Unlucky in Law (30 page)

“No,” Nina said. “Are you saying this bomb threat was to shut Alex Zhukovsky up? Klaus, what is going on?”

“Haven't you been reading up on the Cossacks who became royal pages, on the murder of the Romanov family at Ekaterinburg, and how those bones were dug up but some were never found? Haven't you paid any attention at all?” Klaus said, struggling to get up. Paul took his arm, practically lifting him from the ground into a standing position.

“Of course I have. But none of it seems very relevant. I mean, Constantin was a page, but . . .”

“Haven't you figured out yet who you had on the stand just now?”

“Who?”

“The tsarevitch! Of all the Russias!”

“Oh, my God,” Nina said. The old man, the legend, had finally cracked. She dithered. Did they need an ambulance for him, or should they just run for Paul's car and take him themselves?

“Mr. van Wagoner! Tell her!”

“Okay,” Paul said, “but first you're going to have to tell me what you're talking about.”

People ran by. Sirens wailed. Klaus leaned back, putting his weight against a telephone pole. He started to laugh, then cough. He broke up, first gasping, then giggling. “Ha, ha! Buried right there in old Monterey! He has been under our tushies all these years! It's perfect!”

“Paul, we have to do something for Klaus,” Nina said.

Klaus held on to the phone pole, helpless with laughter.

25

Monday 9/29

A
T ONE-THIRTY, IN A STATE OF MONUMENTAL IRE,
J
UDGE
S
ALAS
called the court to order once more. Alex Zhukovsky did not reappear in the hall outside Courtroom 2.

The falseness of the bomb threat was almost as tormenting as a real bomb would have been, Nina reflected. Judicial processes shot to hell, people standing around on hot sidewalks, judges sent scurrying, police standing helplessly around—it made fools of them all.

And yet, Zhukovsky's absence was one real and cautionary result. The jurors had been kept corralled at the Honeybee throughout; the reporters weren't going anywhere; Stefan had eaten his tuna salad sandwich at the police station. Zhukovsky was the only one missing.

Nina and Paul debated what to do. They had spent the interim calling Klaus's wife, Anna, a sensible psychoanalyst who sent a minion over to take Klaus home for a long nap. He had been overexcited and maybe worse than that. He only agreed to go after Nina promised him faithfully that she would get him a copy of Constantin Zhukovsky's death certificate. Paul was at the office of Vital Statistics taking care of that long shot right now. Under pressure from Sandy about his decision to stay in Carmel and work with Paul, Wish admitted he had forgotten to get it.

Nina decided not to ask for a recess. Salas would not like that, would perhaps implode at such a request after having lost so much status. His hard-won rituals shattered, he was seething with male hormones and Nina knew she would have to soldier on.

Just as Salas said forbiddingly, “Call your next witness,” Ginger Hirabayashi strode through the doors in a flurry of black leather and Grinders boots, to resolve their dilemma. Her Hermès briefcase gaped open and she pulled papers out as she walked. Limping and wearing a matching black neck brace, she seemed not at all embarrassed at being the main object of attention. She went straight to Nina and whispered, “Huge break. Am I on?”

“We have to talk first,” Nina whispered back. “Our first witness isn't here, so you can go on, but I have to know what you're going to say.”

“Okay. Take five.”

Nina stood up and begged the time. Salas wouldn't even dismiss the jury. She and Ginger had to consult in hisses in the hall.

“How are you?”

Ginger said, “Me? Oh, you mean the Russian. I'd like to thank that asshole. He got me thinking even harder. I'm fine.”

“But—your neck.”

“Listen, are we going to spend the time talking about me getting a little beat up?” She ripped the collar off her neck, wincing. “There. Better?”

“You're sure you're ready to go? I don't like not having time to . . .”

“Jump right in,” Ginger said. “Just put me on. On the blood evidence. I had another panel percolating in the back of the lab that took the comparison of DNA right down to the quark level, and it took time. But look what I found.”

She talked so quickly Nina barely had time to nod, punctuating her statements with, “Do you believe it?” Nina got more and more excited. She bit her thumbnail and said, “Okay. You keep one copy of your report to refer to on the stand. Give me the other copies and the original and I'll introduce it right now.”

“I can't wait to get a paper out on this. Medico-legal history.”

“I really thought Alex Zhukovsky killed Christina. I think you have given us the real killer, Ginger. But I still don't understand the crime.”

