Zehra and Bobby Joe stopped before the security checkpoint at the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis. The courtrooms and the prosecutor’s office occupied most of the space above them.
“Why are you working so hard on this one?” BJ asked. “This guy’s a scumbag.”
“I know, and I hate the things he stands for. If we slack and he’s convicted, he will appeal and allege inadequacy of counsel—something I certainly don’t want. Also—” Zehra stopped walking while the flow of people continued around them, going toward the elevators. “I guess . . . well, I guess it’s my sense of justice. What if he’s really innocent?”
“But he confessed to you.”
“I’ve got reasons to think he’s lying for some reason. Besides, every case is a chance to ensure the system is just and fair.” She looked at the African-American standing next to her and knew he understood.
They arrived at the county attorney’s floor and asked to see Steve Harmon, the assistant county attorney prosecuting the Ibrahim El-Amin case.
He came into the lobby and shook both their hands. “Zehra, BJ, two of my favorite people from the wrong side,” he joked. He invited them in. “Can’t talk you two into coming back to work for the good guys?”
“Well—there are days,” Zehra said and looked back at Bobby Joe, who laughed with her.
After filing into his small office, they sat. “Coffee? H2O?” His blue eyes sparkled with energy.
Zehra shook her head. “You should drink tea, Steve. Better for your health. How are things going with the crime fighters here?”
Harmon, jacketless, leaned back in his chair and lifted his hands behind his head, where he locked his fingers. Harmon was in his mid-forties—the hardest kind of prosecutor to work against, because he was very experienced and clever, but young enough to still have the drive to win. Dark hair thinned over his head, which was balanced by a close-clipped beard. The silver flecks throughout shone against his tan skin. His nickname was “Hardball Harmon,” and he wouldn’t offer any help now.
She looked behind his shoulder and saw a family photo with his teenaged kids—a boy and a girl. His boy wore a sweatshirt that said “St. Thomas University.” Her eyes lingered for a moment because he looked about the age of the victim in the murder case.
Harmon interrupted her thoughts. “You know how things are around here. Between the boss, the cops, the victims, and the press, I don’t have much time to prosecute crime.”
“Both sides have their issues,” Bobby Joe said.
“And my problem is,” Zehra started, “El-Amin hates women, and particularly me. I’m going to have to see this case all the way through.”
“The hardest for me are the ‘not-so-innocent’ victims. Know what I mean?”
BJ chuckled in recognition of the problem. “I remember when I was a cop, we’d arrive at the scene of a shooting. Two coked-up dudes fighting over a woman. The first one to pull the gun became the defendant. They’re both strapped, so it could’ve just as easily been the other way around. So who’s the real victim?”
Steve dropped his arms and leaned forward over his desk. “The truly innocent victims—the kids, the rape victims, the old people who get mugged—those are the ones that bother me and keep me on this damn treadmill of a job.”
Zehra shifted in her seat. This talk could go on all afternoon. Better to save it for a happy hour later. “Steve, we’re here to give you notice of an alibi witness Denzel found. We’ll file the formal notice and give you the whole statement when our secretary finishes the transcript, but we wanted to talk about it with you first.”
Harmon’s eyes narrowed, and he crossed his arms over his chest. The light stuff was over. This was business, and he changed completely. “What alibi?”
BJ started, “I’ve been checking and found a guy who says that during the time of the murder, he was with El-Amin at a mosque. He’s an imam and knows the defendant well.”
Harmon gulped a big breath of air. “Yeah, yeah, have you checked this guy out? He’s probably a cousin to El-Amin, lying for him.”
“I know, but in the end, Steve, he’s gonna alibi our client,” Zehra said.
“Details, man.”
Bobby Joe stretched his long body out on the chair. “I’ll give you the whole Q and A, but the short answer is the imam knows our guy, met him often at the mosque, and was drinking tea—oolong China—at the time of the murder.”
“Sounds like a drug deal to me—oolong China.” Harmon laughed at his own joke.
“He remembers the time, place, and all the details.”
“I’ve seen this a hundred times. How do we know your guy didn’t put up the imam to say this? Paid him off?”
“The witness says no,” BJ answered.
“Bullshit.”
Zehra said, “I don’t think you can say that in front of a jury. What if he happens to believe this guy?”
“Bullshit. I’m not afraid of some crackpot camel-driver.”
“Look, Steve,” Zehra continued, “I’m not sure what our client wants, but it’s part of my job to at least talk to you about a possible settlement in light of our new witness. What would you offer short of going to trial?”
