Guilt

Farrell was shaking his head. 'Men on the jury will be jealous of you and women will be intimidated by her.'

'Not true.'

'You want to risk your life on that?'

Dooher seemed to consider that notion. 'I'm a risk-taker, Wes. My gut tells me I'm right in this case. I've lived my life believing what my gut tells me. So yeah, I guess I'd risk my life on this. That's who I am, and I've done pretty well with it, don't you think?'

Wes caught the unspoken message: Better than you have, old buddy old pal.

But this was a terrible idea. Wes couldn't make himself just roll over and accept it, though he could see where this discussion was going to lead. 'What if I can't work with her? What if we don't get along?'

'Why wouldn't you get along? Two professionals, one cause you both believe in? What's not to get along?' Then a sop to Farrell's ego. 'You'll be the man, Wes. She takes orders from you. And she'll jump at the opportunity, then through hoops if you ask her to.'

They were walking again. It was a blustery mid-afternoon and cars packed all of Bryant's four lanes; traffic lined up for the five o'clock commute across the Bay Bridge had halted. Horns and swearing.

'Why do you want her, Mark? Really?'

'I just told you.'

Farrell shook his head. 'No, I mean personally. I'm asking this as your friend, not your attorney, okay? You' ve got to see how badly this could play. Don't you?'

'Yeah,' he finally admitted. 'We've said there's a risk. I think it's worth taking.'

'But why?'

Dooher walked on for a few more steps, then put an arm around Farrell's shoulder. 'I guess the same reason I want you. I just don't feel comfortable with a hired gun.' He pulled Farrell closer to him. 'She's got faith, Wes. She believes in me.'

On the prosecution side of the courtroom, Amanda Jenkins had abandoned her trademark mini-skirt for a conservative dark blue suit. She'd let the frost grow out of her hair and now wore it shoulder-length, curled under. Next to her, helping her arrange her papers at this moment, was Lieutenant Abe Glitsky.

Glitsky had tried to put the madness of all of this out of his life over the past months – he'd had enough on his mind with his children and his new job. Batiste's prediction had come true and Glitsky had been promoted within his unit, and now he was ru

The way he saw it, Mark Dooher was unfinished business from his days as a Sergeant. He had investigated the case, assembled the evidence, and delivered it to the District Attorney. It was his case until Dooher got sentenced.

So as the DA had requested, as the investigating officer, Glitsky sat inside the rail, at the prosecution table next to Amanda Jenkins, wearing the dark suit he'd bought for Flo's funeral and hadn't worn since.

Almost seven months ago.

He was going to be there every day for the duration of the Dooher trial. California Evidence Code Section 777(c) provided that the DA could appoint an 'officer or employee' to be present at the trial, and prosecutors liked the investigating officer to be there for any number of reasons – to prepare other witnesses for what they might expect, to bounce theories and strategies off another professional, to have someone to talk to during recesses, to watch the Judge and the jury. If a juror fell asleep during testimony, for example, he'd tell Jenkins that perhaps she should go over it a second time.

But mostly he was there as a second set of ears, to hear what a witness actually said, as opposed to what everyone – except the jury – expected and therefore heard. There was a huge difference, and that's what Abe was listening for.

'All rise. Department 26 of the Superior Court of the City and County of San Francisco, is now in session, Judge Oscar Thomasino presiding.'

Farrell stood, pulled at his tie and cleared his throat – his nerves were frayed nearly to breaking. He had been in courtrooms hundreds of times, but nothing came close to the electricity surrounding this case. And now, finally, after all the preparation, it was begi

Thomasino, in his black robe, ascended to the Bench. Sitting, he adjusted his robe, arranged some papers, took a sip of water, whispered something to his court reporter, who smiled. Knowing that it was undoubtedly a ritual pleasantry, Farrell still wondered what the Judge had said – if it was about any of them. Thomasino raised his bushy eyebrows to include the courtroom. Everyone was getting seated again, shuffling around, and the 'Good morning' Thomasino perfunctorily uttered went largely unheeded.

It didn't seem to bother the Judge. He turned to the court clerk, tapped his gavel once as though checking to see that it still worked, and nodded to the clerk. 'Call the case.'

The clerk stood. 'Superior Court number 159317, The People of the State of California versus Mark Francis Dooher. Counsel state their appearances for the record.'

Farrell looked at his client to his left, then further down the table to Christina, his second chair. A thumbs up, a practiced smile for her confidence, for his client's. He felt little of that confidence himself, concerned his weakness in accepting Christina as second chair would fatally harm the defense.

Christina looked good – hell, she always looked good – and she certainly was game to fight this battle for as long as it took. Farrell even had to admit she was a substantial and resourceful person with a damn good legal mind.

But so what? In spite of that, in spite of her gung-ho attitude and good humor, he wished she could simply disappear.

Because she was in love with their client, goddamn it.

Wes believed that there was nothing yet between them, but he never doubted that there would be, and privately that shook him.

This was the unspoken motive. Farrell had no indication that Amanda Jenkins was pla

This one question lay buried under the rational arguments in the very pit of his being. There had been nights when it rose ghoulish and woke him in a sweat.

But the time for reflection had passed.

Thomasino, all business, ostentatiously opened his folder, read for a nanosecond, and was now skewering both attorneys' tables. 'Ms Jenkins,' he began, 'Mr Farrell. Before we call the first jury panel, we've got a four-oh-two to rule on.'

Jenkins stood up at her table. 'Yes, your honor.'

The Judge was reading again. 'You've got two motions here and both of them have to do with character evidence, which you know can only be used in rebuttal by the prosecution.'

Thomasino was clarifying this technical point, but that was what 402 motions were about. As a matter of law, evidence of bad character could not serve as proof that a defendant had committed any particular crime. One couldn't say, for example, that because Joe Smith beat his dog, it followed he'd killed his wife.

The law further recognized the perhaps natural, human inclination for the prosecution to want to tarnish a defendant's reputation by bringing up every bad thing that person had ever done, so that it would seem more likely that that person had done the particular thing they were accused of. So it created a check to keep this from happening.

Unless the defense brought up evidence of a defendant's good character first, the Evidence Code forbade the prosecution from introducing evidence of bad character.

Farrell had filed his motion because Amanda Jenkins's witness list had included some of Dooher's past co-workers, not all of whom had the fondest memories of him. But most of all, the accusations of both Chas Brown and Diane Price had become joined at the hip to the actual murder charges against Dooher.