Guilt

'The rush isn't going away, Christina. If the real stuff is here, the rush will find its way back.'

She kissed him again. 'Okay.' Searching his face. 'In the meantime, I'll be a professional, I won't feed the gossip mills, I won't give them any ammunition. But when this is over, this is fair warning. I'm going to be here. For you.'

The Chronicle photographer with the night-vision camera caught them kissing at the front door – nothing passionate, although they did stand together, embracing, for nearly two minutes, saying good night. It was plenty.

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

The gallery wasn't a presence for Glitsky anymore.

Mark Dooher's fate was going to be determined inside the Bar rail. Glitsky glanced across the courtroom at the defense table and felt his blood quicken with hate. It was a reaction he rarely felt. He had dealt with many despicable people, many of whom had committed heinous crimes, but his own feelings for them had almost never gotten personal.

Dooher was different. Not only had he attacked Glitsky on a variety of grounds, threatening his career and reputation – the reverberations were still echoing – but killing his wife… that struck at the heart of things.

The defendant sat, his expression serene, while on either side of him, his acolytes tried not to appear nervous and angry, though to Glitsky's practiced eye, they were failing. This, he knew, was probably in reaction to the Chronicle's story and accompanying picture – Dooher and Christina kissing on his darkened front porch.

Christina's mouth was set, her eyes cast downward. She was pretending to read from a folder in front of her, but she looked up too often to be reading.

Wes Farrell seemed somewhat cooler. He was a pro and knew you didn't show your feelings to the jurors, but Glitsky had overheard him answering one of Dooher's questions at the defense table. The two men didn't seem to be best friends anymore.

In spite of Thomasino's detailed approach to questioning prospective jurors, once he had wi

Amanda had told Glitsky that she didn't subscribe to the belief that there was a fine art to picking members of the jury. In spite of all the fancy theories people had, it was more or less a crap shoot. Evidently Wes Farrell felt the same way. Amanda basically preferred married women to single men for this type of case, and Asians if she could get them, but those seemed to be her only criteria. Farrell liked men who had jobs. But both attorneys seemed inclined, mostly, to keep things moving.

And now the new and improved Amanda Jenkins was facing the panel of twelve. Glitsky tried to take some clues from the jurors' faces, but he didn't know what he might be looking for. None of them particularly avoided his gaze, although none held it either. They were focused on Amanda, not him.

There were seven women and five men. Five of the jurors – two of the men and three of the women – were what Glitsky would call well dressed. Another five had thrown on something at least marginally respectful. Of the remaining two, a younger white man with a half-grown beard and long hair wore a faded Army fatigue shirt, untucked and unbuttoned over a T-shirt. Amanda had let him stay because she guessed he'd be prejudiced against lawyers such as Dooher. It was a surprise when Farrell left him unchallenged.

Another middle-aged, very heavy-set Hispanic man wore jeans and a blue denim shirt that he evidently had gone to work in many times. Farrell had apparently wanted him because he was Catholic, and Amanda told Abe she hadn't objected because she thought he was pretending to be dumber than he was.

There were four Asians (three women and a man), two Hispanics (one and one), three African-Americans (two and one), and three whites (one and two). Glitsky had no idea what the demographics meant, and Amanda, in her no-nonsense style, had set him straight over lunch. 'Nobody has a clue.'

Now she was about to address them, and Glitsky thought that, her softer image notwithstanding, her body language put her at a slight disadvantage. She was holding a yellow legal pad for a prop, standing slightly hip-shot before the jury box.

Amanda made no bones about the fact that she did not like juries, about having to explain every fact or nuance so a moron could understand it, about the cut-throat legal world in which she found herself. Glitsky thought she wore all these feelings on her tailored sleeves, her forced smile betraying all of it. At least it did to Abe. He hoped he was wrong.

Nevertheless, no one was in this room to make friends. He supposed a serious demeanor wasn't the worst handicap a lawyer could have, although all the successful trial attorneys he knew allowed a great deal more personality to peek through when they got in front of a jury.

'Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Good afternoon.'

She checked her notes – maybe the pad wasn't a prop after all – took a deep breath, and began.

'As Judge Thomasino told you, the prosecution's opening statement is to acquaint you with the evidence in the case, the evidence that the People of the State of California will use to demonstrate the facts that we will then assemble to prove, and prove beyond a reasonable doubt, the truth: That on June 7th of this year, Mark Dooher' – she turned and pointed for effect -'the defendant here, willfully and with malice aforethought, murdered his wife, Sheila.

'I'm going to be presenting evidence about what happened on that day, a Tuesday. The weather was exceptionally pleasant, su

Glitsky wasn't surprised to hear Farrell's first objection – nearly guttural with some suppressed emotion, but clear enough. His focus, missing this morning, was coming back. Glitsky knew that though the alleged idyll between Dooher and his wife might have sounded nice, it wasn't up to Jenkins to portray it as such.

Thomasino's eyebrows lifted up and down. 'Sustained.'

It didn't slow Jenkins. She took her eyes off the jury to consult her pad, then went right back to it. 'In his own statement to the police, the defendant admitted what happened next. He left his office downtown and, on his way home, made a stop at Dellaroma's Liquor and Delicatessen on Ocean Avenue for a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne and an assortment of meats and vegetables. He went home and he and his wife shared the champagne and the hors d'oeuvres. Then, because she was tired, Mrs Dooher went upstairs for a nap. The defendant went to the driving range.'

Listening to it, Glitsky was confronted again – it happened to varying degrees every time he came to court in other cases – with the chasm of difference between his essentially free-wheeling job of gathering evidence and the court's job of objectively analyzing it. But Jenkins evidently realized how benign it all sounded because she stopped a minute, walked to the prosecution table to break her own rhythm, and took a sip of water.

She turned back to the jury. 'That's what the defendant told the police. What the defendant did not tell police was that even then, he was pla

'The plan was a simple one.'

'The defendant had long ago obtained – for his own use – a prescription of chloral-hydrate, a strong sedative he said he needed because he had trouble sleeping. Chloral-hydrate is often commonly referred to as "knockout drugs", and that's how the defendant intended to use it. He would puncture some of the gel tabs and slip some of the drug into his wife's champagne. He would help put her to bed. He would go to a nearby driving range to establish an alibi. Then he would return, stab his wife to death in her sleep and make it look like a burglary. He almost got away with it.'