Hill stood up and announced that he would be leaving the bench for fifteen minutes, the last recess of the day. Cole went for a pit stop with the bailiff and Hardy and Freeman started talking about whether they had enough to make a motion to bifurcate the hearing – put it on hold until some of these outstanding issues had been investigated and/or resolved.

But Abe and Treya had come into the courtroom during the last half hour, and Glitsky, finally having pushed through the gallery and inside the bar rail, listened for a minute, caught their gist, and interrupted. 'I don't think we want to do that.'

As Hardy called lab technician Nikki Waller to the stand, suddenly he had the sense that the momentum had truly shifted – the lone fact that Freeman had so desired had finally appeared. The stocky, pretty young woman came confidently forward out of the gallery and took the stand with a kind of bright effervescence. Enthusiasm was rare enough in the courtroom, and Hardy found himself smiling at her, grateful for the attitude and also – mostly – for the information she possessed. He walked her through her introduction and credentials, then got directly to the point.

'Ms Waller, did you have occasion recently to examine for fingerprints some of the contents of the room where Cullen Alsop died?'

'Yes, I did, just today.'

'Hadn't you already done something like that?'

'Yes.' She briefly explained the computer problem, concluding, 'I didn't have a print good enough to compare to prints already in the system by computer, so not too surprisingly, I didn't find anything to match.'

'Although there were a lot of fingerprints in the room, isn't that so?'

'Oh yeah.' She almost giggled. 'There was no shortage there. They were everywhere.'

'And then what happened this morning to make you look again?'

'Well, Inspector Thieu from homicide came to the lab and asked that I check the fingerprints again against a specific individual, whose prints were on file.'

'And did you do that?'

'Yes, I did.'

'Ms Waller, what was the object on which you found the fingerprint?'

She wrinkled her face fetchingly. 'Actually, it was a piece of scotch tape – the inside sticky part – which was used to close the baggie that had held the heroin.'

'And was it usable?'

'It was blurry, but usable.'

'And did you get a match this time?'

'Yes, sir, I did.'

Hardy straightened up and inhaled deeply. 'Would you please tell the court the name of the person whose fingerprint was on the tape that enclosed the bag of heroin?'

Nikki Waller looked helpfully up at the Cadaver. 'Eugene Visser.'

On the stand, Visser was the picture of blue-collar cooperation. 'Of course I can explain it. This was the junkie in the bathroom, right?'

Hardy shrugged. 'You're telling the court, Mr Visser. Not me.'

'Well,' Visser sat back, no sign of tension anywhere. 'First you gotta understand that Jupiter is a party place. I mean, I heard what your last witness was talking about -Falk? – and you know, I've seen him in there too. In the bathroom.'

'We're not talking about Inspector Falk right now, Mr Visser. We're talking about how your thumbprint came to be on a bag of pure heroin that was a vehicle for a young man's death.'

'OK, sure,' Visser said. 'The short answer, then, is I picked it up.'

'You picked it up?'

'I'm in the bathroom, I'm standing at the urinal, it's the middle of the afternoon. I'm hearing some noise next to me in the stall, but you know how that is, you don't exactly go sticking your head over the top and asking how things are going.' A nervous titter rolled through the gallery. 'Anyway, next thing I know, I hear this person swear, like he dropped something, and a baggie of white powder shows up at my feet.'

'At your feet?'

'Yeah. I don't know. He must have kicked it grabbing for it or something. But like I was telling you, this isn't the first time I'd seen something like that at Jupiter. I mean, this is an adult place. There's a lot of law enforcement types, like myself. So I figure, the kid in the stall, maybe he's undercover – like your friend Falk, maybe, huh? -and he's trying to entrap me.' The gallery found this amusing too. 'So I leaned over, picked up the baggie, closed it back up with the tape. By this time, the kid's out of the stall, coming around, frantic. Going all like "Where's my stuff? Where's my stuff?" So I hand it back to him.'

'You handed it to him?'

Visser smiled. 'All taped up. Which, now, take my word for it, I wish I hadn't.'

Another ripple of laughter, and Visser acknowledged it almost as though he was doing stand-up. He began to rise out of the witness chair, but Hardy held up a hand and stopped him. 'Mr Visser, excuse me. We're not quite done here. Inspector Falk has testified that you went into the bathroom after Mr Alsop and both of you stayed in there for quite a while, perhaps as long as ten minutes. Would you care to explain that to the court?'

Shaking his head at all this silliness, Visser plopped back down and gave Hardy a long and serious look. 'You don't have to believe me, but I talked to him.'

'You talked to him? Cullen Alsop? What about?'

He threw a look to the judge, then back to Hardy. 'No, forget it. Never mind. You'd just laugh.'

'I'm not laughing, Mr Visser, I assure you. Please answer the question.'

The private eye fussed with his jacket. He took another moment, then shrugged. 'I told him he oughta go easy on that stuff. That it could kill him.'

Behind Hardy, the gallery hummed again, but this time there wasn't any laughter.

'So we talked like a minute, five minutes, I don't know. He seemed like a good kid. He told me he'd just got out of jail, and the first thing he did was get hooked up. He knew he should get straight, but couldn't seem to do it. So I told him just why didn't he take that bag and flush it right then. Start now. And you know, for a minute I thought he would. I think he really thought about it. But then he just said he couldn't do it, not yet.' The big man let out a convincing sigh. 'It was that close,' he said sadly.

To keep his temper in check, Hardy walked across the courtroom, then to his table for a sip of water. Freeman got his attention, mouthed, 'Let him go.' The old man sensed that Hardy was going to go after him some more, with no idea even of what questions he was going to ask, much less the answers to them. But Hardy ignored Freeman, and by the time he came back to the witness, he had himself under control. 'Mr Visser, did you talk with the police regarding this matter?'

'Yes I did.'

'When was that?'

Visser made a show of remembering. 'I don't know exactly, last Wednesday or Thursday, I think. I told the inspector the same thing I told you.'

'You talked to an inspector?'

'Yeah. Black guy, right? Banks? He had me at Jupiter with the kid, too. He came by there the next day after the boy died, asking questions then.' A nonchalant shrug. 'He was just following up.'

'Where did you see him?'

'He came by my office, which is down on Pier Thirty-eight. I was working late there and he caught me. He asked me the same questions, not so specific about the baggie maybe – I didn't know I had a print on it – but the same basic idea.'

'And then what happened?' Hardy was so angry, he couldn't stop himself.

'What happened when?'

'Next,' Hardy snapped. 'After you'd finished?'

Visser lifted his shoulders, let them down theatrically. 'I don't know. He left.'

Hardy raised his voice. 'Are you telling this court that you don't know that Inspector Banks has been missing from that night on?'

The witness sat back in dismay. 'Missing?'

Behind him, David Freeman exploded into a coughing fit. Evidently he'd choked on some water he was drinking, and now was hacking with a devastating and awful severity. He knocked his glass over on the table. There wasn't a person in the courtroom that didn't believe he could be choking to death. Cole was up, patting him on his back, the bailiff was moving over. Hardy remembered the judge, asked to be excused for a moment, then hustled over.