pair of light green hospital scrub pants Madden had found tucked in the back of a drawer in Kristen’s bureau. Cogan had given Kristen the scrubs to sleep in that night, and she’d worn them home. The semen’s DNA matched Cogan’s.
In recent days, however, after Madden suggested that, upon further reflection, “The stains seem a little high in the crotch area, closer to the fly,” Crowley’s buoyancy has eroded a bit. Because of how minute both the semen and the girl’s DNA sample (from a urine specimen), the defense will likely get an expert witness to testify that the discharge could simply have been “leakage” from the defendant and very well could have been present prior to that evening.
Crowley also doesn’t love that he has a witness who’s admitted to drinking alcohol that night. Though she didn’t drink much, the defense would assuredly argue her memory was compromised. All these “intangibles,” as he refers to anything open to interpretation, are contributing to Crowley’s plaintiveness this afternoon. He stares down at the table, running a finger over the deep groove of the letter N, which someone named Nick B. has carved into the table.
“Kristen was pretty, right?” he finally asks. “But nothing remarkable?”
Madden would prefer not to discuss her looks, but he doesn’t like the throwaway tone of Crowley’s remark. He’s underestimating her.
“I’m not sure about that,” he ventures.
“Not sure about what?”
“That she was so unremarkable.”
“Fair enough,” Crowley says. “But is she the type of girl a jury will take one look at and say, yeah, we understand why this guy took the risk he did? We understand his temptation?”
Madden pictures a juror sitting in the jurors’ box, studying her photos and the video clips the DA’s office would carefully produce. First, he’s a male juror in the second row, then a female in the front row, center. Then he pictures himself in the box.
“One look, maybe not,” he answers. “But eventually, yeah.” He pauses a moment, then permits himself to add: “There’s something very alluring about her. It’s subtle. Do you remember that girl in your school who was pretty but hadn’t been corrupted by popularity yet?”
Crowley smiles. “We called them catch-them-while-you-cans.”
The comment is punctuated by a loud gurgling sound—Pastorini, sucking hard on a straw, is trying to bring up the last vestiges of Diet Coke from a bed of ice in a pint glass. Crowley shoots him a glance, cutting the quest short, but the dissonance is enough to throw him from his train of thought.
“What was I saying?” he asks.
“Catch them while you can,” Pastorini parrots back, eager to redeem himself.
“Cans. Plural. I can live with that. But get me an ex-girlfriend, a one-night stand, his ex-wife—I don’t care—to confirm what the girl said in that diary about the man’s sexual proclivity.”
“We’re working on it,” Pastorini assures him.
“I need it, boys.”
“And Ms. Dupuy?” Madden asks, curious to know what lengths Crowley is willing to go to win.
“Ah yes, Ms. Dupuy. Our very hands-on defense attorney.”
“Technically, she’s on the list.”
“I know,” Crowley says. “How long did they date?”
“About five months. Going back a couple of years ago.”
The DA shakes his head. Madden reads like he’s talking about a promising pupil who’s inexplicably fallen in with the wrong crowd and he’s not quite sure what to do about it.
“Well, let’s see how she behaves.”
“You ever encounter something like this?” Pastorini asks.
“Like what?”
“Like an ex-girlfriend defending a guy in a rape case.”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Us neither. We were discussing it the other day, Hank and I. If you were him, would you have her defend you?”
Crowley thinks about it.
“You’re asking the wrong question, Pete. The question is, would I have taken the case if I were her?”
“Well, both ways, I guess.”
“She’s a good lawyer,” he says, as if that should explain not only her but also Cogan’s choice. “I bet she’s out there right now doing her best to dismantle all Hank’s fine work.”
“She’s over at the university, conducting interviews,” confirms Madden while contemplating the sturdiness—and trustworthiness— of his structure of the case. It’s a building designed to look good from the outside, he thinks. Will anybody notice that the foundation’s shoddy, the materials second-rate?
“We got a good head start,” Crowley continues, “but the gap is going to quickly close. Perkins isn’t going to give them everything, but she’s going to give them something.”
Joyce Perkins is the judge, and while she’s generally a moderate with a slight liberal bent, she’s been less protective of defendants’ rights in rape cases. She’s