First Evidence

From Barnes & Noble

A Conversation with Ken Goddard

What happens when a detective with an incredible knack for collecting evidence comes up empty at a blood-splattered backwoods cabin? In FIRST EVIDENCE, the chilling latest from forensic scientist Ken Goddard, that's the position Detective-Sergeant Colin Cellars is in when four state patrolmen go missing and a longtime friend may or may not be dead. This fascinating look at the systematic dissection of a crime scene, along with the paranormal, "X-Files"-like plot, will have any reader jumping at shadows. We recently had an opportunity to talk with Goddard about his new novel, his thoughts about visitors from outer space, and the way to effectively work a crime scene. Enjoy!

barnesandnoble.com: Good day, Mr. Goddard. So, how is Oregon this time of year [June]? Does it rain as much in the Beaver State as portrayed in FIRST EVIDENCE?

Ken Goddard: This is a beautiful time of year in southern Oregon: blue sky, light breeze, mild temperatures, long days...and even better, the mud's dry! I suppose I could have given my fictional crime-scene-investigating hero, Detective-Sergeant Colin Cellars, the benefit of such nice weather, but what fun would that be? After all, he's supposed to be persevering in the face of disappearing victims and implausible evidence, all the while up to his posterior in mud, rain, lightning storms, and seemingly lethal shadows.

bn.com: Tell us about FIRST EVIDENCE. Set it up plotwise for the benefit of those who have yet to discover it.

KG: FIRST EVIDENCE is based upon one simple question: What would a highly regarded, extremely persistent, and thoroughly professional crime-scene investigator do if he suddenly discovered -- while working a strangely confused homicide scene with dark and ominous overtones -- evidence strongly suggesting the suspect might not be of this world? Would he believe his own eyes, or his carefully documented and collected evidence? What would he do when, in a darkened evidence room, tired and alone at 2am, one of his packaged evidence items suddenly begins to move?

Would he tell anyone?

And, more to the point, would he find himself in deep trouble?

The answer to that last question is a very definite yes.

But I don't believe in letting my characters off easy. So, just to make things a bit more interesting, I've given Cellars a distracting emotional conflict in the form of three treasured childhood friends: Bobby Dawson, Malcolm Byzor, and Jody Catlin. The conflict starts out in the common triangular form: Cellars has been in love with Jody Catlin since high school, but she and Bobby Dawson fell into a brief affair that split up the foursome, and it's been fifteen years since Cellars, Catlin, and Dawson have seen each other. But then I add a slight twist.

As FIRST EVIDENCE begins, on a dark and stormy southern Oregon evening, Jody Catlin is working hard to bring the foursome back together again. And Colin Cellars has reluctantly agreed to meet Bobby Dawson at an evening lecture (having no idea that Dawson has set him up as the scheduled lecturer, or that the topic is "how to collect evidence of extraterrestrial contact"). But Dawson never shows, and Cellars is partway through a good-humored attempt to teach evidence collection techniques to an auditorium full of fervent believers when he is suddenly called away to a homicide crime scene at a remote mountain cabin. There he discovers two clearly unnerved police officers who want to get away from this particular crime scene as soon as they can, a savagely killed dog, and a body that may or may not be his friend Bobby Dawson. Then the shadows start to appear....

bn.com: What drove your interest in the paranormal? Are you a fan of "The X-Files"?

KG: I am very definitely a fan of "The X-Files," but my interest in the paranormal with respect to FIRST EVIDENCE came from being a guest on the Art Bell radio talk show a couple of years ago, during which time I was asked to instruct his many listeners on the methods of collecting and preserving physical evidence. Why would they need to know this, you might ask (as I most certainly did)? Well, as I quickly discovered, many of Art's listeners claim to have experienced paranormal events, or to have had contact with extraterrestrial visitors, but not everyone takes their claims seriously. Thus their desire to learn how to collect supporting evidence.

Much like my fictional crime-scene investigator, Colin Cellars, I was perfectly willing to discuss proper evidence-collection techniques with Art's listeners. But I imagine a lot of them were disappointed when I brought up a very relevant and critical issue: namely, that no crime lab will accept evidence collected by advocates. The reason: Advocates are commonly viewed as believing in an issue so strongly that they could easily be tempted to manufacture or alter the evidence to fit their story.

What they really needed, I went on to explain, was a professional crime-scene investigator -- someone like myself -- who didn't really care if extraterrestrial beings were skulking around on our planet. Well, to be perfectly honest, I'm sure I would care, especially if I was working the crime scene in question. In any event, my comments generated a lot of interesting calls from Art's listeners, and the resulting discussion went on until 3:30 in the morning.

