GRAHAM CONVINCED CASEY to stay an extra night on the island. He pointed out to her that the major’s courier service wouldn’t get the sample to the lab in Syracuse in time to do anything until Monday morning.
So she stayed, getting on Graham’s jet the next morning at seven in order to be back by noon and hopefully get the results fresh from the lab. Ralph picked them up in the Lexus and they headed straight downtown.
The forensic laboratory in Syracuse was just off the main highway, between the hospital and the psychiatric center. Ralph pulled over to the curb in front of the five-story modern brick building. The lab’s director, a blonde woman in a white lab coat, personally held the door open for them. Casey and Graham introduced themselves and she gave them each her card, identifying herself as Helen Mahy.
“I spoke with the deputy director just a few minutes ago,” Helen said with a somber face as they crossed the lobby and stepped onto the elevator, “and he knows we’ve got you covered.”
“Do they match?” Casey asked.
The lab director looked at her watch.
“We should have it the moment we walk in,” she said, lowering her voice with import. “I know this is a matter of national security, and I’ve got to tell you, we’re very glad to be doing our part. My team really scrambled on this, especially Laurie Snyder. She’s the one who’ll have the charts, so if either of you could give her an attaboy it’d mean a lot.”
“We’ll do that,” Graham said, his face grim.
“Are you…” Helen said, turning to Casey and tilting her head. “I’ve seen you before.”
Graham held up a hand. “I’m sorry. We can’t talk about who, what, or where. You understand.”
“Of course.”
The elevator rumbled opened and they took a short turn down a hallway before pushing through two heavy double doors and into a lab that nearly filled the footprint of the building. Men and women in goggles, lab coats, and gloves worked at countertops amid test tubes, beakers, open flames, and high-tech electronic equipment. Nearly all of them stopped their work to stare.
Helen led them to one of several desks in the midst of the lab where a mousy woman in glasses and hair pulled into a ponytail with a red rubber band sat hunched over a computer screen. Helen asked if she had the results on their case.
The woman looked up and blinked at them several times before she said, “Yes. I have it. You can see right here.”
“We can’t tell you how much we appreciate all your work,” Casey said, earning a nod from the director.
The lab woman smiled and turned back to her screen. Using a mouse, she manipulated two white brackets around a yellow rectangle covered with what looked like the inky rungs of four ladders. The patterns of the rungs and their thickness didn’t seem to match and Casey felt her heart in her throat.
“You see here and here?” The woman said, moving the brackets from one ladder to another. “This is just one example. We use thirteen different loci to differentiate or identify individuals.”
“And they don’t match?” Casey said.
The woman shook her head and moved the brackets up and down the rows. “No. Your guy in prison isn’t the one you want. Now, here. Take a look at this. This is the sample we got this morning.”
The woman brought up a new screen with an all new set of ladders.
“They don’t match, either,” Casey said.
The woman looked up at her and blinked. “Well, the ladders don’t match.”
“What?” Graham said, frowning, and his face drained of color.
“But that’s because the original slide sample you sent us-the old one-was so damaged,” the woman said, nodding in agreement with herself. “That happens, usually with old samples, or if it wasn’t stored right. Heat or other climatic conditions can degrade the cells and the DNA, too. The ladders from that sample are incomplete. That’s why I started to say that law enforcement looks for a match of thirteen standardized loci. Here we can only match nine of those.”
“So they do match?” Graham said, his voice harsh and nasal.
“Nine of the thirteen loci do,” the woman said.
“Does that prove it?” Casey asked. “Is nine enough for us to take to a judge? Is this the same DNA?”
“Oh, I have no doubt,” the woman said, nodding vigorously. “These samples? They don’t match exactly, but they definitely came from the same person. The odds of this being someone else are about one in five million. No, you got your guy.”