"There'd have to be some direct relevance to Andrew's case," I told her. "They just can't go fishing into your private life anymore."

"C'mon, Paige," Mercer said, leading her out to the conference room. "Alex'll rip the throat out of anybody who tries to go after you that way. Won't happen."

They were almost at my door when she turned to look at me. "There's something else I need to tell you, Alex."

My fingers froze on the sheaf of papers in my hand. I was less than an hour away from addressing the jury. If Paige had not been honest with me about some fact in the case, this was my last chance to make that discovery.

"I had a phone call last night from a man I was-well-was involved with."

"Sexually?" Mercer asked. There wasn't enough time to be subtle.

"Socially, first. Then, yes, sexually."

Now I was standing, too. "Let's cut to the chase. Does it have anything to do with Andrew Tripping? With this trial?"

"It might." Paige's teeth were practically biting through her lip as she hesitated.

"The reason he called was to try to persuade me not to testify today."

"Someone threatened you?" I asked, as Mercer spoke over me, trying to get the man's name at the same time.

Her head swung back and forth between the two of us. "I can't exactly call it a threat. But it seems he talked to Andrew yesterday. He actually came to the courtroom and met with him."

I slapped my hand on the desk as I looked at Mercer. There hadn't been many people in Moffett's trial part, and I thought immediately of the lawyer who was the young boy's legal guardian. "Graham Hoyt," I said aloud. "The kid's lawyer."

"No, no. I don't know who that is. That's not his name," Paige protested. "It's Harry Strait, the one I'm talking about. He's a government agent, like Andrew Tripping claims to have been. He's with the CIA, I think."

10

"And at the conclusion of the case, ladies and gentlemen, I will again have the opportunity to stand before you," I said, walking to the defense table and stopping directly in front of Andrew Tripping. If I wanted the twelve good people in the box to look him in the eye and declare him guilty, I needed to show them that I was not afraid to do that myself. "At that time, I will ask you to consider the testimony of the witnesses who appeared before you, discuss the evidence that has been presented, and find this defendant guilty of the crimes with which he is charged."

Thorough, calm, understated. I had given them the basic elements of the crime, read the indictment, and previewed Paige Vallis's story. That way, when she gave them more, they would be surprised and somewhat pleased that I had not promised anything I could not deliver. Dulles Tripping, though essential to this case, was practically a footnote, so uncertain was I of the role he would be allowed to play.

Robelon was cool. He started his presentation at the podium, but then stood behind his client's seat, placing his hands on Tripping's shoulders. He was embracing the falsely accused man, as it were, just as Emily Frith leaned in to pat the defendant on the forearm.

He was staying away from specifics, laying in the general picture of the struggling single-parent father, trying to put bread on the table and care for a rambunctious child.

He didn't make my witness out to be a monster, but the under-current was set in motion.

The foundation he was building on would lead him to sum up, I assumed, with a description of Paige Vallis as emotionally unstable, socially insecure, confused by Andrew's mixed signals, and insensitive to his personal travails.

"Don't be taken in by Ms. Cooper, sitting here all alone at counsel table, while the three of us do our job with her witnesses," Robelon said, with a wink at the panel. I always liked that dynamic, assuming some jurors would cast me in the role of the underdog going against the triad of the defense team. In this instance, I thought, glancing across at them, they looked like corporate travelers sitting abreast in the business-class section of a New York to Chicago flight.

"She's got all the enormous resources of law enforcement available at her fingertips," he went on. "Believe me, if there was evidence to be found against my client, she had the means to gather every bit of that."

It may have been bullshit, but juries believed that argument. There was nothing the NYPD could do to enhance this case. We take our witnesses as we find them. Give us your tired, your poor, your hungry-and then, while you're at it, might as well throw in your psychos, junkies, liars, whackjobs, and hookers. I didn't believe in dressing any of them up or polishing their performance before the jury in any case I had ever tried. It was a technique that was bound to backfire. Whatever the point of weakness that would be apparent in the courtroom-whether drug addiction, mental illness, or any alternative lifestyle-that was the vulnerability that the perpetrator had identified and attacked on the street.

Robelon closed with the routine keep-an-open-mind pitch. He made no promises about whether his client would testify, insisting instead that he would hold my feet to the fire and dare me to prove my case.

"Let's have your first witness, Ms. Cooper," Moffett said.

"The People call Paige Vallis."

One of the court officers walked to the side door in the middle of the courtroom, which led to the corridor that housed the bare, dingy witness room. I stared at the group we had selected-eight men and four women-as every head followed him.

Fifteen pairs of eyes-twelve jurors, two alternates, and a curious judge-scrutinized Vallis as she walked in front of the first row of benches, alongside my table, and stepped up to her place on the stand. The officer asked her to put one hand on the Bible and raise the other to take the oath. She was trembling as she complied with his direction.

There was not a single spectator in the room, except for my paralegal, who was there to help steady Paige with eye contact and a reassuring smile.

"Good morning," I said to her, as I rose to begin my questioning. "Would you please tell the jury your name?"

Vallis reached for the paper cup filled with water before she spoke. It shook as she lifted it, and water splashed over its edge. "My name is Paige Vallis."

I took her through a series of pedigree questions, which I had told her I would use to try to calm her down, and get the jury to relate to her. If she could describe her background and her work to them, it would settle her in before moving into the more highly charged testimony about the crime. I wanted to humanize her for the people who would judge her credibility, so that they could understand she had no reason to fabricate the story she was about to tell.

"Where do you live?"

"Here in Manhattan, in TriBeCa." The judge had agreed with me that she did not need to put an exact street address into the public record.

"How old are you?"

"I'm thirty-six." We were exactly the same age, I thought, looking at the young woman whose life had become unraveled on the evening of March 6.

"Were you raised in New York?"

"No, I was not." I had prepped her to look at the jurors and talk directly to them, and she was trying to do that as she answered. She was dressed in a navy blue suit with a pale yellow blouse, and her naturally curly brown hair was swept back away from her plain-featured face. "I was born here, in the city. My father was in the diplomatic corps, so I spent most of my childhood abroad."

"Would you tell us about your educational background?"

"I attended the American schools wherever my father was posted. I returned to this country to go to college, and received my bachelor's degree from Georgetown University, in Washington, D.C. I worked for a few years after graduating," she said, describing a number of entry-level jobs. "Then I decided to go to business school, and got my master's from Columbia five years ago."