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“Good to talk to you again, Steve. If you knew I was gonna call, you must know why I’m calling.”
“Heard from my lawyer not half an hour ago,” Murphy said. “Helluva way to start the day.”
“Better than waking up dead. Like Sandra Ashville, Judge Sakurai, and Deena Scott,” Arnett said.
Murphy hesitated. “He’s gotta be stopped.”
“Agreed. So we need to come have a chat with you,” Arnett said.
“Who’swe?” Murphy asked.
“Jo Fournier,” Arnett answered.
“Oh, right, right, right. You were partnered with her before I retired. She’s a pistol.”
Arnett grimaced. “You at home?”
“Nope. Just sat down to an early lunch at The Wooden Leg.”
“We’ll be there as soon as we can.” Arnett hung up the phone without waiting for a response.
* * *
Jo and Arnett worked up the paperwork for the warrant on Ossokov’s residence and vehicle as quickly as they were able, then headed out to see Murphy. As they walked out to the Crown Vic, Jo’s phone rang. “It’s Marzillo. You mind if I take shotgun?”
Arnett shook his head and headed toward the driver’s side. Jo tapped to connect the call. “Janet.”
“I’m here with Christine.” Marzillo’s voice was hushed, and grim. “She and I have made some discoveries regarding the lab work done in Zara Richards’ case. Can you talk?”
“I’m here with Bob. I’ll put you on speakerphone,” Jo said.
“Before you do—the news isn’t good,” Marzillo said.
“We know.” Jo’s stomach roiled as she tapped the speakerphone button. “Go ahead.”
Marzillo cleared her throat, and Jo heard papers rustling in the background. “I dug back until I found the analysis that identified the sample taken from Ossokov’s car as Zara Richards’ blood. It was sent to DNA CompCorp.”
Jo nodded. DNA CompCorp was one of the backups they used when the department’s own analysis lab had a longer-than-usual turnaround time. “So they outsourced it.”
Marzillo shook her head. “That’s just it. I checked into similar tests we ordered on other cases at the same time. They all went to our standard lab. In fact, I couldn’t find a single other test we sent out to DNA CompCorp for a three-week window around that time. There was no reason I could find for this one to be outsourced, especially given the extra expense involved to the department for an out-of-system analysis.”
Lopez jumped in. “And all the other analyses associated with the case were done through our internal lab.”
“So someone made a purposeful choice to send it to an outside lab,” Jo said. “And it sounds like that rules out contamination?”
Marzillo spoke as if the words were choking her. “I can’t see any way contamination is possible. By the time the blood smear was collected from Ossokov’s car, the tests of Zara’s Starbucks cup, and the duct tape on her hands had already been analyzed. They sent her DNA sample at the same time to be analyzed for exclusion purposes. So her DNA profile was already on record when they analyzed the blood from Ossokov’s car. I don’t see anything that shows it was sent in a second time, so I can’t see how any mistake could have been made.”
The blood drained from Arnett’s face. “You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
Jo sorted through the implications at light speed. “So let me be sure I have this right. That means the sample supposedly taken from Ossokov’s car was actually Zara’s blood.”
“Yes. And since we know that isn’t possible, that means someone either swabbed Zara’s blood into the car for the techs to find, or swapped whatever blood was taken from the dash with a sample of Zara’s blood.”
Jo’s eyes searched the skyline for an alternative. “Wait. Do we even know if there really was blood found in Ossokov’s car at all?”
“We do,” Lopez said. “There are photographs of a blood smear on the dash.”
