Perri O'Shaughnessy - Unlucky in Law

But the results so far were attractive to the prosecution. Nina was dangling a good chance for a conviction and hoping Jaime would be too pleased to take the time to see around it. It reminded her of playing chess with her brother Matt. She beat him now and then by sacrificing her queen. Matt would get so excited about grabbing it that he wouldn’t notice her sneaky rooks setting up the checkmate from the other side of the board.

Behind the professional mask, Jaime’s eyes glittered triumphantly. He rubbed his back against his chair as if he was itching to finish destroying Stefan on his cross-exam. “No objection,” he said. “Subject to cross, of course.”

But wait, as the infomercials always said. The Nina and Ginger act was just getting started.

“I also asked you to perform a second series of tests, didn’t I?” Nina asked.

“Yes. You provided me with the left femur and hip bone from the remains of Constantin Zhukovsky. You asked me to run a series of tests on the bones and also to obtain a DNA profile on the bones.”

She felt Jaime’s eyes narrowing behind her. What was this? Those bones were old news. Weren’t they? “And what were the results obtained from those tests?” she asked quickly.

“Well, several things. I wasn’t sure what we were looking for. I found no sign of poison on the standard tests for toxins. Physical examination of the bones didn’t show anything. I ran the DNA panel, didn’t find anything unusual. I took some bone-marrow samples and stored them the night I was assaulted and the bones were taken.” Briefly and without hand-wringing, Ginger described her fight with Sergey Krilov.

“That night, I noticed a resemblance between the two samples, one from the bones, and one from your client. They were related.”

“Your Honor,” Jaime said, but he seemed dubious, “that’s established.” Maybe he shouldn’t be objecting? He didn’t have enough time to decide.

They were invited to speak to the judge up close.

“I’m going to show that the blood found at the crime scene did not, in fact, belong to Stefan Wyatt,” Nina said, “if I can have a few more minutes. It’s science, Your Honor. It takes time. It takes a few logical steps.”

Jaime said, “You just showed the blood was your client’s. Now you want your expert to contradict herself?”

“She’ll explain her finding.”

Salas said, “Don’t get us into some inexplicable dither. I won’t let you confuse the jury.”

“I’ll keep it simple. Even Jaime will understand,” Nina said.

“Do it in ten minutes,” Salas said. They went back to their seats. Ginger stretched out in the witness box, enjoying herself. Nina, on the other hand, had sweated right through her silk blouse to her jacket. She had thought she could let Ginger run through her findings with just a few questions, but she wasn’t sure she was helping much.

Ten minutes to revolutionize the case. Get to it.

“As I was saying, in establishing paternity, I ran a number of additional tests on samples obtained from the bones,” Ginger said. “The results were so subtle, I would have missed them if I hadn’t been looking. As I said, I compared the two samples and saw that there was a close blood relationship between Constantin Zhukovsky and the owner of the blood found at the scene of Christina Zhukovsky’s murder.”

Jaime leaned forward, puzzled. They knew this. Stefan was his son.

“I went back to the original evidence sample found at the crime scene and compared it with results from a blood test performed on Stefan Wyatt,” Ginger said, “and discovered I was getting a very few sort of rogue cells, not Stefan Wyatt’s. It was weird. I wasn’t satisfied. I discussed my findings with a colleague who runs a company called BloodTech in San Francisco.”

“And what, if anything, did you do next?”

“Based on that conversation, I ran a special battery of tests, PCR-based assays analyzing polymorphic STR markers to try to detect what those rogue cells were.”

“STR markers?”

“Short tandem repeat systems. It’s a sensitive and rapid way to analyze DNA.”

“And what did you learn by using this very sensitive technology?”

Ginger smiled broadly, revealing an outstanding veneer job. “I found a situation called mixed chimerism. The blood found at the scene of the crime was a mixed chimera sample.”

Nobody appeared enthusiastic at this pronouncement. Yeah, so what? juror Larry Santa Ana’s expression said. Nina had no idea what Ginger was talking about, either. The examination was out of control, but Ginger was an intelligent lady and on their side.

Nina asked Ginger to spell “chimera,” then asked, “So what is this mixed chimerism?”

“It’s named after a mythical monster with a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail. It poetically describes a mix that can occur after a bone-marrow transplant.” Good old Ginger, she knew to turn back to the jury and speak earnestly.

“Now, is this the same thing as a blood transfusion?” Nina remembered Paul mentioning that Erin had told him something about one.

“No, although laymen might not realize the distinction when speaking casually about medical issues. A bone-marrow transplant is a widely used treatment for various blood diseases. It has only been available for that purpose since the early seventies. What a marrow transplant is-there’s a donor and a recipient, the sick person. The recipient’s marrow is killed with radiation or chemotherapy, and the donor’s marrow is introduced and begins to grow normal platelets. In the best circumstances, the underlying syndrome is cured.”

Salas kept looking at his watch. Now or never.

“And what does a bone-marrow transplant have to do with this mixed chimerism?”

“The crime scene blood sample was not a perfect match for Stefan Wyatt’s DNA. It showed a few cells that came from someone else. It’s as if the sample was the melding of two people. Apparently, there weren’t enough of these original recipient cells to make the owner of the blood sick again, just enough to show up on this advanced battery.” She folded her hands, looked at the judge and jury, smiled again.

She was a scientist. She thought they understood now, but nobody understood a thing.

“Let’s try to summarize this,” Nina said. “The blood sample from the crime scene showed something unusual on further testing?”

“Yes.”

“Something called a mixed chimera effect?”

“Yes.”

“Showing that the person who left the blood in Christina Zhukovsky’s apartment was not, in fact, our client, Stefan Wyatt.”

“Correct.”

“This person’s blood held Stefan Wyatt’s DNA profile, but showed anomalies that proved to you it belonged to someone else?”

“Right.”

“Did you identify this person?”

“Yes, I believe so.”

“How did you do that?”

“Simple. With permission, I obtained Stefan Wyatt’s medical records and learned that in childhood he had been the donor in a bone-marrow transplant.”

The courtroom was quiet now, getting it.

“And who was the recipient of this bone marrow of Stefan Wyatt, the one whose blood was found in Christina Zhukovsky’s apartment?”

“According to the medical records, that person was his brother, Gabriel Wyatt,” Ginger said, with one final, definitive flick of a finger through her spiked hair.

Monday 9/29

THE JURY MEMBERS LOOKED LIKE THEY WERE STILL TRYING TO TAKE IT in, but everyone seemed to recognize that suspicion had been directed at someone else, and that this was a surprise. The peanut gallery buzzed.

Gabriel Wyatt should still be outside in the hallway waiting; he often came along with his mother. Nina hurried to the counsel table and grabbed her form and a pen. She passed through the attorneys’ gate and headed down the aisle, tossing a question over her shoulder. “Your Honor?” Salas inclined his head and his bailiff moved along behind her, hand on the butt of his weapon.