Page 8 of The Midnight Lock (Lincoln Rhyme 14)

“I didn’t think about it.”

“Could it be that you wanted to attempt to shore up your credibility because you are not in fact very confident about the evidence presented against my client?”

“Objection.”

“Sustained.”

But of course the jurors’ memories could not be erased. They’d just heard that Rhyme was not completely playing fair.

“Mr. Rhyme, were you inside the sterile area of your lab when the analysis of this sand was going on?”

Rhyme fell silent. He looked at Thom in the back of the courtroom, his trim aide wearing today an impeccable navy-blue suit, off-white shirt and dark gray tie.

Coughlin prodded, “Mr. Rhyme?”

“Yes, I was.”

“And when you went inside, did your aide scrub the treads of those tires?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Wipes and bleach.”

“Did he use a Q-tip or similar item to dig into the treads?”

“No. He used wipes.”

“And that was for only ten minutes per wheel.”

“Objection.”

Coughlin trimmed out the “only” and asked, “And that was for ten minutes per wheel?”

“About that, yes.”

“Mr. Rhyme, you must have a lot of equipment in the lab. Chromatographs, electron microscopes, drying hoods … Typical forensic devices.”

“That’s right.”

“And they generate a fair amount of heat?”

“When they’re in operation, yes.”

“Are there fans in the lab?”

Rhyme was silent for a moment. “Yes.”

“And a fan could, in theory, blow trace evidence around. So that foreign matter brought inside the lab could contaminate a soil sample?”

“Objection.”

The judge: “He’s an expert witness. I’ll allow the hypothetical. Mr. Rhyme, please answer.”

“In theory.”

“Mr. Rhyme, the evidence report states that your laboratory analyzed the soil samples from the murder scene and from my client’s property on April twentieth. Is that correct?”

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