Splicer (13 page)

Daddy called it the ten-percentage strategy for keeping your balls out of the Mixmaster,
Grieves reminisced sourly. His father used to expound on this theory regularly.
Take everything you know about the other guy. And then assume that he has ten times the goods on you. You really only have ten percent. Work with it. Never take the competition for granted.
The way he used to say
competition
made the word feel malevolent and mean-spirited.
Overconfidence, son
he used to say
has killed more mortals than the automobile, dynamite and the longbow combined
.

Grieves stared at the screen of his portable computer. There it was. The bank transfer had finally been made. Rosenblatt had paid the fare. His first impulse was to rejoice, but his father’s words came sliding down the old neural pathways again and they impacted right into his ample solar plexus. It felt like the wind had been knocked out of him.

The competition.
What did they know?
Obviously, more than he expected. He was sitting here in the old warehouse his father bought a decade ago, feeling protected and hidden.
You're a fool, Grieves
.
They've probably got you pinned down right now.
Was that possible?  Had he left a clue behind?

Of course he had. Phone calls could be traced. In the blink of an eye today.
But so what?
Rosenblatt would never give him away with what Grieves knew about his duplicity. And the calls to
GeneFab
had been re-routed and scrambled through a dozen computer exchanges.
It was something else.
Then he saw it. A disjointed flash of white thigh when the wind whipped up her dress, for a moment on the street. Redfield's ex. She had made him. True, it wasn't much. She saw some ragged derelict on the street who she thought
might
have been Malcolm Grieves. And so she
might
tell Redfield.
Hey! Guess who I saw?
Would they believe her? Would it matter to Redfield?

It would make sense that Redfield would be more than happy to share the media limelight with his ex-buddy and partner. According to the papers, he needed all the help he could get. But from what Grieves knew of the cops, once they had their prime suspect, they would be extremely reluctant to put much more in the way of police effort against the case. Overworked as they were. Grieves was more worried about the other guys.

He knew they were on his trail. But in a few days, once matters were cleared up in the city, he would be up at the lake and disappear until the trial was over. The cabin was a great hideout, but more importantly, it was designed like a small fortress. He felt confident that he could hold off a small army if he had to. There was that damn word
confident
again. The emotion that caused self-destruction.

He turned off the power on the laptop and then flung a glass bottle against the far wall.
Damn his carelessness.
Rusty’s wife. She could be the death of him. He had to do something.
Talk to her? Yeah. He would talk to her all right.

Jayne found a small table near the kitchen, away from the action by the bar.
Kelsey's Bar and Grill
was a local hangout for lawyers looking for a place to crawl off and lick their wounds; Jayne had a different purpose today. She sat with her back to the rough stucco. When she removed her suit jacket, Rusty could see that she had goose bumps on her arms. He didn't feel cold at all.

"The best news all week has been that brouhaha over your business card. The entire Prosecutors department is acting like it's suffering from PMS." Jayne smiled wickedly. "And only one of them is a woman."

A waiter, as serious as a judge, took their drink orders. Jayne ordered a Heineken. Rusty, a Caesar, no celery. When he left, Rusty asked her "How could Dimbrowsky make such a mistake?"

"There's only one reason. They're all in such a hurry to hang this on you; they've forgotten to do all the homework. Your business card was sitting there under Ludd's front seat, as neat as can be. So they fingerprint it. And of course they find a perfect thumbprint. It couldn't have been cleaner if it was part of a teaching exhibit in Criminal Methods 101. But there's one tiny problem," and then she smiled sweetly, a smile he had never seen before in her repertoire. "The thumbprint doesn't belong to you … and it doesn't belong to Ludd. In fact it doesn't belong to anyone.  I love it."

Rusty drank from the icy rim of the Caesar's glass, felt the rock salt bite into his tongue. Jayne was looking at him, waiting for the obvious question, but all he could think about was that she didn't look quite like his lawyer anymore. Had the light changed her complexion? It looked softer, her eyes less penetrating. Her blond hair had fallen over one eye and she hadn't moved it yet, hadn't carelessly flung it back out of the way. He decided he liked it there. "So whose fingerprint is it?"

