She had spent twenty-five years on the other side of rooms exactly like this one. What she did not know was how close this case had already come to her once before. In 2005 a cold-case analyst named Jennifer Francis went looking for that old bite-mark swab and found it missing. She eventually tracked it to a coroner’s freezer, still usable after nearly twenty years. Even then, colleagues did not think it was reason enough to reopen the file. It took four more years before a different set of detectives refused to accept that same answer. Four years between a usable swab in a freezer and a woman sitting in a chair being told she could leave. The case had been one decision away from her for a long time. The decision had simply not been made.
This was the reframe that kept her in the chair, and it is worth naming because it did exactly what it was designed to do. The burglary thing they were talking about, that was an angle that had been looked at. She knew. But now they were looking at everything else in the case, because nobody was ever arrested. She did not know that or not. What they would like to do, obviously she knew about all the DNA stuff that gets done on cases nowadays. If they asked her for a DNA swab, would she be willing to give them one?
Maybe. Because now she was thinking she probably needed to talk to a lawyer.
She knew how this stuff worked. Don’t get her wrong, they were right, she had been doing this a long time. She wished she had been recording this, because now it sounded like they were selling these people saying she was fighting with her, and now it sounded like they were trying to pin something on her. She had been doing this a long time. And now it almost sounds like you’re trying to pin something on me. Now she got that sense.
On these cases, and she knew it as well as they did, the job was to identify and eliminate suspects. She could not believe this. So if they asked her to give them a DNA sample, a buccal swab, so they could identify or eliminate her, would she be willing to do that? Maybe. Because she knew. That was where they were at too. Right now, from looking at the evidence, it was possible they might have some DNA at the location. That was great. They were going to do what they could to try to put this thing together. And her name was in the book. These people were pointing at her for a reason. She did not know why. That was just crazy. That was absolutely crazy.
The detectives had already done the thing they were pretending to ask permission for. Weeks earlier, a surveillance team followed her and waited for her to throw something away. A cup. A straw. They ran it for DNA without her ever knowing. It came back a match to the bite mark on Sherri’s left forearm, and to skin cells recovered from underneath her broken fingernails. The swab they were asking for now was not evidence. It was a formality for a case that had already been solved in every way except the one that mattered to her in that room. She was being asked to volunteer the thing they already had. The ask was a test of whether she understood the room. She understood it late.
The conversation appeared to end normally. The kind of exit that looks exactly like every other courtesy interview she had probably sat in on herself. She guessed she was going to have to contact somebody. That was fair. Because she knew how this stuff worked. She just could not believe it. They understood. If they were in her position, they would feel the same way. She just could not even believe it. She was shocked. She was really shocked. That somebody would be saying that she did this. They had a fight, and so she went and killed her. Come on. Thanks for giving her the courtesy. She wished they could have recorded it. Thanks for her time. All right, Stephanie. Take care.