Fair Warning

13

Hammond was in the lab at his station, spreading nitrocellulose over a gel tray he had just retrieved from the cooker. He felt his watch vibrate against the inside of his wrist. He knew it was one of his flags. He had gotten an alert.

But the process could not be interrupted. He continued his work, next blotting the gel tray with paper towels, making sure to keep uniform pressure on the gel across the entire tray. When he was finished blotting he knew he could take a break from the work. He checked his watch and read the text.

This was a cover text emanating from a cellular relay coded as Max. Of course, Max didn’t exist but anybody who happened to see the message pop up on his watch, even worn on the inside of his wrist, would not be suspicious, though the message came in at 3:14 a.m. and all the bars were closed.

Hammond went to his lab table and pulled his laptop from his backpack. He checked the other stations in the lab and saw that nobody was watching him. Only three other technicians were working graveyard anyway, and there were empty stations separating all of them. It was a budgetary thing. The wait time on rape kits and some cold-case homicides was still months where it should be weeks if not days, but the city’s budget masters had cut back on the lab’s third shift. Hammond expected that soon he would be working days again.

He opened the laptop and used his thumb to authenticate. He went to the surveillance software and pulled up the alert. He saw that one of the detectives he was monitoring had just made an arrest and put someone in jail. His filing the arrest report had triggered the alert. Hammond’s partner, Roger Vogel, had hacked the internal LAPD network and set the whole alert system up. He had master skills.

Hammond checked the other techs and then looked back at his screen. He called up the report filed by Detective David Mattson. He had arrested a man named Jack McEvoy and booked him at the jail at LAPD’s Van Nuys Division. Hammond read the details of the arrest, then reached into the backpack for the phone he carried in an inside zippered pocket. The phone for emergency contact.

He turned the phone on and waited for it to boot up. Meantime, he closed out the arrest report and went to the public-access page for the city’s jail system. He put in the name Jack McEvoy and was soon looking at a mug shot of the man. He looked angry and defiant as he stared at the camera. There was a scar on his upper left cheek. It looked like it could have been easily erased by plastic surgery. But McEvoy kept it. Hammond thought it might be some sort of badge of honor with the reporter.

The phone was ready. Hammond called the single number stored in its memory. Vogel answered with sleep in his voice.

“This better be good.”

“I think we have a problem.”

“What?”

“Mattson arrested somebody tonight.”

“That’s not a problem. That’s good.”

“No, not for the murder. It was a journalist. He was arrested for obstructing the investigation.”

“You woke me for that?”

“It means he may be onto this.”

“How could that be? The police aren’t even—”

“Call it a hunch — whatever.”

Hammond looked at the mug shot again. Angry and determined. McEvoy knew something.

“I think we have to watch him,” he said.

“All right, whatever,” Vogel said. “Text the details and I’ll see what’s out there. When did this happen?”

“They booked him last night. I got flagged on the software you set up.”

“Glad it worked. You know, this could be a good thing for us.”

“How?”

“I don’t know yet. A couple of ways. Let me go to work on it. You want to meet in the morning? In daylight?”

“Can’t.”

“You fucking vampire. Sleep later.”

“No, I have court first thing. Testifying today.”

“What case? Maybe I’ll come watch.”

“A cold case. Guy killed a girl thirty years ago. He kept the knife, thought washing it off would be okay.”

“Dumbass. Where?”

“Up in the hills. Threw her off an overlook on Mulholland.”

“I mean where’s the courtroom?”

“Oh.”

Hammond realized he didn’t know himself.

“Hold on.”

He dug into the backpack and pulled out the notice to appear.

“Downtown criminal courts. Department 108, Judge Riley. I have to be there at nine to go on first.”

“Well, maybe I’ll see you there. Meantime, I’m on this reporter. Does he work at the Times?”

“The arrest report didn’t say. It said occupation journalist and the summary said he was obstructing the investigation by harassing witnesses, not revealing he was an acquaintance of the victim.”

“Holy shit, Hammer, you left the key part out. He knew the victim?”

“That’s what it says. On the report.”

“Okay, I’m on it. Maybe I see you in court.”

“Okay.”

Vogel disconnected. Hammond turned off his phone and dropped it back into his backpack. He stood there thinking about things.

