Spider Webs

V The Witnesses

During the night a marine layer unfurled over the city, draping the clock tower of the courthouse and smothering its chimes. The hours, unseen and unheard, ceased to exist until the sun burned a hole in the fog. Then the prodigal parrot, the main occupant of the tower, woke up and began to groom its feathers, using the oil from its preen gland. While it prepared itself for the day, it kept a sharp eye on the sheriff’s van, which was unloading its prisoners for the morning’s trials. The bird swooped down on the men, its free flight mocking their shackles.

The hours came back to life. Eight. Nine. Ten o’clock.

In courtroom 5 the man who stepped up into the witness box gave his name as Tyler Winslow Pherson. He lived at 300 Garden Grove Avenue, Bakersfield, and was the executive vice-president of the Valley Oil Corporation. In response to the district attorney’s question, he said that the deceased woman had been his wife, Madeline.

“We were married for eighteen years,” Pherson said. “Madeline was a wonderful woman, devoted to the service of others, children, the elderly, the handicapped. She raised large sums of money for many charities. She spent months learning braille so she could translate books for the blind, and in her work at Hospice she counseled families of the terminally ill. She was a woman who loved God and was loved by Him. I don’t understand how He could have let this terrible thing happen to her.”

“We all sympathize with your plight, Mr. Pherson. But in order to proceed with the trial, I must ask you to confine yourself to answering my questions.”

“How could He have let it happen to a woman like Madeline? Why?” He looked down at Cully. “Why? Why did you kill her?”

Donnelly jumped up to object and the judge began pounding his gavel, but Pherson did not see or hear.

“How many others have you killed? How many others will you kill if they let you go?”

“You will be found in contempt, Mr. Pherson,” the judge said, “if you continue in this vein.”

“I have a right to know. I have a right.”

“The defendant also has a right to a fair trial conducted under the rules of—”

“Rules. The rules are all in favor of that murderer. Aren’t there any rules to protect the memory of my dead wife?”

“If you cannot contain yourself, Mr. Pherson, I must ask you to step down and return at a later time.”

Owen was careful not to show it, but Pherson’s outburst suited his purpose. His remarks might be stricken from the record, but the jury wasn’t likely to forget them or his anguished face when he made them.

Owen said, “Do you feel capable of continuing your testimony, Mr. Pherson?”

“Yes. Yes, I’m all right.”

“I’d like to establish some facts about the family background. For instance, do you have any children?”

“No. We were never blessed.”

“Are there any close family ties?”

“Madeline had a very deep relationship with her mother.”

“Does her mother live in Bakersfield?”

“No. She died in March. She and Madeline had been planning a trip to Hawaii when her mother became ill. Madeline took it very hard. That was the reason I wanted her to go on a vacation. I thought a change of scene would be good for her, cheer her up. The irony of that haunts me day and night, the irony that I should be responsible for her death while trying to help her. She didn’t really want to go anywhere. It was my decision. I’m used to making decisions; I’m used to being right.” He shook his head. “This time I wasn’t right. God help me in my terrible wrongness.”

“Will you please just answer my questions, Mr. Pherson?”

“Yes. Yes, all right.”

“Did Mrs. Pherson inherit anything from her mother?”

“A small amount of real estate, an insurance policy, some treasury notes and the heirloom jewelry which for generations had been passed on to the oldest daughter. The insurance on them was outdated, and Madeline intended to have them reappraised and reinsured. I don’t know their current value.”

“Do you think they were worth a considerable amount of money?”

“Yes.”

“In what way did Mrs. Pherson obtain these jewels?”

“Her mother’s lawyer handed them over at his office.”

“In a container?”

“Yes.”

“Were you present?”

“Yes.”

“Can you describe the container?”

“It was about the size of a makeup case, covered with embossed green leather with a large old-fashioned lock. I carried it out to the car for her, and she sat with it on her lap all the way home. She didn’t cry or make a fuss, but it was not a happy time. During her mother’s illness she remained cheerful and supportive. Now it was all over. Perhaps she was thinking, as she sat with the case on her lap, that she would be the last owner of the jewelry since there was no eldest daughter to pass it on to, no daughter at all. It was the end of the line.”

“So you persuaded her to take a vacation, get a change of scene?”

“Yes. She chose the San Diego area. My secretary made the necessary travel and hotel arrangements, and I drove her to the airport. She called me when she arrived. She sounded quite cheerful. It was the last time I heard her voice.”

“That will be all for now, Mr. Pherson,” Owen said. “Thank you.”

Donnelly rose and went to the lectern for the cross-examination. “Mr. Pherson, you said your wife sounded cheerful when she called you. Did this surprise you?”

“I was happy about it.”

“Yes, but were you surprised?”

“I thought it would take longer for her to snap out of her depression and begin to enjoy life again. So my answer is, I was pleasantly surprised.”

“Did she ever talk of suicide?”

“No, never.”

“I believe you stated that Mrs. Pherson counseled the terminally ill and their families, did you not?”

“Yes.”

“Wouldn’t the subject of suicide come up naturally in the course of these conversations?”

“When I said she never mentioned suicide, I meant in regard to herself. Such a thing would never have occurred to her.”

“Even though she was, according to your testimony, in a state of depression after her mother’s death?”

Pherson sat in silence, motionless except for his eyes, which moved slowly up and down the two row of jurors, establishing eye contact with each person.

“My wife did not kill herself. She was murdered.”

The words were spoken not in the loud, abrasive tone of his previous accusations but with quiet dignity and utter conviction.

Donnelly’s objection was routine. Pherson’s words would be stricken from the record, but they would remain in the memories of the jurors, no matter how solemnly the judge would later instruct them to lay aside their emotions and base their decision solely on facts. They wouldn’t do it; juries seldom, if ever, did. Facts had a way of being pushed out of shape or out of sight.

And the fact was that Madeline Pherson had gone into that bar not to raise funds for charity, not to translate books into braille, not to counsel the terminally ill. She had gone into that bar to drink double martinis and pick up a stranger.

The judge said, “Do you have any further questions to ask this witness, Mr. Donnelly?”

