FOR THE DEFENSE.
ONE HUNDRED EIGHT
WITH SONNY BLUM OUT of play, I call Steve Salzman, the learned young crime scene evidence technician, back to the stand, first thing the next morning.
“I have only a few more questions, Mr. Salzman,” I say in opening. “And I apologize in advance, because these are questions I should have asked when you first testified.”
This is a lie, of course. But I’m not the one under oath.
These are questions I’ve been saving.
“Still happy to be of assistance,” he says.
“I’m sure you are,” I say. “Now, if you don’t mind, could you once again take us through where you found the DNA evidence, hair and skin and whatnot, that allegedly belongs to my client.”
“Objection!” Katherine Welsh says, cutting me off right there. “Counsel is completely aware that there is no such thing asallegedDNA. We’ve gone over this. That the trace evidence found at the murder scene comes from the defendant wasn’t in dispute the first time Mr. Salzman testified, isn’t in dispute today, will neverbein dispute.”
“Sustained,” Judge Horton says.
“With all due respect, Your Honor,” I say. “Aren’t we really splitting hairs here?”
I turn long enough to give Katherine Welsh a quick wink. “Hair,” I say. “See what I did there?”
Horton pounds his gavel.
“Ms. Smith,” he says. “For the last time, let’s dispense with what you obviously think are humorous asides.”
“Sorry, Your Honor.” I turn back to Salzman. “We were discussing DNA,” I say.
He takes us all through it again, what he found in the front hall, in Lily Carson’s bedroom, in Morgan’s.
“Anywhere else besides those three areas?” I ask.
“No,” he says.
“So if I understand what you’re telling us, Mr. Salzman,” I continue, “you only recovered my client’s DNA near where the bodies were found?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“Did you swab all the other surfaces of the Carson home?”
He hesitates.
Because he now knows what I’ve known all along about his work from that night.
“No,” he says finally.
“Mr. Salzman,” I continue, “how many murder scenes have you been present for in your career as a crime scene tech, whether as troubling or grotesque as this one or not?”
Salzman hesitates again, shifts slightly in his chair, gives a quick roll to his neck.
“This was my first,” he says. “Of any kind.”
“And by the time you did arrive there, as part of the second wave of respondents, that house must have been crawling with cops,” I say.
“It was.”
“Did they tell you to sweep all the other rooms in the house?”
