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“So that can be done?”
“Sure. And Hawkinshadscratches on his arms. So something happened to him. I think that’s when his DNA was harvested to incriminate him.”
“But if somebody else had scratched him, let’s say, and then took that skin and, I guess, blood and hair and put it under Abigail’s nails, wouldn’t some of that person’s DNA also end up under her nails?”
“Possibly but not necessarily. Depends on how it was done. In any event, the DNA screen done at the time confirmed it was Hawkins’s DNA under her nails.”
“And the fingerprint? Could that have been placed there too?”
“It could be. It’s extraordinarily rare to find a forged print. It’s far more likely to find a fabricated one at a crime scene.”
“What’s the difference?” asked Mars, looking curious.
“Cop finds a glass with a suspect’s prints on it outside of the crime scene and then places the glassatthe crime scene and swears he found it there. Or a third party could do the same thing. Person wasn’t at the scene but the glass with his print was because it was intentionally placed there. That’s a fabrication. A forgery is where you actually take someone’s prints from one surface and transfer them to another surface at a crime scene.”
“Is that hard to do?”
“Well, you certainly have to know what you’re doing. You lift a print with tape, you’re going to disturb ridge lines. And prints interact differently with different surfaces. You lift a print from a metal surface and transfer it to a wooden surface, chances are you’re going to interject some anomalies into the picture that’ll throw up a red flag.”
“Then an expert would catch it every time?”
“No, unfortunately. I remember they did a test once to check that very thing. About half the time the forensics folks thought a forgery was a real print and a real print was a forgery. I don’t like those odds.”
“Gee, that’s a little unsettling, particularly for someone like me who got wrongly convicted. Was there anything dicey about Hawkins’s print at the crime scene?”
Decker shook his head. “And I checked it very closely. And we had another expert who I trusted come in at the time and do the same thing. He could find nothing that would lead him to believe it was forged.”
“Then Hawkinshadto be there.”
“It seems so. But if he was, how could he be innocent? And if he was there and didn’t kill them, he would know who did, presumably. Why didn’t he finger that person after he was arrested?”
“I give,” said Mars.
“He could have come upon the bodiesafterthey were dead. He could have been the one to call 911 at nine-thirty-five and then gotten the hell out of Dodge, although that leaves open the question of why we couldn’t trace the call.”
“So how did the murder weapon turn up at his house behind the wall?”
“Someone planted it there to frame him.”
“Okay.”
Decker shook his head. “No, it’s not okay. If he happened upon the bodiesafterthe real killer had left, how did the killer know to frame Hawkins?”
“Maybe he knew Hawkins was going to break into the house that night. Maybe that’s why he killed them that night, because he knew Hawkins was planning to be there later. So he planted the DNA on the girl and then Hawkins hit that light switch himself, adding even more evidence against him.” After he finished speaking, Mars smiled. “How’s that theory?”
“You make some good points, Melvin. It doesn’t explain everything, but it’s still an interesting theory we have to explore.”
“And it would explain the time discrepancy too,” noted Mars as he sipped his coffee. “And Hawkins would have to describe something weird going on to get the cops to come out. He knew the people had been shot and had probably screamed when they were, so that’s what he told the police dispatcher he heard, even though he couldn’t have.”
Decker nodded and forked some eggs into his mouth. The memories of his discovering his murdered family had finally stopped unspooling in his head at around four in the morning. He had come back to the room and gone right to the bathroom and stripped off his soaked clothes. That’s when Mars had heard him retching in there, but he’d lied and told him he was fine.
But will it happen again?
He said, “So how did Hawkins get those scratches on his arms? He had to realize that the DNA taken from his arms was planted under Abigail’s nails. Yet he never raised that as a defense. He never said a person had scratched him and presumably gotten his DNA that way. He maintained that he had slipped and injured himself. Even though naming the person might have raised reasonable doubt in the jury’s minds.”
“You think he was protecting somebody?”
“Possibly.”
“You have anybody in mind?”
“Yes, I do.”
