"Objection."

"Sustained. You can't guess in my courtroom, Ms. Vallis," the judge barked at the young woman from his elevated position over her head, and she recoiled, shaken again. "I'm sorry, Your Honor."

"Would you please tell us what the defendant said in that conversation?"

"It was a very short discussion. I told him I was about to go into a meeting. He asked if I wanted to have dinner with him the following night, and I said, 'Sure.' We arranged to meet at the Odeon. That's a restaurant near my apartment. That's all."

"Did you keep that date?"

"Yes, we did. I got there first. When Andrew arrived, we each ordered a glass of wine and chatted for a while before we ate dinner."

"What did this conversation concern?"

Paige Vallis described a coolly impersonal meeting, in which her companion spent most of the time talking about himself or questioning her about her political views. She only had one drink and again she paid her own way. There were no sexual overtures when he walked her back to her building at ten o'clock.

"Did you invite the defendant up to your apartment?" I asked.

"There was no reason to. I thought-"

"Objection as to what she thought, Your Honor," Robelon said.

"Sustained."

The heavy oak door creaked open behind me. I kept my attention on Paige Vallis, but she picked her head up at the sound and stared off in the distance.

"Ms. Vallis, what did you say or do when you reached your building?"

Her mouth twitched and she answered softly, "Andrew asked if he could come in for a cup of coffee. I told him that would be impossible. I-uh-I had a friend in from out of town who was staying in the apartment. Actually, I'm just remembering that now, as I try to recall the details of our dinner," she said, looking back at me.

I squeezed the pen I was holding so tightly I thought it would break in half and spurt ink all over the jurors. I had never heard that explanation in all the weeks of preparing Paige to testify. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Better late than never. What friend, I wondered to myself, and what relevance did this have to her story?

Paige Vallis was trembling visibly now, as I tried to direct her attention to the night of the crime. "I'm going to ask you some questions about the day and evening of March sixth of this year."

She licked her lips to moisten them and reached for the water. Her hand missed and knocked the cup off the railing in front of her; water began dripping onto the court stenographer, who shoved her machine out of the way and reached for tissues to wipe up the mess. Paige stood and leaned over as though to reach for the fallen cup, bursting into tears as she tried to apologize to the judge for the disturbance.

Moffett banged his gavel on the bench. "Brief recess. We'll take ten minutes."

Paige spoke to him before the jurors could be led out of the box. "I'm so sorry, Judge. I can't testify about this in front of him. Does he have to be here?"

She was pointing a finger, while Moffett answered her, and I moved forward to calm her and bring tissues to wipe her face. "Of course he has to be here. The Constitution gives him that right, young-"

"Not Andrew, Your Honor. Him." Paige lifted her head and I turned around to look.

The older of the two men whom Chapman had tried to identify in the courtroom the day before was seated alone now in the back row. He must have been the person who came in just as Paige had fallen apart a few questions back. He rose as my witness waved her hand in his direction, and he pushed the swinging door to exit.

"That's Harry Strait, Alexandra," Paige said, grabbing my hand as I extended the tissue to her. "That's the man I told you about."

Andrew Tripping smiled broadly, put his arm on his lawyer's shoulder, and broke away to follow Harry Strait out into the corridor.

11

I had less than six minutes to corner Paige Vallis in the witness room and read her the riot act. "I can pull the plug on this entire proceeding right this minute. Do you want to explain to me what just happened on the witness stand? I told you from the moment we first met that there was only one thing you could do wrong and that was to lie to me about even the most seemingly insignificant question I've asked you. I don't give a damn about your judgment or your lifestyle or your morals. I need to know the truth."

"I've never lied to you, Alex."

"I'll walk into that courtroom and ask the judge to dismiss the charges if a single thing you have told me is not true. Now's the time-"

"I swear to you, every word I've told you is the truth."

"But you've left things out, is that what you mean? An omission is the same as a lie, if it has something to do with your case. What haven't you told me?"

"Nothing important that involves Andrew Tripping or these charges."

"Whether a fact is important or not isn't your decision, Paige. I need to know every single detail. Everything. I'll be the judge of what's important. Get it? Who was the 'friend' in the apartment that night?"

She returned my stare with a pitiful expression on her face.

"Don't give me that helpless, pathetic look. It was this-this Harry Strait guy, right?" I asked.

"What difference does that make? Andrew didn't know that at the time."

"This isn't a goddamn game, Paige. Do you understand that?" I was furious now. Maxine tapped on the glass panel of the door, reminding me to keep my voice down. "Why is it that when people go to doctors to ask for help, you tell them every symptom, every fact, every ache and pain, so they can make a precise diagnosis. With lawyers, people leave out whatever they want-things that make them look stupid or evil or crazy or thoughtless-then they expect the lawyer to be smart enough to cover their asses without knowing the full picture. Well, you've come to the wrong place, Paige."

"I'm sorry, Alex. It's, it's so…embarrassing."

"Well, it's damn embarrassing to be charged with first-degree rape, too. Especially if you didn't commit the crime."

"Andrew Tripping raped me." She was angry now, and I liked that. It was appropriate that she could still be outraged by the fact of her victimization.

"So what is it you neglected to tell me?" I pounded my index finger against the tabletop in the small, hot room. "Did Andrew and Harry know each other?"

"No," Paige answered quickly. She thought for a minute and then said, "Not that I was aware. I mean, neither had any reason to know about each other, so I had no way of thinking they were acquaintances. Why does it matter?"

"Because everything that went on matters, whether you think so or not. I need to know as much as Andrew's lawyer knows. I need to know every detail that he can provide to Robelon, because Robelon will use them to blow your ass-and mine-out of the courtroom. That's the only way I can protect you. If you had been raped by a stranger who climbed through your window, attacked you, and walked away, then he wouldn't know a thing about you to tell his lawyer."

She nodded her head in understanding.

"But this man spent three evenings with you, talking to you for hours each time. And you talked to him. You said things to him that I would never expect you to remember-little things, personal things that would have seemed of no import before the rape occurred. Yet I can't possibly reconstruct what they were, and I can't ever know what Andrew has told Peter Robelon. Worst-case scenario, want to play that out?" I asked.

Paige was puzzled. She didn't answer me.

"I'll help you. The night of March sixth, you go out with Andrew. Was Harry waiting back at your apartment that night?"

"No. By then-"

"Because all Mr. Robelon has to do is plant that seed with the jury. All he needs is a motive for you to lie."