“Not at this time, Your Honor.”

“You are excused for now, Mr. Pherson. Counsel will notify you if you are needed again. Meanwhile, the same rule applies to you as to all the other witnesses in this case. None of you is allowed inside this courtroom until the conclusion of the trial. And you are reminded not to discuss your testimony with any other witness.”

“Pardon me, Your Honor,” the district attorney said. “My next witness hasn’t arrived yet from San Diego. It’s a four- to five-hour drive or longer, and I don’t expect him until about one o’clock. The situation is my fault. I anticipated that Mr. Pherson would be on the stand for a longer period.”

“All right. Instead of the usual morning recess, we will take the lunch break now and reconvene at two o’clock.”

Cully was sitting on the edge of his chair, hands on the table in front of him with the fingers knotted together like oiled ropes. Donnelly sat down beside him and began to repack his briefcase. “Well? Anything wrong?”

“Did she really do all those good things?”

“Yes. Gunther checked it out.”

“But that wasn’t like the woman who started talking to me in the bar. She wasn’t trying to save my soul, I can tell you that. She was coming on to me.”

“So you say.”

“She came on strong to me. I swear she did. Maybe the police made a mistake and the body they found wasn’t hers but somebody else’s.”

“She was positively identified by her husband and the housekeeper.”

“I saw a movie once about a lady with a split personality who—”

“Forget it. Mrs. Pherson was a nice, wholesome, healthy woman.”

“Then why did she come on to me like that?”

“Maybe you’re irresistible.”

The courtroom was empty by this time except for the two men and the bailiff standing at the door, waiting for the deputy to come and take Cully back to jail.

“About those scratches on your cheek, was she in such a fury of passion she scratched you with her fingernails?”

“No. No, it didn’t happen that way. What happened was she grabbed me and one of her earrings scratched my cheek.”

“Which earring?”

“I’m not sure. I mean, there was a whole lot going on and we were both drunk, and who can remember a little thing like which earring?”

“The jury likes to know little things like that. They may swallow the big stuff whole like the whale swallowed Jonah, but they can get pretty picky about small details that don’t add up or can’t be remembered.”

“Okay, let’s say it was the left earring.”

“Let’s not say anything until we reconstruct the scene.”

“Like how?”

“Walk toward me and grab me the way Mrs. Pherson grabbed you.”

“That would look funny. People might think—”

“The jury’s out of the room, and they’re the only ones whose thinking should concern you. Go ahead. Grab. Do it.”

“No.”

“Come on. Just pretend you find me irresistible, so in a fit of passion—”

“No. It would make me look funny, feel funny.”

“Why? Pretend we’re enacting a scene from a play.”

“I’m not a playactor.”

“Grab me, you son of a bitch.”

The bailiff turned at the sound of a raised voice. “Anything the matter over there?”

“No,” Donnelly said. “We were just discussing how irresistible Cully is to women.” When the bailiff’s attention had returned to the hall, Donnelly added, “Not only to Mrs. Pherson but to our own little Eva. The way she looks at you with those hot little eyes of hers is enough to roast a turkey. Don’t you feel the heat, turkey?”

“No.”

“This sudden attack of modesty doesn’t suit your style, Cully.” Donnelly had finished putting all his papers back into the briefcase. Now he snapped it shut but made no move to leave. “By the way, I have a letter for you. It was addressed to me, but the enclosure is for you.”

“Who’s it from?”

“Your wife.” Donnelly put the letter on the table, but Cully didn’t pick it up or even glance at it. “Don’t you want to read it?”

“No.”

“I think you’d better. It’s often helpful to get somebody else’s slant on things.”

“Louise has only one slant.”

The letter was neatly typed and punctuated and contained only two misspellings.

“Louise didn’t type this,” Cully said. “She can’t type. Her brother did it for her. He probably urged her to send it, too. The son of a bitch hates me.”

“Ah, yes, your brother-in-law, the one you’d like to murder.”

Cully blinked in surprise. “Who told you that?”

“Miss Foster. She thought I ought to warn you not to make such remarks because people might get the wrong impression. Or the right one, whatever.”

“I wouldn’t have told her if I thought she was going to blab it all over.”

“She didn’t blab it all over. By telling me, she was trying to protect you. Oh, yes, she’s quite the tigress, Little Eva is. And you, amigo, are her cub.”

“I’m not. I won’t be. I refuse.”

“Cubs don’t have a choice,” Donnelly said. “Read your letter.”

There were two sheets of paper inside the envelope. One was a request to Mr. Donnelly, Esquire, to pass the enclosed to Cully King.

That was as far as Cully read. He threw the letter on the floor. “Belasco never paid me.”

“I know. I asked him not to, and he agreed.”

“What’d you do a crazy thing like that for?”

“The money is being kept for you. That way you can, more or less legitimately, claim to have no assets. If you have no assets, a public defender will be appointed for you in case something happens to prevent me from continuing your defense. If or when you get out, you should have enough to tide you over while you pick up the pieces of your life.”

“I don’t want to pick up any pieces. Nobody wants me out anyway.”

“A lot of people do.”

“Not for my sake they don’t. Louise wants me out so I can go on supporting her and that louse of a brother of hers. Pherson wants me out so he’ll have a chance to kill me. Eva Foster probably has some crazy idea like wanting to marry me. Oh, sure, they all want me to get out.”

“So do I.”

“With you it’s because you’d hate to lose the case.”

“No. It’s because I’d hate to lose you.”

It took a minute for Cully to understand. When he did, his whole body tightened as if preparing to strike.

“Think about it,” Donnelly said.

“You’re crazy.”

“No. I’ve been planning for some time to quit this business and go up to my ranch in Idaho. I’m sick of the law, the victims and the victimizers. I’d like to be surrounded by nice, normal creatures, horses, dogs, cattle. I doubt there is a God, but if there is, these must be His creatures, not us. They accept the world and each other. They’re not always planning, scheming, fighting to get to the top where there’s no place left to go but down. A river flows through the ranch, loud and ferocious in the spring when the ice pack starts to melt in the mountains. In the fall it flows gently. But no matter what season, each drop of water is different. It’s not like the sea, where every wave seems to be the same, monotonous as death. A river is alive, fresh, vital. I must have felt that way when I was a child, but I can’t remember, I can’t remember.”