So picture, if you will, a blurry-eyed forensic scientist/fiction author sitting in his darkened living room at approximately 3:35 in the morning (his dear and thoroughly amused wife having long since gone to bed), asking himself, "Okay, what would I do if I found something at a crime scene that I couldn't explain with our analytical procedures and expensive scientific instruments?"

The answer, 15 months later, was FIRST EVIDENCE, which started out tongue-in-cheek, but ended up, I think, being one of the more chilling stories I've written to date.

bn.com: As a forensic scientist, you deal with tangibles -- cold, hard facts. In FIRST EVIDENCE, however, Cellars must deal with things that are unlike any that he, or anyone else for that matter, has ever seen before. Would you have dealt with the situation any differently?

KG: The techniques of crime-scene investigation are based on the premise that it is virtually impossible for a suspect, victim, and crime scene to come together without the exchange or transfer of trace evidence. The trick is to isolate that evidence from all of the like materials that were a part of the crime-scene area prior to the interaction of suspect and victim. To do this, you have to trust your evidence -- and your associates. To his dismay, Colin Cellars progressively discovers that he can't trust either of those normally reliable resources, and thus he must rely on his intuition and his persistence in the face of his growing fear of the unknown, to do his job, and to stay alive.

Would I have dealt with the situation in a different manner? I'd like to think that the answer is no. But, in truth, like anyone else, I suppose I'd have to confront the situation -- and the accompanying fears and confusion -- in real life to really find out.

Would I want to be in a position to do so some day? Oh yes, definitely!

bn.com: Do characteristics of yourself show through in Cellars? Also, how are the two of you different?

KG: I probably should explain that I had a very serious crush on a real-life Jody Catlin in high school, and I have a law enforcement buddy named Bobby Dawson who is very much like his fictional counterpart in FIRST EVIDENCE, so I'm probably exposing a lot more of my tattered psyche than is really necessary...or smart, for that matter. But my dear wife, the real Jody Catlin, and the real wife of Bob Dawson, all seem to think this is quite amusing, and I didn't need to consult a shrink to claw my way to the ending of the story, so I suppose it all worked out just fine.

However, to answer your question a little more directly, yes, an awful lot of my mental quirks probably did find their way into Colin Cellars. But I'm really not that insolent with my bosses (who, I might note, are perfectly capable of sending me on a one-way trip to a thoroughly scary or uncomfortable part of the world), and I also added the thick-headed persistence of a stalwart Scottish Police Superintendent buddy of mine to the mix, which, I suppose, gives me a little bit of an out. But, in any case, I enjoyed writing Colin Cellars's scenes and dialogue, and found it quite easy to "step into his skin."

bn.com: During your career you served as a deputy sheriff, a police forensic scientist, and crime-lab director. What sparked your interest in writing thrillers in the first place? Do you also enjoy reading thrillers? If so, who are some of your favorite writers?

KG: I used to write "frog and the princess" stories for my younger sister, in which the frog always suffered (much like the ever-maligned Coyote versus the Roadrunner cartoons). And I continued the practice with my girlfriend/wife, and our daughter, so, in that sense, I had a lot of early practice in giving my fictional heroes a bad time. And I've always enjoyed reading thrillers, so it seemed quite natural to think, one day, that I could write one too.

Writing a publishable novel wasn't quite that easy, of course. For those of you who have tried, you know how hard it is to face that computer screen, especially when you've got the equivalent of a 150,000-word term paper due in a few months. And it actually took the comment of the chief of the Huntington Beach Police Department (that "one professional terrorist could take all 220 of us on and win") to really get me inspired, which resulted in my first novel, BALEFIRE.

A list of my favorite authors would certainly include Elmore Leonard, Thomas Perry, and Thomas Harris. After all, who among us thriller writers isn't envious of Harris's Hannibal Lechter character. On those days when I really don't feel like writing, I can always regain the inspiration by spending a few minutes (or, more likely, a couple of hours) with a well-worn copy of one of my favorite humorous thriller novels: Thomas Perry's METZGER'S DOG.

bn.com: What is your general impression of the way forensic scientists are portrayed in novels and film?

KG: Thinking back, and from my "insider" perspective, I suppose most of the forensic scientists I see in movies, or read about in novels, tend to be a bit two-dimensional. Probably because the forensic scientist usually appears in a support role, and the screenwriter or author probably had limited exposure to life as a forensic scientist, and probably also because I'm biased.

