33

GRAHAM CONVINCED CASEY to stay an extra night on the island. He pointed out to her that the major’s courier service wouldn’t get the sample to the lab in Syracuse in time to do anything until Monday morning.

So she stayed, getting on Graham’s jet the next morning at seven in order to be back by noon and hopefully get the results fresh from the lab. Ralph picked them up in the Lexus and they headed straight downtown.

The forensic laboratory in Syracuse was just off the main highway, between the hospital and the psychiatric center. Ralph pulled over to the curb in front of the five-story modern brick building. The lab’s director, a blonde woman in a white lab coat, personally held the door open for them. Casey and Graham introduced themselves and she gave them each her card, identifying herself as Helen Mahy.

“I spoke with the deputy director just a few minutes ago,” Helen said with a somber face as they crossed the lobby and stepped onto the elevator, “and he knows we’ve got you covered.”

“Do they match?” Casey asked.

The lab director looked at her watch.

“We should have it the moment we walk in,” she said, lowering her voice with import. “I know this is a matter of national security, and I’ve got to tell you, we’re very glad to be doing our part. My team really scrambled on this, especially Laurie Snyder. She’s the one who’ll have the charts, so if either of you could give her an attaboy it’d mean a lot.”

“We’ll do that,” Graham said, his face grim.

“Are you…” Helen said, turning to Casey and tilting her head. “I’ve seen you before.”

Graham held up a hand. “I’m sorry. We can’t talk about who, what, or where. You understand.”

“Of course.”

The elevator rumbled opened and they took a short turn down a hallway before pushing through two heavy double doors and into a lab that nearly filled the footprint of the building. Men and women in goggles, lab coats, and gloves worked at countertops amid test tubes, beakers, open flames, and high-tech electronic equipment. Nearly all of them stopped their work to stare.

Helen led them to one of several desks in the midst of the lab where a mousy woman in glasses and hair pulled into a ponytail with a red rubber band sat hunched over a computer screen. Helen asked if she had the results on their case.

The woman looked up and blinked at them several times before she said, “Yes. I have it. You can see right here.”

“We can’t tell you how much we appreciate all your work,” Casey said, earning a nod from the director.

The lab woman smiled and turned back to her screen. Using a mouse, she manipulated two white brackets around a yellow rectangle covered with what looked like the inky rungs of four ladders. The patterns of the rungs and their thickness didn’t seem to match and Casey felt her heart in her throat.

“You see here and here?” The woman said, moving the brackets from one ladder to another. “This is just one example. We use thirteen different loci to differentiate or identify individuals.”

“And they don’t match?” Casey said.

The woman shook her head and moved the brackets up and down the rows. “No. Your guy in prison isn’t the one you want. Now, here. Take a look at this. This is the sample we got this morning.”

The woman brought up a new screen with an all new set of ladders.

“They don’t match, either,” Casey said.

The woman looked up at her and blinked. “Well, the ladders don’t match.”

“What?” Graham said, frowning, and his face drained of color.

“But that’s because the original slide sample you sent us-the old one-was so damaged,” the woman said, nodding in agreement with herself. “That happens, usually with old samples, or if it wasn’t stored right. Heat or other climatic conditions can degrade the cells and the DNA, too. The ladders from that sample are incomplete. That’s why I started to say that law enforcement looks for a match of thirteen standardized loci. Here we can only match nine of those.”

“So they do match?” Graham said, his voice harsh and nasal.

“Nine of the thirteen loci do,” the woman said.

“Does that prove it?” Casey asked. “Is nine enough for us to take to a judge? Is this the same DNA?”

“Oh, I have no doubt,” the woman said, nodding vigorously. “These samples? They don’t match exactly, but they definitely came from the same person. The odds of this being someone else are about one in five million. No, you got your guy.”

34

CHRIST, I FEEL LIKE an idiot,” Casey said as they climbed into the backseat of the Lexus.

“Why?” Graham asked.

“Did you see those people’s faces? Did you hear what she said? National security? They sure as hell didn’t know they were looking at a twenty-year-old semen sample for the Freedom Project, I can promise you that. They acted like we’re trying to stop another nine-eleven.”

Graham waved a dismissive hand through the air. “Relax. No one got hurt. We’re working the system. We just got our case moved to the top of the pile. It’s nothing they wouldn’t have done anyway, just sooner.”

Casey rode in silence, digesting his words.

“So,” Graham said, “you get with the judge to press him about setting Dwayne free, and I’ll get the media whipped up, pour a little gas on the flames that are already beginning to spring up around Patricia Rivers.”

Casey didn’t respond.

“Come on, will you?” Graham said, touching her shoulder. “This is important. Okay, I grant you, it’s not another nine-eleven. Maybe I shouldn’t have played the terror card to get them to make this such a priority, but no one got hurt and we are righting a pretty big wrong here.”

Casey exhaled through her nose and said, “And that son-of-abitch Rivers has dodged this thing too long.”

“Good,” Graham said with a single nod. “Why don’t you get with Marty and give Judge Kollar a chance to pile on? If he’s smart, he can be a part of this.”

“What kind of gas?” Casey asked.

“We’ve got an innocent man in jail for twenty years,” Graham said, ticking off his fingers, “a corrupt district attorney whose son is the real killer and is hiding out on a desert island, oh, and did I mention that that same DA is about to become one of the most powerful judges in the entire country? This thing is a bonanza. Ralph told me the little blurb this weekend in the Auburn Citizen already has tongues wagging. Right, Ralph?”

The folds of skin in Ralph’s neck bulged as he looked up at his boss in the rearview mirror and grunted his agreement.

“That’s right,” Graham said, “American Sunday is interested-blood in the water-and now it’s time to start the feeding frenzy.”

Casey shivered.

“What?” Graham asked.

“I was thinking of our dive and that feeding frenzy,” she said. “What kind of a person does something like that?”

“Same kind that rapes and murders his prom queen girlfriend,” Graham said, his face and voice somber.

“I honestly didn’t know if Rivers’s DNA was going to match,” Casey said. “I hate to say it, but part of me wouldn’t have been surprised if it was Dwayne Hubbard who killed her. I hate to say it, but there’s something… I don’t know, weird about him. I know he’s our client and I shouldn’t say that, but either way, what you just said might be a problem for us.”

“What’d I say?” Graham said.

“The part about Cassandra being Rivers’s girlfriend,” Casey said, smiling weakly at him. “It’s the defense lawyer in me, I can’t help it. I’m thinking if I’m Rivers’s attorney, I can use that.”

“I don’t follow,” Graham said, removing his hand from her shoulder and cracking open one of the water bottles Ralph kept the cup holders supplied with.

“If I’m his attorney,” she said. “I’m going to concede that it’s Rivers’s semen. So what? My client was the boyfriend. He had consensual sex, but he never killed her.”