More hearsay, though Hardy didn't doubt its truth.

'Let's stop there for a moment, Officer Petrie. Do you recognize the suspect that you and your partner arrested that night in the courtroom today?'

'Yes.'

'Would you point him out to the court, please?'

Petrie raised a hand, pointed a finger. 'In the middle of the defense table over there.'

Torrey had the record reflect that Petrie had identified the defendant, Cole Burgess. 'Now, this gun…' He introduced the murder weapon into evidence, and evidently the size of it made an impression on the gallery. It truly was a tiny weapon – no more than two and a half inches long, perhaps half an inch wide. Petrie identified it as the gun from the scene. 'All right,' Torrey said, 'you've arrested the suspect and recovered a gun. What did you do next?'

'I should say he was already handcuffed. Dan had handcuffed him after he caught him.'

'OK, thank you.'

'Then we brought him over to the squad car and patted him down. His pockets, his coat. He was wearing an old jacket.'

'And did you find anything on his person?'

'Yes, sir. Several items.'

'Would you describe them, please?'

Petrie identified them – the necklace, diamond ring, pair of earrings, a wallet belonging to the deceased containing her identification as well as eighty-five dollars in bills and a dollar sixteen in coins.

Prosaic as this was, no one in the courtroom was unaware of the significance of this testimony. This made it murder in the commission of a robbery. It's what made it a capital crime for which Cole Burgess could be put to death.

If there had been a jury present, this would have been the opportunity for Torrey to play to it, to underscore the importance of this testimony. But there was nothing for him to do in that regard now, no theatrical business to attend to, so he had to press on ahead.

'Officer Petrie,' he said, 'was the defendant intoxicated when you arrested him?'

Hardy stood. 'Objection, your honor. Calls for a conclusion. Officer Petrie is not an expert witness.'

But Torrey was ready with an argument. 'Your honor, a layman can offer an opinion in this area and every policeman on the street is intimately familiar with apparent intoxication.'

Hill nodded in agreement. 'Objection is overruled.' Hardy wanted to keep going, but he'd been warned. The judge had made his ruling. Besides, it was the correct one. There was nothing to do but sit back down and listen to Petrie's answer.

'I smelled liquor on his breath, but he was conversant and coordinated.'

Torrey smiled, obviously pleased at how well his witness had taken to his coaching. 'Conversant and coordinated,' he repeated. 'Thank you, officer. No further questions.'

If Hardy had been prosecuting, he would have had a lot more, so he was surprised – his rhythm off – as he stood to begin his cross. 'Officer Petrie,' he began, 'you smelled liquor on Cole Burgess's breath, is that correct?'

'Yes, it is.'

'Was this a strong odor?'

'I could smell it, yes.'

'Did you give him a Breathalyzer test?'

'No.'

'No.' Hardy paced a few steps to his left, deep in thought. 'Officer Petrie, in your years as a police officer, have you ever pulled over a car for a driving violation?'

Petrie reacted with a bit of impatience. 'Yeah,' he said. 'Of course.'

'Of course,' Hardy repeated. 'And on any of those occasions, if you wanted to know if someone was drunk, what was your procedure?'

'Usually we ask the person to get out of the car and administer some field sobriety tests. Saying the alphabet backwards, or standing on one foot with their eyes closed, like that.'

'So basically walking and talking, right? And other basic tests of coordination?'

'Yes.'

'Now you saw my client staggering when he walked, isn't that right? When he came back with your partner?'

'Well, yeah, but he had fallen down.'

That's right, officer. He not only couldn't walk when you saw him, but he was too uncoordinated to escape, right? He plain fell down when he tried to run, isn't that correct?'

'Well, he ran into something.'

'And fell down, didn't he?'

A reluctant nod. 'OK. Yes.' Petrie tried to sneak a glance over Hardy's shoulder, pick up a cue from Torrey.

Hardy took a step toward the witness box and to his right, hopefully blocking the line of sight. 'Now, how about his speech?'

'I don't know,' Petrie said grudgingly. 'It varied.'

'Did he speak at all, officer,' Hardy asked, 'or was he too incoherent to say much?'

'He was pretty incoherent.'

'And passed out in the back of the patrol car?'

'Yeah.' Petrie squirmed. 'He did that.'

Hardy backed away a step, took a beat, then came back to the officer. 'People who act as you've described here might be drunk, correct?'

'Yes.'

'Another alternative would be if they were injured, is that right?'

'Yes.'

'And in fact, Mr Burgess was bleeding slightly from a head injury, correct?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Well, since you've testified that there were paramedics at the scene and your policy and procedure is to have injured prisoners evaluated by paramedics, isn't it true that the reason you didn't show Mr Burgess to the paramedics was because you could tell that the only thing wrong with him was that he was drunk? Falling down, incoherently drunk?'

Petrie was stuck. 'He was.'

Hardy nodded, satisfied. 'No further questions.'

During the recess, Freeman left for the bathroom. Cole pushed back from the defense table. He was not cuffed in the courtroom, and had crossed his arms over his chest, rested an ankle on his knee. 'I can't believe you didn't ask him anything about the shot,' he said.

Hardy wasn't much in the mood for criticism at the moment. 'Like what? He's not our witness.'

'Why not?'

Hardy, pretending to read from some notes in front of him, finally gave that up and turned to face Cole. 'Because I talked to him early in the week. He says he didn't hear any shot. And we need that shot as much as they don't need it.'

'Why didn't Torrey bring it up, then?'

Hardy had wondered about this too. Certainly, it was an important point. If Cole had only fired the gun once, and not when he fell during the pursuit in the alley, then the only handy explanation for the gunpowder residue on his hands was that he'd fired the gun before the police arrived. Presumably to kill Elaine. Petrie's report of the incident never mentioned a shot, although Medrano's did. So Hardy had put Medrano on his own witness list. He assumed that when Torrey had seen this, he chose Petrie for the prosecution version of the story. Then, in the flush of having demonstrated his special circumstance – robbery – he'd decided he had gotten enough out of him. He didn't need what the officer didn't hear. Hardy hoped this would prove to be a critical omission, but he downplayed it to his client. 'I don't know, Cole,' he said. 'My honest feeling is that he just plain forgot.'

Freeman guessed right again on the next witness – the crime scene lab technician. Lennard Faro was a small man in his early thirties with a thin mustache and thick, pomaded black hair. He wore a blue blazer over a tangerine shirt. A tiny gold cross earring dangled from his left ear. He verified that the slug ballistics confirmed that the bullet that had killed Elaine Wager had been fired from the weapon Cole had had in his possession. Faro had tested the defendant for gunshot residue, then analyzed the results. Now Torrey had come to the nub of it. 'And therefore, based on the results of this test, it was your conclusion that the defendant had on his hands residue that could only have come from a discharged firearm.'

It was a no-brainer. Faro had no doubt at all. 'Yes, sir.' And Hardy got the witness.