“I have no objection.” I turn and look at Tuchio.

He shrugs.

Prichert flips through his report. He finds the page. “Yes, it was the potential floater,” he says. “I couldn’t tell how long it had been in the crevice of the chair, but it did appear based on hair characteristics to match the questioned samples in the bath. But like I say, many of the samples we found in the suite turned out to be matches.”

“Yes, but were any of those matches found in different rooms in that suite?”

“Absolutely. A number of them,” says Prichert. “We found hair, questioned samples-that is, unidentified owners with hair samples-in the bedroom and out in the living room. There were matches between samples in the living room and the dining room. It’s a problem,” he says. “You have a lot of transient use, and it’s all in a confined area.”

I move to the last issue with Prichert. It was Harry who first noticed it, looking at photos of the scene sent to our office by the crime lab. Even after he pointed it out to me, I couldn’t see it. The problem is, neither of the two photos catch it with any clarity. One of them is an oversize magnification concentrating on the zipper at the top of the leather portfolio, showing it in the open position. The other is a distance shot so far out that it’s almost impossible to see. Harry admitted that he would never have caught it himself, except for the fact that the two photos were included in an envelope labeled “Blood-Spatter Tracks.” Harry kept returning to the one close-up shot, searching for the blood, when he suddenly realized what he was looking at.

Three weeks ago, right as jury selection was ending and the trial was getting ready to start, Harry sauntered over to the police department’s property and evidence room. In actuality, this is a good-size warehouse just out of the downtown area. He wanted to look at some of the items taken by the police and inventoried in our case. Most of these came from the crime scene, along with some items from Scarborough’s apartment in Washington, boxes of files and his desktop computer. When Harry saw the number of boxes with files from the victim’s D.C. apartment, he made a note to send one of the paralegals back to the evidence room to go through them just in case Tuchio hadn’t sent us everything. To Harry it looked like there was a lot of boxed-up paper, more than the D.A. had sent us in discovery.

Of course a sergeant hovered over him in the caged locker as Harry surveyed what was there. Harry was not allowed to touch any of it, just look. It took him less than a minute, scanning down a printed inventory list, to find what he wanted. The box was pulled and put on a table outside the cage, where the same officer eyed Harry as my partner carefully went through the box wearing a pair of latex surgical gloves. When he got to the item, Harry barely slowed down. He knew that if he looked at it too long, the sergeant standing behind him would make a mental note and call Tuchio’s office with a report as soon as he left. An hour later Harry was back at the office telling me that what he’d seen in the photograph was there in physical form. He also warned me that unless we moved quickly, because of the way things were stored, stacked in boxes in the caged locker, it might not survive for long.

Back at the counsel table, Harry hands me the photo. I ask Quinn if I may approach the witness. I set the eight-by-ten color glossy on the light table in front of Prichert. Instantly it is projected on the overhead, where the jury, the judge, and Tuchio can see it. The close-up shot catches just the faintest glimmer of what I’m interested in, an area just over two inches long on the photograph.

“Mr. Prichert, do you recognize this photograph?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell the jury what it is?”

“I believe it’s been marked for identification. That’s a partial shot of one of the leather cases. Unless I’m wrong, it’s the zipper on the light leather portfolio.”

“That’s right.”

Tuchio opened the door on this evidence in his own case when he got into the little blood spots, the transfer marks.

“Can you tell the jury what that is, right there?” I circle the area on the photo with the retracted point of my pen. Prichert looks at it, craning his neck. He removes his glasses for a second and polishes the lenses on the sleeve of his coat. He puts them back on and looks again.

“I’m sorry-but I don’t think I see what it is you’re referring to.”

“Right there.” I point to it again.

“It looks like maybe the shot is a little out of focus at that point. I’d say the focal point is farther out at the leather thong on the pull of the zipper.”

“You’re right, it is. It’s very hard to see in this photograph.”

In the picture it is nearly translucent, a thin, fine line that unless you studied it intently, you would never notice. Magnified nearly to a blur in the photo, it seems to disappear into the smooth, deep finish of the calfskin. It is why Harry, searching for evidence of blood, thought he was seeing a seam in the leather. Until he finally realized that it was a tiny section of a line straight as a ruler with a fine, dried mist of what looked like faded rust on one side and clear, smooth leather on the other.

“I think if we looked at the real item, you could see it more clearly,” I tell Prichert.

“Your Honor, I’m going to object.” Tuchio is out of his chair. “Whatever Mr. Madriani is doing, it is beyond the scope of direct. If he wants to do it, let him do it in his own case.”

“What I am do-”

“No. No.” Quinn cuts me off. “Bring it up here,” he says. He flips the sound button, and we go at it along the far side of the bench, away from the jury.

Tuchio is arguing that he never touched the folio during direct and that I shouldn’t be allowed to do it on cross.

“Your Honor, Mr. Tuchio went on at length regarding blood evidence, on the floor in the bathroom, blood on the victim’s chair, and blood transfer marks on the briefcases. All I’m doing here is addressing blood evidence on one of the cases, the small portfolio.”

“There were no transfer marks on the portfolio,” says Tuchio.

“I beg to differ. There is blood on the portfolio, and it was delivered there by centrifugal force. I’d call that a transfer.”

“Transfer involves touching,” says Tuchio.

“Maybe I should ask your witness,” I tell him.

The judge tells me to go ahead, and he flips the switch so everybody can hear again. Tuchio sits down, and I ask Prichert whether drops or particles of blood flung from an object such as the hammer, imparting themselves onto an object such as a briefcase, could be considered transfer evidence.

“Sure. You could look at it that way.”

“I’m going to renew my objection,” says Tuchio.

“Overruled,” says Quinn.

I ask the judge to have the clerk retrieve the portfolio from one of the evidence carts.

To this point we have been using photographs to document much of the physical evidence for reasons of convenience-they’re easier to handle-and because they provide a more permanent record. But the best evidence in this case will be the item itself.

Ruiz puts on gloves before he touches the leather portfolio, then brings it over and lays it on the rostrum just next to the witness stand. The portfolio had been on the table near the television in the hotel room, approximately twelve feet from where Scarborough sat on the morning he was murdered.

“This right here.” I point with my pen, avoiding contact.

Prichert studies it, this time leaning back in the chair. He can see it now. I’m guessing that he didn’t notice it during the investigation that day because two crime-scene photographers were moving among the items in the hotel room taking pictures with macro lenses, close-ups of the gloved prints in blood on the other two briefcases.