Steven Womack - By Blood Written

There’s no way to tell.”

“And how many people actually rode in the car?”

“Again,” Gilley answered, his voice tightening, “We have no way of knowing that.”

“How many people who rented, drove, or rode in this car opened the trunk?”

“What?”

“How many people opened the trunk and used it?” Talmadge demanded.

“How should I-” Gilley stopped, frustrated. He took a breath and paused for a moment. “I don’t know the answer to that question.”

Talmadge smiled. “Did you obtain a list of the forty-two people who rented this particular Lincoln Town Car over the seven-week period.”

“Yes, we did.”?

“And did you question each of these forty-two people?”?

“No, we didn’t.”?

“Did you do background checks on these forty-two peo-?

ple?”

“We did run their names through the NCIC computers,”

Gilley answered.

“And?”

“Six of the forty-two had prior arrest records. Two others had outstanding warrants.”

“So eight of the forty-two people who rented this car over a seven-week period had previous scrapes with the law. Did you interview those eight people? Did you question them?”

“None of them were from Nashville.”

“I didn’t ask where they were from, Detective Gilley. I asked if you tracked them down and questioned them.”

“No, sir, we did not.”

“So eight people out of the forty-two people who rented that car over a period of seven weeks had arrest records or outstanding warrants, and you decide somehow that the defendant, who has never had a run-in with the law in his life, was the person responsible for the bloodstain in the trunk of that-”

Collier jumped to his feet. “Objection, Your Honor! This is totally inappropriate!”

Forsythe cleared his throat, angry. “I agree, General Collier. Objection sustained.”

Talmadge turned back to the defense table. “Question withdrawn, Your Honor. Nothing further for this witness.”

Collier walked to the podium. “One question on redirect, Your Honor. Detective Gilley, of the forty-three people, counting the defendant, who rented that Lincoln Town Car during this seven-week period, who rented it on the night of the murders at Exotica Tans?”

Gilley turned toward the defense table and nodded in their direction. “The defendant, sir. Michael Schiftmann.”

In the gallery, in the row directly behind the defense table, Taylor felt her blood turn cold.

Thankfully, Forsythe declared the afternoon recess. Taylor got up and walked straight out of the courtroom without waiting for Michael and the lawyers. She walked quickly down the hallway, her heels clicking loudly on the marble floor. She went into the ladies’ room and locked herself inside a stall. She held her hand up in front of her and noticed it was shaking. She stared at it a moment, as if it were someone else’s.

Her mind went blank as she stared at the scratched paint covering the metal door in front of her. Then, almost unconsciously, her brain kicked back into gear and she began thinking. There had to be some explanation besides the obvious. This was too easy for the police, too convenient.

She walked out the stall, past a couple of women from the courtroom who looked up in surprise when they saw her.

She rinsed off her hands and wanted to throw water in her face, but then she’d have to repair her makeup. She didn’t want to go back out there looking like she’d been crying.

She ran a brush through her hair, then squared her shoulders and walked back out into the hallway. Michael was a few feet farther down the hall, leaning against the wall, talking to Mark Hoffman, the youngest of the three lawyers.

“Where were you?” Michael asked, his voice low. “You disappeared. I was worried about you.”

“Sorry,” Taylor said, forcing herself to smile. “Call of nature. I sure wish the judge wouldn’t go so long between breaks.”

Hoffman smiled back at her. She hadn’t talked to him much over the course of the trial, but he seemed a little more relaxed, laid-back, than the other two attorneys. “Yeah, he’s intense. A real slave driver.”

“This seems to be moving forward a lot more quickly than everyone thought,” Taylor said, wanting to make small talk about anything so she wouldn’t have to discuss the testimony they’d just heard.

“It’ll start slowing down from here on out,” Hoffman said.

“We’re getting into the really contentious stuff.”

“I gathered,” Taylor said.

“Are you okay?” Michael asked.

Taylor looked up at him and smiled again. “Of course, I’m fine.”

Hoffman looked at his watch. “We better go,” he said.

“When Forsythe says ten minutes, he generally means ten minutes.”

Inside the courtroom, the gallery was rustling with spectators trying to get settled into seats before Forsythe entered.

The court officer had just begun his announcement when Forsythe swept past him, took his seat at the bench, and rapped his gavel twice.

“General Collier, let’s go. Call your next witness.”

Collier stood quickly. “The state calls Ms. Patricia Hooper.”

Taylor watched as a woman about thirty, if that, walked into the courtroom and took the witness stand. She was thin and pale, as if she rarely got outside. She wore narrow wire-rimmed glasses and little makeup. She seemed nervous as the court officer swore her in.

“Ms. Hooper, tell us please your place of employment,”

Collier instructed.

“I’m employed at the Nashville Crime Laboratory of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.”

“And what is your job description there?”

“My job title is special agent, forensic science supervisor. Basically, I’m a biotechnician attached to the Serology/

DNA Unit.”

“And what does the Serology/DNA Unit of the TBI do?”

“Our job is to perform identification and characterization of blood and other bodily fluids like semen or saliva. We also perform DNA profiling to determine if the DNA of a person suspected of committing a crime is present at a crime scene.”

“And, Ms. Hooper, what are your educational qualifica-tions as a forensic science supervisor?”

“I hold a bachelor of arts degree from Vanderbilt University with honors in chemistry, and a master’s degree in bio-chemistry from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.”

“How long have you been employed with the TBI?”

“Four years.”

Taylor felt her backside going numb as she sat there listening to this dry testimony. The woman’s voice was monotone, professional, and profoundly boring. The courtroom was quiet, still, almost stifling. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly and wished that this was all over.

“Ms. Hooper,” Collier continued, “can you explain to us, in layperson’s terms, what forensic DNA analysis is, how it works, and what it means in the process of investigating a homicide.”

“Certainly. In its simplest terms, DNA is material in our bodies that governs inheritance of eye color, hair color, stat-ure, bone density, and a long list of other human traits. DNA is a long but narrow stringlike object so tiny that a one-foot-long string of DNA is packed into a space roughly equal to a cube that measures one-millionth of an inch on its side …”

Taylor listened as the woman droned on for another ten minutes. She described the way DNA strands were named and characterized in strange combinations of letters and terms that seemed complicated beyond comprehension.

“… the locus on chromosome four, GYPA, is particularly useful for forensic DNA testing because it’s polymorphic, which means it takes different forms in different chromosomes. Each of the forms is called an allele …”