CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

Glitsky, Thieu and Jenkins were at a subterranean table in Lou the Greek's, savoring their moment of glory. Glitsky and Thieu were nursing iced teas, but Jenkins had a double martini half-gone and another full one in front of her. It was Friday, by God, and she'd earned it.

'I love this blood thing,' Jenkins said. 'Even without the DNA on Banderas, it's pretty strong.'

Glitsky finished chewing some ice. 'It could always be stronger,' he said, 'but this is good.'

Thieu hadn't been in court, and as usual wanted to know everything. Glitsky thought if he kept up the way he'd been going, soon he would. He already knew everything about everything else.

When Thieu had been filled in, he said, 'It's a shame old Leo died and got cremated before we knew what was up. A sample of his blood to compare to what we found at Dooher's would sink our boy, wouldn't it?'

Jenkins wasn't going to cry over that spilled milk. 'The story the jury just heard – the missing vial – that's all we needed. Juries don't believe DNA, anyway. They don't understand it.'

'Paul does,' Glitsky said. 'I think he invented it, in fact.'

'What's to understand?' Thieu, in fact, had no problem with it. 'It's a fingerprint. It's there, it's you. It's not, not. Am I wrong here?'

'Nope,' Glitsky answered. 'That's the theory, and a fine one it is, too.' He started to slide out of the booth, then stopped. 'Oh, Amanda? – in the rush I forgot. The second chair, Christina? I talked to her at lunch. She didn't know about it. She's not the motive.'

Thieu leaned forward. 'I was thinking about that this afternoon, Abe, and she still could be the motive, even if she didn't know about it.'

Glitsky was shaking his head. 'Not if the two of them didn't have anything sexual going into it. How's Dooher going to know he can get her, sure enough to kill his wife for it, risk a trial, all of this? It's too much.'

Thieu shrugged. 'The guy loves games. Look at Trang, look at Nguyen, the Price woman. This is who this guy is. I could see him doing it just for the challenge, not even knowing how it's going to come out.'

With anyone else, Glitsky would have been tempted to laugh off this idea as too far-fetched, but Thieu hadn't been wrong very often so far.

'I hope you're wrong,' he said.

'Why?'

'Cause if you're right, it's only a matter of time before she's next.'

In the defense room, when the door closed behind them, Christina hung the coat of her suit over a folding chair and walked to her window as she always did. The winter night was closing in, and over the Hall across the street, Christmas lights were coming on in some of the downtown towers.

Now Mark spoke quietly. 'You're thinking I might have done it after all, aren't you?'

Still facing the night, she was silent. He slid off the desk and she felt him begin to come up behind her before she saw his reflection in the window. 'Please,' she said, 'don't.'

He stopped. 'I have no explanation for the blood, Christina. I don't know anything about it.' A pause. 'We joked about it at lunch, about it being Wes's finest hour, but in fact what he said was the truth. The problem with being innocent is you don't know what happened.'

'Yes. I've heard that a couple of times now. It's got a nice rhythm to it, as though it's a universal law, as though it's got to be true.'

'It is true.'

Crossing her hands over her chest, she barely trusted herself to breathe. Mark stood behind her. 'Christina, we've known about this blood all along. You've known about it.'

Finally, she turned around. 'All right, I've known about it, Mark. It's been there all along, no doubt. I guess I just figured there had to be some explanation, and eventually it would come out. Well, eventually just happened and nothing came out.'

He just looked at her.

'What I'd like to know is how a vial of blood from your doctor's office came to find its way into your wife's bed.'

'I don't know.'

'You don't know?' With an edge of despair.

'Don't you think I wish I knew? Wouldn't it be great if I could make something up, something you'd believe, that we could tell the jury?'

She didn't trust herself to answer, to say anything. The silence roared around her.

'I'm going to say a few things, Christina.' His voice, when it finally came, was strangely beaten down. She didn't remember ever hearing that tone before. 'I know you'll probably have thought of most of them, but I'm going to go over them again, then we'll see where we are.'

He was sitting now, behind her. She hadn't noticed when he'd moved. She held herself, cold, wrapped in her own arms.

'The first question,' he began. 'How the vial from my doctor's office got in Sheila's bed. Well, listen, how do we know that happened? How do we even know blood is missing? How do we know that, if it is, it ended up at the scene?'

She whirled. 'Don't patronize me, Mark.'

He shook his head. 'You think that's it? You think I'm condescending to you? That's the last thing I'd do, Christina.'

She waited, arms crossed.

'I'll tell you what we don't know, and the first thing is that we don't know any blood is missing. How do we know some lab technician at Harris's didn't just drop a test tube and not want to admit it? Maybe he's done it before and if it happens again, he's fired. Maybe Mr Banderas's blood is still sitting at the lab with the wrong label on it.'

He held up a hand, his voice low. 'I'm not saying it is, Christina. I don't have a clue what is anymore, but let's go on down with what else could have happened, okay? Look at what they say they have – a vial of A-positive blood. They don't know it's Banderas. They didn't run DNA, for Christ sake, did they?

'Why isn't it just as likely that the police lab here made a mistake? Did you see that guy Drumm? This is the guy whose testimony's gonna put me away? I don't think so.'

'Maybe there was some of this EDTA left on the last slide they looked at. Maybe the guy who killed Sheila had A-positive blood and bled all over the place and the lab screwed it up. Are you saying people don't make mistakes on blood tests? And if they did that to begin with, you think they'll admit it now?'

She was leaning now, half sitting against the window sill.

'So what's easier to believe? That the guy who killed my wife got hold of a vial of A-positive blood and poured it all over the room? Or that the killer just bled?'

'And why -I don't really get this part at all – why in the world would I -assuming I did all this – why would I dream up this blood idea at all? What does it accomplish? You've known me now for almost a year. Am I a moron? If I'm trying to make it look like somebody else did it, why do I use my own knife, why do I leave my fingerprints all over it?'

At last he ventured a step towards her. 'All right,' he said levelly. 'I'll admit at this point it's a matter of faith. You can't know. But why do you assume that everybody else has done their job, that nobody made a mistake, that everybody is telling the truth except me?'

She raised her eyes. 'I don't assume that, Mark. I'm trying. I'm listening.'

His shoulders slumped. His face, for the very first time, looked old to her. Diminished. This was not arrogance, she was sure, but nakedness. She was looking into the core of him.

'I didn't do this,' he whispered. He was not even pleading, which would have made him suspect. 'I swear to you. I don't know what happened.'

When the doorbell rang, Wes assumed it was the pizza delivery and buzzed the downstairs entrance. Opening his door, he stepped out into the hallway to wait. Bart came up around him, sniffed, and walked to the head of the steps, where his tail began to wag and he started making little whimpering noises.