“I never meant to hurt Carol,” Dan started off weakly.

“You know, Dan, she did shoot you.”

“That was an accident! I should've announced myself the minute I got home. It was late… She gets nervous after dark.” His lips twisted. “After what happened to her that night, can you really blame her?”

“Yes, that night. Let's talk about that night.” Griffin took out his Norelco Pocket Memo, turned on the minirecorder and got serious. “You told the police you were working late.”

Dan hung his head.

“I gather you told your wife the same?”

“Yes.”

“But you weren't really at work?”

Dan didn't look up. Vinnie smacked his arm. “For God's sake,” the bookie said. “Stop being such a whiner and stand up for your wife.”

Dan shot the bookie a look, but seemed to get ahold of himself. “I, uh, I was at the Foxwoods casino.”

“You lied to the police?”

“Yes.”

“You do that a lot?”

“I was embarrassed! It was bad enough to be gone when my wife needed me. But then, to have to admit that I was sitting at a blackjack table while she was being viciously assaulted…” He groaned. “My God, what kind of husband does a thing like that?”

Griffin let the question hang, which was answer enough. “So you lied to the police, and you lied to your wife. All to cover up one night at the gaming tables. Do you gamble a lot, Mr. Rosen?”

“I don't know. Is four, five days a week a lot? Is liquidating my business a lot? Is second-mortgaging my home?” Dan's face gained some color. He looked at Griffin hotly, as if daring him to state the obvious.

“You tell me,” Griffin said quietly.

That quickly, Dan folded again. His shoulders slumped. His chin sank against his chest. “I think… I think I have a gambling problem.” And then, “Oh God, Carol is going to kill me!”

“How long has this been going on?”

“I don't know. Three years, maybe. I went to Foxwoods one night with some friends. Business associates, really. And I… I had a really good night. Seriously.” Dan's features perked up again. “I quit the blackjack tables ahead ten thousand dollars. And back then, ten thousand dollars… Wow. I was just about to open my own law firm, and God knows the house needed some kind of something. Ten thousand bucks helped out. Felt good. Easy money.”

“Uh huh,” Griffin said knowingly.

Dan smiled thinly. “Exactly. So I opened my own law practice, except instead of taking with me five loyal clients, I only took three. Money was tighter than I thought, and things got off slower than I thought, and health care cost more than I thought…”

“You started taking on debt.”

“I didn't want to tell Carol. We'd talked about me starting my own practice so many times. She wasn't as sure. That house, those mortgage payments, my God. But it was my dream. I had to have my own practice. Trust me, I told her. Trust me. So she did.”

“But you got behind in payments. And then you…?”

“I remembered Foxwoods. Ten thousand bucks. Easy money, right? I'm a smart man, I've read all the books on blackjack, memorized the odds tables. Hey, it's not like betting on horses. That's pure luck. Now blackjack, that takes strategy.”

“Hence all the blackjack millionaires out there,” Griffin observed dryly.

“I've won,” Dan said immediately. His face held that flush again. “Hey, I've won a lot!”

“How much are you down, Mr. Rosen?”

The lawyer faltered. He didn't seem able to meet anyone's eye. After several moments, when the silence ran long, Vinnie raised his arm to smack the man again. Griffin waved the bookie off.

“Mr. Rosen?”

“I owed eighty thousand dollars,” Dan said gruffly. He ran his right hand through his hair, leaving the brown strands standing up on end. “Only twenty now. I, uh, I liquidated my brokerage account. Otherwise, they weren't going to give me any more money. And then… Well, then I wouldn't have any chance of getting ahead, would I?”

“Who's they, Mr. Rosen?”

“Why don't you ask Mr. Pesaturo?” Dan said bitterly.

Griffin looked at Vinnie.

“Not with that tape on,” Vinnie said.

“I'm working on a murder here-”

“Not with that tape on.”

Griffin sighed, shut off the Pocket Memo. “Let's hear it.”

“I might be aware of Mr. Rosen's predicament.”

“You think?”

“Hey, man needed money, and I happen to know people who don't mind loaning a few bucks every now and then.”

“Percentage?”

“Well, you know how it is in banking. The interest rate on the loan is dependent upon the level of risk. Look at him.” Vinnie shot Dan Rosen a disparaging glance. “Eighty grand down at jack? He's high risk.”

“You're charging him a hundred percent?”

“Fifty. We're not completely unsympathetic.”

“Wait a minute.” Jillian raised a hand, finally interjecting herself into the conversation. “You mean to tell me that you-”

“My associates,” Vinnie amended.

“Fine, your associates are loaning Dan money for his gambling habit with an interest rate of fifty percent?”

Vinnie nodded. She turned to Dan. “And you are taking the money at that rate?”

“One good day,” he said immediately. “That's all you need. One good day, and the loan is repaid and I can get the credit cards down, maybe even make an extra payment on the mortgage. One good day.”

“Oh God,” Jillian said. “Poor Carol.”

Dan deflated again. Griffin turned the recorder back on. “Is it correct to say, Mr. Rosen, that you used the sixty thousand dollars you liquidated from your brokerage account to repay loan sharks?”

Dan nodded. Griffin gave him a look. “Yes,” Dan said belatedly into the minirecorder.

Griffin turned to Vinnie. “And can you, Vincent Pesaturo, verify-through sources-that such a transaction took place?”

“Yeah. My sources, they say such a thing took place.”

“Vinnie Pesaturo, did you order a hit on Edward Como? Did you arrange for him to come to harm in any way?”

The questions came out of left field, but Vinnie didn't blink an eye. He bent lower, so his mouth was directly above the recorder. “No, I, Vincent Pesaturo, did not order a hit on Eddie Como. If I, Vincent Pesaturo, wanted that piece of garbage dead, I would've done it myself.”

“Or ordered a hit in prison,” Griffin muttered. Vinnie smiled, looked at the recorder and didn't say a word.

“Tom Pesaturo,” Griffin spoke up again. “Did you order a hit on your daughter's suspected rapist, Edward Como?”

Tom looked a bit more defensive. “Nah,” he said slowly. “I decided against it.”

“Tom!” his wife gasped.

“Daddy!” Meg seconded.

He shrugged. “Hey, I'm a father. After what that bastard did to my daughter, I'm allowed to think these things. But I didn't do anything.” He shrugged again. “I don't know. Sounded like the police had a good case. That DNA and all. And I figured… I figured the trial might be better for Meg. She could face down her accuser and all. I, uh, I read someplace that sometimes that's better for the victim, you know. Gives her some sense of power back, control. That kind of thing.”

“You read about rape victims?” Meg asked.

“Kinda. I saw this article… in Cosmo.”

“Cosmo?” Vinnie exclaimed.

Tom Pesaturo huffed his shoulders. “Hey, she's my daughter. I want what's best for her. 'Sides, there was a long line at checkout, and you know they got all those women's magazines just sitting right there, decorated up with half-naked cover models. Of course I started looking. And then, well, I saw the title for the article. And then I kind of opened up the magazine. And hey, it was a really long line and, and… It was a good thing to read.”

“You are a sweet man, Tommy Pesaturo,” Meg's mother said. She slipped her hand into her husband's and squeezed.

“Ah well,” he said. Everyone was looking at him now. He turned bright red.

A tapping sound came from the back of the room. Heads turned to Libby, who was staring at Griffin expectantly.