"I can't tell you that exactly." Glitsky recognized something in Trueblood's voice-the same sympathetic but oddly disembodied tone he'd used numerous times before, when he had to inform relatives about the death of someone in their family. He knew that your words had to be clear and carefully chosen to forestall denial. You were recounting an objective fact that could not be undone, painful as it was to hear. At that tone-by itself-Glitsky felt his heart contract in panic's grip. Trueblood's next words, even more gently expressed, were a depth charge in his psyche. "I'm sorry, but this may be very serious." "You mean he might die?"

Trueblood hesitated, then nodded. "It's not impossible. We're still not sure exactly what we're dealing with."

Arguing, as though it would change anything, Glitsky said, "But my wife said it was just a murmur."

Trueblood's red-rimmed, exhausted, unfathomably cheerless eyes held Glitsky's. His hands were folded in front of him on the table and he spoke with an exaggerated care. "Yes, but there are different kinds of murmurs. Your son's, Zachary's, is a very loud murmur," he said. "Now this can mean one of two things-the first not very good and the second very bad."

"So not very good is the best that we're talking about?"

Trueblood nodded. He piled the words up as Glitsky struggled to comprehend. "It could be, and this is the not very good option, that it's just a hole in his heart…"

"Just?"

A matter-of-fact nod. "It's called a VSD, a ventricular septal defect. It's a very small, pinhole-sized hole that can produce a murmur of this volume. Sometimes."

"So the very bad option is more likely?"

"Statistically, with this type of murmur, perhaps slightly."

Glitsky couldn't hold his head up anymore. They shouldn't have tried for this baby. He shouldn't have let Treya talk him into it. She was already in love with it, with him, with Zachary, as was Glitsky himself. After the long wait to welcome him, in only a couple of hours Zachary had moved into their hearts and minds. And not just the thought of him. The presence, the person.

But Trueblood was going on. "In any event, the other option is called aortic stenosis, which in a newborn can be very difficult to correct." He let the statement hang between them for a second. "But that's what we're testing to see now. We've X-rayed the heart already, and it doesn't seem to be enlarged, which is the most obvious sign of aortic stenosis."

Glitsky, grasping at anything resembling hope, said, "And you're saying it doesn't seem enlarged?"

"No. But at his age, we'll need to analyze the X-rays more closely. A heart that size, we're talking millimeters of difference between healthy and damaged. We'll need to have a radiologist give us a definitive read on it."

"And when will that be?"

"We've got a call in for someone right now, but he may not get his messages until morning. In any case, it won't be for a few hours at best. And the echocardio-gram couldn't be scheduled until tomorrow. We felt we had to talk to you and your wife before then."

Glitsky met the doctor's eyes again. "What if it's the VSD, the hole in the heart? The better option."

"Well, if it's a big hole, we operate, but I don't think it's a big one."

"Why not?"

"The murmur is too loud. It's either a tiny, tiny hole or… or aortic stenosis." "A death sentence." "Not necessarily, not always." "But most of the time?" "Not infrequently."

"So what about this tiny hole? What do you do with that?"

"We just let it alone as long as we can. Sometimes they close up by themselves. Sometimes they never do, but they don't affect the person's life. But if the hole does cause… problems, we can operate."

"On the heart?"

"Yes."

"Open-heart surgery?"

"Yes. That's what it is. And it's successful a vast majority of the time."

Glitsky was trying to analyze it all, fit it in somewhere. "So best case, we're looking at heart surgery. Is that what you're saying?"

"No. Best case is a tiny hole that closes by itself."

"And how often does that happen?"

Trueblood paused. "About one out of eight. We'll have a better idea by the morning."

Glitsky spoke half to himself. "What are we supposed to do until then?"

The doctor knew the bitter truth of his suggestion, but it was the only thing he could bring himself to say. "You might pray that it's only a hole in his heart."

"Only a hole in his heart? That's the best we can hope for?"

"Considering the alternative, that would be good news, yes."

It was eight thirty and Hardy told himself that he should close the shop and go home. He reached up and turned the switch on the green banker's lamp that he'd been reading under. His office and the lobby through his open door were now dark. A wash of indirect light from down the associates' hallway kept the place from utter blackness, but he felt effectively isolated and alone. It wasn't a bad way to feel. He knew he could call Yet Wah and have his shrimp lo mein order waiting for him by the time he got there, but something rendered him immobile, and he'd learned over the years to trust these intuitive inclinations, especially when he was in trial.

The primary reality in a trial like this is that there was just too much to remember. You could have pretty damned close to a photographic memory, as Hardy did, and still find yourself struggling to remember a fact, a detail, a snatch of conflicting testimony. The big picture, the individual witness strategies, the evidence trail, the alternative theories-to keep all these straight and reasonably accessible, some unconscious process prompted him to shut down from time to time-to let his mind go empty and see what claimed his attention. It was almost always something he'd once known and then forgotten, or dismissed as unimportant before he'd had all the facts, and which a new fact or previously unseen connection had suddenly rendered critical.

Once in a while, he'd use the irrational downtime to leaf through his wall of binders, pulling a few down at random and turning pages for snatches of a police report, witness testimony, photographs. Other times, he'd throw darts-no particular game, just the back and forth from his throw line to the board and back again. Tonight, he backed his chair away from his desk and simply sat in the dark, waiting for inspiration or enlightenment.

He hadn't noticed her approach, but a female figure was suddenly standing in the doorway. She reached for the doorknob and started to pull the door closed.

"Hello?" Hardy said.

"Oh, sorry." The voice of Gina Roake, his other partner. "Diz, is that you? I saw your door open. I thought you'd left and forgotten to close it."

"Nope. Still here."

A pause. "Are you all right?"

"First day of trial."

"I hear you. How'd it go?"

"You can flip on the light if you want. I'm not coming up with anything. It went okay, I think. I hope. I even got a little bonus from Strout's testimony, so maybe I should declare victory and go home."

But Roake didn't turn on the room lights. Her silhouette leaned against the doorpost, arms crossed over her chest. "Except?"

"Except… I don't know. I was waiting for a lightning bolt or something."

"To illuminate the darkness?" "Right, but not happening."

"It's the first day," Roake said. "It's too soon. It never happens on the first day."

"You're probably right," Hardy admitted. "I just thought it might this time."

"And why would that be?"

"Because Catherine didn't…" He stopped.

"Didn't what?" "That's it."

"Okay, I give up. What?"

"I told her she wouldn't spend the rest of her life in jail. Spontaneously. That I wouldn't let that happen."

Silent, Roake shifted at the doorpost.