"You mean with the mayor?"

"No, with the president. You know, the cabinet thing."

In the endless reams of newsprint leading up to the trial, the nascent potential cabinet appointment naturally got its fifteen minutes of spin and conjecture. But no one-reporters, private investigators or administration officials-had uncovered or revealed anything remotely approaching a connection to Hanover's murder. Many people, including Hardy's investigator, had looked, and all had concluded that Hanover hadn't been involved in anything controversial on the national scene. Beyond that, the nomination process itself had not even formally begun-Hanover's vetting by the FBI was still at least weeks away when he'd been shot.

Hardy shook his head. "I don't know if Glitsky has looked at that specifically. Why? Has something occurred to you?"

Hardy was more than willing to take anything she could give him. A little ripple of concern ran through him. Here he was, nearly a year into his defense of this woman, on the third day of her actual trial, and in the past two days she'd given him not one, but two, potentially important facts-the ring and the nomination- which he'd previously given short shrift. It brought him up short.

Were his own personal demons-his concern over Cuneo's conspiracy theory, allowing the personal element inevitably to creep into his representation of his old girlfriend, the media madness, Abe's personal and professional issues-were these concerns threatening his ability to conduct a competent defense, blinding him to other critical facts? The basic rule of trial strategy is that you didn't want to be surprised by anything once you got to the courtroom, and now in two successive days he realized he'd been vulnerable to broadsides twice! Luckily, it had not yet happened in the courtroom, but he'd obviously been so sloppy in his preparation that it would only be a matter of time.

It was unconscionable-he ought to go in to Braun and get a mistrial declared today and then bow out entirely. In waves of self-loathing, he realized that he'd failed Catherine and even failed himself. He was unprepared. She would go down.

But Catherine was still on the nomination. "That's what they were fighting about, you know. The nomination."

"I'm sorry," Hardy said. "Who was fighting?"

"Missy and Paul."

"When?" Hardy, all but babbling.

"Dismas. That day. Don't you remember I said they'd been arguing?" Though it didn't eradicate the disgust Hardy was feeling with himself, he did realize that he'd reread this bit of information, the arguing, while reviewing his binders last night. Though he hadn't recognized its relevance, if any. And didn't even now.

But Catherine was going on. "That's why Missy wasn't there when I was. She'd left all upset that morning."

"Why was she upset?"

"Because she didn't want Paul to go for the nomination." "Why not?"

"I think mostly it was the house. She'd just spent over a year redecorating the place. The thought of moving to Washington, D.C.? I don't really blame her."

"Is that what Paul told you?"

"What? That she didn't want to move? No. He said she was paranoid about the government and their background check, which he thought was ridiculous. She didn't even want them to start. She thought they'd be prejudiced somehow because she was foreign. She just didn't want to be involved. It scared her, he said."

"But Paul wanted it? The nomination."

"Did he want it? Did Paul Hanover want national recognition for a lifetime of public and private service? Does the pope shit in the woods? Of course he wanted it. Missy would come around, he said. They weren't going to break up over it. They loved each other. She'd see there wouldn't be anything to worry about. He told her that morning that he was going ahead anyway, and that's when they'd fought and she'd walked out."

"And then come back," Hardy said, "in time to get shot."

This sobered Catherine right up. "I know. Great timing, huh?"

In the end, though, Hardy thought with some relief, this at least was an example of a fact to be filed under interesting, even fascinating, but irrelevant. Paul and Missy's argument on the day of their deaths didn't lead either one of them to kill the other. Someone else had killed them both. Which left Hardy only with the ring, and the question of Theresa Hanover's alibi for the night of the fire.

But the bailiff now knocked at the door and announced that it was time to go over to the Hall. Hardy, in a dangerous emotional state in any event, had to bite his tongue to keep from telling the bailiff not to cuff his client, that she didn't need that indignity.

But he knew that this would have been wasted breath.

The cuffs clicked into place.

₂₄

Marian Braun was a Superior Court judge when Barry Bonds was still playing baseball for Serra High School down in San Mateo. Her chambers reflected that longevity with an unusual sense of homeyness. She'd had built-in wooden bookshelves installed all across the back wall, put down a couple of nice large rugs to cover the institutional linoleum floor, hung several pleasant California landscapes here and there. Drapes under sconces softened the two window areas, and the upholstered furniture for her visitors marked a significant departure from the typical judge's chamber setting of a few metal chairs in front of an often imposing and distancing desk.

But the comfortable physical setting wasn't making anybody in the room more relaxed at the moment. To no one's surprise, Braun had summoned Cuneo and counsel for both sides here as soon as her bailiff told her they

were all in the courtroom. At the same time, she'd had the bailiffs bring in a copy of the morning's Chronicle and told them to instruct the jurors not to speak with each other, even casually, until she came out into open court.

Now Hardy leaned against the bookshelf, hands in his pockets, and Chris Rosen held up the wall next to him. Jan Saunders had pulled in her portable chair from the courtroom and was setting up her machine on the coffee table in front of the couch. Braun, silent as a stone Buddha, sat at her desk sipping coffee and pointedly ignoring everyone's entrance as she turned the pages of the morning's paper. She was waiting for Saunders to be ready to record the discussion, and didn't seem inclined to make small talk to cut the tension until that moment arrived. In fact, to Hardy, the gathering tension seemed to be her point.

Saunders hit a few keys, then cleared her throat-a prearranged signal-and Braun glanced at her, took a sip of coffee, put down her newspaper. She looked first at Rosen, then over to Hardy, then over to Cuneo and finally back to the prosecutor. "Mr. Rosen, do you remember a couple of weeks ago when we were starting with jury selection and I said I didn't want anybody talking to the press about this case?"

Rosen pried himself off the wall into a respectful stance. "Yes, Your Honor. Of course."

"Here in the legal world, we call that a gag order. Does that phrase ring a bell?"

"Yes, Your Honor."

"And since Inspector Cuneo has been in the courtroom, sitting next to you at the prosecution table since the formal start of these proceedings, do you think it's unreasonable of me to assume that he is part of the pros-ecutorial team? And that therefore the gag order would apply to him as well?"

"Yes, Your Honor, but…"

Braun held up a hand, stopping his reply, and turned to Cuneo. "Inspector," she began, "what do you have to say for yourself?"

But Rosen rushed to his inspector's protection before Cuneo could say a word. "I don't think Inspector Cuneo quite recognized the sensational nature of his comments, Your Honor. Or how they would be taken."