“Hammer?”

He whipped around. Cassandra Nash was standing there. His supervisor. She had come out of her office without him noticing.

“Uh, yes, what’s up?”

“Where are you with that batch? It looks like you’re just standing there.”

“No. Uh, I mean I was just taking a second. I’m blotting and was just giving it a minute, then I’ll start hybridization.”

“Good, so you’ll get that done before end of shift?”

“Of course. Absolutely.”

“And you’ve got court in the morning, right?”

“Yes, all set on that, too.”

“Good. Then I’ll leave you to it.”

“You hear anything about the next deployment?”

“As far as I know, we’re still on third shift. I’ll let you know what I know when I know it.”

Hammond nodded and watched her go check on the other techs, doing her supervising thing. He hated Cassandra Nash. Not because she was his boss. It was because she was aloof and fake. She spent her money on designer handbags and shoes. She talked about fancy restaurants she and her douchebag husband went to for chef tastings. In his mind Hammond had conflated her named to Cash because he believed she was wholly motivated by money and possessions the way all women were. Fuck them, he thought as he watched Nash talk to one of the other technicians.

He went back to the gel he was prepping.

14

At 9 a.m. Hammond sat on a marble bench in the hallway of the ninth floor of the Criminal Courts Building. He had been told to wait there until it was time for him to testify. On the bench next to him were his notes and charts regarding the case and a cup of black coffee from the snack bar near the elevator alcove. The coffee was terrible. Not the designer stuff he was used to. He needed it because he was dragging after a full eight hours on the graveyard shift, but he was having a hard time stomaching the harsh brew and feared it would give him stomach issues that might haunt him on the witness stand. He stopped drinking it.

At 9:20, Detective Kleber finally stepped halfway out of the courtroom and waved Hammond over. Kleber was the lead detective on the case.

“Sorry, they had to argue a motion before bringing the jury in,” he explained. “But now we’re ready.”

“Me too,” Hammond said.

He had testified many times before and it was now a routine. All except for his satisfaction in knowing that he was the Hammer. His testimony always sealed the deal and from the witness stand he had the best angle on “the moment” — the second when even the defendant was convinced by Hammond’s testimony and the hope went out of his eyes.

He stood in front of the witness stand, raised his hand, and took the oath to tell the truth. He spelled his first and last names — Marshall Hammond — and then stepped up and took the witness seat that was between Judge Vincent Riley and the jury. He looked at the jurors and smiled, ready for the first question.

The prosecutor was named Gaines Walsh. He handled many of the LAPD’s cold cases and so Hammond had testified on direct examination from him many times before. He practically knew the questions before they were asked but acted as though each one was a new one to consider. Hammond was a slightly built man — never played sports while growing up — with a professorial goatee whose reddish whiskers contrasted with his dark brown hair. His skin was paper white after nearly a year on the midnight shift. Vogel’s teasing on the phone call had been on point. He looked like a vampire caught in daylight.

“Mr. Hammond, can you tell the jury what you do for a living?” Walsh asked.

“I’m a DNA technician,” Hammond said. “I work in the Los Angeles Police Department’s bio-forensics lab located at Cal State L.A.”

“How long have you had that position?”

“Twenty-one months with the LAPD. Before that I worked for eight years in the bio-forensics lab for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.”

“Can you tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury what your duties are in the LAPD lab?”

“My responsibilities include processing forensic cases that require DNA analysis, generating reports based on the conclusions of that analysis, and then testifying about those conclusions in court.”

“Can you tell us a little bit about your background education in the field of DNA and genetics?”

“Yes, I have a bachelor of arts degree in biochemistry from the University of Southern California and a master’s in life sciences with a specialty in genetics from the University of California at Irvine.”

Walsh fake-smiled, as he did at this point in every trial.

“Life sciences,” he said. “Is that what we older folks used to call plain old biology?”

Hammond fake-smiled back, as he did at every trial.

“Yes, it is,” he said.

“Can you describe what DNA is and what it does in layman’s terms?” Walsh asked.

