Trisha Scott could feel safe sending off bits of her hair in an envelope under our office door because she knew there was no national database for hair samples as there is for fingerprints. Unless there was someone to point the way, to connect her to the crime, the hair evidence might serve to exonerate Carl without implicating her. I wanted this on the table early, so that if she had plans to send me to join Scarborough, she would know from the get-go that they are fruitless.

“It’s over. Do you understand?”

It takes a few seconds, and then she seems to wither in the chair. Whatever will or determination was left evaporates almost in the blink of an eye. I find myself suddenly looking at a different person across the table, at what I can only characterize as a catatonic mask.

For a long time, she says nothing. She takes a drink of water, her eyes suddenly scanning the restaurant. She sets the glass back down and seems to look right through me as she gathers her thoughts.

“I want you to understand…I wonder…I wonder if I could go to the ladies’ room?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I say.

“Police?”

I nod. They’re not here yet. They are on their way, but she doesn’t have to know this.

“Oh, God! I want you to understand how it was. It’s important that you understand.”

“We don’t have much time,” I tell her.

“There was no other choice,” she says. “All the way out on the plane, I got more and more angry. Terry Scarborough was the kind of person who left a trail of ravaged souls as he cruised through life. By the time I got to that hotel, I was seething.”

“You don’t have to say anything. You’ve probably already said too much.”

“No,” she says. “I’ve been holding it in so long. Nobody I could talk to. I have to…I was thinking as far ahead as my brain would allow. I had the cab let me out two blocks from the hotel so there’d be no record of a taxi having dropped me. For a time I actually thought that-given how I felt, the anger-that I could kill him with my bare hands. But he was bigger than I was, stronger. I didn’t have a gun. Even if I did, I wouldn’t know how to use it. I thought about a knife. Maybe I could buy one. But I’d read enough briefs on appeal in criminal cases. I knew if I did that, even if I got rid of the knife, there’d be a trail. Wounds in the body would tell them the length of the blade, whether it was serrated, probably right down to the make and model. I’d read enough about it. I knew they could do it. They’d start checking all the shops, recent sales, anybody buying a single hunting or butcher knife. And even if I used cash, the salesclerk would remember this woman, because her eyes were all red from crying. I decided I couldn’t buy a weapon. I’d have to improvise, use whatever I found in the room-a lamp, a heavy knickknack off one of the shelves.”

“But then you didn’t have to go looking for a weapon, did you?”

“No. But you already know about that, the hammer in the stairwell. I didn’t want to get into the elevator. Too many people would see me.”

“How did you know what room he was in?”

“I called Dick Bonguard on his cell the night before. I had Dick’s number in Outlook on my computer. I knew that Dick would be trailing along with Terry on the book tour. I told Dick I had something I needed to fax to Terry. He gave me the hotel and the suite number.

“I climbed fourteen floors, all the way to the top. Every three or four flights, I’d stop to catch my breath. That’s when I saw it.”

“The hammer?”

“It was as if God had reached down and put it there and I was his avenging angel. I took it, put it in my purse. I had a good-size bag I always used for travel. I carried it over my shoulder, and I climbed to the top.”

“And the raincoat, the gloves?”

“The raincoat was in a little pouch, in the bottom of my purse with the gloves. I knew if I hit him with the hammer, there would be blood. It would get all over me and I’d be trapped there. From everything I read in the papers-and believe me, I kept up with the progress of your case every day,” she says, “the police never found the gloves?”

I shake my head.

“I dropped them in a trash can someplace. I don’t even remember where.”

“The police wouldn’t have looked very hard,” I tell her. “It didn’t fit the facts of their case. They had a fingerprint on the murder weapon. But it wasn’t yours.”

“I know,” she says. This seems to bother her more than the actual killing itself, the fact that Carl and his parents have been dragged through hell. “I would never have let him go to prison or die,” she says. “You have to believe that. I was buying time. That’s all I was doing. I knew that sooner or later I would have to do something to put an end to it. When the news of the Jefferson Letter broke, it was almost a relief. The very thing I’d been hiding so long was now out in the open. There was no need to hide it any longer.”

“So you fed it to us, hoping that it would be enough?”

She nods nervously several times. “Why didn’t it work?”

“One obstinate juror,” I tell her. “The way it goes sometimes.”

“Then if he’d been acquitted, you wouldn’t be here tonight.”

I shrug. She’s right. If Carl were on the street, free, out from under, this wouldn’t be my job. And given the theory of the prosecution, if Carl were acquitted, they would never be able to convict Scott-that is, if they even found her, which is unlikely.

“So you went up the stairs, put on the raincoat and the gloves. You had the hammer in your purse.”

She nods.

“How did you get into the room?”

“I knocked on the door. How stupid is that? I wasn’t sure if he was in or, if he was, whether he was alone. I knew when he opened the door he’d be surprised to see me. And standing there in a raincoat. I had a story ready. I was going to tell him that I was in town on business and there was something I needed to talk to him about if he could spare two minutes-anything to get inside the room.”

“Because you knew you were running out of time,” I say.

“Yes.”

“So what happened when he opened the door?”

“Strange thing was, he never even looked at me. He was busy reading something, a piece of paper in his hand. Before I knew it, he was walking away. He said, ‘Put it on the table’-something about a check. Then I realized he thought I was room service. Suddenly there he was, sitting in the chair, his back to me, reading some papers, making notes, completely oblivious to the fact that I was even standing there. At that moment I think I just exploded. What he had put me through, and he didn’t even know it. Not that Terry would have cared.

“You want to know the truth?” She looks me straight in the eye now. “It was easier than I ever thought it could be. I closed the door and walked up to the back of the chair, and I swung that hammer, over and over and over again, until the muscles in my arms burned.” She breathes heavily, takes the napkin and wipes her eyes.

“At some point I must have closed my eyes, because when I opened them again, there was blood everywhere-on the ceiling, on the walls, soaking into the gloves I was wearing, spotting and running down the raincoat. I didn’t realize it at first, but the reason I stopped swinging was that the hammer was stuck. The claws were lodged in the top of his head. I couldn’t look at it. For some stupid reason, I had to pull it out. I pulled and twisted. The hammer came loose, and his body fell on the floor. I dropped the hammer.

“It’s amazing. I…You’d think you would go into shock after something like that, but I didn’t. I was overwhelmed with this incredible urge to run, to get out of there. I knew that any minute somebody with a tray was probably going to be at the door. But I wasn’t finished.”

“You had to find the video of Ginnis and Scarborough at the restaurant.”

“How did you know?”