Buck stares at the glossy and blinks repeatedly as his eyes fill. He says nothing. If I didn’t know him better, I’d think he hadn’t heard the question.

“Yes,” he says finally. “That’s my son. Billy.”

“Who took the photo?”

“I did. We’d been fishing for stripers at Potter’s Landing.” Buck points toward the glistening fish. “Billy caught a few earlier in the season, but they weren’t big enough. This one was his first keeper.”

“When was that?”

“Saturday, June twelfth. A week before…” Buck stares at his lap again for a moment, then back at the panel. “A week before.”

“Before what?”

“Your Honor.”

Beatrice had her gavel in hand even before Stanley spoke.

“Before what, Buck?”

“Your Honor!”

The gavel descends.

I knew this would happen, but I thought it would take a little longer. I thought I’d get at least a half dozen questions out before the prosecutor-judge team began its power play. But I’m ready.

Maybe I’m overly defensive. Maybe I’m sleep-deprived. I don’t give a damn. I’ve planned this moment. I intend to shut my opponents down. Both of them.

“Before what, Buck?”

“Your Honor!”

Beatrice leans toward me, but I don’t turn. I fix my gaze on Buck, keep the judge in my peripheral vision. “Counsel,” she barks, “there’s an objection pending.”

“I haven’t heard one, Judge.” Still I don’t look at her. “Before what, Buck?”

Beatrice bangs her gavel and then points it at Buck. She sits up straight, apparently taken aback by my poor manners. “The witness will remain silent. Counsel, Mr. Edgarton has raised an objection.”

She inhales audibly when I wheel around to face her. “No, he hasn’t, Judge. You’re interrupting my examination of the defendant and there’s no objection pending.”

I turn my back to her and point my pen at String Tie. His eyes grow wide, but his fingers keep tapping. “It seems you have an objection, though, Judge. So let’s hear it.”

When I face her again, her mouth is a perfect oval, as if she’s about to begin an aria.

“Go ahead, Judge. Put your objection on the record. And we’ll ask the Big Boys to rule on it.”

My irreverent reference to the appellate panel is more than Beatrice can bear. “Now just a minute, Counsel.”

“No, Judge. You don’t get a minute now.”

She’s no longer taken aback. She’s indignant.

“Now is my client’s time to testify, Judge, my time to question him. And nobody interrupts, not even you, unless this man”-Stanley takes a step back when I aim my pen in his direction-“voices a coherent objection.”

Now Stanley’s mouth is circular. Maybe they plan a duet. “You’re not the prosecutor, Judge. He is. It’s his job to raise viable objections. ‘Your Honor’ doesn’t cut it. Those words don’t appear in the Rules of Evidence. If the prosecutor can’t state a legal basis for his objection, then the judge can’t rule on it.”

The gavel pauses midair. Beatrice looks like she might reach out and pound it on the top of my head.

“And if you’ve got nothing to rule on, then this man”-Buck stares into his lap again when my pen finds him-“keeps talking.”

My face must be maroon by now. I’m winded. I lean against the witness box until Buck looks up, and then I turn to the jury. They’re gaping at me.

“Buck Hammond sat in this courtroom all week without uttering a word. He listened to a parade of the Commonwealth’s witnesses without making a sound. He’s the man on trial; it’s his fate we’re deciding here. It’s his turn to talk now.”

Side-by-side men in the back row rub their chins and stare hard at me. The rest of them avoid my gaze. They look instead at the judge, at Buck, at the floor.

“Buck Hammond is entitled to his turn. The Constitution says so.”

Still, almost no eye contact. The retired schoolteacher looks at me for just a second, then quickly turns away.

Stanley remains on his feet but says nothing. Beatrice sets her gavel on the bench and folds her hands into her sleeves.

I’ll take that as a go.

“Let’s get to the point, Buck”-I pause to glare at Stanley-“while we still can.”

“Counsel, that’s enough.” Beatrice retrieves her gavel and pounds again. “One more editorial comment from you, Ms. Nickerson, and you’ll take a break-a long one.”

I block her out, block them all out. The judge. Stanley. String Tie. Even the spectators. What happens now is between Buck and the jurors. No one else.

“What did Hector Monteros do to Billy?”

In the silence that follows, I study the jurors. Their gazes move from Buck to the easel, then back to Buck again.

“Took him,” he says, “took him from the beach.”

“And?”

Buck grasps the arms of his chair, as if he just hit turbulence.

“And hurt him.”

I pour a glass of water and set it on the railing of the witness box, but Buck shakes his head.

“How?”

Now a few of the jurors grasp the arms of their chairs too. They don’t want to hear the details again. Once was more than enough. They don’t want to hear the story again from anyone, but certainly not the boy’s father. They needn’t worry. Buck has never even been able to say the word.

“He…did terrible things, and then…” Buck changes his mind, takes a sip of water. “And then he killed Billy.”

“How did he kill Billy?”

Buck lowers his head. For a few moments, he seems unable to lift it again.

“Your Honor,” Stanley whines, “perhaps we should take a brief recess.”

“It won’t be any easier ten minutes from now, Judge.”

Beatrice glares at me, her pursed lips arcing downward at the corners again. That’s one of those editorial comments I’m not supposed to make. Next time I’ll tell her ten years won’t make much difference either.

“Take your time,” I say to Buck, and I mean it. Every minute he spends on this witness stand should take us one step closer to a decent result. To me, his agony is apparent, his grief tangible. I can’t tell, though, if the jurors feel it. Their faces reveal nothing.

When Buck lifts his brimming eyes, they settle on the photo tucked under my arm, the autopsy shot. He can see only its blank back, but the look on his face tells me he knows what it is. And he doesn’t want it here. He turns to the jury, still clutching the arms of his chair.

We practiced this testimony. Not because we doctored the answer, but because Buck couldn’t address the question at all, at first. He couldn’t say it out loud. Even now, he has to say the words quickly, or he won’t get through the answer.

“He bound Billy with metal cables…” Buck lets go of the chair arms and presses his wrists together. “At the wrists and ankles. And he smothered him.”

Buck drops his hands to his lap. That’s all he can say on that topic. He’s reached his limit.

“And what did you do, Buck, to Hector Monteros?”

“Your Honor, please, these jurors watched the videotape, they heard from the Chief of Police. They know what the defendant did.”

Stanley knows better. His objection is nothing more than a ploy, a manufactured opportunity to make a speech.

Beatrice stares at me-grimaces-when I look up. I’m tempted to smile. She won’t dare prevent Buck Hammond from telling the jury what he did. There isn’t an appellate panel in the country that would uphold that ruling. Stanley knows that. And Beatrice does too.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she says, “I remind you of the limiting instruction you were given on the first day of this trial. I caution you now-that instruction is still in full force and effect.”

Funny, that’s the only ruling of Judge Long’s that Beatrice has acknowledged. The jurors nod, though, almost as one.

Stanley acts as if he isn’t satisfied. He folds his arms across his chest and stamps one foot ever so slightly on the worn carpeting. Yet another temper tantrum, this one stifled.

“Buck, what did you do to Hector Monteros?”