False accusations

CHAPTER 54

It was after eight and everyone in his office had gone home hours ago. Hellman gathered his papers and was preparing to leave when he paused to gaze out the large picture window behind his desk. Eighteen floors below, flickering street lights mimicked the city’s pulse. Off in the distance, the Tower Bridge was bathed in a splash of orange-yellow radiance from the large flood lamps mounted along the banks of the Sacramento River. Against the black sky, the span looked like a showcased painting in a museum.

The ring of the phone jogged Hellman’s attention away from the nightscape. He briefly thought of letting the machine answer it, but he had never been able to do that. When he used to work in his father’s shoe store as a teenager, if the phone rang, even if it was after hours, his dad answered it. “You never know when it’s a new customer on the phone,” his father would tell him.

It was Lou Palucci at the Department of Justice crime lab. There was a major screwup, he was saying. He needed to talk with Chandler.

“Chandler’s back in New York,” Hellman said.

Palucci was talking fast, apologizing for something.

Hellman slowed him down. “Please, start from the beginning.”

“We’ve got a problem. A major problem.”

Instantly, Hellman’s mind flashed on the DNA: something happened to the beer cans with Harding’s DNA. Things like that occurred occasionally in evidence rooms. Items got lost, misplaced…contaminated. There was nothing more threatening to the validity of DNA analysis than contamination. Although it was a very stable material, mishandle it in just the wrong manner and it was good for nothing.

“…and I should’ve seen it coming,” Palucci was saying, “but I’ve been swamped since getting back from vacation and I didn’t have any control over it. I should, never have allowed it from the start-”

“Did the DNA sample get contaminated?”

“Oh, no,” Palucci said. “No, it’s nothing like that. God, no. No, this is, well…”

“What then?” Hellman said, nearly yelling. Had he been in the same room with Palucci, he might have grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him.

“The criminalist on the case, Kurt Gray. He and Chandler had words a few times. I didn’t think it was important, but you know Chandler, he gets real involved in his cases, and…”

“And what?” prompted Hellman; he was wearing his wool overcoat and he was beginning to perspire.

“And I don’t know how much you know about this, but he brought in this cigarette and asked Gray to run a DNA test on it. He convinced him it should be run on my authority, but I was out of town. I should’ve cut it off before the test was completed, but I let it go through. Chandler and I go back a ways, and-”

“Mr. Palucci, I can’t stand the suspense. What’s the problem?”

“Gray mouthed off about the cigarette and how Chandler-”

Hellman began to sigh relief. Is that all this is about? Mr. Palucci, thanks for calling, but Chandler’s no longer an active member of the Sacramento police force. Therefore, whatever evidence he gets hold of, and how he does it, is no legal consequence.”

“You’re missing the point. Gray isn’t concerned with legal procedure and issues of admissibility. He’s been saying Chandler pulled strings all over the place and used the state lab as his own private agency. When Gray told Bill Jennings-”

“He told Jennings?” Hellman sat down and slumped in his chair. A sudden blanket of perspiration broke out across his body, and it had nothing to do with his overcoat. Bill Jennings. Bill Jennings, the guy who had gotten into it with Chandler fifteen years ago, and who likely still carried a grudge.

Hellman’s mind was racing, trying to assimilate the impact and consequences of what Palucci was telling him. “Gray told me that Jennings said something about misuse of public funds. He was going to the chief of the lab, and if he doesn’t get satisfaction, he’ll go all the way to the attorney general and file a complaint with the Bureau of Investigation.”

“Bureau of Investigation? What would he want with them?”

“My guess, Mr. Hellman, is that he’s going to try and stir up as much trouble as he can.”

Hellman pulled out a handkerchief and wiped the perspiration from his face. Bureau of Investigation. What the hell kind of power would they have over Chandler? Civil rights violation? Public fraud? Violation of public trust? Are they going to try and nail me instead, being that I’m an officer of the, court and-

“Mr. Hellman?” Palucci was saying.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m here. I’m just…thinking.”

“I thought maybe Chandler could give Jennings a call and straighten him out, get him to calm down and-”

“Thanks, Mr. Palucci, I appreciate your concern. I’ll handle it from this point. If anything else comes your way, please give me a call.”

“You don’t understand,” Palucci said, his voice vibrating with anxiety. “My neck’s in the sling on this one. If Jennings so much as mentions it to the chief, I’m out of a job. Terminated. Twenty years down the tubes. Internal Affairs will rip me apart.”

“What makes you think Internal Affairs will get involved?”

“Once the chief knows about this, he has no choice but to report it to them.”

Hellman sighed, rubbed his forehead. “Okay, I hear you. I’ll get on it right away, talk with Chandler, see what we can do.”

Hellman hung up the phone and sat there a moment. Beads of perspiration crept down his forehead and onto his cheek, tickling him back to reality. He wiped his face again, reached for the phone, and called Chandler.

The next morning, Chandler was returning from a crime scene when his cell phone rang. It was Denise.

“Everything okay?”

“I didn’t want to bother you at work,” she said, “but I checked our machine during a break, and there was a message from Jeffrey Hellman. He said he tried your cell last night, but it went straight to voicemail. He left a message at home, too, but the sitter obviously forgot to tell us.”

“Did he say what it was about?”

