“Are you sure you can continue, Mr. Pohlmann?”

“Quite sure, Your Honor.” Klaus began to smile, but it still looked like a toss-up as to whether a hearty laugh or unconsciousness would follow. He fanned himself vigorously with a file. “Miss Reilly will examine the next witness.” He leaned over to Nina and whispered, “Listen carefully: European boys are often given the name of their grandfather.”

Nina nodded. She had no idea what he was talking about. His breathing returned to normal and his color was restored, but an impish smile stayed pasted to his face.

She stood up, wet her lips, and said, “Good morning, Professor.”

“For you, perhaps.”

Now, that was not a good beginning, but it told her what she wanted to know, that Alex Zhukovsky knew what had been going on in the courtroom. “Have you engaged in a recent conversation with Wanda Wyatt this morning?”

“Yes.” A scowl.

Aha. “What, if anything, did she tell you about your family?”

“She told me she had married my father. She explained fully.”

Salas’s face darkened. He told the bailiff, “Go see if you can find Ms. Wyatt. I want to speak to her in my chambers over the lunch break. Continue, Counsel.”

“Did this information surprise you?” Nina asked.

“I had no idea.”

“How did you feel about your father, Professor Zhukovsky?”

“I loved him. He was my father.”

“Did you think he was an honest man?”

“On the whole. My father loved telling stories. Anyone could tell you that. But at heart, he was good.”

“You admired him?”

“Yes. He had been through a lot in his life, and had managed to find peace in his later years.”

“You were proud that he was your father?”

“Of course.”

“Where is this going, Counsel?” Salas asked.

“Just one more question along this line, Your Honor,” Nina said, keeping her eyes on Zhukovsky’s eyes, holding him there. “Are you proud of him today? After what you have just learned?”

He hesitated. “I’ll always be proud of him. I don’t know why he kept this from Christina and me, except that we were selfish brats who went kind of nuts when our mother died. But we were children. I feel sure he would have trusted us eventually, had he lived longer.”

“When you hired him to dig up your father’s remains, you had no idea Stefan Wyatt was your half-brother?”

Jaime started to object. He had several grounds for objection, but he changed his mind and choked them off. He had calculated that the answer would only add to the idea in the jury’s minds that Stefan had a definite and strong connection to Christina.

Nina turned back to Zhukovsky, who was ruffling the sides of his cheeks with the backs of his hands, making up his mind once and for all. He knew they could get legally obtained records of his call to Stefan entered into evidence, and he should be worried about perjuring himself further at this point. Salas waited. They all waited.

“You’re right,” Zhukovsky said. “I need to change my testimony in that regard. I just-I was afraid that it could be thought that I had something to do with my sister’s death. I didn’t.”

“It’s about time,” Nina said. A deep fatigue drifted along inside her, tempering the relief. They’d had to keep at Zhukovsky. She had feared he would never capitulate. Jaime could make use of the information, too, as he could with Wanda’s testimony. But they could make no progress, discover no further truth, until this moment when Zhukovsky sat up straight in the box and pressed his eyes shut as if in a moment of prayer.

Nina said, “You hired Mr. Wyatt?”

“Yes.”

“You asked him to dig up a grave at El Encinal Cemetery and told him it was your father’s grave?”

“Yes.”

“You offered to pay him five hundred dollars to do it?”

“Yes.”

“Thank God,” Stefan said loudly enough for the jury to hear. He held his hands over his eyes. Klaus put an arm around his broad shoulders and whispered to him.

“When was this?”

“Two days before Christina was murdered.”

“Did you know what day this job was to take place?”

“I asked him to do it on Friday night, April eleventh.”

“The night your sister was murdered.”

“I didn’t know she would die that night! The two events are unrelated, I promise you.”

“But we know he didn’t dig up the bones on that Friday night, don’t we?”

“When I went to pick up the bones and they weren’t where they were supposed to be, I called him again. He said he hadn’t gotten around to it. As if I had asked him to mail a letter or something! He promised to do it Saturday night instead. April twelfth.”

The jury, provoked out of lethargy at hearing lies exposed, leaned forward, looking eager. Even Nina felt eager. At last, a breakthrough with this obdurate, deceitful witness. How long they had waited for this information. “Now, you have claimed your sister, Christina, gave you Stefan’s name, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You had no other personal knowledge of Mr. Wyatt?”

“No. I didn’t recognize his name. I know that a woman named Wanda cleaned house for us occasionally a very long time ago.” Disquiet and amazement sneaked into his voice. “But I had no reason to connect things up.”

“All right. Now let’s hear it, Mr. Zhukovsky. Why did you want to dig up your father’s grave?”

He gave her a look he might give his surgeon on the morning of a root canal, like a man anticipating severe postoperative pain. “To persuade my sister not to do something incredibly foolish,” he said. “To protect her from public humiliation. To save my father’s name and myself from ridicule. To protect her from crackpots. I wanted his bones dug up for the sake of my sister.”

The jury looked as puzzled as Stefan, but Nina felt again that aggressive joy as the case opened in front of her like a croc opening its jaws and showing her its big teeth. She couldn’t wait to wrestle with it, clamp the massive jaw of it, get it under control now that she had finally identified what kind of animal it was. Klaus tugged at her sleeve and she bent down. “Ask him: who was he named for?”

She didn’t know why he wanted this, and she didn’t want to do it, but Klaus had that look, and she realized she would not be able to escape what amounted to an order. “By the way, Mr. Zhukovsky, who were you named for?”

“So,” Zhukovsky said. “You knew all the time? Christina made a lot of it. She considered it another good piece of evidence.” He said something in Russian.

“I couldn’t get that down,” the court stenographer interrupted.

“Sorry,” Zhukovsky said. “It’s a long story, and an incredible one. We’ve kept quiet about it for such a long time…” He stopped to fumble with a handkerchief, which he used to wipe his hands. “Should I go on?”

“Be my guest,” Nina said, hardly able to hear her own voice over the roar of her tension. She wanted to jump up there and squeeze the whole thing right out of him. She couldn’t wait another minute. On the other hand, she was fully aware courtroom surprises were sometimes dangerous, even lethal to a case.

Everyone in the courtroom sensed the importance of this moment. The room got noisy momentarily as people repositioned their bodies for comfort, settling in for a good quiet listen. Klaus held Stefan by the arm, whether to steady himself or to steady Stefan, Nina couldn’t tell. The judge’s eyes narrowed to turtle slits. He would let things in a little at a time, and cogitate at his leisure. Jaime, as anxious as she was, sat back in his chair, arms behind his head, a picture of confused hope. He was holding himself in check, secretly praying for a narrative that would present him with an opportunity for ambush.

“This all started several years ago. Christina met a man…”

A phone rang in muted tones on the bailiff’s desk. He spoke softly into it. Then he was out of his chair, whispering to the clerk, then the judge. Salas pounded his gavel. “Clear the courtroom immediately. Stay calm and proceed outside. We have a bomb threat.”