“I am not even sure what to do, whether to ask for a mistrial or not,” he tells Gordy.

The judge smiles, shaking his head. “You’re not going to do anything since you asked him.”

“I didn’t ask him,” Polansky protests.

“He answered your question,” says Gordy. “What is your request? What do you want me to do? Why did you come up here?”

“I don’t know,” says Polansky. “Now I’m wondering whether I should open the whole thing.”

“I’m not going to let him open up the whole can of worms based on that answer.”

“Thank you,” says Polansky, still a little dazed. “I am not… I have no requests then.”

Garvey’s second trip to the stand is a carefully crafted piece of work and a redemption of sorts for his performance on the first day of the trial, but it is almost beside the point. So, too, is the testimony of Robert Frazier, who takes the stand the following day to explain himself to the jury and declare that he had no reason or desire to kill Charlene Lucas. Frazier’s day in court has already been clouded by Sharon Henson; she has colored everything to which the jury is subsequently exposed. More than that, Henson’s testimony provided a stark contrast to the other essential testimony in the case: Romaine Jackson was young and frightened and reluctant when she identified Robert Frazier as the man she saw with Lena on the night of the murder; Sharon Henson was hard and bitter and contemptuous when she took the same stand to deny her own words.

That is precisely the comparison that Doan makes in his closing argument to the jury. Rich Garvey, now permitted in the courtroom as an observer, watches several jurors nod in agreement as Doan paints a vivid picture of each woman-one is an innocent truth-teller, the other, a corrupt prevaricator. Once again he returns to Henson’s testimony about her boyfriend’s clothing. He gives special attention to one small piece of testimony, one tiny fragment gleaned from a week of legal argument. When Romaine Jackson testified, she was asked to describe the defendant’s hat. A cap, she says, a white cap.

“She’s got her hands up here and she says it has a snap on it,” recalls Doan, hands to his head. “Has a snap on it… And when did that become significant?”

Sharon Henson, he tells the jury. A day later, Sharon Henson is on the stand trying to help her boyfriend. Oh, says Doan, in imitation, he was wearing all beige. Beige trench coat. Beige slacks. Beige shoes. Probably beige underwear and a beige golf cap…

The prosecutor pauses.

“… with a snap on it.”

By now, even the juror in the front row-the one who had Doan worried at the beginning of the trial-is nodding in agreement.

“Ladies and gentlemen, after seeing and listening to Romaine Jackson and then hearing that description from a woman who is doing her very best to help this defendant, can there be any question that the person that Romaine Jackson says she saw is the defendant?”

A helluva connect, thinks Garvey, as Doan moves on through the rest of the evidence, urging the jury to use common sense. “When you put it all together, that jigsaw puzzle we talked about will be clear. You will clearly see that this man-”

Doan wheels and points at the defense table.

“-despite all his protestations to the contrary is the man who brutally murdered Charlene Lucas in the early morning hours of February 22, 1988.”

Polansky responds with his strongest stuff, listing the state’s evidence on a nearby drawing board and then crossing off each item as he tries to explain away the circumstances. He does his best to knock down Romaine Jackson and to resurrect Vincent Booker as the logical alternative. He steers clear, however, of Sharon Henson.

In his final response to the jury, Larry Doan actually has the temerity to go to Polansky’s drawing board and begin writing his own comments above his opponent’s visual aid.

“Objection, your honor,” says Polansky, tired and angry. “I would appreciate it if Mr. Doan wrote on his own board.”

Doan shrugs with feigned embarrassment. The jury laughs.

“Overruled,” says Gordy.

Polansky shakes his head; he knows the game is up. And no one is surprised when, only two hours after arguments, the courtroom is reconvened and the jurors file back into the box.

“Mr. Foreman, please stand,” says the clerk. “How do you find the defendant Robert Frazier in indictment number 18809625 as to murder in the first degree, not guilty or guilty?”

“Guilty,” says the foreman.

In the gallery, only the Lucas family reacts. Garvey stares blankly as the jury is polled. Doan shoots a look at Polansky, but the defense attorney continues to take notes. Robert Frazier stares straight ahead.

In the third-floor corridor ten minutes later, Jackie Lucas, the younger daughter, finds Garvey and wraps her arm around his shoulder.

Garvey is momentarily surprised. There are occasions like this, moments when the survivors and the detectives share whatever kind of belated victory comes from a courtroom. Too often, however, the family doesn’t even show for court, or if they do, they regard the defendant and the authorities with equal shares of contempt.

“We did it,” says Jackie Lucas, kissing Garvey lightly on the cheek.

“Yes, we did,” says Garvey, laughing.

“He’s going to the Pen, right?”

“Oh yeah,” he says. “Gordy’ll hammer him.”

Doan follows the family out of the court, and Garvey and Dave Brown both congratulate him again on the closing argument. Writing on Polansky’s board, he tells Doan, that was a nice touch.

“You liked that?” says Doan.

“Oh yeah,” says Garvey, laughing. “That was real class.”

Their voices rattle down the corridor as the highlights are told and retold. For the first time, Garvey and Brown are given a full account of the disaster that befell Sharon Henson. They are laughing loudly when Robert Frazier enters the corridor, his hands cuffed behind him, two sheriff ’s deputies trailing behind.

“Shhhhh,” says Brown. “The man of the hour.”

“Are we ready for the ceremonial eyefuck?” asks Garvey. “I definitely think we’ve earned it.”

Brown nods in agreement.

Larry Doan shakes his head, then walks quietly to the stairwell and up to his office. The detectives wait a few more seconds as Frazier and the deputies approach. Slowly, silently, the defendant passes them with his head down, his hands gripping a stack of rolled-up court papers behind him. There is no eye contact. There are no angry words.

“Fuck it,” says Garvey, grabbing his briefcase from the hallway bench. “He was no fun at all.”

Once more across the same stale ground, once more into the breach. Once more into the gaping maw of that alley, that hellacious piece of pavement that had never done right by him in the past.

Tom Pellegrini parks the car on Newington, then walks down a cross alley cluttered with garbage and dead leaves. Fall has changed the rear of Newington Avenue again, making it seem a little more as it should be. To Pellegrini, the alley only looks right in colder weather-the bleak and pale vision to which he had grown accustomed months ago. The seasons shouldn’t change in this alley, he thinks. Nothing should change until I know what happened here.

Pellegrini walks down the common alley and through the gate at the rear of 718 Newington. He stands where the body had been, looking yet again at the back of the house, at the kitchen door and the window frame and the metal fire stair running down from the roof.

Red-orange. Red-orange.

The colors of the day. Pellegrini checks the wood trim on the rear of the house carefully, looking for something, anything, that can be called red-orange.

Nothing.

Looking over the chain-link fence, Pellegrini scans the house next door. The yard of 716 Newington is empty now; Andrew and his shitbrown Lincoln are both long gone, the latter permanently repossessed by the finance company, the former tossed out of the house by his long-suffering churchwoman of a wife.