Ellen Kassabian, chief of Forensic, Energy, was a large woman with the slow, measured speech that juries found authoritative but which, Leisha knew, could conceal a stubborn inflexibility. Hossack questioned her closely about the scooter.
“What specifically was the nature of the tampering?”
“The shield was set to fail at the first impact at a speed above fifteen miles per hour.”
“Is that an easy tampering to create?”
“No. A device was attached to the Y-cone to bring the failure about.” She described the device, quickly becoming incomprehensibly technical. Nevertheless, the jury listened intently.
“Have you ever seen such a device before?”
“No. To my knowledge, it’s a new invention.”
“Then how do you know it does what you tell us it does?”
“We tested it extensively.”
“Could you now, as a result of your testing, duplicate the device?”
“No. Oh, I’m sure someone could. But it’s complicated. We had Defense Department specialists look at it—”
“We’ll be calling them as witnesses.”
“—and they said,” Kassabian continued, undeflectable, “that it involved new technology.”
“So a very sophisticated—even unusual—intelligence would be needed to engineer this tampering?”
“Objection,” Sandaleros said. “Witness is being asked for her opinion.”
Hossack said, “Her professional opinion is well within the ground established by her credentials.”
“I’ll allow it,” the judge said.
Hossack repeated his question. “So a very sophisticated—even unusual—intelligence would be necessary to do this tampering?”
“Yes,” Kassabian said.
“An extremely unusual person, or group of persons.”
“Yes.”
Hossack let that hang in the air while he examined his notes. Leisha watched how the jurors’ eyes searched the courtroom for the Sleepless, an intelligent and unusual group of persons.
Hossack said, “Now let’s consider the third retina print registered on the scanner the morning Dr. Herlinger died. How can you be so sure it was that of an adult Sleepless female?”
“Retina prints are scans of tissue. Like all tissue, it breaks down with age. There’s what we call ‘blurring,’ places where cells are broken and haven’t regenerated—it’s nerve tissue, remember—or are malformed. Sleepless tissue doesn’t do that. It regenerates, somehow—” Leisha heard the ambivalence on ‘somehow,’ the bitter wistfulness she had first heard twenty-one years ago from Susan Melling “—and the retina scans are very distinctive. Sharp. No blurring. The older the subject, the more surely we can identify a Sleepless print. With young children, it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference, even for the computer. But this was an adult female Sleepless.”
“I see. And it matches with no known Sleepless?”
“No. The print isn’t on file.”
“Clarify something for the court, Ms. Kassabian. When the defendant, Jennifer Sharifi, was arrested, her retina print was taken?”
“Yes.”
“And does it match with the scan on Dr. Herlinger’s scooter?”
“It does not.”
“There is no way Ms. Sharifi tampered with that scooter herself.”
“No,” Kassabian said, thereby allowing the prosecution to make this point before the defense could put it to more dramatic use.
“Does the print match that of Leisha Camden, who had been in the same building with Dr. Herlinger just before his death?”
“No.”
All eyes turned towards Leisha.
“But it was a Sleepless who bent close to that scanner—the last person to do so—sometime between the time Herlinger left home that morning and the time he died at 9:32 A.M. A Sleepless who therefore tampered with the scooter.”
“Objection,” Sandaleros called. “An inference on the part of the witness!”
“Withdrawn,” Hossack said. He was silent a moment, again drawing all eyes to him by the profound, taut quality of his stillness. Then he repeated slowly, “A Sleepless print. A Sleepless.” And only then, “Nothing further.”
Sandaleros was savage about the retina print. Gone was the bewildered modesty of his opening statement. “Ms. Kassabian, how many retina prints of Sleepless are stored in the law-enforcement net of the United States?”
“One hundred thirty-three.”
“Only 133? Out of a Sleepless population of over 20,000?”
“That’s correct,” Kassabian said, and from the small shift of her weight on the witness chair Leisha saw, for the first time, that Ellen Kassabian disliked Sleepless.
“That seems a very small number,” Sandaleros marveled. “Tell me, under what circumstances does a person’s retina print enter the law-enforcement file?”
“When he’s booked for arrest.”
“That’s the only way?”
“Or if he’s part of the law-enforcement system itself. Police personnel, judges, prison guards. Like that.”
“Attorneys, too?”
“Yes.”
“So that is how, say, Leisha Camden’s print was available for you to check.”
“Yes.”
“Ms. Kassabian, what percentage of those 133 retina prints from Sleepless belong to law-net personnel?”
Kassabian clearly didn’t like answering this. “Eighty percent.”
“Eighty? You mean, only 20 percent of 133 Sleepless—27 people—have been arrested in the nine years that retina-print records have been kept?”
“Yes,” Kassabian said, too neutrally.
“Do you know what those arrests were for?”
“Three disorderly conduct, two petty larceny, twenty-two public disturbance.”
“It would appear,” Sandaleros said dryly, “that Sleepless are a pretty law-abiding lot, Ms. Kassabian.”
“Yes.”
“In fact, it would appear from the retina records that the most usual Sleepless crime is simply existing, thereby constituting a public disturbance.”
“Objection,” called Hossack.
“Sustained. Mr. Sandaleros, do you have any additional questions pertinent to Ms. Kassabian’s actual testimony?”
And yet, thought Leisha, Deepford had allowed the introduction of the retina statistics, clearly not in proof order and only marginally relevant.
“I do,” Sandaleros snapped. His whole demeanor changed; he seemed suddenly taller, subtly fiercer. As he had with the jury, he moved slightly closer to the forensic expert. “Ms. Kassabian, can a retina scanner be loaded with a retina print by a third party?”
“No. No more than a third party could, for instance, leave your fingerprint on a gun if you were not there.”
“But a third party could substitute a gun with my fingerprints for one with somebody else’s. Could a scanner with prerecorded retina prints be substituted for an existing scanner, without detection, if the person doing the substitution kept his face well away from the scanner as he did so?”
“Well…it would be very difficult. Scanners are protected by security measures that—”
“Would it be possible?”
Kassabian said reluctantly, “Only by someone with immense engineering knowledge and experience, an unusual person—”
“May it please the Court,” Sandaleros said crisply, “I would like to have replayed that portion of the record in which Ms. Kassabian discussed the qualifications of the person we know tampered with the scooter-deflection field.”