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common standards and protocols, any reputable crime lab in the country would have done it. And I’ll tell you something else. Another case almost exactly like this happened three years ago. Again with a semen stain, and Kirmani saying the cloth was clean. By the time anybody figured out what had happened, a plea had already been cut and signed.”
    I was still with the DA’s office three years ago, at least for a few months. With guilty relief I thank my stars that I was probably gone by the time this happened, or at least never heard about it. “Okay. Did you confront Dr. Kirmani?”
    Vargas looked at the ground. “Not then, no.”
    “Why not?”
    “Dr. Kirmani doesn’t respond well to having his decisions questioned,” Vargas said. “Especially by underlings. Kirmani has a Ph.D. in biology, but not molecular chemistry. He’s twenty years older than me, but I have more forensic experience than he did when he took that job. So do half the other techs.”
    “So what did you do?” I asked, though I suspected I knew the answer already.
    Vargas shrugged. “I waited till that bastard was gone, then did the chemical test myself.”
    “And?”
    “Positive for semen. And I had a colleague observe all this, to preserve the chain of evidence.”
    “Did you get a DNA match with Conley?” I asked, though I didn’t think I wanted to hear the answer.
    “Only basic serology, so far,” he said. “But everything matches for the defendant on that level. I should have the DNA finished tomorrow morning. But I’m telling you, Mr. Cage, Wes Conley is the guy. He raped that girl.”
    “You don’t know that yet.”
    “Yes, I do,” he said. “I know.”
    “How?”
    “The same way you knew things when you were a prosecutor. Sometimes, you just get an intuition. No, more than that—a certainty. Like you know before you know—before the facts back it up. Like knowing the basketball is going in the hoop the second it leaves your hands.”
    Like knowing the X-ray is going to come back with a death sentence, I thought. “All right. What did you do next?”
    “I got up my nerve and asked Dr. Kirmani about it. Shouldn’t he have done a chemical test?”
    “And?”
    “The question caught him off guard, so he did his patronizing-uncle routine. Assured me everything was fine. No sign whatsoever of semen on the carpet. Chemical test unnecessary.”
    “Did you tell him you’d done the chemical test yourself?”
    Vargas lit another cigarette and nodded.
    “And?”
    “He blew up. I mean, he went totally ballistic. Threatened to fire me on the spot. He told me my test had to be wrong, because he’d already proved there was no semen on the carpet. He accused me of being drunk on the job, and drunk right then.”
    I gave Felix a hard look. “Were you?”
    He looked away. “I’d had a couple of beers. I was scared to death, man. He was threatening my whole career!”
    At this point I was wondering what the hell I’d taken on by even hearing Vargas’s story. “Did you go over his head, talk to the director of the crime lab?”
    Vargas shook his head. “No point. Those two guys hate each other, but Kirmani has the director cowed because of his Ph.D. Besides, the director doesn’t want anyone poking their nose into his quality control. Because it’s a fucking mess down there.”
    “Christ. Did you talk to Mitch Gaines?”
    “I thought about it. But in the end, I didn’t.” Felix shook his head helplessly. “You know that guy.”
    I nodded. I didn’t blame him for not going to Gaines.
    “I did talk to a cop I trusted,” he said warily, “a junior detective. I told him what had happened. He told me to let it go. He said nobody wanted to know if the crime lab had problems. That would screw up too much for too many people, and there was no money to fix them anyway. He also said Mitch Gaines would be the last guy to do anything to help me.”
    I wasn’t so sure of this.
    “So that’s when I thought of you.” Vargas