“You’re making that up. He’s most likely dead by now.”

“Should we bring him in and ask him?”

“You’re bluffing.”

“This isn’t poker, Mr. Cutlip.”

I turned around and nodded to Beth. She stood, left the courtroom for a moment, and then came through again, accompanied by the Very Reverend Theodore H. Henson.

Cutlip pushed himself to standing in the witness box when he saw the clergyman, and his face turned crimson, and I feared he would collapse right there with a heart attack. He raised his hand and pointed at the reverend and said,

“Ever thing he told you is a lie, ever damn thing.”

“But still, it was after your confrontation with the reverend in the chapel of his church that you left Pierce forever.”He dropped down heavily into his chair. “I was ready to go anyways, and I didn’t need him spreading his lies, getting ever one’s tongues a wagging.”

“Like the way you cheated at poker.”

“Lies.”

“The way you killed Jesse Sterrett.”

“Lies.”

“The things you did to Hailey.”

“Lies, lies, and damn lies.”

“Bingo,” said Beth.

I stepped back as soon as I heard Beth relay our subtle signal. I stepped back and stopped and took a few breaths. This was it, now or never. I had made progress, strong progress, I had tied that bastard to a murder sixteen years ago, but still there was only accusation and denial, still there was no direct evidence relating to the death of Hailey Prouix. I had set the stage, and now was my chance, my one chance. I wanted to stop, take a break, I wanted to hold on to the hope for a little longer before it turned to hard reality, either way, but now was not the time for timidity. I faced the jury.

“I have one more letter,” I said.

It was lying there, with my other papers, on the podium. Beth had two copies on transparencies, with certain of the phrases on one of them now underlined.

“Let’s have this marked Defense Exhibit Seventeen,” I said as I dropped still another copy before Troy Jefferson. “It’s just a torn piece of envelope with a message on it, and I give it to you, Mr. Cutlip, and I ask you if you’ve ever seen it before?”

I stepped up to the witness box and placed the torn piece of envelope in front of him. He was startled to see it, I could tell. He read it slowly and shook his head as he read it and said nothing.

“Have you ever seen this before, Mr. Cutlip?”

“Where’d you get this?”

“It was with the others.”

“She kept it?”

“All these years. Yes.”

Cutlip put his hand on his chest and struggled for breath. “She kept it.”

“Yes, she did, Mr. Cutlip. All those many years after you wrote it.”

“I… I… No, this isn’t…”

“This is your writing, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You wrote this to Hailey years ago, immediately after you left Pierce.”

“I don’t… I…”

“I originally thought this, too, was written by Jesse Sterrett. The other letters were typed, but this was handwritten, so I couldn’t really compare. But now I know it was written by you. Everyone’s voice is unique – word choice, expressions. I had Ms. Derringer underline all the expressions in this letter that matched the very expressions you used in your testimony. Should I have her put it up on the screen, Mr. Cutlip? Over half the words are parts of the same sentence constructions used in your answers yesterday and today. Should I have her put it up on the screen?”

“No.”

“It’s your letter, isn’t it?”

“She kept it.”

“You wrote this, didn’t you? You wrote this to her.”

He sat there staring at the torn piece of envelope, not moving, not moving, but all the while I could see him psychologically getting closer, closer, a moth circling a flame, getting closer, closer. And then, slowly, he nodded.

Flop.

“Let the record reflect,” I said, “that the witness nodded yes.”

“Record will so reflect,” said the judge.

“Read your letter to the court, please.”

“I can’t.”

“Read it, Mr. Cutlip, read your desperate note to your fifteen-year-old niece.”

“I won’t.”

I took hold of a copy of what I had given Cutlip and read it out loud myself.

“’It’s killing me ever day, ever damn day, that we’re not together. My heart weeps in the wanting. I’m less than a man without you, a carcass already near dead, dying of lost love. You done this to me, you stole my world like a thief. Don’t listen to what they are saying, it’s nothing but lies, lies and damn lies.’ ”

“Stop.”

“’I’m sorry for what I done but I never had no choice, I only done what I had to.’”

“Stop it, damn it.”

“’Never a love been so fierce or fearsome, never has it cost so high or been worth the entire world.’”

“She kept it, don’t that prove nothing?” he said. “She kept it, don’t that prove it all? You just a fool who don’t understand.”

“What don’t I understand, Mr. Cutlip?”

“It wasn’t like that, not something dirty. It was love, real and hard, the truest in the world. Fearsome and fierce, like I said, but also something alive, more alive than anything you’ll ever see, like it had a mind of its own. And it wasn’t my doing, it was her doing. It wasn’t me that started it, it was her that started it. She seduced me. I had no choice in it. Whatever she wanted, she got. I had no choice. She seduced me.”

There it was, the shift I was looking for, the shift of blame. I was wondering where it would fall, and I now I knew. The person he was scapegoating would be Hailey herself. I turned to look at Reverend Henson, who had prophesied what Cutlip would do. He stared back at me, his eyes glossy, but he was nodding. He had seen it, too. They all had seen it.

I turned back to that cur on the stand. I could barely stand to look at him, he disgusted me so, but still, along with the disgust I couldn’t help feel a drop of empathic pity for the man. He was right, in his way, when he said that whatever Hailey wanted she seemed to have gotten. And what girl doesn’t try to seduce her father, or the substitute that comes in to take his role? The poor fool, I almost believed it when he said he had no choice in it – almost – because there is always a choice. When you have the power, the responsibility, when you take hold of a child’s hand, there is always a choice. And he made his. And in so doing he took from Hailey Prouix something she maybe didn’t even know she had, but something she spent the rest of her life struggling again to find. “How old was she?” I said in a voice so soft the jury leaned forward to hear. “How old was she when she seduced you, Mr. Cutlip?”

“I got nothing more to say.”

In a voice still soft, weary with resignation, I laid out the charges. “You were jealous of Jesse Sterrett, weren’t you, Mr. Cutlip? And you weren’t going to let him take Hailey away from you, so you killed him.”

“I want to go home.”

“And you tried to kill Guy for the same reason, because he was taking Hailey away from you, and also to quiet his complaints about the money.”

“I’m sick, I’m dying.”

“And by accident, by tragic mistake, the killer you sent, your man Bobo, ended up murdering Hailey Prouix instead.”

“Whatever Bobo done, I had nothing to do with,” said Cutlip.

I stopped and turned to the jury. I watched their eyes as they watched him. It is often hard to read a jury, but I could read those eyes.

“Will the court reporter please read back that last answer?” I said.

As the reporter was reviewing the tape spit out by her stenographic machine, Cutlip spoke up.

“Maybe I want a lawyer,” he said.

“One moment, Mr. Cutlip,” said the judge as she waited for the court reporter.

The court reporter read from her tape in a halting monotone. “Question: ‘And by accident by tragic mistake the killer you sent your man Bobo ended up murdering Hailey Prouix instead.’ Answer: ‘Whatever Bobo done I had nothing to do with.’”