“I don’t have to sit here and listen to this crap.”

“Yes, you do. You have no choice. You are an accused murderer, which considerably limits your choices.”

“Everyone has rights.”

“The rights of an accused murderer exist mainly on paper and in the lofty minds of idealists. You are sitting here quietly listening to your attorney. If you make any move to protest, if you get loud or contentious, the bailiff will come over, then a deputy, two deputies, and you’re in handcuffs and irons. Accused murderers aren’t free to do what they want to do. They sit and listen to their attorneys, whether that attorney is reading the weather report or making a reasonable proposition. That’s what this is, a reasonable proposition.”

“Not to me.”

“You said you didn’t want to pick up the pieces of your life. Well, neither do I. I have to walk away from the past. Walk with me, Cully.”

The bailiff yawned, shifted his weight from one foot to another, checked his wristwatch with the clock on the wall and thought of a Reuben sandwich with cold beer and hot apple pie.

“Consider it carefully,” Donnelly said.

“There’s nothing to consider, you hear? Nothing.”

“You’ll be looked after the rest of your life.”

“Some life, stuck on a ranch in the middle of nowhere with a queer and a bunch of cows and a river instead of the sea. That’s not for me. I want to be a free man or a dead one.”

“Surely I deserve some return on my investment. Face the facts, Cully. The odds against you right now are about ten to one. If I can turn them around, you’ll owe me your life. And remember, I didn’t get you into this mess. You did it all yourself.”

“I didn’t. It was her fault. I think she planned the whole thing. She intended to jump overboard, and she did. And like you made the doctor admit on the stand, she could have possibly been unconscious and something in the ocean made those marks on her throat.”

“Bullshit,” Donnelly said. “They’re your marks. You choked her.”

“What for?”

“The jewels.”

“I only got five hundred dollars for the earrings.”

“The other jewels, the ones in the green leather case.”

“I don’t know anything about that case, I swear it.”

“You lie as naturally as you breathe, so I won’t ask you what you did with it or how you expect to dispose of jewels, whose description will be known to every gem dealer and pawnshop owner in the country.”

A suffusion of blood gave Cully’s face a purplish hue. “I can’t dispose of what I ain’t got.”

“What you ain’t got,” Donnelly said, “is anyone who believes you.”

“It’s your job to make them believe me.”

“Most lawyers would expect big bucks for a job like that. All I expect is gratitude.”

“I’m fresh out of gratitude.”

“Think about it, the way your future looks from here. Even if you’re found not guilty, you can never wash off the smell of this trial. You won’t be considered an innocent man; you’ll be considered a murderer who got away with it. Naturally you’ll never get another job in your field. What yachtsman would entrust his boat to a man with your reputation? When you choked Mrs. Pherson, you killed two people, you and her. You’re through, Cully. What you think is just a curve in the road ahead is the end of the line.”

Donnelly drove home feeling light-headed and weak, like a man recovering from a long illness.

His life had always been a series of blueprints, carefully planned, precisely drawn. Now, in one brief interlude, a door had been opened, and the blueprints scattered all over the room. There was no way to retrieve them and put them back in order.

He parked in the garage. Both of Zan’s cars were in their usual place, but there was a smell of exhaust fumes in the air and the hood of Zan’s Jaguar was still warm.

He went into the house by the back door. The housekeeper, Mrs. Killeen, was on the telephone in the kitchen. She hung up as soon as she saw him and got to her feet, straightening the prim white collar of her pink uniform.

“Are you home for lunch, Mr. Donnelly?”

“If it isn’t any trouble.”

“I like to be informed in advance. However, I can always toss something together in an emergency.”

“Simply coming home to one’s own house can hardly be described as an emergency.”

“I plan ahead.”

“So do I,” Donnelly said. This was true until an hour ago. Now everything had blown up and away, and the flight both scared and elated him.

“Your wife is upstairs in her sitting room,” Mrs. Killeen said. “She’s in a good mood, by the way, so don’t wreck it.”

“Is that an order, Mrs. Killeen?”

“Merely excellent advice. But then lawyers are more inclined to give advice than to take it, so I might as well keep my mouth shut.”

“A very good idea.”

The door of Zan’s sitting room was open, but he knocked anyway so he wouldn’t startle her. She sat at her small bird’s-eye-maple desk, writing a letter. She was dressed for a fall day in town, in a tweedy beige suit almost the color of her hair. The bulkiness of the suit gave her added weight and fresh makeup concealed her pallor.

“Why, Charles, what a nice surprise.”

“For me, too. You look very well.”

The steadiness of her voice and hands made him wonder what kinds of pills she’d taken that morning and which doctor she had conned into prescribing them.

“I’m just writing to my brother, Michael, to tell him my news. Or rather, our news.”

“I didn’t know we had any news.”

“Oh, but we do. You just haven’t found out about it yet.”

She laughed. It was a pleasant sound with none of the latent shriek that could be heard in most of her laughter.

“Are you ready for a great big surprise, Charles? I should really make you guess, but it would be cruel to keep you in suspense.”

“I could stand it.”

“Anyway, you’d never guess. It’s too wonderful, really.”

“Tell me.”

“We’re going to have a baby.”

The shock wave that hit him subsided almost immediately, leaving him with the realization that she couldn’t be talking about her own pregnancy — she was, after all, over forty, in poor health and chemically addicted — she was referring to adoption. Even this seemed very remote. She could never qualify, and neither could he. But she looked so happy, and there were so few happy moments in any life, that he didn’t want to spoil it for her until he had to.

“I think it’s just what we need, Charles. Something to bring us together, give us a common interest. We’ve been growing apart, and a baby will give us something to plan for, the nursery and clothes and christening and—”

“Where will we get this baby, Zan?”

“I heard about an obstetrician in town who arranges such things.”

“For money?”

