"But I'm not-"

"Listen to me, Paige. All he has to do is convince them that Andrew seduced you, convinced you to spend the night with him at his place. You wake up early in the morning, realize you have to explain why you didn't come home to an angry boyfriend-"

"Harry wasn't my boyfriend by then. I'd ended it weeks earlier. I just couldn't get rid of him. He wouldn't leave me alone," she said, pleading with me to understand.

"That's all Robelon needs to work with. Harry's pissed off because you spent the night with another man. So you tell Harry it wasn't your choice. He doesn't believe you so you beef up the story a bit. Make it sound like Andrew forced you. He held you against your will and raped you."

"Whose side are you on, anyway?" she asked me. It was not the first time a victim had been pushed to that question. "Andrew did rape me. I swear it. And Harry wasn't in my apartment the night of March sixth. Why would anyone lie about something as serious as rape?"

"To save her own neck. To get back at someone who hurt her in another way. I don't have time to give you all the reasons."

Maxine knocked again and stuck her head in. "The judge is ready."

"Last chance, Paige." I was face-to-face with her now, as close as I could get. "Screw around with me and I'll see that you're indicted for perjury. For filing a false report. Am I missing anything else?"

"No, I promise you, Alex. Harry Strait used to scare me to death, he was so jealous, so demanding. I didn't want his name brought into this. I had no idea that he had any contact with Andrew Tripping. I still don't know how or when they met, or why he's here today."

"Will you tell me about Harry this weekend? Either come in to my office on Sunday afternoon for a few hours or give me some time on the phone."

Paige nodded.

I went on. "I need you to think back about everything you remember, some way we can connect Strait and Tripping. Who is Harry Strait and what do you know about him? Why he scared you and what you mean by 'demanding'?" I was still hoping that my four o'clock interview with Tripping's son would take place, but I wanted to know why Paige was so fearful of Strait.

Reluctantly, Paige Vallis whispered, "Yes. Yes, I will tell you."

"And if he's back in the courtroom now, you're just going to have to suck it up and carry on. Trials are public. Judge Moffett hasn't got a basis to exclude him."

I opened the door, leading the way back inside. There were no spectators in the gallery. Moffett let the witness resume her seat before bringing in the jurors.

The smooth flow of the narrative that I had counted on was hopeless. On top of that, I worried that the jurors would now view Paige Vallis as hysterical and flighty. The tears, the trembling, and the freaked-out reaction to the reserved-looking man who had walked into court would be all three or four of them would need to discount her reliability.

"You may continue, Ms. Cooper."

"Thank you, Your Honor," I said, rising once again to stand at the podium. "I'm going to direct your attention to March sixth. Do you recall what day of the week that was?"

"It was a Wednesday. I had just come out of our regular staff luncheon meeting when Andrew telephoned."

"What was the purpose of his call?"

"He asked to see me again, for dinner."

"Had you heard from him since the last time you saw him, the night of your dinner at the Odeon?"

She shook her head back and forth.

"Words," Judge Moffett said to her. "You gotta answer in words. The court reporter can't take down your head movements."

"Yes, sir."

"Yes, you heard from him?" the judge asked.

"No, I meant no to that." Now she sounded confused as well as slightly hysterical.

"Did you have dinner with the defendant?"

"Yes, I met him at seven-thirty, at a restaurant he suggested, near Grand Central Station." Paige Vallis described the meal, the bottle of red wine they split, and the conversation, which was mostly about the boy, Dulles Tripping.

"How was the dinner paid for this time?"

"Andrew took the check," she said.

Robelon called out, "What'd she say, Judge? I couldn't hear it."

It was hard for him to hear the answers that were helpful to his arguments, and those he would ask Paige Vallis to repeat. I could tell how he would work this fact. Now that Andrew Tripping had paid for the food and wine, of course his date was willing to put out for him. Robelon wanted to underscore that for the jury.

Paige had accounted for most of their time together in the restaurant. Then Andrew asked her if she wanted to come to his apartment to meet his son, Dulles.

"Yes, I said that I did. Andrew hadn't told me until that moment that he had left the boy alone for the evening. I was surprised, considering how young he was. So I agreed to go with him."

There was no touching, no hand-holding, no suggestion of intimacy as they walked to the building on East Thirty-sixth Street.

"Andrew opened the apartment door with a key. It was completely dark inside, so I thought perhaps-"

"Objection."

"Sustained."

"What happened when you entered the apartment?" I asked.

"Andrew turned on the light. Dulles wasn't asleep-I figured he might have been, because it was almost ten o'clock, and because it was so strange that he would be waiting in total darkness," Vallis said, slipping in her "thought" by the back door. "He was sitting on a chair, a straight-backed wooden chair, in a corner of the living room."

"Who spoke first?"

"Andrew did. He told the boy my name and asked him to introduce himself."

"And did he?"

"No. He didn't say a word. He didn't move a muscle. Andrew spoke again, and like a military commander, ordered Dulles to stand up and come shake my hand."

"What did you observe as the boy approached you?"

"Tears were streaming down his cheeks. That's the first thing I noticed. As he got closer, I could see that his left eye was bruised, and there seemed to be some scratches on his face, too."

"Did you say anything to him?"

"I dropped to my knees and grabbed hold of his elbows. I started to ask if he was all right, and as I was doing that, his father began shouting at him, telling him to grow up and act like a man."

"What did you do next?"

"I tried to embrace the boy, telling him that he would be okay. But he stepped away from me and wiped his face with the backs of his hands. I stood up to get closer, so I could try to examine his eye. 'What happened to you?' I asked him."

Paige Vallis explained that Dulles resumed his seat while his father answered her question. "'He made mistakes,' is what Andrew told me. 'He's going to get things right this time. Aren't you, Dulles?'"

Then she described how Andrew pulled up two chairs, facing the boy, and ordered Paige to sit down in one of them.

"Did you sit?"

"Yes."

"Did you make any effort to leave?"

"No. Not then. I didn't think that-"

"Objection," Robelon said.

"Sustained. Don't tell us what you were thinking, tell us what you did," Moffett told the witness.

"Yes, Your Honor." She turned back to the jury. "Andrew began drilling the boy, talking to him like a soldier. He made him stand up at attention, and then fired a series of questions at him."

"Do you remember any of them?"

"I remember the first thing Andrew asked about. 'The lion's brood,' he said. 'Tell us their names.' Dulles answered him. He named Hannibal and his three brothers-they were weird names like Hasdrubal and Mago-I can't think of the others. He got it right, apparently. Then Andrew told him to list the winning battles of Aetius, who was some kind of Roman general. Dulles did that right, too. He knew all the places and the dates."

Paige continued with a litany of quizzes, all of them about military figures. Mike Chapman could have answered them without missing a beat, but the ten-year-old child had been force-fed the list in the few months he had taken up residence with his schizophrenic father.