"That's the point. It's
nobody's
fingerprint." While she waited for that to sink in, she drew back on the long neck of the Heineken bottle. Rusty watched her stretch back. He was surprised by his reaction to the appearance of the soft swell of her breasts under a pale blue silk blouse. He coughed and looked back towards the bar, towards the light and noise. "You're not paying attention," she laughed. He turned back to her, swallowing hard.
The problem was he was paying too much attention.
Then she asked him another question.

"How could you use a business card without leaving your fingerprint on it. Show me." He pulled one, a little worn at the edges, from the inside front pocket of his coat. She took it carefully in her right hand. "Look. These cards have been printed on special stock. They have a very shiny surface.
Clay-coa
t they call it. It's perfect for picking up prints. How would you hand one to a client?" She handed it back to him. He pretended to pull it from his breast pocket again then handed it to her across the table held between his thumb and forefinger. She took it gently from him using the same combination.

"Even in this light I can make out our finger prints. Now, you could have handed it to me by the edges, which is a little awkward, but the only way I can take it from you is with thumb and forefinger. One of us has to leave a fingerprint."

"What if they were wearing gloves?" he offered, feeling slightly stupid about the whole conversation, but transfixed by this new personae of hers. She was almost rising out of her chair.

"In June?

"So then who is this other
Tom Thumb
?”

She nodded her head. "I like that. Our
Tom Thumb
is obviously like some sort of intermediary. You know, those guys you hire to pass around your business cards."

"I think you've been at this too long."

"It's a joke, Rusty. But the best kind - a joke on the prosecution. It's killing them that they even found the damn thing. The best part? It'll make the jury go crazy. If we get that far."

"Let's drink to that."

She turned to him conspiratorially. "So tell me. How did the murderer get your business card?"

Rusty pulled a folded piece of loose leaf from his jacket pocket. "Here's the list I made. It's only got seven names on it. I didn't have a lot of time to hand out business cards. Two days to be exact. So the list includes important suspects like my mother …"

"You're such a good son. Does she hate you that much that she would frame you for murder?"

"Knowing how she felt about Ludd, she might have volunteered to do it herself."

Jayne leaned over him, the scent of her perfume causing him to flush slightly. She didn't seem to notice. "Who's this?" she asked, pointing.

"My roommate."

"Motive there?" She looked up at him, her face only inches from his.

"I don't think she really cares
that
much."

"You never know, Rusty. You just never know. "She looked back at the list then smiled. "Quasimodo?"

"I put that in just in case you were going to say you didn't see a name that
rings a bell.
"

Jayne threw her head backed and laughed, a long lusty appreciation of a simple joke. It was good to see her happy after the scare she had put into him over her conspiracy theory. "Very funny, Redfield.  But don't they call that 'gallows humor'?"

"They haven't reinstated the death penalty since I last checked, have they?"

Jayne rubbed her hands together then put her jacket over her shoulders. Rusty guessed wrong that the beer had given her a chill. She opened a file on the black plastic tabletop. "Dimbrowsky or Kozak, I'm not sure who," she began, "has been burning the midnight oil - likely because of their mishandling of the business card evidence. They've produced another lab report. We can go over it in detail later but one of them has me a little worried." Rusty cleared his throat; his shoulders notched down, his mouth set for bad news. "Do you remember reading anything about 'spit' on Ludd's driver side window?"             

Rusty's eyes narrowed. "Did you say
spit
?"

"Expectorant. Spittle. On the glass." She was still serious.

Rusty shook his head slowly.
Spit? This thing is about spit?

Jayne flipped through the folder. Her mouth was set hard. "Well - they typed it. They DNA fingerprinted it. When you've got the tools, I guess you might as well use them."

"So they DNA fingerprinted the spit on the window glass and …?"

"And it's yours," she said, looking across at him.

"Impossible.”

"Are you telling me, you of all people - that you don't believe in DNA fingerprinting?"

"No. I didn't say that. It's just that I know something you don't."

"Like what?" She gave him an
I dare you
look. It was loaded.

"I know I wasn't there. As for spitting on it? From the outside I might have considered it - if the opportunity presented itself."

He stopped for a minute as if he was counting to ten. "What if I had a machine that could produce a copy of anyone's fingerprint?"

"Here we go again," she said.

"Just type in a name - JAYNE McEWAN - and out would come a little, I don't know, a decal that I could press onto a cocktail glass and there you'd have it. Your fingerprint at the murder scene. Or on the murder weapon. How valuable would a fingerprint be then in a court of law."