“Is he subpoenaed? Put him on the stand after me.”

“I'll do that. Anyway, congratulations. As always, you're a prodigious intelligence.”

“Same to you, baby. You pestered it out of me.”

Paul's head appeared on the landing as he came up the stairs. He saw the two women high-fiving in the hall and said, “What'd I miss?”

“Come on in and watch the show,” Ginger said.

“Here's the death certificate on Constantin.” Paul held it out to Nina, but Ginger grabbed it.

“Let me see that.” She read it, read it again, and said, “Huh. I'll be damned!”

“What?”

The door opened. “The judge is ready,” the bailiff said.

Nina said, “Ginger, you'll be damned in what way?”

“Destruction of the world as we know it on a volcanic scale! Yeah, this is living!” Ginger said nonresponsively as they marched back into the jungle. The natives were already getting restive in the back pews. The jury looked hyped-up after the bomb threat. They expected some action.

Nina didn't waste another second. “Call Dr. Ginger Hirabayashi.”

They spent some time going through Ginger's stellar curriculum vitae, her medical degree, her certifications, her years as a chief medical examiner, her long experience as an expert. Jaime had offered to stipulate that she was an expert in the field of forensic pathology, but Nina wanted the jury to have an exact knowledge of the worth of her testimony.

“You asked me to perform DNA testing on blood evidence found at the scene of the crime, to determine whether the blood found there matched the blood of various other parties in the case.” The main party, of course, was Stefan, who had asked Nina what was going on the minute she came back in.

“Trust me,” Nina had told him, “all the way to the end here. I think you're going to be okay.”

Plainly wondering where “okay” could possibly enter into this equation, he swallowed twice and clutched the edge of the table. Then he scrutinized Nina's face for clues. He knew that the blood was the single most damning evidence against him.

Nina asked open-ended questions, and Ginger began discussing the work she had done in the case. She had performed one set of tests comparing Stefan's blood with the blood found on the glass shards, she testified.

“The result was a match with Stefan Wyatt's blood sample,” she said.

Expecting something different from this witness who was supposed to save him, Stefan let out an appalled gasp. Jaime smiled tightly. He seemed to have decided to humor the daffy defense, which was doing a lovely hatchet job on itself.

A complete set of Ginger's lab records was provided to Jaime and the judge, confirming her testimony. Ginger authenticated the records and, holding her breath, Nina asked that they be accepted in evidence as defense exhibits. She knew that Jaime had a legitimate objection to make—he had the right to examine them first and discuss them with Susan Misumi and others.

But the results so far were attractive to the prosecution. Nina was dangling a good chance for a conviction and hoping Jaime would be too pleased to take the time to see around it. It reminded her of playing chess with her brother Matt. She beat him now and then by sacrificing her queen. Matt would get so excited about grabbing it that he wouldn't notice her sneaky rooks setting up the checkmate from the other side of the board.

Behind the professional mask, Jaime's eyes glittered triumphantly. He rubbed his back against his chair as if he was itching to finish destroying Stefan on his cross-exam. “No objection,” he said. “Subject to cross, of course.”

But wait, as the infomercials always said. The Nina and Ginger act was just getting started.

“I also asked you to perform a second series of tests, didn't I?” Nina asked.

“Yes. You provided me with the left femur and hip bone from the remains of Constantin Zhukovsky. You asked me to run a series of tests on the bones and also to obtain a DNA profile on the bones.”

She felt Jaime's eyes narrowing behind her. What was this? Those bones were old news. Weren't they? “And what were the results obtained from those tests?” she asked quickly.

“Well, several things. I wasn't sure what we were looking for. I found no sign of poison on the standard tests for toxins. Physical examination of the bones didn't show anything. I ran the DNA panel, didn't find anything unusual. I took some bone-marrow samples and stored them the night I was assaulted and the bones were taken.” Briefly and without hand-wringing, Ginger described her fight with Sergey Krilov.

“That night, I noticed a resemblance between the two samples, one from the bones, and one from your client. They were related.”

“Your Honor,” Jaime said, but he seemed dubious, “that's established.” Maybe he shouldn't be objecting? He didn't have enough time to decide.

They were invited to speak to the judge up close.

“I'm going to show that the blood found at the crime scene did not, in fact, belong to Stefan Wyatt,” Nina said, “if I can have a few more minutes. It's science, Your Honor. It takes time. It takes a few logical steps.”

