Lisa Scottoline - Mistaken Identity

“I can read English!” the old woman snapped, though an Italian accent flavored her words. She glared through thick glasses that magnified milky brown eyes. “We come to make sure our daughter is safe!”

“Oh, no,” came a loud moan from the conference room, and Bennie turned to see DiNunzio leaping to her pumps.

Lou flipped up the collar of his dark-blue windbreaker and kept his head down against the drizzle. The sidewalk was wet and raindrops dotted the pebbled surface. Soggy trash clumped in the gutter, blocking the sewer. Lou couldn’t remember the last time it had been sunny in this goddamn city. Maybe the last time somebody had cleaned up South Philly. He was in a foul, foul mood. Investigating one of his own. A killer.

Lou shook his head, jingling the change in his pockets. He’d told Rosato last night he’d follow up on Lenihan, and he had started as soon as he got home, making phone calls. Lenihan was in the Eleventh, and Lou used to have buddies in the Eleventh. One of his buddies had died, prostate cancer, and the other, Carlos, had moved to Tempe, Arizona. For the air, Carlos had said, when Lou called him long-distance last night.

What, we don’t have air in Philly? Lou said.

Lou and Carlos shot the shit awhile, dime a minute, and it turned out Carlos’s kid joined the force, also the Eleventh. Maybe the kid could give him the skinny about Lenihan and drug dealing. Lou had asked Carlos to set it up, and Carlos had said yes. Lou lowered his head and watched unhappily as rain pelted his leather loafers, making a wavy water line around the edge of the toe. Shit. The back of his collar felt clammy. He tried to shake off the drops, but couldn’t. It wasn’t the rain bothering him anyway.

It was Rosato. She’d almost got whacked right under his nose. He hadn’t seen it coming. What was the matter with him? He was a cop, for Christ’s sake. Maybe he really was getting old.

Lou reached the corner and looked down the street, blinking against the drizzle. A patrol car was coming on, a half block away, probably on its way to the precinct house. The car looked like a new one with a factory-fresh white paint job. Red, white, and blue lights shiny on the roof, like the flag.

Lou jogged across the street, trying to jump the gutter and falling short. Christ. He was getting old. He remembered the first time he got into a squad car, he twisted the wheel back and forth like a kid. But what he felt like was a man. Responsible. Not just for himself, for his wife and family, but for everyone. To protect and to serve. It had meant a lot to Lou.

The drizzle came heavier, and Lou picked up the pace. A bank of rowhouses lined the cross street, then a corner bakery. Nobody was inside the bakery, but its shelves were full. Old glass display cases heaped with butter cookies that were covered by pink cellophane hay. Trays of soft pinwheel cookies with sticky red jam in the middle. Lou shook his head, hurrying by. All those old-time bakeries would be gone soon. Everybody wanted everything new nowadays. Good-bye, little white boxes tied with string.

Lou spotted the precinct house straight ahead, on the left. You’d never know it was a police station from the outside. The sign was small and the yellow brick poorly maintained for a municipal building. Steel cages covered the windows and the flag was at half-mast. It was because of Lenihan, though the kid wouldn’t be getting the hero treatment. The Department would want the whole thing to blow over, and so would the mayor.

Lou got closer. Squad cars were piled like goddamn cookies around the place. Never enough parking around any precinct house; never enough cops, never enough cars. Nobody could keep up with the scumbags, the drugs so plentiful they blanketed everything, cheap as baker’s flour. Not a soul in the world could stop it. Lou knew that in his head, but it didn’t stop him from trying. He was stupid that way. He climbed the front steps of the station house and went inside.

Behind the desk was a young black woman with her hair tucked up under her hat and a smile covered with braces. She asked if she could help him, like it was a bakery shop, and Lou smiled. “Lookin’ for Ed Vega,” he said.

“You just missed him. He’ll be right back.”

“Damn,” Lou said. “I’ll wait. He was supposed to meet me for lunch.”

“You’re not a reporter, are you?” she asked, her eyes narrowing, and Lou laughed.

“Hell, no. I’m-I used to be- a cop.”

The witness, Dr. Liam Pettis, was bald, with a silver-white tuft of hair above each fuzzy ear, and his smile was flanked by the softest of jowls. He wore a seersucker suit of sky-blue stripes that fit his small, pudgy frame as if it had been bought many years ago. In response to Dorsey Hilliard’s questions, Dr. Pettis recited a laundry list of expert qualifications-degrees, publications, and awards-yet still managed to sound slightly surprised when Judge Guthrie qualified him as an expert.

“Dr. Pettis,” Hilliard continued, “in addition to being a professor and a licensed physician, you are also an expert in blood spatter analysis, are you not?”

“I am.”

“Briefly explain what blood spatter analysis means, in layman’s terms, if you would.”

“Blood spatter analysis, or bloodstain pattern analysis, means simply that when blood is acted upon by physical forces, it will deposit itself on items at a crime scene or on the clothing of a perpetrator in a certain pattern. By understanding these patterns, we can learn much about the manner in which the murder was accomplished.”

Bennie caught a glimpse of the gallery. Sketch artists rushed to get a drawing and reporters made rapid notes. Mike and Ike remained in position and behind them huddled the DiNunzios. Mrs. DiNunzio glared at her, and Bennie wondered who were more protective, bodyguards or Italian parents. Still, she didn’t resent Mary’s mother, who reminded her of what her mother could have been, had she been well.

“Dr. Pettis,” Hilliard asked, “could you describe for the jury the type of injury Detective Della Porta sustained in relation to the blood spatter you examined?”

“Certainly. In this case, a gun, a.22 caliber weapon, was fired into the decedent’s lower forehead. Here.” Dr. Pettis pointed a furry finger at the middle of his brow. “The skin over the bone exploded, the cranium was pierced, and blood and matter in the cranial vault were blown forward. The bullet lodged in the back of the skull and made a small hole in the forehead. Its geometry was quite round, which suggests that the weapon was fired directly at the victim, point-blank. Considering the blood spatter on the walls and furniture of the apartment, which I examined through photographic evidence, I would say the weapon was fired from a distance of three to four feet.”

Hilliard crossed to the evidence table and picked up the plastic bag containing the bloody sweatshirt. “Dr. Pettis, have you had a chance to examine the blood on the sweatshirt that constitutes Commonwealth Exhibit 13, which we admitted earlier into evidence?”

“Yes, sir, I have.”

Hilliard rested on a single crutch, extracted the sweatshirt from the bag, and walked to the stand with the sweatshirt, which flopped at his side like a blood-soaked battle standard. “These spots on the sweatshirt are what you are referring to as blood spatter, is that correct?”

“Yes. That is a very typical pattern of blood spatter. In addition, I performed a number of tests on that blood, the conventional blood work for typing and so forth, as well as DNA testing. PCR testing. I could elaborate, if you wish, on the PCR process.”

Hilliard shook his gleaming head. “That won’t be necessary,” he answered, glancing at the jurors. “PCR testing is accepted in the scientific community as reliable and valid, is it not, Dr. Pettis?”