Jaime gave him an incredulous look. “I don’t think it’s appropriate,” he said. “I’m going to be surprised by this witness’s testimony, too.”

“He’s on the witness list we supplied several weeks ago,” Nina interrupted. Judge Salas looked through the court file for this token correctness and found it.

“He is,” he told Jaime.

“Does it say he’s going to testify about the blood evidence?”

“The description is so general he could testify about Mao Tse-tung. You could have filed a pretrial motion objecting to the vagueness of the description.”

Of course Jaime hadn’t done that, because his own witness list, provided to Nina on the last possible day, had also featured vague descriptions.

“I object to putting Mr. Wyatt on out of order,” Jaime said grimly. “I move for a continuance to allow me to prepare a cross-examination of Dr. Hirabayashi.” He had decided to stand on procedure. Nina couldn’t fault him for that, but she had a strong sinking feeling that if they recessed now, Gabe would find a way to be absent in the morning.

Before she could protest some more, Salas told Jaime, “Your motion for a continuance is granted. You may have until tomorrow morning to prepare an examination of Dr. Hirabayashi.”

“I didn’t mean that-I meant, we should adjourn…”

The judge ignored his flustering. “Your objection to putting on this witness out of order is overruled. Mr. Wyatt?”

Gabriel Wyatt, who had been following all this with the shocked expression of a seal in the mouth of a shark, said, “Me?”

“You. I am going to bring the jury back in. We’ll take your testimony at this time. However, it has come to my attention that you need to be cautioned, and I am going to tell you about certain rights you have at this time.” Salas pulled out a card to let Wyatt know that he could take the Fifth Amendment if at any time he felt his testimony might be self-incriminatory, and told Wyatt he could have time to consult a lawyer if he needed one.

When he finished, Gabe’s expression remained the same-stunned, resigned, and maybe just a little cagey. During a long silence he thought about his rights. To Nina’s vast relief, he finally said, “Oh, let’s get it over with.”

She turned and walked decorously back to the counsel table. When she got there, she squeezed Stefan’s hand so hard he said, “Ow!”

She took a deep cleansing breath and exhaled it. She would have to fly by the somewhat worn seat of her pants a while longer, which was okay. Somehow, she felt more comfortable in that position.

She only wished Klaus was there to see.

Then again, this streak of Tahoe gambler’s luck couldn’t keep up much longer. Judging from Gabe Wyatt’s face, he had no plan to confess. Jaime was conferring with Detective Banta. The jury filed back in and the judge muttered to his clerk, looking not a bit perturbed by the rash of on-the-spot decisions he had just had to make.

“You may step down,” Salas told Ginger. Ginger passed Nina on her way out to the hall where the witnesses had to wait. She leaned down to whisper, “Am I cool or what?”

“Stick around outside. I didn’t get half your testimony.”

“Don’t forget to check out that death certificate for Constantin. We should definitely discuss that when you get a second.”

“Okay, thanks.” Nina shuffled through her paperwork to find the certificate, then looked down at her legal pad, which held a few Q and As and a comic-booky series of sketches showing a glass thrown, connecting, shattering.

She called Gabe Wyatt to the stand. He was sworn in, giving his name in a strong enough voice. She imagined that he would have dressed differently if he had known he’d be giving a show today-the khaki pants weren’t pressed and he wore a green polo shirt. Examining the back of his head as he swore to tell the whole truth, he looked a lot like Stefan, but better.

“You are the defendant’s older brother?”

“Yes.”

“How much older?”

“One year.”

“What is your occupation?”

“I’m a junior executive at Classic Collections.”

So let the jury think he had friends in fashion. Nina didn’t care. “Where did you attend school?”

“Pacific Grove High, then Monterey Peninsula College for a while.”

“Did you graduate?”

“Yeah, from high school. My family wasn’t well off,” he explained. “College was a luxury we couldn’t afford.” He nodded as if to himself and Nina realized with a stab of joy that he wanted to tell a story, was dying to tell it. All she had to do was get out of the way.

“You and Stefan lived with your mother, Wanda Wyatt?”

“In a two-bedroom shack we rented. Our mother worked as a maid most of the years we were growing up.”

“You’ve done well,” Nina said.

“I don’t like my work, but I work hard. I’m paid enough to get by.”

“Where was your father while you were growing up?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?”

“He didn’t live at home?”

“My mother told us he left us, and died somewhere else. She told us a lot of lies about him.”

“How do you know that?”

“Recently, she told me the truth.”

“When was that?”

“Last spring. I stopped by the house. My mother was looking at an old picture of the old man she had worked for before we were born. She’d had a few.”

“Do you remember your father?”

He shook his head. “I don’t. I guess he must have come around sometimes, but I don’t remember him. Neither does Stefan.” He sounded resentful.

“What truth about your father did she tell you?”

“She said my father was Constantin Zhukovsky.”

This much Nina knew from Wanda’s testimony, but now she wanted to go further. She let her own curiosity lead her in her questions. If Jaime wanted to object, he would.

“What was your reaction to that?”

“Anger. He died in 1978. I was only four, but she told me that, other than when I was an infant, he wasn’t around. He must have been ashamed of me and my brother, ashamed of our mother. He had married her, though, I saw the marriage certificate. We were his legitimate children, but he was fixated on his first two. The father’s name on our birth certificates said John Wyatt. Our mother told us he was an insurance salesman who died when we were young.”

“The ‘first two’ children you’re referring to are Christina and Alex Zhukovsky, is that correct?”

“Exactly. They had not been told, either. I decided to check into the whole situation.”

“The situation being your father’s marriage?”

“The situation being my whole fake childhood. The situation being the deprivation he let us grow up in. The situation being how the first two got coddled, while Stef and I couldn’t-didn’t have anything.” Envy and bitterness flavored his words.

Nina let them spread over the courtroom, then asked, “And how did you go about checking into this?”

“First, I looked at the death certificate. I saw how and when he died.”

Nina brought the copy of the certificate for him to examine. “Is this it?”

“Yes.”

It was entered into evidence.

“According to this, your father, Constantin Zhukovsky, died in 1978 of a syndrome known as thrombocytopenia.”

“That’s right. I did some reading on the topic, and questioned my mother some more. Turns out, he had a blood disease, aplastic anemia, which led to a syndrome, thrombocytopenia, that had made him sick off and on for years, especially toward the end. That got me thinking. After all, I had aplastic anemia that led to a serious blood disease, when I was a child.”

“So you came to believe what your mother had told you?”

“It was a weak link, but yeah, I believed her. By then I was hooked. I took a look at my new siblings. I found out where Alex was teaching and I shadowed him for a few days. I knocked on his door in Carmel Highlands one day when he was out and the cleaning people were there, and I saw his furniture. Roche-Bobois sofa and chairs, rug worth a fortune. He drove a new Coupe de Ville.”