My phone buzzes. Luke’s prosecutor, Bruce Ghadiali. I answer on the second ring.
“Hi, Allison,” he says. “The test results came back.”
I walk out into the hallway. The DNA and print results on the contraband! Took them long enough. But the college baseball season is only just beginning. The timing isn’t terrible. Luke could be reinstated as coach within a week if I can convince Bruce to drop the charges.
“Wanna stop by in person?” he suggests. “Worth a face-to-face.”
Sure it is, from his perspective. He’ll want to find a way that we can quietly dismiss these charges without his office looking bad in the media. I’d probably do the same in his shoes.
“I can come over right now,” I tell him.
I reach Bruce Ghadiali’s office at 26th and California within the hour. He’s expecting me and extends his hand. He’s one of the principal supervisors in the felony trial division. As a former prosecutor myself, I know a sup’s life—answering questions constantly, putting out fires, juggling multiple issues and cases at once, and pining for the days when your only job was to try cases and put away bad guys. Sometimes promotions don’t feel like promotions.
He is in a blue shirt with a navy tie pulled down. His office is standard-issue government, small and square, a cheap wraparound desk, banker’s boxes piled everywhere. The only thing out of place is a Nespresso coffee machine resting atop a file cabinet.
“I wanted to meet first as a courtesy,” he says. “By the way, while you’re here, here are photographs of the inventory from the car. If you want to do a physical inspection, that’s fine—”
“I don’t think that will be necessary.” Not after the test results, it won’t. But I take the folder and stuff it in my bag.
“So we ran DNA and prints on everything in the bag that contained the drugs and, for that matter, everything in the space beneath the trunk.”
“And…Luke’s prints aren’t on a single thing, right? Not the bag. Not the drugs. Not the tube of lipstick. Nothing at all.”
“That’s right,” he concedes. “You were right.”
“Any hits at all on the database?”
He lets out a large sigh. “One match,” he says. “A match for both DNA and fingerprints. On both the bag and on the lipstick.”
I sit back and suppress a smile. “Anyone I know?”
He thinks about that a moment. “You could say that,” he says, angling his head.
I open my hands. “Don’t keep me in suspense, Bruce. Who’s the lucky person?”
He purses his lips. Leans back in his chair, eyebrows raised.
Every story needs a villain. And in Luke’s case, the villain is…
“You,” says Bruce. “The DNA and prints were a match for you, Allison.”
30
Allison
“That can’t…I mean obviously that can’t be…” Nerves close my throat, the wind knocked from me, still convinced that I must have heard him wrong.
“Every federal employee is fingerprinted,” says Bruce Ghadiali. “And you were part of the voluntary DNA submission program. I checked.”
But this can’t be right because there is no chance my fingers touched that tube of Trinity’s lipstick I took from Luke’s condo. I wore gloves the whole time. I’m not an idiot. And I sure as shit didn’t apply that lipstick to my lips.
Same with theTrinityshopping bag I dug out of Luke’s recycling bin. There isno waymy fingerprints or DNA could be on it. None.
I look up at Bruce. “You can’t think thatIhad anything to do with this.”
“I was surprised to see these results,” he says. “I called you here as a courtesy, Allison, so you’d agree to withdraw as counsel. If you don’t, I’ll have to move to disqualify you.”
“That’s…absurd,” I manage, my voice weak.
