Proof Positive (2006) (13 page)

The adrenaline wore off a few minutes after Mary Clark started for home, leaving her crushingly tired. Shortly after she drove onto the freeway, her eyelids closed for a second before jerking open when her car swerved. Fear straightened her in her seat and kept her alert for the rest of the drive.

Mary Clark had been married to a dentist for ten years before her hours and his dalliance with his dental assistant led to divorce. She lived in a converted farmhouse, which she'd gotten in the settlement. Gravel crunched under her tires when she pulled into the driveway. Mary had kept the porch light on when she left for the liquor store. She opened the door, and the alarm whined until she punched in the security code.

The criminalist hung her windbreaker on a coatrack before going into the kitchen for a snack. It was almost three, but she was starving. After gobbling down three Oreo cookies and a glass of milk, Mary turned on the alarm and trudged up the stairs to the second floor. She wanted to drop into bed, but she smelled of scotch, bourbon, and sweat, and her sheets would stink in the morning if she didn't take a quick shower.

While she brushed her teeth, Mary thought about Bernie's protestations of innocence. It was a criminalist's job to evaluate evidence objectively, and that was what she'd done as soon as her suspicions about the print on the hammer in the Hayes case had been aroused. She had worked from the hypothesis that Bernie had done nothing wrong. But now, in each case, she believed she had clear and convincing evidence of intentional wrongdoing.

If she was right, Bernie had just snowed her. He'd played on the trust that had built up between them over the years, and she had been too tired and too overwhelmed with guilt to see it. She was a scientist and a damn good forensic expert. She was certain there was something wrong with the cases she'd reviewed, and she could not see how the errors could have been the product of a mistake. For a moment, Mary toyed with the idea of calling Carlos Guzman at home, but it was so late, and she needed sleep so she would be alert when she met with Cashman in the morning. Besides, no matter how sure she was, she owed it to Bernie to give him the chance to prove her wrong.

And what if she was wrong? She hoped that she hadn't destroyed their relationship with false accusations of ineptitude and outright criminal conduct. She was certain that there were problems with Hayes and the other cases, but her certainty had wavered after their conversation. Bernie seemed so sure of himself. She wanted to believe that he hadn't done what she suspected. Thank God, she hadn't rushed to Guzman with her suspicions. Maybe there was a good explanation for the fingerprints and the other things she'd found. There had to be. Bernard Cashman was one of the most respected criminalists in the state. He'd been her mentor when she started at the crime lab four years ago. More important, he was her friend, the person who consoled her when her mother died, the shoulder she'd cried on when her marriage was breaking up.

Mary finished taking off her makeup and stepped into the shower. The pounding water was steamy hot, and she almost fell asleep in the bathroom. After toweling off, she put on flannel pajamas and used her last ounce of energy to walk to her bed and crawl under the covers. Doubts still nagged at her, but she was too exhausted to entertain them for long, and soon she was asleep.

Chapter
17.

BERNARD CASHMAN APPEARED CALM WHILE HE WAS TALKING to Mary Clark, but inside he was furious. When he drove from the crime scene, he gripped the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles turned white, and it took all of his self-control to keep his rage from turning into tire-screeching speed as he headed down I-205 toward the crime lab. Cashman could not believe what Mary was planning to do to him. He had never done anything to hurt her; he had always been kind and supportive, pushing her forward when she had doubts, cheerleading when she was successful. And this was how she repaid him. How dare she go snooping in his cases? How dare she interfere with his work? Did she have any conception of what was at stake?

Cashman parked in the rear of the lab, which was housed in a block-long, two-story building of gray metal and tinted glass only a few blocks from several suburban shopping malls. Well-tended lawns surrounded the building, and there was a small park with picnic tables on one side.

The evidence from the liquor-store robbery had been packed into several paper bags, which had been sealed at the crime scene. Cashman put them in his personal storage space, one of many in a secure area off the parking lot. In the morning, he would take the evidence inside the lab and log it into the main evidence vault before working on it. Now he had more pressing matters to take care of.

