As the Wicked Watch(62)

“Oh,” I said, finding her revelation unnecessary. It made me wonder whether she was always this transparent with reporters. No doubt, I wasn’t her first.

“Look, the only reason I’m telling you this is because I think he can be of some help to you—and to Pamela Alonzo.”

“How’s that?” I asked.

“Seth, that’s his name. He knows the state crime lab is a shit show of grand proportions,” she said, checking around as if someone in the boisterously loud café could overhear us.

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“Noncompliance, ineptitude, downright stupidity,” she said. “Just short of malfeasance, and I’m not convinced that’s wrong, either.”

Pressed for time, I probed. “Okay, what specifically are you talking about?”

She sighed hard. “Jordan, you won’t believe how much gets lost, overlooked, improperly assessed. If there’s one thing prosecutors and defense attorneys agree on, it’s that they are more likely to lose a case in the state crime lab before it ever gets to court.”

“Go on,” I urged.

April rested her left hand on the brown legal folder. “I’ve been keeping a record of their mistakes going back ten years,” she said and began pulling out data sheets and newspaper clippings. “It’s so bad, I’ve got to believe that some of it is on purpose. I’m talking DNA that could have changed the outcome of hundreds of cases lost or never reviewed, or if it was, the results could be delayed for months. Here, check out this piece in the Sun-Times.”

April and I leaned in close, our heads nearly touching.

“This is from 2003. Hundreds of rape kits from poor communities in suburban Cook County were never processed!”

“Wow, really?” I said and picked up the clipping. “I hadn’t heard about this. This happened before I moved here.”

Underneath the clipping was a stack of logs. “What’s recorded on these?”

“These are evidence logs from the state’s crime lab, from the county’s, and from the city of Chicago’s,” she said, spreading them out side by side on the table. “Look here.” She pointed to a line item. “See the entry date of this blood sample? It was from a murder committed during a home invasion. There was a struggle and blood had been collected from the scene that didn’t belong to the victim. See the case file number?”

“Yes,” I said. “But wait. How did you get these?”

She grinned coyly and batted her eyes.

“Oh,” I said. “Never mind.”

“Now look at the date recorded by the city’s crime lab. June 15, 2001. Right? The results were inconclusive. So the city sent the sample to the state crime lab in Springfield on June 29. Now look at the evidence log for the state. See that case file number?” I nodded. “The evidence wasn’t logged by the state until November of that year. You mean to tell me it took five months for that evidence to travel 170 miles down I-55 to Springfield?”

“That’s insane!” I said. “Was there ever a result?”

“No,” April said, shaking her head slowly. “I looked up the case file. The victim was a seventy-seven-year-old Black man. God bless him, he must’ve tried to fight ’em off, because he drew blood from his attacker. An arrest was never made in that case.”

I looked up at April, bewildered by what she was telling me. “And let me guess, that wasn’t an isolated case?”

“You got it! It happens time and time again,” she said. “I’ve tried to get print reporters interested in this story and in connecting the dots. The TV reporters blew me off entirely. The Sun-Times and the Herald did the rape kit story. But news organizations have short attention spans when it comes to these things. Too scientific; too ‘in the weeds,’ they tell me. One reporter said his editor asked him, ‘How many more stories can we write about government agencies being inept?’ The topic grew stale to them, and they moved on.”

“Meanwhile, the number of cold cases just keep piling up,” I said.

“Exactly. That’s why in recent years, more private labs have sprung up. Some of the better public labs are run out of the South and Southwest, in cities like Tulsa and Dallas–Fort Worth. We’ve got to have one of the worst systems in the country. And from what I’m told, law enforcement across the state ain’t big on asking the FBI crime lab for help when they’re stumped.”

April was talking so fast, I could barely keep up to form an opinion. This is what April wanted to talk to me about? To pitch a story every television outlet in town had already turned down? And why did they? It is interesting.

“All of this is public record?” I asked.

“Well, most of it, yes,” she said.

“Wow, you must be the queen of the FOIA,” I said.

“That I am, but I didn’t FOIA all of this,” she said, the wry smile returning. “Ever heard of pillow talk?”

There’s something about lying in bed with someone that makes us vulnerable. When we shed our clothes along with our inhibitions, that can lull even the most esteemed professionals into sharing confidential information that could get them fired if it ever came to light. April, I believed, risked sharing to convince me of her allyship.