“For money, naturally, to pay him for his work. He brings together unwanted babies with wanting parents, that’s his motto.”

“Is that where you went this morning, to see this doctor?”

“Yes.”

“Did you give him any money?”

“No. He’ll have to see you first in order to make sure you’re a wanting parent You are, aren’t you, Charles?”

“I think we should discuss the subject before coming to a decision. We’ll have to wait until this case I’m on is finished. Then we’ll sit down and talk.”

“When will the case be finished?”

“I don’t know.”

“Weeks? Months?”

“Possibly.”

“But the doctor’s expecting to hear from us tomorrow.”

“I’m afraid he won’t, Zan. You’ve waited twenty years before considering adoption, you can wait a little longer, build up your health and energy and be ready to face the responsibility of having a child. It’s a big step. Whether it’s up or down needs further extrapolation.”

“Extrapolation.” She picked up the sheet of letter paper she’d been writing on and began to fold it over and over again until it was pleated like a fan. “That’s a fancy word for no, isn’t it?”

“It means we must assess the situation.”

“Haven’t you guts enough to come right out and say no?”

“If that’s what you want me to do, very well, no. You can’t assume responsibility for a child in your present state of health.”

She took the little fan she’d made out of the note paper and started waving it slowly back and forth across her face. All her movements were slow. Since he didn’t know what kinds of pills she’d taken, he wasn’t sure whether this uncharacteristic languor meant that they were wearing off or increasing in effect. There was even a very faint possibility that she hadn’t taken anything more addicting than a dream.

“I am a wanting parent,” she said.

“Today you are. What about tomorrow?”

The word didn’t have the effect on her that he thought it would.

“Tomorrow I’ll go down and see the doctor and tell him what an important case you’re working on so you couldn’t come in person but you wanted him to know how eager you are to have a child. Tomorrow,” she repeated. “Just think, tomorrow there might be a baby waiting to enter our lives.”

“Your life,” he said. “Not mine.”

“You don’t have to share it, Charles. You wouldn’t make much of a parent anyway. You have no more feeling than a turnip. I may have a thousand faults, but at least once I was able to love, and I will again. There are years and years of love stored up inside me.”

“What’s the name of this doctor, Zan?”

“I won’t tell you.”

“All right. Maybe I can find it in the yellow pages under ‘Children for Sale.’ ”

“You’re going to ruin things for me, aren’t you?”

“This particular thing, yes.”

“Why? Do you hate me so much?”

“No.”

“Every time I get an idea you shit on it.”

“This isn’t an idea,” he said. “It’s a fantasy. I don’t know when or where it started, but I know where and when it’s going to end. Here. Now.”

“It’s not a fantasy. I want a child.”

“At the moment that’s probably true. But tomorrow you might want a chimpanzee. You can probably get one for about the same price.”

The first witness of the afternoon session gave his name as Alfred Elfinstone, assistant hotel manager of the Casa Mañana, San Diego.

At first his testimony seemed likely to be as undramatic as his appearance. He was small, neat, discreetly dressed and spoke with a pronounced British accent. He’d picked up the accent during his service at the hotel chain’s London branch, and he’d clung to it through the years as a symbol of civilization in a world without rules, manners or syntax.

Yes, he had been on temporary duty at the desk when Mrs. Pherson registered during the afternoon. She was a nice-looking, dignified woman, wearing sturdy, sensible shoes of the kind British women wore for striding across the moors, a sight Mr. Elfinstone had never seen but could picture from reading the novels of Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters.

Mrs. Pherson, he recalled, had handed him a green leather case to put in the safe for her. “It appeared to be a jewel case, quite old except for the lock which was brand-new, or looked that way to me.”

“Later,” he said, “she came back to the desk and retrieved the green case without explanation. At least, if there was an explanation, I didn’t understand it.”

“It? What’s it?”

“What she said.”

“Which was?”

“That she intended to do something she’d never done before in her life and would assuredly never do again. Then she laughed. She had a most pleasant laugh, bubbly but controlled, like fine champagne.”

“You didn’t tell me this in our previous conversations, Mr. Elfinstone. Why not?”

“I just remembered it a minute ago.”

“Were you puzzled by her remarks?”

“Not frightfully. I usually don’t pay much attention to what people say. It’s what they do that counts.”

“And what did she do?”

“Took the elevator up to her suite. A few minutes later she came down again, walked across the lobby and joined a man.”

“Is the man now sitting in this courtroom?”

“I’m not sure. I didn’t pay much attention to the man. I was more interested in the way the green leather case clashed with the blue and white coat she was wearing. Well-groomed ladies avoid this sort of thing.”

Owen smoothed away the frown wrinkles between his eyebrows. He didn’t like surprises in general. In particular he didn’t like the kind of witness who suddenly remembered things on the stand and blurted them out without consultation.

Elfinstone was scratching his left temple as if trying to conjure up more surprises.

He did. “Now that I come to think of it, I recall asking her what she meant to do. She said she couldn’t tell me, it was a secret and, if anyone found out, they might try to stop her. I wouldn’t, I told her. I believe in people reaching for the brass ring, seizing the day. Carpe diem. As I watched her cross the lobby, I thought Yes, the little lady is going to seize the day.”

“Then, as far as you could tell, Mrs. Pherson did not appear to be despondent?”

“My word, no. Happy as a lark, she was. I’m no ornithologist, but I believe larks are presumed to be happy because they sing a lot. Mrs. Pherson was not singing, of course, it being a hotel lobby. But she might have been singing inside herself, as it were.”

“Yes. Thank you, Mr. Elfinstone. I have no more questions.”

“Are you ready to cross-examine this witness, Mr. Donnelly?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Then go ahead.”

Donnelly exchanged places with Owen at the lectern.

“Mr. Elfinstone, how many years have you been in the hotel business?”

“Over twenty years.”

“During this time have you had any experience with guests checking in and subsequently committing suicide?”

“Alas, yes. Yes, indeed, though we try to keep such things private. People tend to avoid rooms where a tragedy has taken place.”

“In your years of experience have you observed that potential suicides exhibit similar behavioral patterns?”