“I can try,” Hammond said. “DNA is short for deoxyribonucleic acid. It is a molecule composed of two strands that twist around each other, forming a double helix that carries the genetic code of a living thing. By code I really mean instructions for the development of that organism. In human beings DNA contains all our hereditary information and therefore determines everything about us, from the color of our eyes to the function of our brains. Ninety-nine percent of the DNA in all human beings is identical. That last one percent and the myriad combinations within it is what makes each of us completely unique.”

Hammond gave the answer like a high school biology teacher. He spoke slowly and recited the information with a tone of awe. Walsh then moved on and led him quickly through the basics of his assignment to the case. This part was so routine Hammond was able to go on autopilot and glance a few times at the defendant. It was the first time he had seen him in person. Robert Earl Dykes, a fifty-nine-year-old plumber, had long been suspected of killing his ex-fiancée, Wilma Fournette, in 1990, stabbing her to death, then throwing her body down a hillside off Mulholland Drive. Now he was finally brought to justice.

He sat at the defense table in an ill-fitting suit his lawyer had given him. He had a yellow legal pad in front of him in case he came up with a genius question to pass to the lawyer next to him. But Hammond could see it was blank. There would be no question from him or his lawyer that could undo the damage Hammond would inflict. He was the Hammer and it was about to come down.

“Is this the knife that you tested for blood and DNA?” Walsh asked.

He was holding up a clear evidence bag containing an opened switchblade.

“Yes, it is,” Hammond said.

“Can you tell us how it came to you?”

“Yes, it had been sealed in evidence from the case since the original 1990 investigation. Detective Kleber reopened the case and brought it to me.”

“Why you?”

“I should have said he brought it to the DNA unit and it was assigned to me on rotation.”

“What did you do with it?”

“I opened the package and examined the knife visually for blood and then under magnification. The knife appeared to be clean but I could see that there was a spring-loaded mechanism in the handle, so I asked for a knife expert from the toolmark unit to come to the lab to disassemble the weapon.”

“Who was that?”

“Gerald Lattis.”

“And he opened the knife for you?”

“He took it apart and then I examined the spring mechanism under a lab magnifier. I saw what I believed to be a minute amount of dried blood on the coil of the spring. I then began a DNA-extraction protocol.”

Walsh walked Hammond through the science. This was the boring technical part where the danger was that the jurors’ thoughts could wander off. Walsh wanted them keenly interested in the DNA findings and asked quick, short questions that required quick, short answers.

The provenance of the knife would have already been testified to by Kleber. The knife was confiscated from Dykes when he was originally questioned in the investigation. The original detectives had it examined for blood by a lab using archaic methods and materials and were told it was clean. When Kleber decided to reopen the case at the urging of the victim’s sister, he took another look at the knife and brought it to the DNA lab.

Finally, Walsh arrived at the point where Hammond provided his findings that the DNA extracted from the minute amount of blood on the spring of the switchblade mechanism matched the DNA of the victim, Wilma Fournette.

“The DNA profile developed from the material on the knife does match the profile from the victim’s blood obtained during the autopsy,” Hammond said.

“How close is the match?” Walsh asked.

“It is a unique match. A perfect match.”

“Can you tell the jurors if there is a statistic associated with that perfect match?”

“Yes, we generate statistics based on the human population of Earth to give a weight to that match. In this case the victim was African-American. In the African-American database, the frequency of this DNA profile is one in thirteen quadrillion unrelated individuals.”

“When you say one in thirteen quadrillion, how many zeros are we talking about?”

“That would be a thirteen with fifteen zeros behind it.”

“Is there a layman’s way of explaining the significance of this frequency?”

“Yes. The current population of Planet Earth is roughly seven billion. That number is significantly eclipsed by thirteen quadrillion. That tells us there is no one else on Earth or in the last one hundred years on Earth who could have that DNA. Only the victim in this case. Only Wilma Fournette.”

Hammond stole a glance at Dykes. The killer sat unmoving, his eyes downcast and focused on the blank yellow page in front of him. It was the moment. The Hammer had come down and Dykes knew that it was over.

Hammond was pleased with the part he had played in the legal play. He was the star witness. But it also pained him to see another man go down for what Hammond did not consider to be much of a crime. He had no doubt that Dykes had done what he had to do, and his ex-fiancée had gotten what she had coming.

He still had to sit for cross-examination but he knew as well as the defense attorney that he was bulletproof. The science didn’t lie. The science was the hammer.

