"Was there anything else in the trash compactor bag, Sergeant?" "Any more glass, you mean?" "No. I mean anything at all."
"Well… sure. I mean, it was for garbage. There was other garbage in it."
His tone and attitude induced a small buzz of laughter from the gallery. He was trying to play the question as ridiculous.
"And did you ask the lab to analyze this garbage as well?"
The onlookers out in the theater seats, now somewhat primed for drama from Gina's earlier performance with Strout, had been listening quietly, even intently, but at this question, another low hum of laughter rippled through the gallery.
Thinking everyone was laughing at Gina-perhaps they were- Faro couldn't quite hide a quick and confident smirk. "Did I ask the lab to analyze the rest of the garbage?" he repeated.
"Right. That's my question."
"For what?" Still playing it for a laugh.
Gina shrugged. "I don't know. Evidence?"
Realizing that even if Gina's question was ridiculous, she was serious about it, Faro sat up. "I was with the lab techs and watched as they went through the whole bag. We got the bottle and other pieces of glass, but there wasn't anything else to look at."
"Just garbage?"
"Yes. Just garbage."
"Hmm. Were there fingerprints on the bottle?" "No. It had been wiped."
"Now, by wiped, you mean that someone had taken a cloth or some other material and rubbed along the surface, presumably to remove evidence that was found there, right?"
"Yes, correct."
"Can you distinguish between an object that just doesn't happen to have any usable prints on it, and one that has been deliberately wiped down?"
"Yes, we can. Typically an object such as a bottle will have something on it, unless it's been washed down or wiped. Dust, debris, smudges, partial prints-even if those partials aren't good enough to give us an ID. And that's particularly true on a surface such as glass, which is a good medium to hold fingerprints. We found nothing like that on this bottle. In the absence of evidence that it had just, for example, been washed, it would appear that it had been wiped before it was put in the trash compactor."
"But there was still blood on it, isn't that true? Caryn Dryden's blood."
"Yes."
"So the wiping wasn't completely successful, was it?"
"No. Some microscopic traces had soaked into the label. And whoever wiped the bottle failed to remove them completely. But I have to tell you that otherwise, he did a pretty darn good job."
"Let me ask you this, Sergeant. Was there any indication in the trash bag of what had been used to wipe the fingerprints off the bottle? And presumably some of Caryn's blood, as well?"
"Like what?"
"Like Kleenex, or paper towels. Maybe a dish towel."
Faro looked confused. "Well, there might have been some paper towels, but there wasn't any sign of blood on them."
"But do you remember any such towels specifically?"
From behind her, Abrams objected. "Relevance, Your Honor. Where is this going?"
Toynbee said, "I think I see where this is going. I'll listen to a few more questions. Overruled." Then he pointed a finger at Gina. "I said a few, Ms. Roake."
"Yes, Your Honor." Back to Faro. "Sergeant, were there paper towels in the trash?"
"I don't specifically remember. Probably."
"If so, though, are they still available for analysis?"
"No. As I said, it was just garbage. After we went through it, we tossed it out."
"Of course, Sergeant, you are aware you could get DNA from a paper surface, such as a paper towel?" Seeing the trap, Faro hesitated.
Gina went right on. "So if someone indeed used that bottle to hit Ms. Dryden, and that same person wiped the bottle, at the same time that they were removing their fingerprints, they could have been leaving their DNA, isn't that right?"
"Yes." Suddenly Faro's jokes about garbage weren't feeling so funny.
"But you didn't either save or analyze any of those materials, did you?"
Faro's eyes darted over to Abrams, out to the gallery. This was the crux of the matter-he hadn't collected the most important evidence. "Sergeant, your answer."
It took him nearly a full minute, which is a long and eerily silent time in a packed courtroom, until finally he shook his head and said, "Uh, no."
"And if you had retained that 'garbage,' as you called it, and we had the paper towels used to wipe the bottle, we might be able to know whether my client was the person who'd wiped it down, wouldn't we?"
"Objection. Speculation."
It was, but Gina didn't care what the ruling was. She'd made her point.
From the bench, before Gina had even turned around to go back to her table, Toynbee tapped his gavel and called for the lunch recess. Standing at her place in front of the witness box, Gina let Faro walk by her and turned to watch him stop to say a few possibly uncharitable words to Gerry Abrams.
She waited until Faro had let himself out through the bar rail, then on an impulse she walked the few steps to the prosecution table. Abrams was standing, head down, arranging his folders, but after a moment looked up. "Well," he said, "looks like you drew first blood."
"It's a bad case, Gerry."
He shrugged. "It's what it is. And I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you. It's still going to go to a jury."
"Without a murder? You're kidding yourself."
Another shrug. "We'll see. It's still a murder-you got nothing to rule it out, anyway."
"True, but traditionally, you're supposed to be able to prove it."
"I intend to. And a jury will buy it. Your man's guilty. Get used to it." Dismissing her out of hand, he turned and walked through the gate in the bar rail out to the gallery, where he cracked some joke that got the uniformed policemen chuckling.
Gina stood rooted, paralyzed with a sudden spike of anger. These guys, she thought. What were they basing their prosecution on if it wasn't the facts of the case? Because surely the facts as she'd seen them couldn't support anything approaching the bedrock certainty with which Abrams, Juhle, even Jackman obviously felt that they were right. Could it be that it was just a question of arrogance? She had the feeling that the pursuit of Stuart did not spring from any sense of justice, but from a belief that he was vulnerable, convictable, and that was all that mattered-he'd be another notch in the belt, that was all. A career step for Gerry Abrams, a timely closed case for Devin Juhle, proof that Clarence Jackman's administration was equal-opportunity in prosecuting those who broke the law.
Here they were, in the midst of a well-attended, high-profile hearing. The State's apparatus for punishing the guilty was in full array, the district attorney's position set in stone. And yet she had just shredded their contention that a murder had even been committed at all, and gotten a straightforward admission that they hadn't collected the strongest possible evidence that might have tied Stuart to what had happened, whatever it had been.
And still, obviously, on a fundamental level none of this mattered to the prosecuting team. It wasn't personal, either to them or about Stuart. Nor should it be, she knew. She was fine with that in the normal grinding mill of the legal system, where most of the time there was no real question of the defendant's culpability. But the problem with that was that it seemed to create this mind-set that was literally blind to the concept that someone could get into the system and be innocent.
Perhaps this was really what Wes had been warning her about all along. You don't get involved with people you believe to be innocent, because the fundamental function of the law wasn't to dispense justice. She'd said it herself not long ago: It was about conflict resolution.