“No.”

“Some were obviously despondent, were they?”

“Yes.”

“And some quite cheerful?”

“Yes.”

“Did others have a calm, pleasant manner?”

“Oh, yes. Lull before the storm, you know.”

“Are you saying, in other words, that you couldn’t pick out a potential suicide on the basis of appearance and behavior?”

“If we could do that, we would steer them to an establishment run by our competitors.”

Mr. Elfinstone was becoming a hit with the audience, and both he and they would have liked the scene to continue. But Donnelly had no more questions, and the judge told Mr. Elfinstone he could step down.

He stepped down, satisfied that he had done his duty and harmed no one. He didn’t believe in the death penalty.

The testimony of Isaac Stoltze and Angelina Gomez took up the rest of the afternoon.

Stoltze was the bartender on duty when Mrs. Pherson went into the bar and sat down beside Cully King. He was a reluctant, if not a hostile, witness. The payment allotted to him by the state would not cover the loss of a day’s wages and the expense of driving up from San Diego. In addition to the financial aspect, being a witness interfered with his principle and practice of noninvolvement. He minded his own business and did his job well, and if other people had done the same, he wouldn’t be here on this witness stand with people staring at him as if he were the one who’d done something wrong.

The state might as well have saved its money. Stoltze could not positively identify the pictures of Mrs. Pherson or the person of Cully King, didn’t recall what or how much they had to drink or whether they went out of the bar together.

Angelina Gomez was a plump, pretty young woman with a face round as a dumpling and eyes like black grapes. It was her first experience as a witness and her first trip north of Los Angeles. She had driven up from San Diego with Mr. Elfinstone, who assured her that there was nothing to worry about, that all she had to do was tell the truth. His assurances made her more and more nervous. The truth kept wandering in and out of her mind like a lost child, never pausing long enough to be identified.

The strain proved too much for Angelina. She sobbed into Mr. Elfinstone’s handkerchief, drank the coffee he’d brought along in his thermos and used his rearview mirror to reapply her makeup. By the time she reached the courtroom she was composed, and the truth was standing quite still in a corner of her mind.

She told the district attorney she was the housekeeping maid assigned to the south wing of the fourth floor of the Casa Mañana. After guests checked into the hotel, she said, they usually unpacked or partly unpacked, then left their rooms to go down for a walk on the beach or to wander through the tienditas on the ground level. During this time she was expected to make sure everything was tidy, ashtrays washed and soiled towels replaced. Angelina was doing just that when Mrs. Pherson unexpectedly returned to her suite.

“Let’s just pause here for a minute,” Owen said. “Did you enter the room during Mrs. Pherson’s absence?”

“Yes.”

“Had she unpacked?”

“Yes, sir. Everything was hung up in the closet or put away in drawers. She was a tidy lady. All I had to do was replace a couple of towels she had used.”

“The clothes that were hanging in the closet, had they been put there carefully?”

“Oh, yes, just like they were for sale in a store, all zipped and buttoned on their hangers to keep their shape.”

“Just where were you when Mrs. Pherson came back unexpectedly?”

“In the bathroom. I offered to leave and come back later, but she said no, it didn’t matter because she was going right out. So I finished tidying up the bathroom, replacing two towels. I heard her talking to herself in the bedroom. At least I guess it was to herself. There wasn’t anybody else there. It was like when you’re dressed to go out and before you leave, you look in the mirror and say, ‘Hey, looking good.’ ”

The audience appreciated this more than Owen did. He was suspicious of Mexicans anyway, and he wondered if she’d deliberately brought up the business of standing in front of a mirror making approving remarks before leaving the house. Everyone did it, of course. He wasn’t the only one. And he certainly never said, “Hey, looking good.”

“Did she sound happy, Miss Gomez?”

“Oh, yes, real happy, like maybe she’d had a couple of drinks.”

“Did you listen to what she was saying?”

“I had to listen. I was there. You can’t open and close your ears the way you can your eyes.”

“What did you hear?”

“Something like, ‘You always wanted to go to Hawaii, and now you get to go.’ Stuff like that. I didn’t think anything of it. A lot of people would like to go to Hawaii, me included. I never even saw Santa Felicia until this afternoon.”

“Then she seemed to be looking forward to the trip, is that right?”

“Sure. Why not?”

Owen had no further questions, and Donnelly did not cross-examine.

Court was adjourned for the weekend.

On Friday night the two older Owen boys, Chadwick and Jonathan, were allowed to go to a high school football game.

Thatcher, the youngest, knew what was in store for him. He could see the constitutional amendment booklet sticking out of his father’s coat pocket, so he hung around the kitchen as long as possible, even going so far as to help his mother stack the dishes in the dishwasher.

“I feel sick,” he told Vee. “Like I got something serious.”

“Really? What do you suppose it is?”

“Chicken pox.”

“I don’t see any spots.”

“Right here on my arm.”

“That’s your poison oak from last week.”

“Or maybe I got Rocky Mountain spotted fever.”

“That comes from ticks not found around here.”

“Then how about endometriosis?”

“Will you spell that for me?”

Thatcher was as easily trapped as a butterfly. He had picked the word up while eavesdropping on a conversation between two lady teachers, and he’d copied it in the corner of a notebook, thinking it might be useful someday. This was the day. He took a scrap of paper from his pocket and read aloud the carefully printed letters.

“Endo meet me oasis.”

“That sounds serious,” Vee said.

“It is. I think I ought to go to bed and watch TV.”

“I think you think wrong. Your father is waiting for you in the den.”

“But I feel weak and dizzy. Things are floating in front of my eyes.”

“You have no fever, your color is good and you ate two helpings at dinner.”

“But what if I really got that disease? It could be fatal.”

“Not as fatal as what you’ll get if you don’t drag yourself into that den. And for your information, by the way, endometriosis is a disease of the womb, and boys don’t have wombs.”

“I could be an exception. Nobody ever X-rayed me.” Vee closed the dishwasher with a bang. “Beat it, Thatcher.”

“Okay. But you’ll be sorry if I’m terminal.”

