No answer.

“That’s the truth, isn’t it, Paco?”

All belligerence now. “Who’s Paco?”

“You are, Mr. Chiurco, or you were, weren’t you?” Hardy kept waiting for the judge to step in to advise Chiurco of his Fifth Amendment rights, but if she wasn’t going to do it, he sure as hell wasn’t going to do it for her. This man had killed at least two people, probably three, and had tried to frame his client, and Hardy couldn’t possibly have cared less about his rights.

Chiurco, still unresponsive, pulled at his tie, cleared his throat.

Hardy let a few seconds pass, silence settling into the room until it was complete. “Mr. Chiurco,” he asked, “where do you buy your coffee?”

“All over the place.”

“Have you ever bought coffee at Bay Beans West on Haight Street?”

“I might have. I can’t say for sure.”

“Mr. Chiurco, did you not tell your employer, Mr. Hunt, that you were a regular customer of Mr. Vogler’s marijuana business at Bay Beans West? If you’d like, we can have Mr. Hunt come up here and so testify.”

The witness did not move, did not speak.

“Mr. Chiurco?”

“I don’t have to answer that question. It might tend to incriminate me.”

“So you’re invoking the Fifth Amendment?”

“Only against whether or not I bought marijuana, yes.”

“All right,” Hardy said. “Let’s move to another topic. Do you own a handgun?”

Chiurco brought his hands up to his mouth, pulled at the sides of his face. “All right. I own a gun. So what?”

“What make of gun?”

But Chiurco just shook his head. “That’s all. I’m not saying anything else.”

The already heavy stillness seemed to take on an oppressive weight in the packed courtroom. Chiurco stared stone-faced into the space between him and Hardy.

“I’m not answering,” Chiurco said again. “I’m taking the Fifth.”

Hardy nodded, took another step forward to within spitting distance of the witness. “Isn’t it true, Mr. Chiurco, that you used that same Glock.40 to kill Dylan Vogler and a liquor store clerk named Julio Gomez during a robbery in 1995?”

At this the gallery fully exploded behind Hardy. And over that tumult, finally Stier found his voice again. “Objection, Your Honor. The witness has taken the Fifth.”

She banged with her gavel, again and again, her voice strained as she tried to make herself heard. “The objection is sustained. That’s enough.” Bam! Bam! “Sustained.” Now standing, leaning out over the bench, at the top of her voice. “I want order in this courtroom! Order!” And the sound of gavel pounding rang out again and again.

At last, a semblance of silence. Braun, still on her feet, shaking with rage, now asserted her authority, order after order. “The jury is to retire to the deliberation room. Bailiffs, clear the courtroom. Clear the courtroom! Mr. Chiurco, you will remain on the witness stand. Counsel, stay at counsel table!”

The gallery’s removal took the better part of ten minutes, much of the crowd objecting and even refusing to move until Braun had more bailiffs called in to help from neighboring courtrooms.

When, finally, the last spectator had been cleared, Braun pointed down at Chiurco. “Sir, as a witness in this courtroom, you have asserted your Fifth Amendment rights. You need to talk with your attorney. You will consult with counsel and return to this courtroom with your attorney on this coming Monday at nine A.M.”

But Hardy, still standing in front of Chiurco, couldn’t let that go unchallenged. “Your Honor, with respect, that’s unacceptable. Mr. Chiurco should be taken into custody.”

Now she raised her gavel as though it were a weapon. “That’s all, Mr. Hardy. How dare you try to tell me what’s acceptable or not in my courtroom. That’s absolutely all from you.” And now unnecessarily banging her gavel on every note for emphasis, she added, “You… will… not… disrupt… this… courtroom… further!”

And again at last in total control, the master of her domain, Braun looked around in a kind of stunned disbelief at what her pronouncements had wrought. “Bailiffs,” she said evenly, “the defendant goes to the holding cell. Mr. Chiurco, you go find yourself a lawyer. Coun sel, in chambers. Right now. It’s quarter of.” Then, with another glance out at the empty gallery, “Bailiffs, you may readmit the spectators. This trial resumes again in precisely fifteen minutes.”

In Braun’s office Stier was near apoplectic. “Talk about no evidence! In spite of all of his self-serving rhetoric Mr. Hardy presented no evidence out there just now, Your Honor. All that was just a blatant attempt to find a handy scapegoat to distract the jury.”

“Ridiculous, Your Honor. Fingerprints at the crime scene are evidence, particularly when the person whose fingerprints they are says they couldn’t be there. What’s your theory, Mr. Stier? Did Chiurco loan somebody his fingerprints? Did his hands take a walk without him? The fact is,” Hardy said, “that I’ve presented more evidence this morning that my client is innocent than Mr. Stier has presented in his entire case against her.”

“She’s not innocent until the jury says so,” Stier said.

Hardy held out a hand in a behold-the-ass gesture: “Actually, Your Honor, Mr. Stier’s got it exactly backwards. Maya’s innocent until the jury finds her guilty. I think they still teach this in law school in this country.”

Braun had finally lost all pretense of a judicial demeanor. “God damn it! No more!”

But Stier kept on. “Mr. Hardy can split hairs, but I’m confident the court understood what I was saying, Your Honor. And this testimony from Ms. Foreman that Mr. Chiurco maybe used to be called Paco? On what planet does this rise to the level of evidence?”

“The same one,” Hardy shot across at him, “that you landed on when you had Cheryl Biehl testify. I’m just, frankly, stunned that you think you’ve still got a case.”

Stier harrumphed. “To the contrary, Your Honor, since Mr. Chiurco does investigative work for Mr. Hardy’s own law firm, I wouldn’t put it past them to have colluded to put on this entire elaborate charade just so the jury would have to consider an alternate suspect.” Then, directly to Hardy, “So, how do you do it? You give your guy a bonus when this is done for the inconvenience you put him through?”

“That’s the most ridiculous and insulting accusation I’ve heard in all the time I’ve been practicing law, Your Honor. It’s beneath contempt.” Hardy, finally reaching his limit, raised his own voice. “Here’s what I did, Paul. I paid your police department to plant his fingerprint inside the scene of a murder and maybe on the casing from a cartridge at the scene of another murder. What kind of a bonus would you recommend for someone who’s willing to put themselves in prison for life?”

Braun slapped a palm down on her desk. “That exchange, gentlemen, just cost you each a grand. Want to go for another one?”

Hardy, dizzy with adrenaline, fighting to reassert his rationality. “The plain fact, Your Honor, as I said out there, is that Chiurco ought to be under arrest right now. He’s a danger to himself and to the public. The police should be searching his stuff for spatter and Preslee’s place for his DNA. We need to continue this trial at least into next week, or even longer, to let the police finally conduct a real investigation.”

Braun hated this whole thing. She hated Hardy’s provocative and believable theory. She hated Stier’s entire presentation of the case, the sideways involvement of Jerry Glass, Schiff’s sloppy investigating, the political ramifications, the testimony about things that may or may not have happened as much as fifteen years before.

Above all, Braun hated the idea that she might have to tell the jury that this trial might be prolonged another week or even longer. There was no way she could accept a police investigation at this stage into another suspect without dismissing the charges against the current defendant.