“Just that it was very important. I’ve got the numbers if you want to call him.”

Chandler jotted down the information and reached Hellman in his car on the way to court for an unrelated case. Their conversation was interrupted by occasional crackles.

“Shit,” was all Chandler could manage at first. “What are the ramifications?”

“Well, if Jennings tells Denton, which is likely, I really don’t see any harm to you-what are they going to get you on, petty theft of a cigarette? There’s just nothing there.”

“So then what’s the problem?”

“It seems that most of this falls on your friend Lou. I’ve been running it over in my head, and it’s probably going to go like this: if the chief of Forensic Services finds out about it, he’s going to get Internal Affairs involved, and your friend Palucci will be history. And if the chief doesn’t report it to Internal Affairs, Jennings is going to go straight to the attorney general and he’ll get the Bureau of Investigation to look into it. Either way, Palucci-”

“I can’t let that happen, Jeffrey. He was doing me a favor.”

“And that’s why Jennings is going to be all over this. But a bigger problem is that Denton could get you-and me-on obstruction of justice.”

“Because we didn’t turn over the Harding DNA results?”

“We technically should have alerted them to the results immediately. I did tell Denton that he should obtain a DNA sample on her, but I didn’t tell him why. I didn’t tell him that we’d already run the tests.”

“You couldn’t tell him.”

“Thanks to you.” Hellman paused. “If you’d only run it through a private lab-”

“I don’t want to go through all that again,” Chandler said as he walked up the stairs toward the lab. “It’s not gonna get us anywhere.”

“It’s messy. It’s goddamned messy. If Jennings is out for blood, he’s got a good case. His vampire teeth are polished and poised for action.” They were interrupted by a crackle.

“Should we talk about this later, when you’re back at your office?” Chandler asked, concerned about the security of the cell signal.

“We’re fine.”

“What if Harding and her attorney find out about his? Could they file a federal suit against me for violating her civil rights?”

“We’re talking about a cigarette,” Hellman said. “A piece of consumable merchandise. Petty theft of a cigarette, for Christ’s sake.”

“No, we’re talking about DNA. There’s nothing much more private than your own genetic code.”

“Did she see you take the cigarette?”

“I don’t know.” Chandler thought a moment and remembered that she did not return to the table after leaving to take a few drags. Was that the reason-did she see him bag the cigarette and slip it in his pocket? He shook his head. “I doubt it. Unless she left it there purposely to set me up-”

“Now you’re getting paranoid.”

“Who the hell knows with her?” He stopped on a landing and took a deep breath. “Look, even if she didn’t see me take it, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that she took out a cigarette during lunch with me, and then a couple of hours later there’s a cigarette in the crime lab that I’m asking Gray to run a lip print and DNA analysis on.”

After a moment’s thought, Hellman said, “I just don’t see a fourth amendment issue here.”

“What about a civil suit? Could Harding and her attorney go after me for a civil rights violation?”

Hellman snorted. “I don’t have to tell you that anybody can file a civil suit for anything. All it takes is a few hundred bucks. It doesn’t stand a chance of winning, but yeah, they could file one. And you’d be spending a lot more time in California away from your family than you’d like. Win or lose.” He paused. “But I really think the biggest problem lies with your buddy Palucci and the obstruction of justice issue.”

Chandler clenched his jaw. “What if I call Jennings myself and confront him?”

“No. That’ll be worse.”

“Fine. Then I have another idea,” Chandler said. “Let me make a few calls and I’ll get back to you.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“I’ll let you know. I’ve just gotta make some calls first.”

He disconnected the call, then dialed Lou Palucci.

“I heard,” Chandler said. “Sorry, man. I had no idea that Gray would blabber it all over the damn place. I thought he was a professional.”

“He’s on the strange side, Chandler. Normally, he’d be fine,” Palucci said, “but this is not the kind of thing that comes up regularly. Not to mention the fact that he’s fairly green. But it’s not like he was telling everyone about it. Apparently, he and Jennings got into a pissing match over you. Each had his own story to tell. And it just came out. At least, that’s the version I got.”

“Why don’t you talk to Jennings. Tell him what kind of an impact this is going to have on the lab-and on you. Tell him it could cost you your job.”

“I spent the entire night thinking about it. Can’t you just see the headline? ‘Director of State Crime Lab Involved in Scandal.’ If he doesn’t know what’s going on in his own department, what kind of a director is he? And if it does get out that I did know, it’ll be worse: I knowingly violated procedure, abused my position, allowed the usage of taxpayers’ money for personal interests…it’ll be filled with all sorts of things for the media to grab hold of.”

After a moment of silence, Chandler sighed. “Lou, listen to me. All you have to do is talk with Jennings. Now, before he gets to Denton, the chief, and the attorney general. Just make sure you impress upon him the fact that if he takes the lab down in an effort to take revenge on a fifteen-year-old dispute, he’ll be blacklisted by the very lab he relies on to make his cases.”

“I think I’ve got a better source of persuasion for Jennings.”

“Who’s that?”

“Someone who saved his ass a few years back. Jennings owes him.”

Chandler gave him his number in New York and hung up. He ran his fingers through his hair, then leaned his shoulder into the metal fire door and pushed into the hallway.

“Dammit.”