“We are all terminal, Thatcher. However, at the moment you’re more terminal than most, and endometriosis has nothing to do with it. Your father doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

Vee switched on the dishwasher, wiped her hands on her apron, found out she wasn’t wearing one and reached for a towel.

“Thatcher, I want you to do me a favor.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“What’s in it for you? Joy in bringing happiness to someone, pride in your ability to show compassion to another human being.”

“How much is that in dollars?”

“One.”

“What’s the deal?”

“Be patient with your father. You know how proud he is of you and how much he loves you.”

“If he loves me so much, how come I’m not at the football game? If I’m too young for football, I’m too young to memorize the amendments.”

“Oh, come on, Thatcher, be reasonable.”

“I’m reasonable. It’s everybody else that isn’t.”

“A buck is a buck. Take it or leave it.”

“All right, it’s a deal. What do I have to do?”

“Be nice to your father. The case he’s prosecuting is very important to him, and he’s working so hard he needs to get his mind off the law.”

“The amendments,” Thatcher pointed out in a deadly reasonable voice “are the law.”

“Oh, you know what I mean. Make an effort to memorize at least some of them. Give it the old college try.”

“I’m only in the sixth grade.”

“So give it the old sixth-grade try. Will you do that for me, please?”

“No. I’ll do it for a buck.”

Vee gave him a hug and kissed the top of his head. She loved this boy who was so much like his father as deeply as she loved the father who was so much like his son.

In the small, book-lined den Oliver Owen sat in the red leather chair in front of the fireplace. The leather was actually vinyl, and the fireplace was a gas grate, but the books were real and read.

Thatcher sat on the floor, arms clasped around his legs, chin resting on his knees.

“Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in a chair, Thatcher?”

“No.” Then, thinking of the dollar, Thatcher added, “Dad.”

“Very well, we’ll get right down to business. What are the first ten amendments called?”

“The Bill of Rights.”

“Good. You remembered.”

“I don’t remember what they are, though, except the one about how we should all carry guns around.”

“That’s not quite what it says, Thatcher. We’ll get back to that later. For now let’s go through some of the other amendments to give you some idea of what’s ahead. Let’s look at Amendment Thirteen. Like the other amendments, it is indicated by a Roman numeral — in this case an X followed by three ones. In Roman numerals an X is a ten, and three ones add up to what?”

“If I had a computer like all the other kids—”

“You don’t need a computer to add ten and three, especially when I’ve already told you the answer, which is thirteen.”

“I was just going to say thirteen.”

“Amendment Thirteen reads as follows: ‘Section One. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section Two. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.’ December eighteenth, 1865.”

Thatcher chewed thoughtfully on the hangnail on his left thumb. “Does that mean we can’t have slaves?”

“Yes.”

“Why not?”

“Because slavery is wrong.”

“Why?”

“Don’t ask stupid questions, Thatcher. Figure it out for yourself. Would you like to be someone’s slave, having to obey orders, to work without salary or allowance?”

“No, but I wouldn’t mind having one of my own. Man, think how great it would be having a slave to do all your chores, pick up your clothes and do your homework and beat up on the kids you don’t like. Wow, wouldn’t that be super?”

“No, it would not be super, Thatcher. It would be immoral and illegal, and the possession of a slave would make you hopelessly dependent.”

“I already am, Chadwick says. Wow, when I think what my slave could do to that creep—”

“Let’s stick to the subject. At the time, 1865, there were actually some arguments in favor of slavery. And certainly some results of the Thirteenth Amendment were not adequately foreseen by its creators. I refer to the excessive proliferation of the black race in the last hundred years.”

“Maybe a slave could even go to school for me and take my exams. And Friday nights he could stay home for me while I went to the football game. Boy, oh, boy, when I get to be President, I’m going to bring back slavery.”

“Shut up, Thatcher.”

“Why?”

“Because you... because I... because. Just because.”

“That doesn’t sound like a legal argument to me.”

“It may not be legal, but I suggest you obey it. Now.”

“Okay, okay. This wasn’t my idea anyway.”

“Now.”

Thatcher darted out of the room like a freed slave. With a sigh Oliver returned the amendment booklet to his pocket. Then he leaned back and closed his eyes.

When Vee came in half an hour later, she found him asleep. She leaned down and kissed the top of his head just the way she had kissed the top of Thatcher’s, with the same mixed feelings of pride, joy and resignation.

“Oliver, dear.”

He awoke with a start. There were no slow, sweet awakenings for Oliver. His eyes snapped open, ready to confront an enemy. “What’s the matter?”

“Your office called. A man named Harry Arnold has been trying to reach you. He’s at five-five-five-one-eight-one-eight.”

“All right. Thanks.”

“Do they have to disturb you like this on a weekend?”

“Harry Arnold is my most important witness in this case. I’ve got to find out what he wants.”

Harry’s wants were simple: two plane tickets back to the Virgin Islands for him and his son, Richie. He was sick of waiting around for his turn in the witness box; he was sick of Santa Felicia, as he was sick of the climate, the people, the food.

“I want to go home,” Harry said.

“That’s impossible.”

“What if I just do it anyway?”

“If you leave now, while you are under subpoena, the court will order you to be brought back, and in addition, they could fine you a considerable sum of money or even put you in jail. My advice—”

“Who asked for it?”

“—is to stay put and consider this a little vacation. The Judge’s allowance for your food and shelter has been very generous.”

“Some vacation, stuck in a crummy motel and my son, Richie, hanging out at the waterfront most of the time. It’s a rough place for a fifteen-year-old, bums, winos, pushers. Sure, he hangs around the waterfront at home, but everybody knows him, and he ain’t the only black, like he is here.”

“I’m putting you on the stand Monday morning. We’ve already discussed in detail the questions I’m going to ask you. After I’ve finished my questioning, the defense will cross-examine. Then I might decide to reexamine, and the defense will very likely recross. You’ve been advised of all this before.”

“What comes after that recross stuff?”

“You may be requested to keep yourself available for further questioning later in the trial.”

“Jeez almighty, I could be here till Christmas.”

