Linda Fairstein - Entombed

"And included in that group of investigations, is there the matter of Darra Goldswit, known by a particular forensic biology number?"

"Yes. That case was FB number 1334."

"Did you personally conduct the testing in this case?"

"Yes."

"Did you receive a rape evidence collection kit to examine in this matter?"

"Yes, that kit contained vaginal swabs and slides prepared with samples taken from sheets at the crime scene. Both items tested positive for the presence of semen, from which I was able to extract a sperm cell fraction."

"Were you able to determine a genetic profile from either of those samples?"

"Yes, from both of them, actually."

"What determinations did you make?"

"The DNA profile from the victim's vaginal vault was identical to that from the sample on her sheets."

"Did you compare that profile to others then entered in your data bank?"

"Our data bank was very small at that time, Ms. Cooper. We had just gone online several months earlier. I entered the profile but got no matches at that moment."

Darra's case was the earliest strike, to our knowledge, of the Silk Stocking Rapist, just weeks away from being lost to the statute of limitations.

"Did you undertake a statistical analysis to determine the probability of that profile appearing in the African-American population?"

"Yes, we knew from the victim's physical description of the assailant that he was a black man. We used the probability guidelines established by the National Research Council."

"In the African-American population, what are the odds of finding the exact profile that you identified and matched on the two samples in Ms. Goldswit's case?"

"We would find this, Ms. Cooper, only once-one time-in ninety-five billion African-Americans. We could put ninety-five billion men in one place, if we had a big enough room, and only one of them will fit this genetic profile."

Finding John Doe and pulling him out of that enormous haystack was the only major obstacle left in this operation.

I finished the questions I needed to prove the scientific aspect of the case, linking this crime scene evidence to the human phantom we were about to indict, and followed Marie from the jury room. She knew her way out of the courthouse, and I returned to read the definitions of the various crime categories charged and ask the grand jurors to vote.

When I left the room so they could deliberate, I found Mercer Wallace waiting at the warden's desk. "Got your vote?"

"Give them five minutes. The novelty of it will take them longer than usual."

"We've got a problem at Kennedy Airport. You can wait the jury out or come with me," he said, striding to the hallway.

"What-?"

"Annika Jelt's parents just landed. They've never been more than twenty miles away from their farm before. They don't have proper documentation and immigration won't let them into the country."

We both had our gold shields and identification badges in our hands, having been left by an angry immigration officer to cool our heels-and our tempers-while she fetched her supervisor.

"Put the hardware away," the supervisor said when he joined us in the glass cubicle. "Rules is rules and I don't break them for anybody."

I pointed across the corridor to the middle-aged couple, sitting stone-faced on folding wooden chairs like a pair of nineteenthcentury Ellis Island immigrants. "Their daughter is in the intensive care unit of New York Hospital, fighting for her life. We'll vouch for them, sign for them, deliver them back here in a week. What more-?"

"Welcome to America, post nine-eleven. I don't know who let them board without the papers they need, but this is as far as they get on my turf."

"The Swedish consulate arranged the whole thing. They were escorted onto the plane by an envoy from the American embassy, who gave them a letter that was hand-signed by the ambassador. He was promised by an NYPD captain that they'd be met on this end by a Port Authority official who would arrange everything from this point on."

"Maybe they can cut corners in Stockholm, lady, but I call the shots at this airport. The paperwork they got at the consulate is outdated."

Mercer was trying to restrain me, taking the reins with his unflappable demeanor. "We can do this your way, or we can do it the way the police commissioner just recommended to me. The mayor drives out here with the key to the city and a phalanx of reporters-and you continue to get in his way, or you just bend the regulations a bit and let us get these nice folks on the road."

We wrangled until after six o'clock, when the shifts changed and a new supervisor appeared. I had called the grand jury warden before the office closed to confirm the indictment had been voted. Within the hour we were on the Belt Parkway back to the city with our charges, who were more frightened than exhausted. The English they had not spoken since high school was basic enough for us to communicate, and I told them as much as I could about their daughter's experience and the news of her great recovery.

Mercer entered Manhattan through the Midtown Tunnel. "Let me out on First Avenue. I'll catch up with Mike and Andy Dorfman at the morgue."

I knew the nurses would not allow all of us into Annika's tiny room, and that it was more important for Mercer to be present at the parents' reunion with their child, in case there was any further conversation about the facts of the attack. For me, it would be less stressful, less emotional, to watch the processing of the skeletal remains. Without flesh and blood, the bones seemed too far removed from anyone with whom I could identify.

I had never been in Andy's cubicle in the basement of the medical examiner's office.

The familiar odor of formalin wafted through the dim hallways, and empty steel gurneys lined the walls, waiting for their lifeless loads.

No need to look for room numbers. I could hear Alex Trebek's voice as I passed an open door. Andy was hunched over the left femur of the skeleton, while Mike sat in a chair with his feet on the desk, noshing on a bag of pretzels and looking at the small portable television set on a bookshelf across the room.

"European Literature. You're just in time."

Our usual bet was twenty dollars. "Double or nothing," I said. This was one of my few areas of strength against Mike's concentration on military history and general trivia.

"Not a prayer. Twenty is max. Don't get too cocky, kid. You in, Andy?"

"Nope," he said, dipping a toothbrush in a bowl of cloudy water and gently scrubbing against the bones.

"He hasn't stopped working since we left him last night," Mike said. "A little toothpaste, a little soap-our girl will be cleaned up in no time."

"Writer who lost an arm at the Battle of Lepanto," Trebek read aloud from the answer board to the three finalists, each of whom looked as pained as I did by the question.

"That category's a mischaracterization," I said. "You just got lucky. It's war in the guise of literature."

Mike lifted a Polaroid of the skull from the top of a pile in front of him and scribbled something on the back. "You first, Coop."

"Who was…? Give me a hint, will you?" I knew Lepanto was in Greece, but couldn't begin to figure whether the battle was an ancient or modern one.

"No, I'm sorry," Trebek said to the three-time champion, a waiter from Oregon who was trailing the other two players. "It was not Alexandre Dumas."

"Time's up," Mike said, tapping the photo on which he'd written the question on the tabletop while he twirled Andy's calipers in the other hand.

"Who was Sophocles?"

"Very lame. Bad answer."

"He was a playwright and a general, wasn't he?"

"Yeah, but he never lost a body part," Mike said. None of the contestants answered the question correctly. "Who is Miguel Cervantes? You didn't know he was called El Manco, the one-armed man? Lepanto was the first defeat of the Ottomans by the Christians- Spanish and Venetian mostly. Fifteen seventy-one. Jane Austen and those brooding Englishmen you like to read never left the sheep farm, Coop. I would have won the bundle tonight."