Jaime said, “You just showed the blood was your client's. Now you want your expert to contradict herself?”

“She'll explain her finding.”

Salas said, “Don't get us into some inexplicable dither. I won't let you confuse the jury.”

“I'll keep it simple. Even Jaime will understand,” Nina said.

“Do it in ten minutes,” Salas said. They went back to their seats. Ginger stretched out in the witness box, enjoying herself. Nina, on the other hand, had sweated right through her silk blouse to her jacket. She had thought she could let Ginger run through her findings with just a few questions, but she wasn't sure she was helping much.

Ten minutes to revolutionize the case. Get to it.

“As I was saying, in establishing paternity, I ran a number of additional tests on samples obtained from the bones,” Ginger said. “The results were so subtle, I would have missed them if I hadn't been looking. As I said, I compared the two samples and saw that there was a close blood relationship between Constantin Zhukovsky and the owner of the blood found at the scene of Christina Zhukovsky's murder.”

Jaime leaned forward, puzzled. They knew this. Stefan was his son.

“I went back to the original evidence sample found at the crime scene and compared it with results from a blood test performed on Stefan Wyatt,” Ginger said, “and discovered I was getting a very few sort of rogue cells, not Stefan Wyatt's. It was weird. I wasn't satisfied. I discussed my findings with a colleague who runs a company called BloodTech in San Francisco.”

“And what, if anything, did you do next?”

“Based on that conversation, I ran a special battery of tests, PCR-based assays analyzing polymorphic STR markers to try to detect what those rogue cells were.”

“STR markers?”

“Short tandem repeat systems. It's a sensitive and rapid way to analyze DNA.”

“And what did you learn by using this very sensitive technology?”

Ginger smiled broadly, revealing an outstanding veneer job. “I found a situation called mixed chimerism. The blood found at the scene of the crime was a mixed chimera sample.”

Nobody appeared enthusiastic at this pronouncement. Yeah, so what? juror Larry Santa Ana's expression said. Nina had no idea what Ginger was talking about, either. The examination was out of control, but Ginger was an intelligent lady and on their side.

Nina asked Ginger to spell “chimera,” then asked, “So what is this mixed chimerism?”

“It's named after a mythical monster with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail. It poetically describes a mix that can occur after a bone-marrow transplant.” Good old Ginger, she knew to turn back to the jury and speak earnestly.

“Now, is this the same thing as a blood transfusion?” Nina remembered Paul mentioning that Erin had told him something about one.

“No, although laymen might not realize the distinction when speaking casually about medical issues. A bone-marrow transplant is a widely used treatment for various blood diseases. It has only been available for that purpose since the early seventies. What a marrow transplant is—there's a donor and a recipient, the sick person. The recipient's marrow is killed with radiation or chemotherapy, and the donor's marrow is introduced and begins to grow normal platelets. In the best circumstances, the underlying syndrome is cured.”

Salas kept looking at his watch. Now or never.

“And what does a bone-marrow transplant have to do with this mixed chimerism?”

“The crime scene blood sample was not a perfect match for Stefan Wyatt's DNA. It showed a few cells that came from someone else. It's as if the sample was the melding of two people. Apparently, there weren't enough of these original recipient cells to make the owner of the blood sick again, just enough to show up on this advanced battery.” She folded her hands, looked at the judge and jury, smiled again.

She was a scientist. She thought they understood now, but nobody understood a thing.

“Let's try to summarize this,” Nina said. “The blood sample from the crime scene showed something unusual on further testing?”

“Yes.”

“Something called a mixed chimera effect?”

“Yes.”

“Showing that the person who left the blood in Christina Zhukovsky's apartment was not, in fact, our client, Stefan Wyatt.”

“Correct.”

“This person's blood held Stefan Wyatt's DNA profile, but showed anomalies that proved to you it belonged to someone else?”

“Right.”

“Did you identify this person?”

“Yes, I believe so.”

“How did you do that?”

“Simple. With permission, I obtained Stefan Wyatt's medical records and learned that in childhood he had been the donor in a bone-marrow transplant.”

The courtroom was quiet now, getting it.

“And who was the recipient of this bone marrow of Stefan Wyatt, the one whose blood was found in Christina Zhukovsky's apartment?”

“According to the medical records, that person was his brother, Gabriel Wyatt,” Ginger said, with one final, definitive flick of a finger through her spiked hair.