“A murder trial is not conducted for the convenience of witnesses. You may consider it bad luck to have been in that particular place at that particular time, but eventually you may come to realize it was good luck because it enabled you to help justice prevail.”

“I don’t want to be a witness. I didn’t see nobody kill nobody.”

“You told me you heard screams in the night. That makes you the last person to hear Mrs. Pherson’s voice.”

“Maybe it wasn’t her voice. Maybe it was the radio.”

“Richie will testify that he, too, heard the screams.”

“Why’d you have to drag a kid his age into it?”

“I didn’t drag him; I didn’t drag you. That’s just the way it happened.”

“It could still of been the radio.”

“You also told me Cully King was drinking heavily and that he has a reputation for violence when he’s drunk.”

“A lot of my friends do.”

“An hour or so after you heard screaming you went up on deck to check a loose cable and you saw Cully King throw some clothing overboard.”

“It could of been trash.”

“What’s the matter, Harry? Up until now you’ve been pretty positive about the woman’s screams and the clothes being thrown overboard.”

“I want to go home. I don’t like it here. I don’t like the way my kid is acting, hanging out with those bums at the waterfront and him only fifteen.”

Owen thought of his own son Chadwick, barely a year younger than Richie but a mere child in comparison. He said, “You’re lucky, Harry, to have a responsible, hardworking son like Richie.”

“No luck about it. I brung him up like that.”

“Be at my office at nine o’clock Monday morning,” Owen said, “and don’t bring Richie. He’s not allowed in the courtroom except during his time on the stand. Nine o’clock and be prompt.”

“Who says?”

“The state of California says.”

There was a long silence, then Harry’s voice, tight and high as if it had squeezed past clenched teeth: “I’ll be there.”

Harry hung up and replaced the telephone on the bedside table. Propped up against two pillows, he looked like a huge man with a barrel chest and overdeveloped deltoids that made him appear neckless. Below the waist he was small and scrawny. All of him was black, the purplish black of the native West Indian. He could climb a mast with the agility of a monkey climbing a coconut tree and slide down again without a drop of blood on his calloused hands. Like Cully King, he’d gone to sea as a boy, but he lacked Cully’s brains and perseverance and remained semiliterate. He couldn’t or wouldn’t adapt to computers. They reawakened superstitions long buried, and their language was that of a hostile and barbarous tribe.

He turned on the television set and watched an old movie until Richie came home. It was after ten.

“Where you been?” Harry said.

“Out.”

“Where is out?”

“The opposite of in.”

“That supposed to be funny?”

“Maybe it wasn’t.”

“It wasn’t. So start over. Where you been?”

“Hanging around.”

“Hanging around where, who, what for?”

Richie sat down in the only upholstered chair in the room. He was taller than his father, and lighter-skinned, but he had equally heavy shoulders and arms. He was always growing into or growing out of things. The happy medium passed as quickly as any moment of happiness.

He pulled at the hairs of the seedling mustache on his upper lip to stimulate its growth while his father watched in disapproval.

“You should wash your face better,” Harry said. “So you been out hanging around, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“What part of out and what part of around?”

“I was drifting. You know, doing this and that.”

“What’s a this?”

“I played a few video games.”

“Where did you get the money?”

“Helped a guy launch his trimaran this afternoon. Then I walked out to the end of the breakwater to look at the Bewitched. She’s still got some kind of security guard on her. It’s funny, her just sitting there dead in the water when we worked so hard to bring her here for the big race.”

“Hard work never killed nobody.”

“I wouldn’t mind staying here if they let us live on board.”

“We’re going home soon,” Harry said. “I take the stand Monday, and after they finish with me, it’ll be your turn.”

“I got nothing to say against Cully. He’s a good guy, like a father to me.”

“How come you need two fathers?”

It was an old jealousy that cropped up every now and then like a persistent weed. It could be trampled on, mowed down or even uprooted, but it always returned, nurtured by an unalterable fact: Harry and his wife were very dark while Richie’s skin was copper-colored like Cully’s. Harry had never voiced his suspicion, but his friends all knew about it. So did Richie, who was pleased at the idea and looked for secret signs from Cully that it was true.

“I don’t need two fathers,” Richie said. “One is enough.”

“Maybe too much, huh?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t say it, but I heard it.”

Harry laughed. He appreciated his own jokes so much that he didn’t care whether other people did or not.

“You want to watch some TV?” Harry said.

Richie shook his head. “Why do they think Cully killed that lady?”

“Money.”

“Cully don’t need money. He’s happy like he is, a ship under him and chicks laying the right moves on him.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Flinging themselves at him.”

“No chicks flang themselves at him that I ever seen. Some old hookers, sure. Every guy gets flang at by some old hookers. You know what a hooker is?”

“Sure.”

“Then stay away from them.”

Richie grunted. Every conversation with his father seemed to end the same way: Do this or don’t do this. It was safer to steer the subject back to Cully, who never cared what people told him to do or not to do. Me and Cully, we’re a lot alike. When they let him go, when we get back to the islands, I’m going to come right out and ask him to tell me the truth: that he’s my real father. Maybe him and me will live together just like an ordinary family.

“If he killed the lady for money,” Richie said, “how come he didn’t get it?”

“He got some. The rest he hasn’t had a chance to sell yet.”

“What rest?”

“The jewels in the green case.”

“I don’t think there was jewels in that case. It didn’t feel like it, didn’t rattle or jangle.”

“How do you know that?”

“She let me carry it for her.”

“When?”

“Once.”

“The stuff must of been all wrapped in cotton. That’s it, stuff wrapped in cotton don’t rattle.” Harry scratched one of his shoulders. It bulged purple-black like an eggplant. “You carried it for her once?”

“Yeah.”

“What once?”

“I don’t remember. Just a once like any other.”

Harry knew he was lying, but something warned him not to try to force or finesse the truth out of him. The truth was often something to stay away from.

“Let’s watch TV,” Harry said. “You want to watch some TV?”

“I don’t care.”

“Okay, you pick the program.”

“No, you pick it.”

Neither of them moved. Then Harry said, “Listen, kid, all I ask is, don’t do nothing stupid.”

