‘Your Honor! I object.’ Hardy was forced to raise his own voice.

For nearly the first time in the entire trial Salter banged his gavel. ‘Mr Soma, please! Get yourself under control. Another outburst like that and I’ll find you in contempt. You hear me?’

‘Yes, Your Honor, I’m sorry.’ But he looked neither diminished by the rebuke nor sorry for what had caused it. He was drawing some rich blood.

‘Doctor,’ he continued, ‘did the defendant ever indicate to you that he was entitled to something for all the trouble he was going through?’

‘No. He was-’

‘Did Sal Russo, defendant’s father, did Sal ever complain about how much these visits were costing?’

‘Yes, sometimes he would-’

‘Did it ever occur to you that he meant to ask how much it was costing him, not Graham?’

‘No, it wasn’t-’

‘Do you know it wasn’t his father’s money?’

‘No, but-’

‘Do you know his father didn’t pay back even the softball money as soon as they got back to his apartment?’

‘No, but I-’

‘Your Honor.’ Hardy had to try to break up this rhythm. ‘The witness is entitled to explain his answers.’

‘They’re all yes-and-no questions, Your Honor.’ Soma was really on a roll. He didn’t want to give the judge time to make any ruling on the objection. The jury would remember what he’d gotten, not how. ‘I’ll watch it, Your Honor.’ Which was easy to say – he was finished. He’d gotten what he’d come for. ‘No further questions.’

‘I have one.’ Freeman the wild card came up and around the defense table for redirect. He hadn’t even cleared it with Hardy, so he must have been sure he was on to something. ‘Dr Cutler, at any time in all of your treatments of Sal Russo, did you, Sal, and Graham ever frankly and fully discuss the possibility of assisted suicide?’

There was a collective gasp in the gallery. This was the kind of question Soma might have asked. To hear it from the defense table was shocking.

But Freeman had done it and it was now on the record. Cutler, shell shocked anyway from Soma’s assault, now looked stunned. ‘Yes, many times. He asked me if I’d help kill him if he got too far gone. I said I couldn’t.’

‘And was Sal Russo lucid during at least some of these discussions?’

‘Yes. Many of them. Most.’

‘It was brilliant, if I do say so myself, and I do.’ Freeman was in the holding cell defending himself. Hardy and Graham were both having trouble appreciating his genius. ‘We got assisted suicide in the front of everybody’s brains now.’

‘We did before, David. It was more subtle was all.’

‘Subtle schmuttle.’ Unwrapping his Reuben sandwich, Freeman scoffed at the idea. He took a juicy bite, leaned over so the bag would catch his drippings, swabbed his thick lips with a napkin. ‘Listen up. Graham didn’t say that he was thinking of killing his dad, for any reason. Remember, we’re loving this assisted suicide defense, but it’s still illegal, my sons.’ He pointed at Graham. ‘Even if it’s going to get you off.’

Graham was unconvinced. ‘Yoda better that clearer make.’ Freeman motioned over to Hardy. ‘That’s for this silver-tongued devil in closing.’

‘How can I thank you enough?’ Hardy asked.

Freeman grinned and took another bite. ‘No charge.’

33

Thursday afternoon, all day Friday, Monday and Tuesday of the next week, was a long, slow waltz for the defense. Hardy had to get the jury to hear about the progress of Alzheimer’s disease, about Sal’s relations with the rest of the estranged family, about the places and times Sal and Graham had been together in public. So he called Helen and George and Debra and the young Dr Finer, who’d first examined Sal at the county clinic. He called the owner of the U.S. Restaurant, where they had frequently eaten.

Keeping up on the motive issue, he brought up many of Graham’s past co-workers and associates. One at a time Hardy called as witnesses several EMTs – three male, two female – who’d crewed with him over the past two years, all of whom had nothing but good to say about his compassion, bedside manner, cooperative spirit, medical knowledge, punctuality, and general competence. He’d made no enemies within his ambulance company.

Besides Russ Cutler, three other members of Graham’s softball team, the Hornets, testified that he’d brought his father to games, introduced him around, went out for food afterward. He was a solicitous and dutiful son.

Especially effective was Roger Stamps, who’d been with them in Fremont after a game a year or more ago when Sal had wandered away from the softball field. He and Graham had driven the darkened streets for over an hour before locating Sal in the coffee shop of a bowling alley.

Graham had paid his father’s tab, got him belted into the car, and drove him home. He’d never shown impatience or anger. Stamps hoped that when he got old he could have a son as devoted as Graham.

Craig Ising was a guy’s guy and hence a good call for this jury, but there was a risk to calling him as well. In Hardy’s mind there was a very real legal question as to whether Graham’s knowing participation in the high-stakes softball games, even leaving aside the question of claiming his income from it, constituted a felony.

In the end they decided to call Ising as a witness anyway. He, better than anyone else, could put a positive spin on Graham’s apparently irresponsible defection from Harold Draper’s courtroom, as well as explain the intricacies of his motivation to be a replacement player: that Graham had correctly predicted the end of the baseball strike, had wanted another look from the major league clubs, wouldn’t play as a scab, and so on.

If Graham wasn’t going to testify, somebody else had to make the jury aware of his state of mind, and Ising was the best choice. Graham hadn’t acted like a selfish flake – he was a man in pursuit of a dream.

Soma and Drysdale kept a low profile. The occasional objection would come up over a witness’s characterization of one of Graham’s actions, but generally the prosecution seemed happy to let Hardy call his people and let them talk.

None of the witnesses were rebutting the evidence that had been presented. What could there be to worry about?

On Wednesday morning at seven-thirty Hardy sat behind the closed door of Abe Glitsky’s office with David Freeman and Sarah Evans. They were reviewing all the leads that, as Sarah had independently discovered over the past four months, had gone nowhere. Hardy and Freeman were contemplating calling one more witness and then they were going to wrap up the defense, Hardy getting to tie the pieces of his story – Graham’s story -together at last.

The early confidence he felt in their strategy had completely disappeared by now. Not that the trial hadn’t gone as well as he’d hoped, but a jury was always a crapshoot, and this one particularly. Hardy had been in the air with his dive now for most of four court days, and it was all he could do to hold his tuck for the next hours.

He hadn’t rebutted any prosecution evidence in his own case in chief. Oh, yes, he’d done his best to discredit witnesses on the issue of whether there had been a struggle, but that had been about the extent of his arguments. He had presented an affirmative defense that was simply an alternative explanation of the same facts that the prosecution had used.

It was going to come down to a matter of what the jury believed. Or whom they believed. In that sense it was good that no one had found any ‘other dudes’ to point at.

And now they were all committed. Hardy’s defense was really the only possible one left. But he couldn’t shake his intense discomfort over the fact that it was, basically, a cynical lie. A lie that served justice, he believed, but still a lie.