when was this done? Before or after the last comparison between the suspect samples and the back-up crime scene sample?”

Greenberg looked at the activity log

“After the chemical analysis, but before the database comparison.”

“So you mean the last comparison was done using this tampered sample file?”

There was alarm in Alvarez’s voice.

“I’m afraid so.”

“ Damn! ” The frustration was mounting. “Okay, you say the evidence sample file was over-written . Does that mean it can’t be recovered?”

Greenberg thought for a minute.

“Well we do a backup tape every day at six p.m. but it looks like this tampering was done after the new profile was uploaded and before the back up was done.”

“So we’ve lost it for good! And the test was destructive so we haven’t got the sample anymore. Shit! ”

“There is something else we can try. If I can take a look at the computer that was used for the scan, I can check the outgoing packet log for the upload to the LDIS server.”

“Does it keep that data?”

“Only as a temporary file. But when the system deletes it, it doesn’t do a double delete like the hacker did on the database. It just frees up the area of the disk for reuse. If there hasn’t been much more activity on that computer, I could recover the temporary packet log file with a standard utility and recover the raw data.”

“OK can you do that ASAP?”

“We have to. Let’s take that server out of use right away.”

“Okay and then when you’ve done that, run another comparison between the restored crime-scene sample and both reference samples: that’s Elias Claymore and Louis Manning.”

“Will do.”

Greenberg was about to say more, when he suddenly remembered the airhead who had phoned up a few days ago. He hadn’t told her the password. All he had told her was that it was his mother’s maiden name. But he hadn’t told her what that was. He had been hoping that she would call him back after she phoned during the day and asked one of his colleagues all those questions about him. They had teased him mercilessly about that afterwards.

She had asked about his age and his eyes and his zodiac sign!

He realized what had happened. She had “social engineered” him — and one of his colleagues. Once she had his birth details it would have been no problem to find out his mother’s maiden name. But she had sounded so dumb on the phone.

An act of course!

How could I have been so stupid?

He tried to put it out of his mind as he looked at the file allocation table. Then he remembered something else.

“Dr Alvarez, I noticed that there are also extra reference samples file for Elias Claymore, Bethel Newton and Louis Manning. According to the properties, these are mitochondrial DNA profiles.”

“Yes that’s right. We do mitochondrial DNA profiles on reference samples as a matter of course. But we decided to use Y-STR on the evidence samples.”

“And you haven’t got any more evidence samples?”

Alvarez thought for a moment.

“Let me just check.”

He typed in something at his own computer and smiled.

“Oh I’m wrong. There’s another nail sample — the thumb of the victim’s other hand.”

Greenberg smiled.

“Well maybe it would be a good idea if addition to the new Y-STR test we also do a mitochondrial DNA profile on that last piece of evidence — just to cover all the bases, ‘scuse the pun?”

Alvarez smiled.

“That’s a good idea. I’ll get right on it.”