“Oh, yeah. Sure it will. DNA printing’s only gone to trial a couple of times in Virginia. There are very few precedents, very few convictions nationwide – every damn one of them still being appealed. Try explaining to a Richmond jury the guy’s guilty because of DNA. I’ll be lucky if I can find a juror who can spell DNA. Anybody’s got an IQ over forty and the defense will find a reason to exclude him, that’s what I put up with week after week . . . ”
“Bill . . .”
“Hell.” He began to pace the kitchen floor. “It’s hard enough to get a conviction if fifty people swear they saw the guy pull the trigger. The defense will drag in a herd of expert witnesses to muddy the waters and hopelessly confuse everything. You of all people know how complicated this DNA testing is.”
“Bill, I’ve explained just as difficult things to juries in the past.”
He started to say something but caught himself. Staring across the kitchen again, he took another swallow of wine.
The silence was drawn out and heavy. If the outcome of the trials depended solely on the DNA results, this placed me in the position of being a key witness for the prosecution. I’d been in such a position many times in the past and I couldn’t recall it ever unduly worrying Bill.
Something was different this time.
“What is it?”
I forced myself to ask. “Are you unsettled because of our relationship? You’re thinking someone’s going to figure it out and accuse us of being professionally in bed together-accuse me of rigging the results to suit the prosecution?”
He glanced at me, his face flushed. “I’m not thinking that at all. It’s a fact we’ve been together, but big deal? So we’ve gone out to dinner and taken in a few plays . . .”
He didn’t have to complete the sentence. Nobody knew about us. Usually he came to my house or we went to some distant place, such as Williamsburg or D.C., where it wasn’t likely we would run into anybody who would recognize us. I’d always been more worried about the public seeing us together than he seemed to be.
Or was he alluding to something else, something far more biting? We were not lovers, not completely, and this remained a subtle but uncomfortable tension between us.
I think we’d both been aware of the strong attraction, but we’d completely avoided doing anything about it until several weeks ago. After a trial that didn’t end until early evening, he casually offered to buy me a drink. We walked to a restaurant near the courthouse and two Scotches later we were heading to my house. It was that sudden. It was adolescent in its intensity, our lust as tangible as heat. The forbiddenness of it made it all the more frantic, and then quite suddenly while we were in the dark on my living room couch, I panicked.
His hunger was too much. It exploded from him, invaded instead of caressed as he pushed me down hard into the couch. It was at that moment I had a vivid image of his wife slumped against pale blue satin pillows in bed like some lovely life-size doll, the front of her white negligee stained dark red, the ninemillimeter automatic just inches from her limp right hand.
I’d gone to the suicide scene knowing only that the wife of the man running for Commonwealth’s attorney apparently had committed suicide. I did not know Bill then. I examined his wife. I literally held her heart in my hands. Those images, all of them, flashed graphically behind my eyes in my dark living room so many months later.
Physically, I withdrew from him. I’d never told him the real reason why, although in the days that followed he continued to pursue me even more vigorously. Our mutual attraction remained but a wall had gone up. I could not seem to tear it down or climb over it much as I wanted to.
I was scarcely hearing a word he was saying.
“. . . and I don’t see how you could rig DNA results unless you’re involved in a conspiracy that includes the private lab conducting the tests and half the forensic bureau, too-“