“I got a great offer for this animal—plead guilty and be damn glad he’s in a state that doesn’t have capital punishment. That’s what he’d get in his own country. He butchered a young boy. Wait ’til the jury sees the photos of the kid.” He looked from one to the other as if to try and convince them and laughed again in a nervous, forced manner.
Zehra knew the laugh offered a peek into Harmon’s occasional lack of confidence that he tried hard to cover up. “Maybe so, but you have to admit, an alibi witness is strong mojo for us. Can’t you agree to at least let him plead guilty to something less serious? How about murder in the second degree?” She knew his answer before he said anything and didn’t blame him for hanging tight on this case.
Harmon shook his head. “No, thanks.”
“Remember, dude, the killer was wearing a mask. Added to an alibi witness, think you can still prove it beyond a reasonable doubt?”
“So what? I’ve also got the DNA. You see that? Small problem for your bronco.”
“Okay,” Zehra agreed.
“It’s a match—which is a conviction in my book. In spite of all the witnesses you want to parade in there, I got the DNA. The jurors all watch TV—so they know DNA’s airtight proof.”
“Maybe I could sell him on pleading to second degree,” Zehra said.
“Even if I wanted to, do you think the elected county attorney wants to go before the public and tell them he let the most ruthless killer of the year off with second degree? He’d be out of office so fast, he’d be out before El-Amin even got to prison. No way, guys.”
He was right. Zehra knew a prosecutor only dropped the charges for two reasons: either the evidence was so weak they couldn’t prove their allegations, or they knew they couldn’t prove it because of unusual sympathy for the defendant. Neither applied to this case.
The meeting was over. Zehra stood. “Okay, Steve.” She reached across the desk and shook his hand firmly.
BJ bumped fists with him. “Dude,” he said.
Back on the public service level of the Government Center, Zehra turned to Bobby Joe. “I’ve got an appointment at the BCA lab in forty minutes. Want to come with? I have to hurry because when I get back, I’ve got to finish my closing argument for a rape case I tried last week.”
His thick eyebrows pinched over his eyes. “What case is that?”
“I got a guy who sexually assaulted his teenage cousin—allegedly. He waived a jury, so the judge ordered us back tomorrow to make the final arguments. He’s already heard all the evidence.”
“How can you keep these cases straight?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. Sometimes they blend together, and I worry whether I can give adequate time to each case. Every public defender has the same problem—too many cases.” She looked up into the air above t
hem. The Government Center had two parallel towers with an open atrium in the middle that rose twenty-four floors. “The rapist is even creepier than El-Amin.” Zehra shrugged her shoulders and asked him, “How can you keep so calm all the time?”
He smiled. “Faith, baby. Most old cops are angry or screwed up. That almost caught me too, until I found my faith again. That and my music. Maybe I should talk to you about it sometime.”
She paused for a moment. In an odd way, he sounded similar to Prisha—both of them so confident about their faith and how it directed their lives daily. Zehra envied them.
Forty minutes later they squealed into the parking lot before the sprawling Bureau of Criminal Apprehension forensic lab on Maryland Avenue in St. Paul. They rocked to a stop. Built in 2003, the complex boasted mostly glass walls surrounded by red brick and stood three stories tall. By going directly to the scientist who had done the testing on the mask found at the crime scene, Zehra hoped to find a sliver of something she could use in her defense.
They gathered bags and notes and walked to the entrance. Beside the double glass doors stood stone sculptures that resembled ancient Mayan art. A warm breeze blew Zehra’s hair over her face and lifted her spirits. She always got a jolt of Denzel’s peace when she was with him. She was grateful for his presence.
He checked his watch. “Chill, Z. We’ve got time.”
They were directed to wait in a large, glass-enclosed atrium that climbed two stories and was capped by a glass roof. Sun flooded around them and lit up the space. When Zehra sat, the room darkened. She looked up to see puffy, thick clouds moving across the sky. The atrium darkened to a dull gray.
Of course, every time she was in this room, Zehra stared at the sculpture on the second floor level at the end. It was titled Exquisite Corpse. Zehra had seen it before but was always amused at the sense of humor the artist had expressed. A line of about twenty large aluminum frames, looking like magnifying glasses, balanced on their handles. Inside the row of empty glasses, a long model of a human body stretched the full length. It was sliced into thin sections from foot to head as if it were awaiting scientific analysis. The slices were colorful, full of blue, green, brown, and blood red sections. Holding the slices of the body inside the round frame was a spider web of metal filaments. The most creative part, she thought, was that each slice showed the different types of testing the lab performed: molecular models of heroin, bullet holes, blunt object traumas, gas chromatography, and two DNA double-helix models.
