“It’s seductive, that’s why,” Hardy said. “If it’s any help, I doubt Eve saw it either. She just wanted the knowledge, to taste the forbidden fruit.”

“One little taste. That’s all I wanted. Just to see.”

“Original sin,” Hardy said. “And so you’re not the first to commit it, are you? It goes back a ways, that fall from grace. Some would say it’s the human condition.”

“But it wasn’t who I was ever supposed to be.”

“No,” Hardy said heavily. “No, I don’t suppose it was.”

“That’s the horrible thing. And then Tess.” Her voice broke again. “If I could just have those days back. That day.”

John Greenleaf Whittier’s phrase hovered in Hardy’s consciousness-“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: ‘It might have been.’ ” But he merely draped his arm over his client’s shoulder and drew her in for a moment next to him. “You’ve still got lots of days ahead of you, Maya. Better ones. I promise you.”

Suddenly, the bailiff knocked from the courtroom side and swung the connecting door open. Recognizing the not unfamiliar tableau-a suspect wrung out with emotion, a face nearly disfigured, swollen and red from crying-he stepped into the doorway and leaned over toward Hardy, asking with an unexpected solicitousness, “Everything okay here, sir?”

“If we could get a couple more minutes, I’d appreciate it,” Hardy said. “And maybe some Kleenex.”

31

Stier stood looking down onto Seventh Street from the third-floor window in Clarence Jackman’s office. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”

Jackman, obsidian black, stood six feet five inches tall and this morning had grunted in satisfaction when his bathroom scale failed to clear the two-hundred-seventy-pound marker. As always, he was dressed in a well-tailored dark suit and white shirt, today with a maroon-and-dark-blue rep tie. Ignoring Stier’s profanity, Jackman spoke in his low-registered, powerful, quiet voice. “You needed to be told right away. Get it in front of Marian, put the woman on your witness list.”

Stier turned. “Of course. Nothing else to do, really.” He shook his head in disgust. “This was Schiff?”

“Apparently, although Bracco says he’s just as responsible.”

Another dismissive head shake. “Cops. What was she thinking?”

“I really believe she’d convinced herself it was immaterial. The woman seemed senile. Schiff didn’t think you’d want some probably untrue random detail screwing up your story.”

“I don’t care about my story, Clarence. I build the case out of whatever story I’ve got to work with. If it’s got inconsistencies… but, hell, you know this. And it would have been nothing if I laid it out up front. Now it looks like we buried it.”

“I know that.”

Stier slammed his hand on the windowsill. “Shit!”

“Right. But I’m afraid there’s something maybe worse, if you’d like to sit down.”

The request clearly surprised Stier, but this was his boss, so he went where Jackman indicated and sat on the front couple of inches of one of the leather couches. “Shoot,” he said.

“Well, let me start out by admitting a personal bias, which I do try to leave out of my professional duties. Nevertheless, I think you may know, Paul, that Kathy West and I go back quite a way. When I first came on here, she walked me through quite a few minefields on the political side, actually was one of my informal advisers.”

“Well, I-”

Jackman forged his smile of steel and held up a hand, cutting off the interruption. “If I may. My point is that I’ve watched this case develop over the past few months with a lot of interest and a bit of a sense of discomfort, not only because of the inherent weaknesses in the evidence, but because of the media blitz that’s accompanied all of Jerry Glass’s side of things with the mayor and Harlen Fisk and your defendant’s husband.

“But I never felt I had to discuss this with you because, as I say, I generally like to stay out of battles where I have a personal stake, but also because you won at the PX, so there was nothing for me to say. The court had ruled.”

Jackman slid his haunch off the edge of his desk and went to sit across from Stier in his leather wing chair. “But now, suddenly,” he continued, “this new wrinkle-maybe there were two shots and not just one-seems to undermine your basic theory of the case. This is important to me, first because it’s no longer personal, and second because, contrary to popular opinion, my job-our jobs, yours and mine-that job is not only to prosecute. It’s to serve justice. It’s to find the truth of what happened. If we find exculpatory evidence, it’s our duty to put it in the record, not hide it so we can go ahead and get our conviction.”

“I’m not hiding anything, Clarence. I didn’t know about this until twenty minutes ago.”

“No, I know that. I guess my real question is how does this make you feel about this case, and about your defendant? Does it change anything for you, and if so, what?”

Stier’s body language-hunched shoulders, flushed complexion-belied the control he exerted over his confident tone. “Strategically, I’d admit it’s a pain in the ass. It’s going to give more credence to this testimony than it deserves. But as to the actual facts, first, they probably don’t change a lick. You tell me the woman’s apparently senile, so she may or may not have heard two shots, and in any event she didn’t get to Schiff and Bracco until a couple of days later. Hell, what she heard might not even have been on the morning of the murder. So do I have an issue with my basic theory? No. None. Nothing’s changed.”

Jackman, hands relaxed and linked in front of him, nodded. “And Mr. Glass?”

“Regardless of what the media’s doing with the mayor and all that, Jerry’s helping me make the dope case, Clarence, and that’s the motive here. I know it’s unusual for the feds to get involved in one of our murders, but to me the financial stuff he’s got already proves the money laundering, which in turn proves her complicity with Vogler. As for the mayor…” Stier met Jackman’s gaze. “She’s no part of my case. Neither’s Fisk. That said, their financial dealings with Joel Townshend are complicated and wide-ranging, and I don’t think Jerry’s out of line looking into them.”

“Well”-Jackman stole a peek at his watch-“thanks for making the time. I see you’ve got to be back in court in ten minutes.”

This was a dismissal.

“Certainly.” Stier got up and made it to the office door before he turned. “Thanks for the heads-up on Schiff’s witness, Clarence, although I don’t think she’s going to make any difference in the verdict. And on the other stuff, I appreciate the candor.”

Cheryl Biehl considered herself a close friend of Maya’s. She’d visited her twice in jail, and Hardy knew that for a nonfamily member to brave the bureaucracy, indifference, cultural challenges, disorganization, noise, and crowds of the jail’s visiting room showed a rare and true commitment and friendship. And to do so twice! Biehl’s affection for Maya must be genuine. So he was happy that he wasn’t going to be grilling her on her earlier testimony to Stier, testimony that had effectively painted her friend as a long-standing user and seller of drugs.

He was also marginally cheered, if slightly perplexed, by Stier’s addition of a new witness, Lori Bradford, at this stage in the proceeding. Calling for a sidebar, and admitting as soon as the court had come back into session that he had only been informed of the existence of this witness during the lunch recess, Stier acknowledged that he would in all probability not actually call her. But he told Hardy and the court that a perusal of police procedures during the investigation had revealed that this woman’s testimony had not made it into the inspectors’ reports, and hence not into Hardy’s discovery documents. Painting the oversight as little more than an unimportant technicality, Stier just wanted to preserve the sanctity of the record.