Cashman punched in a code on a keypad before swiping his key card to gain entry to the deserted building. He walked down several narrow corridors to the evidence locker, swiped his card to gain entry, and went to the area where closed files were kept. The evidence bag with the hammer was missing from the State v. Hayes file. He pulled the other cases that could have aroused Mary's suspicions. Nothing was missing, but the evidence of what he'd done was there, if you knew where to look.

Cashman and Mary Clark had desks that abutted in a large cubicle near the director's office. Each criminalist had a computer, black metal file holders, and personal in and out boxes. The desks weren't locked. Cashman searched Mary's desk but found neither the hammer nor any other evidence from cases he had worked. Where was the hammer? He would be ruined if she showed it to Carlos Guzman. He might even go to prison.

Cashman collapsed onto his desk chair. The moment he sat down, his eyes closed and he had to fight to open them. Sleep was a luxury he could not afford. He glanced at the clock. It was a little after two-thirty. Mary usually got to work around eight. What to do? What to do? He couldn't let her tell Carlos about the hammer. Take a deep breath and calm down, he told himself. Do what you do best, think! He had to approach the problem calmly. If he acted too quickly, he would be more likely to make a mistake, just like the one he had just learned he'd made in Hayes.

When Raymond Hayes murdered his mother, Cashman was new at the crime lab, and the respect of the detectives and his fellow criminalists was even more important to him than it was today. It was because of his need to be respected that Bernie first discovered he possessed powers to fight injustice and to right wrongs akin to the powers possessed by Superman, Captain Marvel, and the other superheroes in the comics he'd read as a kid. The young Bernie Cashman envied those superheroes. They were not prey to bullies, they were worshipped by others, and they shaped their own destiny they were special. Until his epiphany, Bernard Cashman had never felt special.

As a child, Cashman was a painfully shy weakling, a target for schoolyard bullies. Cashman's father, a brutal, driven, self-made man, ignored his sickly son, whom he considered a disappointment. His overprotective mother coddled Bernard and refused to let him play with other children or exercise in any way, for fear that physical exertion would damage his health. Her incessant bragging about his intelligence embarrassed him, especially after he realized that there really wasn't anything outstanding about his mental powers. Oh, he was smart enough to master his schoolwork, but he soon discovered that he lacked the imagination that translated intelligence into genius. Someone else was always first in his class. Later in life, someone else always got the plum jobs. Cashman had accepted his mediocrity until the day he testified before the grand jury in the Hayes case.

In hindsight, Cashman could see that he'd made his mistake in Hayes because he'd acted too quickly, but he'd had no choice. He had worked the Hayes crime scene with Michael Kitay, a senior criminalist. Kitay, who was supposed to check the hammer for prints, suffered a heart attack at work and died at the hospital on the day before the grand jury in Hayes was convened. Cashman had been ordered to testify in Kitay's place. In the confusion, he assumed that Kitay had checked the hammer for prints, and he did not learn that the work had not been done until the morning of the grand jury, when he read through the reports that Kitay had prepared before he collapsed. When he looked for the physical evidence in the crime lab, Cashman was told that the district attorney had taken possession of it that morning.

Cashman had intended to explain the problem to the prosecutor who was running the grand jury, but the DA was already in the grand-jury room when Cashman arrived at the courthouse. Then Steve Hooper had casually mentioned that the DA was counting on the criminalist to provide the forensic evidence that would link Raymond Hayes to the murder. The detective confided that the district attorney was worried that he would not get an indictment if forensic evidence did not connect Hayes to the crime. Cashman had not paid much attention to Hayes, because Kitay had taken the case for himself. He had no idea that finding a fingerprint belonging to Hayes on the hammer was crucial to the state's case until Hooper explained that Hayes had sworn he had never seen the blood-covered hammer before he had discovered it lying next to his mother's corpse, and had never touched it.