The artwork made her feel reverent. She turned to BJ. “Does your jazz group play anywhere I can hear you?”
“Sure. The Dakota next month. I’ll let you know.” He paused to smile. “’Course, we got a slow night and the nine o’clock time slot, but hey—I’ll blow anytime I can.”
In ten minutes, Dr. Betty McWhorter approached them from across the room. Zehra and BJ rose to shake her hand. She said, “Bobby Joe, I haven’t seen you since you left the police force. So you want to see the respirator from the Ahmed murder case?”
“Yes. Thanks for taking your time,” Zehra said.
They trailed behind her to a desk in the corner, where they received temporary security badges. Through two locked doors and down a long hallway, Dr. McWhorter led them to a small room. Inside, it was empty except for a white table, three chairs, and a sealed box on the table.
“Take those seats,” McWhorter said.
Shiny metal trim surrounded the door and the edges of the table. Zehra shivered in the cool air. She asked, “What can you tell us about the testing you did on the face mask?”
Dr. McWhorter shrugged. A tall woman with bleached-blonde hair, cut short to barely cover her ears, she moved her eyes from one to the other. “As you probably know, in the biology section we conduct several types of serological examinations on evidentiary materials. That includes blood, seminal fluid, saliva, and urine, along with immunological tests and microscopic exams. For instance, hair, tissue, skin cells, blood, semen, and other bodily samples.” She lifted her chin and sniffed.
“What about the DNA testing?” Zehra said.
McWhorter turned her large body in the chair to face Zehra. “Once we obtain the samples, we perform nuclear autosomal and Y-chromosome STR DNA tests. We compare the DNA types obtained from the questioned materials with DNA types obtained from known sources. In this case, we extracted samples of the saliva from inside the respirator. There was also a small quantity of blood; probably the perp bit his lip.” She marked the date and time on the outside of the sealed box with a felt tip pen, initialed it, and finally opened the covers. “We swabbed the inside cheek of the defendant, Mr. El-Amin, for a sample. Our testing uses capillary electrophoresis to check the match. After you’ve done a few hundred of these, it’s really pretty simple. The technology does most of the work.” She sat up in the chair and nodded her head.
“Bottom line, does the saliva inside the mask match the DNA of Mr. El-Amin?” Zehra asked.
“Respirator,” McWhorter corrected her. “But you’re right. Here—you can take it out.”
Zehra reached into the box and lifted out the small object. “This isn’t a mask? Sure looks like one.”
“A layman would call it that. But this is better, more effective than a mask.”
Zehra turned it over in her hands. The white cup had “3M 8000” stamped across the top and to the side, as well as “N95.” A pliable metal strap curved inside the cotton cup, designed to cover the nose and act like a nose clip. The mask could be held in place on the face with four yellow elastic straps around the edges. It looked like a typical face mask. She handed it to Denzel.
“What would this be used for?” she asked.
“Oh, if you were doing a home project, like sanding, and wanted the best filtering protection, this is it. Maybe a hospital worker or a dentist would use one. It’s designed to fit tightly around the face and has an electronic charge in the micro fibers to enhance the filtration.”
“Wow. This is top drawer material,” BJ said.
McWhorter agreed. “This is the best you can get without using a full head mask.”
“Plus, it fits tightly around the face, so it won’t fall off when you’re killing someone violently,” BJ said. “And it covers up almost everything. Look—” He held it in front of his face without touching his skin.
Zehra agreed that it hid most of his face—perfect for a disguise. “But Denzel, you’ll have to shave your goatee before you become a serial killer.” She laughed and then turned back to the doctor. “I know this is a crazy question, but are you certain about your test results?”
McWhorter smiled and dropped her eyes for a moment. “DNA identification is the gold standard, my dear.”
“I know, but do you think the criminal justice system is relying on this testing too much? For instance, what if there’s contradictory evidence?”
McWhorter stood. “That’s not my job.” She placed the mask back into the box, closed it, and sealed it again by taping it shut. She cradled it in her arm as she moved toward the door. “When it comes to identification, in my opinion, we should rely on it—it’s foolproof.”
Chapter Thirteen