"Deputy Chief Glitsky has not been at work for two days and did not return calls to his office, and Hardy, likewise, could not be reached for comment."

"Dad? Are you all right?"

Still leaning on his hands, the paper spread open under him, Hardy stood immobile. "If any of the jury saw this or heard about it, we're going to ask for a mistrial. I've got to or I'm incompetent." Now he straightened up, pressed a hand to his eyes. "I'm going to have to do this all over again. And Catherine in jail all that time. Lord."

His daughter moved up next to him, put an arm around his waist. He turned back to the front page so she could read the article from the top. When she finished, she rested her head against him. "But none of it is remotely true."

"No. What makes it so effective is that most of it is true. The mayor and Abe and I are friends. She asked Abe to look into the investigation. I used to date Catherine. The facts are fine. It's just all twisted. I especially love where it says that Abe hasn't been in the office for two days, implying that he's ducking questions, when in fact he had a baby born with a hole in his heart. You think that might account for it?"

"How about your relationship with Uncle Abe being a source of discussion…"

"My cozy relationship. And it's discussion and conjecture. Don't forget conjecture."

"I never would. But what's that supposed to mean?"

"It means we're somehow up to no good."

They both stood over the paper, staring down at it. "So what are you going to do?" Rebecca finally asked.

"Well, first, let's see if I can get the judge to ask if any of the jurors saw this or heard about it."

"Do you really want that?"

"I don't have a choice. It's too big to ignore. I think I can convince Braun." "To declare a mistrial?"

He nodded. "If any of the jurors read this, and I'm almost certain at least three of them can read, then it's extremely prejudicial. They get kicked off just for ignoring Braun's instructions. If they discussed it with the other jurors, the whole panel goes." Suddenly, he let out a little yelp of alarm and reached over to uncover his black pan and flick the heat off under it.

"I like a nice crust on hash." Rebecca squeezed his waist. "Don't worry about that."

But Hardy's lapse in timing bothered him. "I've never ruined anything I cooked in this pan before," he said miserably.

"And still haven't," his daughter responded. "Besides, it's not ruined. It's well done."

"Same thing. It's got to be an omen."

"No, it's a sign. Besides, I hate runny eggs."

Hardy stuck the corner of his spatula into one of the hard yolks. "Well, they're not that. And what would it be a sign of?"

She gave it a second. "Perseverance. Staying in the frying pan even when it's too hot."

The lighthearted, feel-good words resonated on some level, although Hardy couldn't put his finger on it. "You think?" he asked.

"Positive," she said.

In the "Passion Pit" two hours later, the attorney and his client sat on either end of the library table that served as the room's only furnishing. "This is unbelievable," Catherine said as she put down the paper. "What's it going to mean?"

"It means we might be able to start over if you want."

She threw a terrified glance across at him. "You don't mean from the beginning?"

"Pretty close."

"I can't do that, Dismas. I couldn't live here that long."

Hardy wasn't so sure that she was exaggerating. He'd known a lot of people who'd gone to jail-including some who more or less called it home-and most of them went through the original denial of their situation, hating every second of the experience, but then came to accept the surroundings as the reality of their life. Over these eight months, if anything, Catherine had come to hate her incarceration more and more each day. She'd lost the weight because she'd all but stopped eating. Another eight months, or more, preparing and waiting for another trial, might in fact kill her. If she didn't kill herself first. The year before Hardy had had another client try to do that very thing.

"Well, Catherine, after we find out if any of the jury has seen this, and they have, then if I don't move for a mistrial-regardless what Braun rules-it's damn close to malpractice."

"I'd never sue you for that."

"No. But an appellate court might find me incompetent."

She couldn't argue with that. "I don't want to stop, though. I think we're doing okay." "That's heartening."

"You don't?"

"Honestly, Catherine, I don't know. Cuneo has…" He stopped.

"What?"

An idea had occurred to him, but he didn't inadvertently want to give Catherine any false hope. "Nothing. I'm just thinking we've still got some rocky ground ahead of us. You testifying, for example." He explained his problem with her old and brand-new alibi, how the discrepancy would sound to the jurors.

"But I have to testify if I'm going to talk about Cuneo. Isn't that our whole theory about why he kept coming after me?"

"Yes. Initially, anyway."

"Would a second trial be any different?"

"Maybe. Slightly. I don't know. A venue change might make a difference."

"Are you still mad at me?"

The question took him by surprise-talk about irrelevant-but he nodded. "Yep."

"I didn't kill anybody, Dismas. I know you don't like to talk about that. You've told me not to go on about it, but it's the truth. It really is. And I can't stay in here too much longer. I've got to see the end in sight."

"Don't do anything stupid, Catherine."

"I won't. But I can't start all this over again."

Hardy boosted himself from the table and walked across to the glass-block walls of the jail's attorney-client visiting room. He couldn't remember the last time he'd let a trial get so far away from him, and now he wasn't sure how to proceed. Most defense attorneys spend a great deal of their time trying to get delays for their clients-to put off the eventual day of reckoning and the finality of the sentence. But Catherine didn't want delay, couldn't accept it. She wanted resolution. But if he'd tried to deliver on that at the expense of a winnable strategy, a shortchange on the evidence issues, or a blunder in his refusal to press for an obvious mistrial, he stood the very real risk of condemning her to life in prison.

But maybe, he was beginning to think, there was another approach-legal but rarely invoked-that could change everything. If he could get Braun to rule that Cuneo's statements to the press were a result of deliberate misconduct on the part of the prosecution-i.e., Rosen- she might give him a mistrial for prosecutorial misconduct. In this case, Catherine-having once been placed in jeopardy by the state-would under the theory of double jeopardy walk out of the courtroom a free woman. They couldn't try her again for the same crimes, even if they were capital murder. But of course, this made it a potentially huge decision for the judge, since it would undo the efforts of the grand jury that had issued the indictments, as well as those of the district attorney and the police department. And there would be an immediate uproar from the conspiracy buffs that somehow the fix was in.

But Catherine cut him off midthought. "Can I ask you something?" she said from behind him.

He turned.

"Is this true, what Cuneo says? That the mayor asked Glitsky to intervene?" "Yes."

"Why did she do that?"

"Because she was afraid of your father-in-law's enemies. She thought it might have been about business somehow. The city's towing contract."

"And Glitsky followed that up?"

" 'Til it ended with nothing."

"And all the other leads?"

"Every one he could find, yes."

"How about the political one?"