Within four months she landed her first real job, an executive trainee position with a small cable television station in the capital.

Before she met and married Ben, Talia had two serious romantic interludes with men closer to her own age. Both of these involved upward career moves. The first lasted a year, an apparently painless encounter with Harold Simpson, her supervisor on the job. They parted friends and from all appearances have continued to stay in touch over the years. The second, James Tarantino, was an executive with a trade association in the capital, a sometime lobbyist and public relations expert for the Wine Institute. Talia was learning to rely on her beauty as well as her intellect to get ahead. She lived with Tarantino for four months. He made the unhappy mistake of showboating her at the institute’s annual gala, a feast at the Hilton-tables of ice sculptures, an ocean of cocktail sauce, and shrimp the size of lobster. Over hors d’oeuvres Tarantino introduced his date to a distinguished guest, the senior partner for the institute’s law firm, Benjamin Potter. Incapable of any long-lasting relationships with men, Talia, it seems, had found the father figure she had never known. The rest is history.

I’m taking Talia to the little commons area-an atrium, some bushes and shade trees, landlocked by executive offices in the center of the courthouse building. This is off-limits to the public and press. A few judges sometimes eat lunch here, serenity in a sea of conflict. She sits on one of the little stone benches.

Talia’s got a cigarette out of her purse. She’s gone back to smoking, a habit once kicked, but a crutch she now seems to need. She lights up and looks at me, a picture of dependence.

“I want to prepare you,” I say.

Her expression tells me she is not looking forward to this, a train of long admonitions from her lawyer.

“In a few minutes you’re going to hear a lot of ugly accusations. Nelson’s going to get up in front of the jury and tell them that you killed Ben, that you planned it, that you waited until the right moment, and that you or a lover shot him in the head with the little gun, then mutilated the body to make it look like suicide.”

She cringes just a little at this, breaks eye contact with me.

“It’s important-it’s imperative that you keep your cool, that you control your temper, your emotions. The jury is likely to form some important first impressions today.”

“I’ll try,” she says.

“Don’t try. Do it. We can’t afford to give this jury a picture of a defendant out of control.”

By all rights, given the statistics and the realities in capital cases, Talia should have a big advantage, at least on the issue of death. She is rich, and good-looking, articulate, though the jury may have no chance to hear her firsthand. Juries generally don’t hate people who look like themselves. Since the preliminary hearing, when we are in court, I’ve had her dress down, a fashion show in reverse, so much so that today she is a symphony for the common man.

Talia wears a neat gray pleated skirt and simple white blouse, a little fluff around the collar, like Mary Queen of Scots ready for the injustice of this trial.

“For a while,” I tell her, “it’s going to look bad for our side, a little unbalanced.”

The state will bludgeon us with its opening argument. Strategy will dictate that we reserve our own opening until it’s time for the defendant’s case in chief.

“In the beginning the jury will have a one-sided view of things,” I tell her. “That’s why it’s important that we don’t play into their hands, become emotional.”

She asks me a few questions about expression, how she should look.

“Concerned,” I tell her. “Like a woman on trial for her life, for a crime she didn’t commit.”

She looks away, blowing smoke rings, an assortment of expressions, faces of concern, in the dark glass windows that surround us.

“Don’t act,” I tell her. “A jury can smell it. You won’t have to, believe me.” My guess is that Talia will be scared witless when she first hears Nelson unload.

I walk her through more of what she can expect. I explain that the DA will parade an army of witnesses to the stand before we have a chance to put up our own.

“Most of this testimony you’ve seen in the preliminary hearing,” I say. “But this is the big time, they’ll gloss it, pull out all the stops. There will be some surprises,” I tell her.

“Tony?” she asks.

I nod.

“What will he say?”

“You’ve seen the deposition.” I’ve shown Talia a transcript of Skarpellos’s statement, his words before I stuck my pike in him and drew blood off the record. This was a little insurance against surprise, an awestruck face sitting next to me for the jury to see.

“I’ll handle Tony,” I tell her. “You worry about the jury and what they’ll see when they look at our table. Like that,” I tell her. I’m pointing to her cigarette.

“I know you can’t do it in the courtroom, but even outside during a break, jurors have eyes. It makes you appear hard,” I tell her. “It is easier for a jury to convict and condemn someone who looks hard.”

Her eyes follow me, the expression of a frightened bird. Then she crushes the cigarette on the concrete.

“This, ladies and gentlemen, was a violent, calculated, premeditated murder.” His voice is booming, the crest of a verbal wave breaking over the jury box. Nelson stands stark still before the railing, centered like some dark exclamation point punctuating this charge for the jury.

Minds that have begun to wander, with the collective stomach full from lunch, are jolted to consciousness. Seconds pass in silence as Nelson allows the jury to assimilate the full measure of this thought.

“Ben Potter was a brilliant lawyer, a star on the ascent. A man with everything to live for, a thriving law practice, friends who loved and admired him. You will hear testimony in this court, ladies and gentlemen, that Benjamin Potter was highly regarded, not only here in this community among lifelong friends, but on a broader plain, at the very core of our national government. At the time he was cut down, he was among a handful of select candidates under consideration for appointment to the highest court in this land, the United States Supreme Court.”

Nelson labors only a little under the impediment that the nomination was never formally announced. He cuts through this difficulty as if it is trivial. He offers Ben’s status like a statement of damages to the jury, an immense social loss to the community. Studies show that a victim well liked, highly regarded in the community is more likely to bring a conviction from a jury, that the killer is more likely to suffer death.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the state will produce evidence, testimony by expert witnesses, that the victim, Ben Potter, was brutally murdered at another location, shot in the back of the head, execution style, that his body was then transported to his law office in this city. Expert witnesses will tell you that a twelve-gauge shotgun was then used, inserted into the victim’s mouth and discharged in an effort to deform the body, to conceal the earlier bullet wound, to make it appear as if the victim had taken his own life.”

Some of the jurors are recoiling at this mental image.

“Evidence will show, ladies and gentlemen, that hair found in the locking mechanism of this shotgun is consistent in all respects with samples taken from the head of the defendant, Talia Potter.” With this he points an extended arm, a single finger of one hand, like a cocked pistol at Talia.

Jurors are looking at her now, wondering how it is possible that this woman could perpetrate such a vile act. Her eyes are cast down at the tabletop. I lean over toward her, an indifferent smile on my face, like Nelson has just offered us tea and toast.

Between clenched teeth I whisper: “Look at them, in the eye. Each one of them.”