They come out in two even lines of six, file into their rows of chairs, and take their seats. The jury foreman has a single slip of paper in her hand as she sits down.

The clerk is ready; the judge bangs his gavel. “This court will come to order,” he says.

A hundred conversations come to a stop in mid-sentence.

“Madam foreman, has the jury arrived at a verdict?”

“It has, Your Honor.”

“Please give it to the clerk.”

There’s a quick exchange here. Acosta takes the slip and peers at it for what seems like an eternity. He then looks at Talia, as if this is somehow expected.

“The defendant will rise,” he says.

Talia and I are on our feet.

“The clerk will read the verdict.” Acosta hands it back to her.

“In the matter of People v. Talia Potter, to the charge of violation of section 182 of the penal code, first-degree murder, we the jury find the defendant, Talia Potter, NOT GUILTY.”

There’s a roar from the courtroom. Hands are over the railing behind us, reaching for Talia. I can feel a hundred open palms patting on my back. Talia’s leaning over the railing into Tod’s arms, tears streaming down her face. Then to me. She whispers in my ear, barely audible. “Thank you,” she says. “I don’t know how I will ever thank you.” There’s a lot of warm wetness against my cheek.

I don’t know what to say, so I say nothing, and she turns to hug Harry.

It is true. There is nothing that exhausts so thoroughly as tension. I slip down into a seat, my chair at the counsel table, and take a single deep breath. Acosta is trying to beat the courtroom back into order with his gavel. Two reporters have somehow gotten into the room with their microphones. They are leaning over the railing behind me for an impromptu interview. I ignore them.

I look over. Nelson and Meeks are like two orphans at their table. It is as if everyone on their side of the room has come over to ours, like the building may topple to this side.

Nelson may want to poll the jury. With the commotion he may not get the chance. Acosta looks at him, and Nelson merely shrugs, as if to say “Why try?”

The judge thanks the jury, but no one hears him. “The defendant is discharged.” He’s now standing in front of his chair on the bench, yelling. “This court is adjourned,” he says. With that he is gone, down the steps, behind the bench, into his dark cavern, the jury still in the box left to fend for itself.

The press is now roaming over them, inside the box, reporters with notebooks trying to find out what happened behind closed doors. The jury foreman is holding court at the railing. The bailiffs have given up on trying to keep the cameras out of the room. Belted with battery packs, the crews are setting up with anything that looks legal as a backdrop-the bench, the jury box with its scene of unseemly chaos. Nelson crosses over, in front of the cameras, as if to give them a special photo op. As I look up he’s standing in front of my counsel table, his hand extended as if in congratulations.

“Well-fought case,” he says. “Good trial.” There is something genuine, unfeigned in this. Some of the print press are jostling to capture these few words, writing them down as if they are holy writ. I take his hand and shake it. This is memorialized for the news by one of the camera crews. Then he leaves. Like that, Nelson and Meeks are out of the room, leaving this party to the victors.

For a moment I am left alone. The reporters have moved around Talia and Harry, asking for reactions. Talia is breathless. Having shed all anxiety, she’s radiant in this moment of victory.

I’m still holding the single item from Sharon’s probate file, the store receipt with the undecipherable script, only one word of which I can read with any certainty-the word “Bernardelli.” I sit dazed, staring at the evidence cart in a far corner, plastic bags with the hair and the monster pellet-and the exquisitely tooled shotgun bent open at the breech, the shotgun claimed by George Cooper from the hardware store after its repair. The shotgun Coop used the night he murdered Ben Potter.

CHAPTER 41

There is a bridge, 900 feet high, over the American River. Some people use it to get to Sutter’s Mill, the place where James Marshall discovered gold. Some people take it to eternity. George Cooper did that on a Tuesday morning in late October.

His house is in utter disarray. I’ve not been here in more than a year. Had I come and seen the bedlam of this place, perhaps I would have known how far over the edge of reality Coop had truly gone.

I’ve brought Nikki to help me. Parts of this task require a woman’s touch. There are personal belongings and mementos everywhere. Things from a lifetime spent in public service. She will carefully package some of the more delicate items, things we don’t want to trust to the movers. Relatives from the East have come for Coop’s funeral and have asked us to oversee the packing and shipping of his belongings to the next of kin.

Harry has come along today, if for no other reason than to satisfy his curiosity.

It is what I have sworn I would never do again, another probate for a friend, this time Coop’s own. I am making no mistakes. Peggie Conrad is doing her magic with Coop’s probate file.

Coop had written to me an epistle of some length, in a scarcely legible scrawl, and mailed it the day he dove from the bridge. In it he apologized profusely for the trial he had put me through, for the torment and agony of Eli Walker’s column, which he had never intended. But as Coop had told me that morning at my house, he never thought I would take Talia’s case.

“Jeez,” says Harry. “The smell.” Harry’s wandering through the rooms of the single-story farmhouse that Coop and his wife had bought in the early fifties, a place that had seen many happy times when the three of them were together as a family.

There’s a stench about it now, something I have smelled only a few times before, like the odor of death. In the time of Coop’s marriage this house was spotless. Jessica Cooper was a meticulous housekeeper.

Now the rooms are cluttered with trash, discarded food containers, aluminum trays of half-eaten TV dinners. This place, I think, is a mirror of the chaos that was George Cooper’s life in those final months of grief, and ultimate revenge.

There are newspaper clippings everywhere, yellowing strips of newsprint from the local and national press, all with a common thread, Ben’s death, the murder investigation, Talia’s arrest and indictment. The clippings are strewn on tables, on the floor; they rest under dishes of rotting cat food, the pet nowhere to be seen. There are little piles of feline feces littering the carpet. Some of these have begun to breed curious white molds.

In one corner of the room, propped against the wall, is a metal frame on wheels, a furniture dolly, and a large piece of discarded carpet. Here in this setting, Coop’s story to Nelson, the theories on how to move a body no longer appear so implausible.

“When did you know,” says Nikki, “about Cooper?” She has been trying to put the pieces together for a week now. I’ve not given her all the parts.

“Not until the day of the verdict,” I tell her. “Though I should have seen it long before.” I cannot believe how obtuse I have been.

“The receipt?” says Harry.

I nod.

“If it hadn’t been for Peggie Conrad, the work on Sharon’s probate, Cooper’s actions would have gone unseen,” I tell them.

“He was a sick man,” says Harry.

“He was lost,” I say.

Harry’s dropping little pieces of garbage, mostly old food, into some large trash bags he’s found in the kitchen.

“Looks like Skarpellos told a lot of truth,” he says.

I nod. It is troubling that much of what Tony Skarpellos attested to in open court-his story of Ben’s plans for divorce, the assertion that Ben had designs on another woman, the items I had ridiculed to the jury as false-I can see now were in fact gospel.