"I know."

"I still don't know where to put any of this. How this can be happening to me." She gestured at the surroundings. "None of this is in my life, Dismas. Even after all this time, I can't understand how I've gotten here. I keep telling myself to just be strong and bear up and don't give them anything they can use. But then I think, so what? It's already been too long. I'm not their mom anymore."

"You're still their mom, Catherine. They visit here every chance they get."

"But I can't… I mean…" Again, she bowed her head, shaking it slowly side to side, side to side. "This isn't getting us anywhere. I'm sorry."

"First, one more apology and I start pulling out your fingernails. You've got every right to be miserable and lonely and afraid and have all of this get to you. Second, we don't always have to be getting anywhere. That's for in there." He indicated the courtroom. "Here we can just sit if we want."

She nodded again, then reached over and took his hand. "Can we do this for a minute?"

"I'm timing it," he said.

Seconds ticked by. At last her shoulders settled in a long sigh. "I've been wondering if I could have seen the seeds of all this back when Will and I first started, if that wasn't my original mistake. And everything followed from that."

"You got your kids out of it," Hardy said, "so maybe it wasn't all a mistake."

"I know. That's true. But I also knew it was a different thing with him than I had with you. You know what I'm saying?"

Hardy nodded. He knew.

"But I'd finished college and worked almost ten years and pretty much given up on dating because of all the losers, and then suddenly here was this kind of cute guy who could be fun in those days. But I knew, I knew, Diz, in my heart, that it wasn't… well, the same as I'd always wanted. But I also thought there wouldn't ever be anything better. So I settled. I settled. So, so stupid."

"You did what you did, Catherine. You made a life that worked for almost twenty years. That's not failing."

A bitter chuckle. "Look around you. Getting to here isn't failing?"

"It's not over yet."

"It isn't? It feels like it is. Even if they let me go. That's what I'm saying."

"I understand what you're saying. But I can't have you bail on me now. The first job is to get you acquitted. After that, when you're back outside…"

She was shaking her head and let go of his hand. "Dismas. Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Don't give me the standard pep talk. We both know I might not get back outside."

"I don't know that!" Hardy's tone was firm, nearly harsh. He turned on the bench to face her directly. "Listen to me." Taking her hand back almost angrily, holding it tight with both of his. "I believe you're innocent, and because of that the jury will not convict you. I'll make them see it. And you need to hold on to that thought. I need you to do that for me."

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and let it out all at once. "All right," she whispered, nodding her head. "All right. I can try."

Moving on to news and strategy, he told her of Far-rell's interview with her mother-in-law, the remote but arguable possibilities presented by the missing ring, combined with Theresa's purchase of a new car for cash. While acknowledging without much enthusiasm that it might be something Hardy could introduce to the jury, she really didn't show much interest until he got to what Glitsky had told him about this morning. "You mean Missy was stealing from Paul? When she was going to get all the money anyway?"

On the slab concrete bench, the two of them might have been coaches huddled on the sidelines, conferring in intimate tones. "She wouldn't have gotten any if she left him," Hardy said.

"No, I know. But that much… I mean, if that's true, she must have been planning to leave for quite a while, and I don't understand that at all. They only got formally engaged six months or so before they died, and the remodel had already been going on long before that."

Hardy's shoulders went up an inch. "Maybe she wasn't sure they'd ever really get married and she wanted to make sure she got something out of him for the time invested. Then, by the time they actually started making plans, she'd already socked all this money away."

"Maybe. But I don't know what it means. Why did she take it out?"

"You said it. They were arguing. Paul might have thought it wasn't a major issue, but maybe she didn't agree. She was leaving him."

Catherine sat straight up. "Maybe I'm stupid, Dis-mas, but that doesn't make any sense. She wasn't going to leave him over some possible minor subcabinet appointment. Paul told me. That day. Remember? That's what the fight was about. He was going to tell them to go ahead and start the vetting process. But beyond that, there were other candidates. He might not have even gotten the nomination, and if he had, he still would have had to be confirmed. The whole thing was months away at least, if it happened at all. I can't see Missy deciding to leave last May over it."

"I'm not arguing with you. But the fact remains that she did take out the money. If she wasn't leaving him, what was she doing?"

"Maybe giving it back to him?"

Hardy tossed her a get-real look. "Maybe not." In the hallway in front of them, two bailiffs led eight jailhouse residents in their orange jumpsuits to another holding cell down the long corridor. The chains that bound them together rattled and echoed, then died, and Hardy said, "Now if somebody was blackmailing her…"

"What for?"

"I don't know. But that's kind of been the mantra around Missy, hasn't it? Nobody knows anything about her. Even the tabloid guys never printed any dirt, and if they couldn't find anything, I've got to believe that if something was there, it was well hidden. But now I wonder if somebody found some nasty secret of Missy's and threatened to tell Paul. So Missy would have had to pay to keep it quiet."

Catherine barely dared say the words. "Are you thinking Theresa?"

"She's the ex-wife," Hardy said. "She hated Missy more than anybody. She'd be motivated to look for dirt on her." He didn't add, though they both knew, that Theresa had no alibi, that she'd paid cash for a new car soon after Missy had withdrawn the money. Hardy didn't want to overplay it, but the suddenly very real possibility that Theresa might have killed Paul and Missy was there in the cell between them. "Did anybody else in the family ever talk to Missy about her life?" Hardy asked. "Even when you all were first introduced to her?"

"It wasn't like we all got together and played parlor games, Diz. She and Paul ran in different circles than all of us. We'd see them both at holidays or sometimes at some social thing, but we weren't doing sleepovers and trading intimate secrets, I promise you."

Out of the corner of his eye, Hardy saw the bailiff appear in the small, wired-glass window to the courtroom door. They heard the keys, and the door swung open.

Showtime.

They were just back from the first morning recess, and so far Hardy felt he was doing very well on the eyewitness front. He was delighted with Rosen's decision to call Jeffrey (Jeffie) Siddon, since the young gas station attendant's demeanor was unsympathetic, to say the least. Flat of effect and subtly hostile to if not bored by the entire proceeding, his mumbling responses surely didn't inspire any confidence in the jury.

Further, his identification of Catherine was not exactly emphatic. Yes, he'd picked her out of a photograph, then out of her booking mug shot. Hardy had already made his point about IDs from a single photo, but the fact is that other people were saying they recognized Catherine, and this guy would be just one more. But facing her in person, he seemed to hesitate. Rosen had to ask him twice if he recognized in the courtroom the person who had bought the gasoline in the container from his station. Could he point out that person to the jury? Jeffie had raised his hand an inch or two, nodded, and pointed briefly at Catherine. Hardy thought, from the performance, that it was almost as if he had pantomimed the words "I think" afterward.