"It depends on how much this machine costs."

Rusty smiled, appreciating the irony. "Like a computer. Anybody could afford one."

"The weight of the evidence would be lessened but it would still be a factor." She looked at him hard. She needed an answer.

"Great. So there's a computer system sitting in at least four labs in Toronto - the good old
GeneFab IM5 -
that can produce a quantity of anyone's DNA by duplication. You just put the results in a bottle. Splash a little around. And Rusty's DNA is found at the scene of the crime."

Jayne stared through him. She had just turned down his offer of another Heineken. She was working again. "You can't just make up DNA though.  You need a piece of the original."

"And I've thought about that," he said. Jayne didn't respond, working the permutations over in her mind.

"I've been involved in dozens of murder trials," she finally offered. "DNA typing only came up in one. It's very expensive …"

"Won't be for long."

"But it is
now
and the Toronto Police don't have one of those
IM5's
you're talking about, what with the cutbacks lately. They’re lucky they still get to use their police radios! So the question is - why would the Crime Unit request DNA typing of spit on a window when the obvious source was the murder victim?"

Rusty shrugged. "Don't they always?"

Jayne laughed humorlessly. "Almost never. Everything has a price tag attached to it. DNA testing costs a small fortune. They've got your card and you've been placed at the scene with the other evidence. Even the partner, Rosenblatt, is supplying some kind of corroborating story. So what the hell do they need two sets of DNA typing reports for? Something's not kosher here? Dimmy has to be the one who ordered it. I'd like to know why?"

"So what the hell do we do about this evidence?" asked Rusty.

"I don't know. Problem is, most of the time you're talking over my head. What do you think will happen if we bring in an expert? The jury is even less likely to know what's going on."

"So we do it for them. Right in court. We'll duplicate the DNA of one of the juror’s right on the floor of the courtroom."

"And if it doesn't work, we just plead insanity?" She glared at him. It felt like charity. Or maybe she was right. The case against him might be falling apart. But he wasn't sure if that made a difference. He was still worried about her confession the other night in her car but they had since decided to just go for broke. He had spent the last few evenings shadowing Grieves’ old haunts. A friends place, a favorite bar, some former fellow employees at GeneFab who treated Rusty like he was three stages more sinister than the Ebola Virus. Nothing had come of it. He put down his glass and drew a circle in the condensation on the side. "Explain something to me, Jayne!"

She was sobered by his serious tone. It wasn't the reaction he expected. She was obviously thinking the same things he was.
Who were these people and when would they show themselves?
"I'll try," she said.

"Let's change the subject for a moment. And please stop reacting to my questions like I'm opposing counsel. I'm just curious." Jayne shrugged. "To me, Friday afternoons, Caesars and Law, don't mix." She nodded, still wary. "What happened to your marriage?" he asked.

Her face showed surprise. "Is this where we get to show each other our battle scars?" She winked.

"Glad to. You first."

She flipped that errant strand of hair out of her face. "Nobody's fault really. I just make a lousy …
co-dependent
."

"I promise to lay off the tech talk if you do."

Jayne twirled her beer bottle lightly between her fingers. "He finished Medical school the same year I passed my bar. Two yuppie professionals ready to take on the world. We moved to Ottawa. Then, within the next three years, we moved twice more. Career moves. Once for his career, once for mine. Only my move was without him."

Her response was off-hand. No emotion showed at the edges of her smile. "How easy was that?" Rusty probed.

"You know what it's like. On a scale of one to ten? Two point two. Or one thousand. Depending on what time of day you ask me the question. I suppose for some people it would be devastating. Not that I'm the
Ice Queen
. I just don't have a lot of time to worry about it. He probably didn't either - the shit head."

"So you've given up on the whole idea? Men! Women!"

"Well, I can't say I've given up on women exactly. I haven't tried them yet. But I've tried men." She looked at him directly. "I've definitely tried men."

"And lately?"

She drained part of her Heineken. "Don't push it, Redfield. I'm trying to retain this good mood."

"You, client. Me, Jayne," she said slowly. Then she stood to leave. For a fraction of a second she seemed to hesitate. Then she said good-bye and walked out of the room. He watched her leave. At the bar she turned ever so slightly and looked back before she left. He nodded and smiled.
Well Rusty!
he thought, feeling depressed and energized at the same time.
Some salesman you are.