Fair Warning (Jack McEvoy #3)(33)

“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.