Red Rock Island (Damian Green Book 1) Read Free Page A

there was any way he could speed it up or otherwise automate it. Perhaps if he could develop a process that would make the DNA testing say, seventy percent correct, than he could move forward and submit fewer samples for the more refined DNA test. He visited a few websites and read about the process. While he thought he could shave perhaps 10-20% of the time off of processing, he really could see how a specimen needed to be as carefully analyzed as it was. One website he visited, suggested fifty-four hours from receipt of some item of clothing or sample containing DNA to its resolution. The trouble with handling and analyzing DNA was it was so easy to contaminate because there was DNA everywhere.
     
    ‘Okay’ he thought; he wasn’t going to come up with some genius solution to DNA testing today.
     
    He then did a search on some recently solved cold cases to see what they had in common, and it was back to DNA. From an engineering point of view, DNA testing was the crimp in the pipeline of an otherwise smooth flow of evidence. He was back to the theory of how to speed up the DNA analysis and it wasn’t just the two hundred plus cases of the SJPD, it was the nationwide processing of DNA specimens. Perhaps some of the crimes under the jurisdiction of SJPD were committed by someone whose DNA was collected in Arkansas. The whole matching of DNA to potential cold cases would only move as fast as the state crime labs were at processing samples currently within their possession. He needed an analyzer that wasn't invented yet; that would be much quicker at processing DNA. Okay he’d leave that for another day as he put the concept on the to-do list.
     
    Maybe he would do a computer run and collect any name of a person interviewed during one of those cold cases who had since interacted with the criminal justice system. It might be coincidence and it might have an impact on a cold case. It was a starting point and so he wrote the program to do the analysis.
     
    Then he couldn’t resist so he took high powered binoculars and rushed outside to see if he could catch a glimpse of the floating wreaths. Each anniversary he promised himself he wouldn’t go looking for the wreaths and each year he did. It was as though by seeing them floating, it meant his family wasn’t gone for the briefest of moments. Of course they were gone, but as long as he could see the wreaths in the distance, it was like they were waving to his soul. He searched for maybe fifteen minutes and then gave up; there was no sign of them. He knew the flowers would eventually sink as there was no Styrofoam in the wreath or anything else that would harm the bay or it inhabitants. There was an incoming rainstorm creating higher waves, which usually caused the wreaths to sink quicker. He knew because he had conducted experiments about the sinking of wreaths in his lab. He sighed and said another prayer for his departed family and turned to go back inside, wondering what his family would have thought of his little ceremony and his life since their deaths.
     
    His phone dinged with an email and he saw it had arrived from Trevor, Natalie’s son. He’d met the boy at the funeral of his family. Natalie had seen something in Damian that matched something in Trevor. They were both probably geniuses, but Trevor was just starting out as an assistant district attorney. He had sailed through law school at Berkeley and passed the California Bar having missed just one question, a record among test takers. The death of Damian’s family influenced Trevor to put the bad guys behind bars.
     
    Trevor was more outgoing than Damian, but then he hadn’t lost his family. The two men occasionally took in a Giants baseball game or a Warriors basketball game. There they would argue statistics of the various players. Despite his affection for the other man, Damian had never invited him to his home, nor had he been to Trevor’s condo in San Jose. Trevor loved to hear about Damian’s