He starts making a stack with the other close-ups, all facedown on his desk. He finds another, a picture of the shotgun lying on the floor, just Ben’s shod foot in a corner of the shot. “This one’s OK,” he says. He’s toying with the next. A hard close-up, a little blood, but so far the cleanest of the bunch.

Nelson’s fuming. “One picture of the victim would be nice,” he says. “So they can remember it wasn’t a victimless crime.”

Acosta looks at him with mean eyes. He drops the picture onto the stack of rejects, a victim of Nelson’s sarcasm and bad timing.

Back out before the jury, and Nelson has had his wish list of pictures butchered by the Coconut, though Acosta has covered his bets. He’s severely limited the photographs the state may use at this point in the trial, but left open the use of other pictures if the state establishes a compelling nexus between the defendant and the crime.

Talia’s in her seat, fragile, a gray pallor in her cheeks, holding her stomach with one hand. I think she’s lost her breakfast.

From a stack of twenty-six prints, Nelson has only eight left to show Canard for purposes of identification. These are all relatively harmless, long-distance shots of the office, points where the killer may have come and gone from the building, a lot of little exit signs, a sanitized album. They are quickly identified by the witness and marked.

“Your Honor, the people would move the remaining photographs into evidence.” Nelson will take what he can get, at least for the time being.

“Any objection, Mr. Madriani?”

“None, Your Honor.”

The pictures start filtering through the jury box, being passed from hand to hand. One of the older women tries to adjust her glasses to get the detail on the wide-angle. For this she will need a magnifying glass, I think.

Nelson and Canard do a few more preliminaries. The witness identifies the shotgun found at the scene, the twelve-gauge Bernardelli over-and-under. Then Nelson turns to a more pressing agenda.

“Detective Canard, did you have occasion to interview or talk with the defendant on the night of the murder?”

“Objection, Your Honor. The question assumes facts not in evidence.”

“Excuse me,” says Nelson. “Detective, did you have occasion to talk to the defendant the night that Mr. Potter died?”

“I did.”

“How did that interview come about?”

Canard explains how a radio car was dispatched to Ben’s house, but that no one was home. The patrol officer was ordered to wait at the residence until someone, any family member or friend, arrived. Then he was to radio Canard, who would drive out and make the overtures to the family. Except in an emergency where the victim was lingering, this was standard procedure in the department, he says. He tells the court that Talia arrived home about ten P.M. and he immediately left Ben’s office and went to the house.

“That was the first contact that you had with the defendant, Talia Potter?”

“It was.”

Nelson is slow, methodical on this, developing each question, setting a foundation of stone.

“Did you have occasion to inform the defendant that her husband was dead?”

“I did.”

“To your knowledge, had she been told previously by anyone else?”

“No,” Canard says. “Our officer at the house had express instructions not to contact the family.”

“Can you tell the jury, when you informed the defendant, Talia Potter, that her husband was dead, what was her reaction?”

Canard takes on a more thoughtful expression. “She took it rather casually,” he says.

“Casually?”

“Yes, no outward emotion,” says Canard.

“No tears? The defendant didn’t break down and cry?”

“Not immediately,” he says.

“She waited awhile?”

“Objection, Your Honor. Leading and suggestive. The district attorney is trying to put words into the mouth of the witness.”

“Sustained.”

“What did the witness say when you told her that her husband was dead?”

“She asked how it had happened.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I told her he died as a result of a gunshot wound, what appeared at that time to have been a possible suicide.”

“And what was her reaction to this?”

“She didn’t have much reaction. It was almost like she might have expected it.”

“Objection, Your Honor. Move to strike the second part of the answer as unresponsive to the question, speculative,” I say.

“Sustained. The witness is advised to confine himself to the questions asked.” Acosta’s looking down his nose at Canard.

“The reporter will strike the second part of the witness’s response. The jury will disregard the opinions of the witness concerning what the defendant might or might not have expected. This is not evidence,” he says.

“When you told her that her husband might have committed suicide, did the defendant start to cry at that time?”

“No,” he says.

Nelson’s trying to make of this lack of emotion something it is not, that Talia knew more than she did, that she knew Ben was already dead when she arrived home.

“In fact did she cry at any time in your presence during the initial interview at the victim’s residence?”

“No,” says Canard.

“During that interview did you ask the defendant where she had been that evening?”

“I did,” he says.

This will all come in. Talia, when she talked to Canard, was not in custodial interrogation, not the focus of suspicion. There was no need to Mirandize her, no way I can keep her alibi away from the jury, the false information she gave the police.

“And what did she tell you?”

“She said that she had been on a business trip, having left her office earlier that day and traveled to Vacaville to inspect, or I think she said ‘tour,’ some property. A house that was for sale.”

“The defendant was in the real estate business?”

“As far as I know, that’s correct.”

“According to the information given to you by the defendant, she went nowhere else, only to Vacaville to tour this property and back home?”

“That’s correct.”

“Detective Canard, can you tell us how far it is, in miles, between Capitol City and Vacaville, roughly?”

“About fifty miles, to the property in question. It’s out of town a little ways.”

“You’ve checked this?”

“On my odometer,” he says.

“How long would it take to drive that distance and back, in your estimation, doing the speed limit?”

“Two hours, less perhaps, depending on traffic.”

“Did you ask the defendant what time she left on this trip?”

“She told us it was about four o’clock, four P.M.,” he says.

“So it was possible that the defendant, if she left at four in the afternoon, could have driven to the property in Vacaville, toured it, perhaps briefly, and returned to Capitol City by, say, what”-Nelson shrugs-“six-thirty in the evening?”

“Possible,” says Canard.

“Detective Canard, did you or your staff take any action to independently verify the whereabouts of the defendant on the day in question?”

“We did. We obtained copies of the defendant’s credit card statements for the period in question and looked for gasoline purchases, restaurant purchases, items she might have purchased while in transit between Capitol City and Vacaville.”

“And what did you find?”

“We found no purchases made by the defendant by credit card between Capitol City and Vacaville on that date.”

“Did you make any other inquiries?”

“We subpoenaed checking account records belonging to the defendant, to see if she might have drawn any checks to establishments along that route on the date in question.”

“Did you find any?”

“No.”

Talia’s squirming next to me in the chair. She leans over toward me.

“They know,” she says.

I smile at her, for the benefit of the jury, like she has just said something amusing, a little wit to take the edge off the monotony. Then I nudge her with my knee, hard under the table. If she is acquitted, Talia could still be bruised for life.