"Why is that?"
"Well, because we can simply look at what's there and compare it to our known sample. Let's say, for example, you look in a victim's mouth and have seven fillings, a crown, and a root canal or extraction site, and they're just where they are in your sample. Well, then, you've got a match."
Hardy, sensing an opportunity, jumped at it. "So you can get a match with only, say, a few matching teeth? Less than a whole mouthful?"
"Sometimes, of course. Sometimes you don't have a whole mouthful. But you work with everything you have. In the case of Mr. Hanover, I compared all of the teeth. There was a one hundred percent correlation."
"And so you positively identified the victim as Mr. Hanover?"
But McInerny was shaking his head. "Not precisely," he said.
"No? Could you explain."
"Sure. I simply verify the match. My dental records match the victim's. And in this case they did."
Hardy, having wasted twenty minutes of the court's time on this dry well of a cross-examination, realized that he let himself succumb to the luxury of fishing. He'd gotten an unexpected and gratuitous, entirely minor victory of sorts from Strout during the morning session and he'd let it go to his head. He was going to alienate the jury if he kept barking up this kind of tree, to no effect.
Acknowledging defeat, he tipped his head to Dr. Mc-Inerny, thanked him for his time, and excused him.
The afternoon passed in a haze of redundancy. Toshio Yamashiru was, as Rosen took pains to point out, not only the dentist of Missy D'Amiens, but one of the top forensic odontologists in the country. As Strout had told Glitsky so long ago, he had assisted in the identification of the 9/11 victims. He had twenty-plus years of experience not only in general dentistry, but in advanced forensics.
No doubt prompted by Hardy's aggressive cross-examination of Dr. McInerny, Rosen went to great lengths not only to establish Yamashiru's credentials, but also the techniques that he'd used in the morgue and then in his own lab to exactly correlate the various fissures, faults and striations of each tooth in the skull he examined with the dental records of Missy D'Amiens.
After an hour and forty-one minutes of this excruciatingly boring detail, he finally asked, "Doctor Yamashiru, what was the correlation between the teeth you examined at the morgue and that of the woman whose records are in court, Missy D'Amiens?"
"One hundred percent."
"You're certain?"
"Completely."
"Thank you, Doctor." Rosen turned to Hardy. "Your witness."
Hardy blinked himself to a marginally higher state of awareness and stood up. "Your Honor, I have no questions for this witness."
With ill-concealed relief, Braun turned to Yamashiru. "Thank you, Doctor. You may step down." She then looked up, bringing in the jury, and raised her voice. "I think we've had enough for today. We'll adjourn until tomorrow morning at nine thirty."
In the holding cell just behind the back door of the courtoom, Catherine, caged, paced like a leopard.
Hardy, who'd endured complaints-many justified, he'd admit-about the family since Catherine had gone to jail, felt compelled to try and tolerate another round. Even if he were wrung out and ready to go home-or really, back to the office for a minimum of a couple of hours where he would check his mail and e-mail, answer urgent calls from other clients and deal with any other outstanding firm business that needed his input-he had to let her get some of her frustration out. Because if she didn't blow off steam back here, out of sight, she might do it in front of the jurors, and that would be disastrous. So he let her go on, unaware that with the tensions of the day his own string was near breaking. "I was just so conscious of them all day long, sitting there in the gallery, watching my back, my every breath, I think, and all of them believing I could have done anything like this. How could they even think that?"
"I don't think they do."
"Ha. You don't know."
"No, I don't. That's true."
She got to one end ofher twelve-foot journey, grasped the bars for a moment, then pushed off in the other direction. "Shit shit shit."
"What?"
"Just shit, that's what." She opened her mouth and let out something between a scream and a growl.
"Hey, come on, Catherine, calm down."
"I can't calm down. I don't want to calm down. I'm locked up, for Christ's sake. I might be locked up forever. Don't you see that?"
She reached the other end, turned again.
"Catherine, stop walking. Please. Just for a second." He patted the concrete bench next to him. "Come on.
Sit. You'll feel better."
She didn't stop walking. "I've been sitting all day."
He sighed, let the words out under his breath. "Christ, you can be a difficult woman!"
She stopped and looked at him. "You're not mad at me, are you?"
"No, Catherine. How could I be mad at you? I make a simple request for you to sit down so you'll feel better and, because I've been working all day every day for eight months already on your behalf, of course you completely ignore what I want and continue to pace. This makes me happy, not mad. And why? Because I need the abuse. I thrive on abuse, if you haven't noticed."
"I'm not abusing you."
Hardy had to chuckle. "And I'm not mad at you. So we're even. You continue pacing and I'll just sit here, not being mad, how's that?"
She stared down at him. "Why are you being this way?"
"What way? Calling you on your behavior? Maybe it's because how you behave in the courtroom is going to have an effect on the jury."
"Okay, but we're not in the courtroom now." Some real anger crept into her tone. "I've been behaving well in there all day and now, if it's all the same to you, Dis-mas Hardy, I'm a little bit frustrated."
"Well, take it out on me, then. I'm a glutton for it. Here." He got to his feet. "I'll stand up, be your punching bag. Go on, hit me."
She squared around on him as though she actually might. Hardy brought a finger up to his chin, touched it a few times. "Right here."
"God, you're being awful."
"I'm not. I'm facilitating getting you in touch with your inner child who wants to hit me. You'll really feel better. I swear. This is a real technique they teach in law school."
In spite of herself, she chuckled, the anger bleaching out of her, her face softening. "I don't want to hit you, Dismas. We can sit down."
"You're sure? I don't want to stem your free expression."
She lowered herself to the concrete bench. "It's just been a long day," she said.
He looked down at her. "I hate to say that it's only the first one of many, but that's the truth. We ought to try to keep from fighting. I'm sorry if I pushed you there."
"No. I deserved it. I pushed you."
"Well, either way." Hardy put his hands in his pockets, leaned against the bars behind him. "This is worse for you, and I'm sorry."
They were in a cell in an otherwise open hallway that ran behind all of the courtrooms. Every minute or so, a uniformed bailiff or two would walk by with another defendant, or sometimes an orange-suited line of them, in tow. The place was lit, of course, but in some fashion Hardy was dimly aware that outside it was close to dark out and still cold. Down the way somewhere, quite possibly in an exact double of the cell in which they sat, but invisible to them, they both could hear someone crying.
"She sounds so sad," Catherine said. "It could be one of my daughters. That's what I'm missing the most. The kids." She took a deep breath. "It's bad enough now, with them having to deal with all that high school nasti-ness, with their mother in jail, what they must be going through day to day. But what I really agonize about is how it's going to affect them in the long run, if I wind up…" She stared at her hands in her lap.