“May I sit, Mr Ocampo?”
He nodded and I pulled the chair to the bedside. Gershwin leaned against the wall.
“There have been two recent sexual assaults, sir. The assailant left his DNA, which, it seems, was mistakenly identified as yours.”
Puzzlement on the round face. “How do you have my DNA?”
“It seems you consented to have it tested two years back, sir. You were part of a university medical study, correct?”
“I remember signing several consent forms, one having to do with DNA.”
“All DNA samples can be evaluated as part of a national database, sir. Somehow yours was obviously screwed up somewhere along the line.”
He sneezed again and grabbed a wad of tissue, blowing his nose and hawking mucus into the cloth. He wadded the tissue in a fat palm, put his left hand over the right like a foul shot and tossed the wad toward a can beside his bed, a meter to my right. The shot went wide and the ball of tissue rolled to the floor. I shot a downward glance at the tissue thinking a fresh DNA reading might not be a bad thing.
“Are you all right, Mr Ocampo?” I asked.
“Allergies. It’s hay fever season.” I looked to the window, closed tight against pollen, I assumed. Ocampo’s frown morphed into a face fighting a sneeze and losing. He grabbed another wad of tissues from the box and wiped the fleshy plains of his face and cheeks. I reached out a toe and nudged the tissue closer.
“Look, Mr Ocampo, can you accept our apology? Given the DNA indication, well, we had to check you out. We had no idea you were, uh …”
“Too fat to move much farther than the toilet? It’s OK, Detective. I’m quite aware of my body mass. I’m also aware that it makes me a poor criminal.”
Ocampo’s anger was draining away as, hopefully, were headlines saying, FCLE Arrests Bedridden Man for Violent Assaults.
When Ocampo turned away to catch another wet sneeze, I reached to the floor and snapped up the wadded tissue with my fingertips, slipping it into my pocket.
“Then I think we’re set to go,” I said. “We’re truly sorry, Mr Ocampo.”
Ocampo nodded quietly. It seemed a good exit note, hoping my ass-reaming of an unconnected phone and our gestures of kinship might keep Ocampo from contacting his lawyer.
We exited the store and cut between the buildings to the alley, finding Canseco in the cruiser. “Where’s Ocampo?” Canseco said as we walked up. “He wasn’t there?”
“Yep,” Gershwin said. “He was there.”
“He’s not going to the lockup?”
“Not unless you’ve got a flatbed truck, amigo,” Gershwin said.
I put the soaked tissue in an evidence bag, then called Roy and told him we were coming in empty-handed and we’d explain when we arrived. We entered his office and I gave a thirty-second rundown.
“You’re certain it’s impossible?” Roy asked. “Absolutely?”
“I pulled away the covers to make sure it wasn’t some kind of trick.”
Roy shot a look at Gershwin for his take.
“I doubt Ocampo’s dick pokes out of his fat far enough to, uh, make the journey,” Gershwin said. “And even if he tried to sneak up on someone, they’d smell him coming.”
“Bad BO?”
“Like he was sweating onions. I figure the only way Ocampo gets a full bath is if he goes through a truck wash.”
Roy turned to me. “He sells stuff right? How’s he run the shop?”
“A clerk. Ocampo seems tied in via cameras and microphones.”
Roy paced for a few seconds, pausing to stare out his window at the glittering skyline of Miami. The sparkling Biscayne Bay was visible between buildings, bright pleasure boats cutting white swaths through the blue water. Roy clapped his hands, turned to us. “Still, lab fuck-up or not, we need a DNA rule-out sample from Ocampo. Think he’ll consent?”
“Not necessary,” I said, pulling the bag from my pocket. “The guy has allergies and was pouring from his nose and eyes. This tissue went straight from his face to my pocket.”
“You’re beautiful,” Roy said.
We headed to the lab, cursorily flashing ID at the security check-in. I’d been working with the FCLE for nine months and was known by everyone. Gershwin was known as well, especially by the young woman at the front desk, pretty and Gershwin’s age, twenty-six.
“I’ll run the sample back,” I said. “You go fill in your dance card.”
He trotted to the desk, me to the lab, a maze of offices opening to a wide expanse of tables topped with microscopes, centrifuges, computer monitors and the like. A large overhead door opened to the lot, useful when entire vehicles had to be inspected. I stopped at the day-officer’s cubbyhole and was pleased to see Deb Clayton. I tossed the bagged tissue on the desk.
“Part of the rapist case, right?” she said. “You want results in a couple hours?”
“Take your time, Deb. It’s gonna be exculpatory.” I explained the circumstances.
“This happen much?” Gershwin asked, stepping into the room. “A mix-up?”
Deb leaned her small frame against a table. “Big testing labs handle thousands of samples daily. Sometime whole batches get screwed up.”
“What if it got mixed up at the test site?” Gershwin asked. “At the university.”
“Happens less often, since protocols tend to be tighter. But it’s a possibility.”
I saw where Gershwin was going: instead of thousands of candidates for the mix-up, it might be dozens.
“Let’s head to the U,” I said.
Medically oriented studies were handled, naturally, by the medical department, a complex of buildings with related disciplines. We were directed to the Office of Experimental Research and entered a room looking more business than academe: russet carpet, peach walls hung with color-coordinated abstracts, a half-dozen chairs along the wall.
We announced ourselves to a receptionist and wandered the office, footsteps suctioned into the soft cushion of carpet. Dr Marla Roth appeared seconds later, a slim woman in her late fifties with short and graying hair and intelligent brown eyes that stared over the tops of half-circle reading glasses. When we produced badges she hid the surprise and led us down a short hall to her office, more cluttered than the entrance, three walls holding bookshelves arrayed with binders. Her voice was warm, but precise, like a friendly accountant. She directed us to sit, and I outlined the reason for our visit.
“Yes,” she said. “I was in charge of that survey. May I ask what you’re looking for?”
I gave her the Reader’s Digest version and she frowned, probably at the implication of a mistake. She went to a shelf, fingers flicking over files until pulling one and bringing it to her desk.
“Since you’re alluding to a potential mix-up in our process, I want to be exact.” She read for a minute, looked up over the glasses. “The study involved two phases. The first was purely observational, accruing data from participants ranging from moderately to morbidly obese. Eligibility criteria included repeated attempts to lose twenty per cent or more of body mass, but failing. A major percentage of those who lose that