Scott Turow - Identical

“But that, Mr. Tooley, is as far as you may go. The subpoenas directed to both of the Misters Gianis are quashed. No DNA, no more fingerprints.”

“What about the fingerprint card Greenwood County just sent to Dr. Dickerman?” asked Mel. “Can we have that?”

“Nope,” said the judge. “I was about to get to that. The fingerprint lifts from the house are encompassed by my ruling, and Dr. Dickerman should turn those over to Mr. Kronon. The fingerprints Senator Gianis gave for purpose of this lawsuit belong to him and should be returned forthwith. The fingerprint card of Cass Gianis belongs to Greenwood County, since the county is allowed by law to maintain a database of fingerprints for future criminal investigations. Cass Gianis’s blood will be returned to him, after proper notice to Kindle County, which is the only prosecutor’s office for fifty miles with no legal representative here at the moment.”

Everybody in the courtroom howled at the small joke. Evon had noticed long ago that any effort at humor somehow seemed side-splitting when it came from the bench.

“And with that, Mr. Horgan, Senator Gianis’s motion for voluntary nonsuit is granted and this case is dismissed. Good day, all of you, and thank you for your presence.”

The judge left the bench.

Tooley motioned Tim to come forward to receive the evidence the judge had just ruled belonged to Hal. Tim signed the receipts and marked the envelopes and containers with his initials and the date and time. Sandy Stern had caught sight of Tim doing this and stepped over to pay his respects.

“This was the finest detective any of us ever saw,” Stern told Evon, who’d come forward with Tim to help him keep everything straight. She still wasn’t convinced Stern knew who she was.

“So I’ve heard.”

“That’s why old folks hang on,” Tim told them both. “To hear all those compliments they didn’t deserve in the first place.”

All three were still laughing when Mel Tooley approached Stern and took him by the elbow.

“What the hell was that?” Mel asked.

Stern smiled in his serene, enigmatic fashion.

“Well,” said Stern, “the judge is supposed to be the smartest person in the room. It’s satisfying when it actually happens, no?”

Tooley did not appear convinced.

For once Mel had no trouble convincing Hal not to speak to the press, since he appeared, just like Evon, utterly befuddled. Along with Hal, Tim and Mel and Evon squeezed into Hal’s Bentley to go back to ZP. Tim kept all the evidence in his lap. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to take it to Dr. Yavem or not.

“Did we just win or did we just lose?” Hal asked as soon as Delman, the driver, closed the door, which shut with the padded sound of a jewelry case.

“You just watched the baby get divided,” said Mel. He clearly lacked Stern’s appreciation for the judge’s performance.

“I think we may be OK,” Evon said. She’d been thinking about all of this for some minutes.

“Really?” Hal was eager for any good news.

“The idea was to do the DNA testing, right? We have the blood evidence from the house, right, from the French door? That’s clearly the murderer’s.”

“But we don’t have the DNA from either brother,” Mel said.

“We got the fingerprint lifts from the house. Lots of them were identified as Cass’s. You can extract DNA from old fingerprints.”

“You can?” Hal was delighted to hear it.

“It’s not for sure,” Evon said, “but we can try. I mean, Yavem can. I know it’s been done. It only takes a speck. With that many prints, he’s bound to get something.”

“What about Paul?” Mel asked. “Dickerman has to give back his fingerprints.”

“You can get DNA off the bone from a chicken wing somebody ate. Or a cigarette they smoked. If Tim follows Paul around for a couple of days, I’ll bet he can pick up something.”

“Great,” said Tim, who’d said nothing to this point. “Paul knows who I am. Our paths have been crossing since Cass and him went to grade school with Demetra. And he’s seen me in court. They’ll throw my butt out wherever I turn up.”

“Maybe not,” Evon said. “You’re the one who’s always telling me old men are invisible. And if they throw you out, you just refer the assignment to a buddy you trust who works as a PI. You must know a hundred old codgers who’d be good.”

Tim didn’t smile, but Hal said, “Fabulous.” Even Tooley had brightened a little, less chagrined by having been so far outflanked by the judge.

Tim drove the evidence to Yavem’s lab, then returned to the cubicle he’d been given at ZP to use the computer to study Paul’s daily calendar, posted on his campaign website. Gianis’s schedule seemed superhuman, when you remembered that he had stiff legislative duties and still kept a law office. He was shaking hands at bus stops and train stations during the morning and afternoon rushes. He attended fund-raisers at breakfast, lunch and the cocktail hour, and convened press events several times a week, at which he announced policy initiatives. There was one at a fire station today, where he was going to discuss his proposal for the future of the department, a tender subject, since over the last thirty years better building techniques had made as many as a third of the firefighters here and elsewhere in the country redundant. In the evenings and weekends, Paul tended to do town hall meetings in community centers or local places of worship. Out of curiosity, Tim had compared Paul’s schedule to that of his top three opponents, none of whom appeared to be exhausting themselves the same way. It just made you wonder what could possibly be worth it. And there wouldn’t be any letup if Paul got to city hall. That wasn’t a 9-to-5 job either.

That night Tim attended Paul’s town hall at the JCC in Center City. Gianis drew a small crowd, no more than seventy-five people, but he looked enthusiastic as he charged up the stairs to the stage in the center’s auditorium. He was wearing a camel hair sport coat but no tie and began by speaking on his own under the lights for about fifteen minutes. Paul was charming and relaxed as he talked about his campaign’s three s’s-schools, safety, stability, meaning stable finances-and growing up here in Kindle County. He’d worked every day in Mickey’s grocery until he started college. He told funny stories about putting price stickers on canned goods, from the time Cass and he were five years old.

“In my family,” Paul said, “the invention of the bar code was a bigger deal than landing on the moon.”

As soon as he turned to the audience for questions, there were several about dismissing his lawsuit against Hal. Occasionally, as he was pondering his answers, he removed his heavy glasses to rub the purple bump on his nose.

“To be blunt,” he said about the lawsuit, “we made a mistake. I was upset that someone was saying these kinds of things about me, and I wanted to take a stand. But at a certain point, when people become obsessed you have to accept that they’re not rational. They’re going to believe what they want to, no matter what you do.”

The explanations seemed to go down well with most of the small crowd. An old fellow in a flannel shirt stood up then and gave a long tirade about bullies like Kronon, swinging their billions like truncheons. If rich people could spend without limit trying to decide elections, we were basically back to where we started, when the only voters were white men with property. The audience applauded. Eventually the questions turned to school funding and the quality of lunches.

Midway through the evening, Paul opened a bottle of water that had been left on the podium and drank deeply. Tim kept his eye on it after that.