He smacks his lips. “Can you tell the difference between human blood and dog blood without a microscope?”
“Yes,” Kempter rolls her eyes and the distain in her voice overflows with sarcasm “that’s one of the many powers I have as a science teacher.”
Their banter goes back and forth as I study the jury. They don’t nod or frown. If anything they look tired. I search their faces for hope, belief, disbelief, anything. All I see is exhaustion.
“The sample he brought was high in white blood cell count,” she emphasizes the word sample. “Other than that, I saw no indicators common in an infection. Lots of white blood cells can be a sign that someone is sick, though. It can be a sign of leukemia. It can also mean nothing. What did surprise me, though, about the sample, was that it wasn’t coagulated. The cells were healthy, moving around.”
Gomes gauges her believability and upstages her. That’s how Mike describes it. He paces away from the jury and once again turns toward them, giving them more face-time. “And you didn’t call the police. Are living blood cells not an indicator that the blood is fresh? Did you not think the blood must have been put on the shirt recently?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it had been four days.”
“And how do you know it had been four days?”
Kempter looks at me again… the fear present, but less apparent. “Jacob brought the shirt to me on a Friday afternoon. I threw it in my desk. It was Labor Day weekend. My class is Monday, Wednesday and Friday. When I looked at the shirt it was Wednesday morning. It had been four days.”
“And the blood looked fresh?”
“It was fresh,” she says. “The cells were alive and well. Aside from a high white count, they seemed preserved… but they had been on a dirty T-shirt in a drawer in my desk. The stain should have been dried out. It wasn’t. So I tested it.”
Gomes nods, playing along. “How did you test it?”
“Looking at it, you wouldn’t think there was much special about it,” Kempter nods at me, “except for its behavior. I figured if there was an invisible infection, maybe I could give it to mice.”
“And was there?” Gomes asks, “An… invisible infection?”
“Well, the first mouse showed no immediate affects,” she explains, turning toward the jury. “I had been running maze experiments with my grad students to test the ability of mice to develop memory. I tested the exposed mouse with the mazes, and the results were typical of most mice. Nothing exceptional. Over the course of a few weeks the mouse was able to learn the maze and completed the maze in faster and faster times. At that point I determined that there was nothing special about the individual mouse and I returned him to the rest of my mice population. That’s when I noticed something peculiar.”
“And that is?”
“The mouse was aggressive,” Kempter furrows her brow as she wipes away sweat on her upper lip. “Just at first. But it clearly bit another mouse. I thought nothing of the event at first. However, to be careful I placed the exposed mouse and the mouse he bit into solitary confinement. The bitten mouse had never been through testing. We were saving it as the control variable. However, when introduced to the maze for the first time, it ran it as if it had already learned the maze. As you can imagine, this compromised our entire dataset. It simply did not make sense for this mouse to know the maze.”
“A coincidence…”
“Objection, your honor!” Mike’s voice cracks as he shouts inches from my ear. “Leading.”
Judge Brentt sustains before Gomes reframes his line of questioning. “Could this have been a coincidence, Dr. Kempter?” the DA continues. “Luck. Not a very large sample size to draw any conclusions from” Gomes implies.
“I thought the same… At first… On a hunch I introduced a third mouse. Also a control variable. This one bitten by the second mouse. It ran the maze even
“Yes,” Kempter rolls her eyes and the distain in her voice overflows with sarcasm “that’s one of the many powers I have as a science teacher.”
Their banter goes back and forth as I study the jury. They don’t nod or frown. If anything they look tired. I search their faces for hope, belief, disbelief, anything. All I see is exhaustion.
“The sample he brought was high in white blood cell count,” she emphasizes the word sample. “Other than that, I saw no indicators common in an infection. Lots of white blood cells can be a sign that someone is sick, though. It can be a sign of leukemia. It can also mean nothing. What did surprise me, though, about the sample, was that it wasn’t coagulated. The cells were healthy, moving around.”
Gomes gauges her believability and upstages her. That’s how Mike describes it. He paces away from the jury and once again turns toward them, giving them more face-time. “And you didn’t call the police. Are living blood cells not an indicator that the blood is fresh? Did you not think the blood must have been put on the shirt recently?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it had been four days.”
“And how do you know it had been four days?”
Kempter looks at me again… the fear present, but less apparent. “Jacob brought the shirt to me on a Friday afternoon. I threw it in my desk. It was Labor Day weekend. My class is Monday, Wednesday and Friday. When I looked at the shirt it was Wednesday morning. It had been four days.”
“And the blood looked fresh?”
“It was fresh,” she says. “The cells were alive and well. Aside from a high white count, they seemed preserved… but they had been on a dirty T-shirt in a drawer in my desk. The stain should have been dried out. It wasn’t. So I tested it.”
Gomes nods, playing along. “How did you test it?”
“Looking at it, you wouldn’t think there was much special about it,” Kempter nods at me, “except for its behavior. I figured if there was an invisible infection, maybe I could give it to mice.”
“And was there?” Gomes asks, “An… invisible infection?”
“Well, the first mouse showed no immediate affects,” she explains, turning toward the jury. “I had been running maze experiments with my grad students to test the ability of mice to develop memory. I tested the exposed mouse with the mazes, and the results were typical of most mice. Nothing exceptional. Over the course of a few weeks the mouse was able to learn the maze and completed the maze in faster and faster times. At that point I determined that there was nothing special about the individual mouse and I returned him to the rest of my mice population. That’s when I noticed something peculiar.”
“And that is?”
“The mouse was aggressive,” Kempter furrows her brow as she wipes away sweat on her upper lip. “Just at first. But it clearly bit another mouse. I thought nothing of the event at first. However, to be careful I placed the exposed mouse and the mouse he bit into solitary confinement. The bitten mouse had never been through testing. We were saving it as the control variable. However, when introduced to the maze for the first time, it ran it as if it had already learned the maze. As you can imagine, this compromised our entire dataset. It simply did not make sense for this mouse to know the maze.”
“A coincidence…”
“Objection, your honor!” Mike’s voice cracks as he shouts inches from my ear. “Leading.”
Judge Brentt sustains before Gomes reframes his line of questioning. “Could this have been a coincidence, Dr. Kempter?” the DA continues. “Luck. Not a very large sample size to draw any conclusions from” Gomes implies.
“I thought the same… At first… On a hunch I introduced a third mouse. Also a control variable. This one bitten by the second mouse. It ran the maze even
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