Cashman remembered feeling sick to his stomach as he took the oath. Within minutes, the deputy district attorney asked Cashman what the examination of the bloody hammer had revealed. If he testified that no one had examined the hammer for prints, he would let down the prosecutor and all of the policemen and detectives who had worked so hard on the case. Worse still, he would be responsible for a horrible murderer walking free. Cashman was in a panic. He imagined that he might even be fired if he let down the prosecutor. So, he testified that an examination of the handle of the hammer had revealed the fingerprints of Raymond Hayes. He convinced himself that his testimony wasn't perjury. When he was through testifying, Cashman planned to take the hammer to the lab and print it. He was sure that the print would be there. Everyone knew Raymond Hayes had killed his mother.

Cashman was excused after his testimony, and the DA walked with him to the anteroom where the next witness was waiting. When the door to the grand-jury room closed, and the jurors could not hear, the prosecutor had pumped Cashman's hand and said that Cashman's testimony had saved the state's case. Cashman asked if he might take the physical evidence back to the lab. To his horror, the DA had told him he was going to keep all of the physical evidence in his office until the trial was over. Cashman had returned to the lab in a daze and had hardly slept until the word reached him that Hayes had pleaded guilty because of his testimony about the print.

Everyone had treated Cashman like a hero when Hayes pleaded. It had been one of the greatest moments in his life. He had been terrified when he lied under oath, but after Hayes confessed to the murder, Cashman knew that he had done the right thing. Justice had been served, and Hayes's mother had been avenged. The hammer had stayed in evidence until after the execution, and Cashman had not seen it again. It never occurred to him that an examination of the hammer might reveal no prints, or the prints of another man. By pleading guilty, Hayes had admitted wielding it, so there had to be a print on the handle.

After the Hayes case, Cashman, like his superhero models, used his powers sparingly and wisely, choosing only the most heinous cases with the most evil villains. When the police were certain they knew the guilty party but didn't have enough evidence to convict, Cashman came to the rescue. Over the years, he had manufactured evidence in only a few cases, and he had felt good about it every time. When he had doubts about his mission, he would open the case file and view the victim's battered and defiled body, and his doubts would vanish. Now Mary, who had no idea of the good he'd done, wanted to destroy him. Worst of all, by exposing Cashman, Clark would be paving the way for appeals that would open the prison gates to murderers, rapists, and the other scum he'd put behind bars. She had to be stopped, but how? The moment he asked himself what he would have to do to stop Mary, it dawned on him that he wouldn't have a problem if Mary Clark did not exist.

Suddenly, Cashman was wide awake, his heart thudding in his chest. He liked Mary, he was very fond of her, but she was the only one who knew, she was the only person who could spoil everything. Cashman swallowed. What was he thinking? To take Mary out of the picture, he would have to No. He shook his head. Such a thing was unthinkable.

Cashman swiveled his chair and leaned back. But what if for the sake of argument he could come up with a way to remove Mary and avoid detection? The odds of success were certainly in his favor. He would be starting with a terrific advantage over the average criminal, because he could arrange to investigate Mary's death, thus giving himself the opportunity to point the finger away from himself and toward someone else.

An image of a deranged man dressed in orange flashed in Cashman's brain. He sat up in his seat. Jacob Cohen, the madman who lived in the vacant lot on Queen Anne and Hobart! What had Doug Weaver said? Cohen made a terrible impression in court; he was not believable. Weaver didn't think his client was dangerous, but what was he supposed to say? Hannah Graves and Steve Hooper obviously thought that Cohen was a danger to women. It wouldn't be wrong if someone like Cohen went to prison. Taking him off the street would be a good thing. He was a convicted sex offender and clearly insane. If he could stop the release of all those terrible people back into society while putting away a dangerous rapist, would that be wrong?

By two-thirty a.m., Cashman had worked out a plan and had analyzed it for flaws. He went to the evidence locker and found eight pubic hairs that had been seized from Cohen during the attempted rape case. Using tweezers, he transferred two of the hairs to a small vial. Then he replaced the two pubic hairs he had just taken with two similar pubic hairs from another old case. When he had collected the rest of the items he needed, he left the building.