But speaking of bias: One aspect of forensic work rarely mentioned is the fact that, to do their job properly, forensic scientists must constantly maintain an unbiased view of an investigation and the related evidence, which, in turn, means they really shouldn't care if their efforts end up helping the defense more than the prosecution, and often results in telling the investigating officer things they really don't want to hear.

bn.com: Because of the bizarre nature of Cellars' case, evidence is pretty difficult to come by, let alone hold on to. Are there any real-life instances that you'd care to discuss when very little evidence was available but you still managed to crack the case?

KG: I would have to say that most homicide cases are worked with very little relevant or linking evidence, mostly because it's difficult to find, especially if some time has lapsed between the event and the crime-scene search, or if the scenes have been inadvertently contaminated. I can recall many instances in which it took several crime-scene investigations (regarding a serial burglar, rapist, or murderer), and thus several victims, before we had enough evidence to ID a suspect. These are very frustrating cases, and tend to cause the investigators to sleep poorly at night.

bn.com: At one point, Cellars makes an extremely persuasive argument regarding the existence of extraterrestrial life. Do you share his viewpoint?

KG: Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do...although I would like to think that my reasoning is based on logic rather than emotion. First off, it's an awful big universe out there. What are we talking about? Fifty billion stars in each of 50 billion galaxies, give or take a few billion? So right off the bat, it's hard for me to imagine that "intelligent" life (I happen to think that a lot of critters besides humans are intelligent, but that's a separate issue) exists only on our little remote planet. And then I'd add the pure elegance and utility of the DNA molecule/code, and its incredible ability to transmit information in response to life-form feedback. What I'm basically talking about here is the ability of life to evolve in response to a particular environment and the competing factors therein. So, is DNA the traveling repository of adaptive life on a universal basis? Seems perfectly reasonable to me.

But, at the same time, I should add here that I have a great deal of faith in the ability -- and the apparent compulsion -- of human beings to con each other for attention, financial gain, etc. So, do I believe that all of these extraterrestrial contacts described by so many people have all occurred? No, absolutely not. But do I believe other intelligent life forms are out there and are capable of contacting us if they so desire? Let's just hope it's a reasonably friendly contact and not the sort of progressively chilling situation I wrote about in FIRST EVIDENCE.

bn.com: What's next for you? Any other projects planned featuring Detective-Sergeant Colin Cellars?

KG: As a matter of fact, Detective-Sergeant Colin Cellars is once again up to his posterior in disappearing victims, implausible evidence, lethal shadows, confused crime scenes -- and, of course, dark and stormy nights. And, to tell you the truth, I really don't think he'd want it any other way.

Science Fiction Weekly

...compelling and suspenseful.

Library Journal

Crime scene investigator Colin Cellars thinks that murder has been committed. But there's no culprit--and no body. From the author of best sellers like Double Blind.

Kirkus Reviews

Dark shadows wreak hokey havoc in this latest technobabbling police procedural from Goddard (Double Blind, 1997, etc.). On his first day as roving Oregon State Police Crime Scene Investigator, Collin Cellars is curious about a violet-eyed lovely among the flying-saucer freaks attending his lecture on what kind of evidence extraterrestrials might leave if they really did visit Earth. Before he can get her phone number, Cellars is called away to investigate a shots-fired report in a tree-shrouded wilderness on a dark and stormy night in the southern Oregon mountains. The two police deputies who arrive before him have been literally shooting at shadows. Cellars finds the disemboweled corpse of a dog and, inside a hidden cabin, the brutally murdered body of what appears to be his long-lost buddy Bobby Dawson and, next to that, a painting of a woman who resembles his long-lost girlfriend Jody Catlin. Then the shadows move in and Cellars finds himself shooting up his brand-new Ford Expedition—the first of a series of pristine vehicles that are smashed, blown up, or inexplicably transported to the parking lot of a tavern by these shadows, who scream and bleed when they're shot but still seem able to drive. Before Cellars can catch up on his sleep, Alessandra, she of the violet eyes, ravishes him in a hotel room. He wakes to find that Alessandra, the corpses, and other evidence he took from the crime scene have all vanished. Meanwhile, Jody Caitlin, now a lab technician, discovers odd DNA patterns in a blood sample that could come from shape-shifting silicon-based life forms. Before she can fill out her report, though, she's snatched by the shadows, who inform Cellars over the telephonethat they will swap Jody for something Cellars inadvertently took from Bobby's cabin. When a minor character complains, "This is all starting to sound like one of those eye-sucking, mummy-on-the-loose monster movies," one can't help but agree. Violent, campy X-Files send-up that fades when the shadows step into the light.