Guilt

'You ready to go out into this?' Sam asked her. She had her hand on the doorhandle, but didn't look as though she was prepared just yet. Huddled into an oversized down jacket, Sam looked tiny and vulnerable.

'I think the real storm's going to be inside,' Diane said. 'Are you all right?'

'Sure,' Sam said, too quickly.

'You're nervous.'

A nod.

'Don't worry. I won't blow this. I say what happened and they try to shake my story, which they won't be able to do, and then we leave and this whole thing is behind us, and they put that bastard in jail where he belongs.' She looked over at Sam, still inside herself. 'That's not it, is it?'

Sam shook her head.

'Wes Farrell?' Diane had learned all about Sam and Wes.

Another nod. 'I'm going to hate him after he questions you. I know I am. That's all. And I don't want to.' She blew out a quick breath. 'It's just the end of something. The final end.'

'I'll be gentle with him,' Diane said, then patted the other woman's leg. 'Let's go, okay?'

They crossed Bryant, leaning into the wind, and came to the steps of the Hall, where Sam held open one of the huge glass double doors and they entered into the cavernous, open lobby.

Or not directly. First, a makeshift plywood wall funnelled visitors toward a doorframe, to the side of which sat a desk manned by two uniformed policemen. A couple of reporters had stationed themselves outside the courtrooms to be ready for just such arrivals, and they attached themselves to the two women, asking the usual inane questions as they fell into the desultory queue for the security check.

Diane was wearing designer jeans, a couple of layers of sweaters and a heavy raincoat, a large leather carry-bag slung over her shoulder. Moving forward with the line of people entering the Hall, trying to respond politely to the reporters and stay close to Sam, it didn't register to Diane that the doorframe was the building's metal detector until she was walking through it, setting off the beeper.

'Oh shit,' she said, as the policemen stopped them, took the carry-all from her and put it on the desk and told her to step back through the entrance again. 'No, wait.' Reaching for the carry-all, trying to take it back from him. 'We'll just go back and put this in the car. I'll just-'

But it was too late. The policeman, alerted by the weight of it, had already pulled it open and was reaching inside. 'Everybody else! Hold it! Step back!'

'What?' Sam asked.

'You!' The cop had Diane by the arm and was moving her away to the side. 'Get over there, put your hands against that wall. Do it! Now!' Then, to his partner, gesturing to the line forming behind the doorframe. 'Keep them back. Get on the phone and get a female officer down here.'

'What is this?' Sam demanded. 'What's going on?'

Diane started to turn around. 'I know-'

But the officer yelled at her again. 'Against that wall! Don't you move!' Then he lifted his hand out of the oversized purse.

He was holding a small, chrome-plated handgun.

At about the same moment, back in their office across the street, the mood had shifted from relief at getting a piece of Michael Ross to fury at Wes Farrell's decision to abandon his character witnesses.

Dooher was fuming. 'What do you mean, you're resting? We've got to call Jim Flaherty.'

Farrell was calmly shaking his head. 'We're not calling Flaherty. We're not doing character.'

'We have to do character, Wes. Character wins it for us.'

'We've already won it. We don't need it.' Farrell was giving it a more confident spin than he felt after the nearly disastrous testimony of Michael Ross, which in spite of his cross remained a serious evidentiary chip for the prosecution.

Wes wasn't going to tell Mark that the Archbishop had withdrawn as a witness unless he absolutely had to. The momentum had shifted, and Farrell's last and best hope was that he could save what he'd already accomplished. He still had a good chance to get Mark an acquittal. But he was holding all this close.

Christina was standing by the doorway. 'I thought you could never get enough. You've said that a hundred times. And now we've just had a hit from this Ross character -I think we do need more, Wes.'

'Well, I want to thank you both for your input, but unless you're going to fire me, Mark, this is my trial, and I'm done. We've won it. I've got a closing argument that's irrefutable. Christina, I'm sorry you don't get to cross-examine Diane Price. I'm sorry we didn't use you, and I believe you would take her apart, but I don't want any hint of bad character about Mark, not now. Even if we can refute. It's not worth the risk when we're so far up. You both have got to trust me here. I've done a pretty fair job so far. I promise you it's going to work.'

But Dooher wasn't ready to give it up. 'How long have you known this, that you weren't going to call Flaherty?'

'Frankly, Mark, I don't know. There was always that possibility, right from the beginning. I wanted to keep the door open as long as I could in case I needed him, but now it's my judgment that I don't. We don't.'

Christina spoke up again. 'I'd like to know where they got Michael Ross. What was that about? How could he have been where he said he was?'

'He wasn't,' Dooher said flatly. 'They made him up. Glitsky and Jenkins invented him.'

Christina believed it, Farrell could tell. But it was more than any one witness or decision at this point – Wes knew that Christina had bought the package with Mark.

If the facts didn't fit, then the facts must be wrong.

As a defense lawyer, she was inexperienced; as a person, she was naive. And she made the novice's mistake. She confused Not Guilty – a legal concept that meant the prosecution had failed to establish guilt, with Innocent, a fact of behavior.

But this was not the moment for these niceties. Farrell forced a relaxed tone. 'How Ross got to testify is a long and tedious story about attorney duplicity that I'd be happy to recount for you at our victory celebration. But meanwhile, I'd like to put this thing to bed before Jenkins pulls any more quasi-legal shenanigans out of her bag of tricks – ones that might hurt us.'

One last shot from the defendant. 'You're sure we got it, Wes? This is my life here.'

He forced himself to meet Dooher's eyes. 'I have no doubts.'

By the lunch recess, news of the arrest of Diane Price for carrying a concealed weapon had spread through the Hall, along with the myriad theories attendant upon any event of this nature: she had been planning to assassinate Dooher; she was going to kill herself as a last, desperate cry for help; or maim herself as a publicity stunt.

Diane's plea was that the whole thing was simply a mistake. She'd carried a gun for protection for years and years, since a few months after the rape. It was registered, even, though she had no license to carry it concealed on her person. She'd had no violent agenda. She simply hadn't realized that there was a metal detector at the entrance to the Hall of Justice.

This explanation was, of course, dismissed by every law-enforcement professional in the building, and Diane was taken upstairs – Sam Duncan abandoned, scuffling to locate the Crisis Center's attorney. Diane spent three hours in custody before being cited and released on the misdemeanor.

Every person in the courtroom – the gallery as well as the principals – was aware of the drama that had occurred outside during the lunch recess.

With this as a backdrop, Amanda Jenkins stepped up and presented her closing argument. The facts, she said, spoke for themselves, and allowed for no other interpretation than that Mark Dooher had murdered his wife on the evening of June 7th. The defendant had not been at the driving range when he said he was. They had a witness who'd positively identified his car near his house when the murder had been committed, another witness who'd been twenty feet from where Dooher was supposed to have been, and had never seen him.