He looked out into the rows of the gallery and saw a woman weeping. It was the sister who had urged Kleber to reopen the case after nearly three decades. Hammond was her hero now. Her superman. With an S on his chest for Science, he had taken down the villain. It was too bad that her tears didn’t touch him. He felt no sympathy for her or her long-held pain. Hammond believed women deserved all the pain they got.

Then, two rows behind the weeping woman, Hammond saw Vogel. He had slipped into court unnoticed. Now Hammond was reminded of the greater villain who was out there. The Shrike. And that everything Hammond and Vogel had worked for was at risk.

15

Vogel was waiting in the hallway after Hammond finished answering the weak cross-examination from the defense attorney and was finally dismissed as a witness. Vogel was the same age but not the same demeanor. Hammond was the scientist, the white hat, and Vogel was the hacker, the black hat. Vogel was a guy who only had blue jeans and T-shirts in his closet. And that hadn’t changed since they were college roommates.

“Way to go, Hammer!” Vogel said. “That guy’s going down!”

“Not so loud,” Hammond cautioned. “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to see you kick ass in there.”

“Bullshit.”

“Okay, come with me.”

“Where?”

“We’re not even going to leave the building.”

Hammond followed Vogel down the hall to the elevator alcove. Vogel pushed the down button and turned to Hammond.

“He’s here,” Vogel said.

“Who’s here?” Hammond asked.

“The guy. The reporter.”

“McEvoy? What do you mean he’s here?”

“He’s getting arraigned. Hopefully, we didn’t miss it.”

They took the elevator down to the third floor and entered the large and busy arraignment court where Judge Adam Crower was presiding. They took seats on one of the crowded benches of the gallery. Hammond had never seen this part of the system in which he played a part. There were several lawyers standing and sitting while waiting for the names of their clients to be called. There was a wood-and-glass corral where defendants were brought in eight at a time to confer through narrow windows with their lawyers, or with the judge when their case was called. It looked like organized chaos, a place you would not want to be unless you had no choice or were paid to be there.

“What are we doing?” Hammond whispered.

“We’re going to see if McEvoy has been arraigned,” Vogel whispered back.

“How will we know?”

“Just watch the people they’re bringing out. Maybe we’ll see him.”

“Okay, but what’s the point? I don’t get why we’re looking for this guy.”

“Because we might need him.”

“How?”

“As you know, Detective Mattson filed his reports on the case in the department’s online case archives. I took a look. You’re right, the reporter knew Portrero, the victim. The detectives interviewed him and he voluntarily gave his DNA to prove he’s not the guy.”

“So?” Hammond asked.

“So, that DNA is somewhere in your lab. And you know what to do.”

“What are you talking about?”

Hammond realized he had said it too loud. People on the benches in front of them turned to look back. What Vogel was suggesting was beyond anything they had even thought of before.

“First of all,” he whispered. “If it’s not assigned to me I can’t get near it — different procedures than Orange County. Second, we both know he isn’t the Shrike. I would never frame an innocent man.”

“Come on, isn’t it just like what you did in Orange County?” Vogel whispered back.

“What? That was completely different. I kept somebody from going to jail for what should not even be a crime. I didn’t send him there. And this is murder we’re talking about here.”

“It was a crime in the eyes of the law.”

“Have you ever heard the saying that it’s better that a hundred guilty men escape than one innocent suffer? Benjamin fucking Franklin.”

“Whatever. All I’m saying is, we could use this guy to buy us time. Time to find the Shrike.”

“And then do what? Say Never mind, I cooked the DNA? That might work for you but not me. We need to shut it all down. Everything. Now.”

“Not yet. We need it open in order to find the guy.”

The dread that had been growing in Hammond’s chest was in full bloom now. He knew his hatred and greed had led him to this. It was a nightmare he saw no way out of.

“Hey,” Vogel whispered. “I think that’s him.”

Vogel surreptitiously pointed his chin at the corral at the front of the courtroom. A fresh line of arrestees had been led in by the courtroom deputies. Hammond thought that the third man looked like the mug shot he had seen the night before. It looked like the reporter, Jack McEvoy. He looked weary and worn down from his night in jail.