“This is what I believe the evidence will show. The evidence will show that Guy had no motive, but that another might have. The evidence will show the possibility that another had opportunity and access to the means to commit this crime. The evidence will show that the prosecution brought this case before they found the evidence needed to answer the crucial questions I have just raised, because they thought they had discovered the ultimate answer. They have accused Guy Forrest of killing Hailey Prouix because his is the only name they could come up with and the link between Guy and Hailey was powerful and undeniable. Love. He loved her. He had given up everything for her. That is why he is on trial today, because of that love.

“And so this is, finally, what I want you to ask yourselves, ladies and gentlemen: Whenever did love become a crime?”

38

WE STOOD as the jury was let out for the day, remained standing as Judge Tifaro followed. I put my arm around Guy’s back, squeezed his shoulder, said a few encouraging words before the bailiff led him away for transport back to the county jail. So it was just Beth and me at the defense table as I packed up my notebooks, my folders, my omnipresent yellow pads, when something banged hard onto the wooden tabletop beside me.

Startled, I turned to find a large brown briefcase and holding on to it a grinning Troy Jefferson.

“That was pretty good,” he said, “that song and dance of yours.”

“Thank you.”

“You should have lowered your voice and done a Barry White. I can hear him singing it: ‘Whenever did love become a crime?’ But it’s not going to fly. Doesn’t matter where you try to point the finger, the fingerprints on the gun are Guy’s.”

“We’ll get to that in the course of the trial.”

“I had thought blaming the lover might be your strategy, as good as any, but I didn’t think you’d be so foolish as to spout it in the opening when any day, any minute he could walk right into the courtroom.”

“Well, there you go, that’s what we are, Beth and I, a couple of fools.”

“You blaming him in the opening, getting it into all the papers, might just force his hand. And it certainly forced mine. We’re twenty-four/sevening the search for the missing man.”

“Maybe you should have twenty-four/sevened it before you swore in the jury.”

“Oh, we’ll find him and his alibi. The detectives pissed and moaned about the overtime, but they’ve already got leads.”

“Speaking of the detectives, I saw Stone at the table, but not our good friend Breger.”

“He took a jaunt.”

“Anyplace interesting?”

“Vegas.”

“Gambling?”

“No. But before he left, he told me he still had some questions about that night of the murder. Once again he asked if you would consent to allow us to examine your phone logs for that night.”

“And once again I refuse,” I said. “Attorney-client privilege. And I don’t think the judge will set the precedent of allowing you to rummage around the phone records of the defense attorney after a trial starts.”

“Maybe not, but not every defense lawyer is called just moments after a murder. I suppose we’ll just have to see.” He opened his briefcase, took out a blue-backed motion, tossed it onto the table before me. “I’ve been holding this for a while, but I think it’s too hot to hold on to any longer. I’ll be filing it before we leave the courthouse. I expect she’ll rule tomorrow.”

“Let me guess, Troy. You weren’t the quiet type on the basketball court.”

“I did my share of verbalizing,” he said with his grin before he turned for the exit, followed by the two ADAs who were assisting him. Beth and I watched as the coterie departed.

I scanned the document he had given me: MOTION TO COMPEL THE DISCLOSURE OF CERTAIN TELEPHONE LOGS. “You’ll have to answer this tonight,” I said as I handed it off to Beth.

Beth snatched the motion with her good hand and quickly reviewed it. Her wrist had healed badly. The bones had needed to berebroken, manipulated into proper alignment, and fastened together with metal pins inserted by a huge pneumatic device to keep them in place. For her it had been a summer of pain, but it looked as though the doctors had finally gotten it right and this would be the last of her casts. She continued reading the motion as she said, “He’s right, you know.”

“Who, Troy? Nah, he’s just talking trash.”

“No he’s not. He seemed almost gleeful.”

“Really? I thought he seemed a bit rattled.”

“Not rattled, relieved. If you had been less specific, you would have kept your options open to the end. Any big surprises could have been accounted for. Now, if the other lover walks in, we’re sunk. What if he shows up and matches the DNA and then gives himself a perfect alibi? What then?”

“He won’t.”

“Why not?”

“He has a reason to hide. Maybe he’s married, maybe he’s engaged to someone else, maybe his gay lover is a jealous fiend. Whatever, he hasn’t come forward yet and won’t in the future.”

“But he might if he thinks the real killer is getting off because of his silence. He might suffer the embarrassment to stop a travesty of justice.”

“He’s not that noble.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Trust me.”

“I don’t know, Victor,” said Beth, staring now at the door out of which Troy Jefferson had just departed. “It’s almost as if Jefferson already knew who the other lover was and was preparing to whisk him in as soon as you blundered into his trap.”

“Wouldn’t he have had to disclose that to us already?” I said, my voice betraying my sudden nervousness.

“Not if it was merely a suspicion that he can now send his detectives out to turn into a fact.”

I wondered on that for a moment and then shook my head. “I had to do it. To win this thing I need the jury to see the missing lover behind every question, every possibility. If I just tried to offer him at the end, it would have looked like flummery. Now he’s sitting right here at the defense table, ready to shoulder the blame when the evidence is equivocal. He’s what the jury will see when that police technician testifies that she couldn’t detect gunpowder residue on Guy’s hands at the crime scene. She’ll try to dismiss the result by claiming that the gunpowder washed off in the rain, but the jury will be wondering if maybe the police tested the wrong man. And when the DNA pattern of the semen gets put up on the chart, without my saying a word, they’ll be wondering if they’re looking at the DNA of a killer. By the time I get to closing, they’ll have argued the case for themselves and found reasonable doubt.”

Beth just stared at me, a faint amusement at my assurance in her eyes. “It sounds so easy.”

“Genius always does. But in the end all our supposes don’t matter.” I rapped her cast gently with my knuckle, the sound sharp and hollow. “Hello. Anybody there? This is what our client wants us to argue, he has told us so repeatedly, so this is the way we go.”

“I’m not used to seeing you so deferential to the client.”

“He’s a lawyer, and it’s his life on the line.”

“Let’s just hope it doesn’t blow up in his face,” she said. “Have you decided if Guy is going to testify?”

“He wants to, but I won’t let him. He’d have to say he knew about the other man and that he hit her on the night of her murder. Those two facts would kill us.”

“But what about the open door, the sudden sound? How are you going to prove up the possibility that someone else could have slipped into that house the night of the murder?”

“That’s why, dear Beth, they invented cross-examination.”