“Like what?”

“You’re young. You can make little mistakes when you’re young. Don’t start making no big ones till you’re older.”

Richie was leaning forward, his hands on the arms of the chair as if he were preparing to spring up and race away.

“You got something on your conscience, keep it there,” Harry said. “Blabbing just spreads it around like manure. I mean, don’t tell me nothing, even if I ask.”

On Monday morning Defense Counsel Donnelly asked for a postponement of two days for personal reasons. So it was Wednesday before Harry had a chance to wear the new suit he’d purchased at a thrift shop for five dollars, the fifty-cent shirt and the tie and matching handkerchief, twenty-five cents.

The coat was too small, so he kept it unbuttoned, and the pants were too large, so he hitched them up as much as possible with a belt, embossed leather, one dollar.

“You look sharp,” Owen told him. “You can get the trousers altered later.”

“Why? I don’t figure to wear them again.”

“Suit yourself... How much does the state owe you for the clothes?”

“Six seventy-five.”

Owen paid him the exact amount. “Normally we don’t allot money for this sort of thing, but this is a special situation. I want you to look like a respectable, hardworking man.”

“I am a respectable, hardworking man.”

“Certainly, of course you are. But I want the jury to see that for themselves. It’s especially important, in view of your race, for you to appear at your best, put your best face forward, as it were.”

“I only got one face,” Harry said. “You want I should bleach it?”

“I’m simply being realistic, Harry. Civil rights or no civil rights, prejudice still exists.”

“No kidding.”

“I want you, as I want all my witnesses, to look proper.”

Harry wasn’t sure what “proper” meant, but he felt there was something wrong with the whole conversation. It aggravated his resentment over the delays and increased his worry and uneasiness about Richie. The boy was too quiet. He spent hours wandering around the waterfront alone and went swimming off the sandspit at the end of the breakwater. The water was too cold for swimming, well below sixty, and Richie returned to the motel, blue-lipped and shivering and mute. Harry said to Owen, “How come there was another delay?”

“Defense counsel had to drive his wife down to a hospital in Long Beach.”

“Don’t they have hospitals here?”

“Not this particular kind.”

“What if there’s another delay, and another?”

“You put up with it the same as the rest of us.”

“The rest of you aren’t stuck in a crummy motel room.”

“Blame your friend Cully,” Owen said. “He could have saved all of us a lot of trouble.”

There was an interval of silence. Harry looked worried. “When I go in the courtroom, where will he be sitting?”

“There’s a long table in front of the judge’s seat. Cully will be at the far left with his counsel, Donnelly.”

Waiting for court to begin, Donnelly was quiet and preoccupied. Gunther sat in his usual place at the railing. He had helped Donnelly take Zan down to the hospital in Long Beach, doing the driving while Donnelly held Zan in his arms in the back seat. The doctor had given Zan a shot, and she was asleep with her head against Donnelly’s chest. At first she was light as a bird, and her fragility and helplessness brought tears to his eyes. But as the miles passed, she became heavier and heavier as if molten lead were slowly being injected into her veins, replacing her blood. His arms ached and his tears evaporated in the dry atmosphere of the air conditioner. Then he felt the sting of new tears, this time for himself, for his own helplessness and inability to carry this burden any further. The road was ending almost where it began, in the back seat of a car. Smog, he told Gunther, it was the smog; it always affected his eyes. And Gunther solemnly agreed.

At nine-fifty Cully was brought in by the deputy. In the mornings Cully usually looked bright, even cheerful, but today he was grim-faced, and he sat down in a tentative way as if he weren’t sure whether this was his place or not.

Eva Foster smiled at him, and the bailiff nodded, but Cully failed to notice. He said to Donnelly, “I got a note from the kid. It was passed along to me this morning by a guard who often goes fishing off the breakwater.”

“That’s nice.”

“Not nice. Bad. Crazy. The kid’s got the crazies.”

“Let me see it.”

The note was a single sheet of paper folded and refolded into a small rectangle. The message was printed with such intensity that the pen had stabbed the paper in several places.

Harry won’t mind. He don’t like me or you much anyways.

Donnelly refolded the sheet of paper while Cully watched him anxiously.

“Well, what’s your advice? What do I do now?”

“Nothing.”

“But he thinks I’m his father.”

“And are you?”

“I told you that night in jail, I’m not. Harry’s wife is a slut; she’d go with anyone.”

“So she might have gone with you.”

“If she did, I was too drunk to remember. It doesn’t matter anyway. I’m not going to be his father. The hell with living together like a real family him and me or me and anybody else. Jeez, why does everybody think they’re entitled to a piece of me just because I’m on trial for murder? Jeez,” he said again. “That Foster dame, she wants us to be a real family, too. And you and your goddamn ranch, and my wife and her slob brother. And that crazy Pherson waiting to kill me. Now it’s the kid. The whole bloody bunch of you waiting to slice me up like a pie.”

“Lower your voice,” Donnelly said. He thought of the nursery rhyme: “Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie. / And when the pie was opened, the birds began to sing...” This pie had only one blackbird, and there would be no singing.

“I don’t want to be anybody’s husband, anybody’s father, anybody’s lover, anybody’s target practice. You’re sick, you’re all sick, coming on to me like cannibals. That’s what you are, cannibals. I’d rather go to the gas chamber than be eaten alive by a bunch of cannibals.”

“You may not have a choice,” Donnelly said. “A lot will depend on Harry.”

Harry made a better witness than Owen anticipated. He was solemn and respectful, awed by the grandeur of the courtroom with its vaulted ceiling and crystal chandeliers. To him it was like a church, and God himself in a black robe sat majestically on his throne.

He told of his short acquaintanceship with Mrs. Pherson from the time she came on board the Bewitched with Cully. The jury who’d heard it all before in one way or another looked bored until he reached the part where he’d heard a woman screaming in the middle of the night.

Owen asked him if the woman was Mrs. Pherson.

“Must of been,” Harry said. “She was the only woman on board.”

“What was the nature of her screams?”

“Nature?”

“Was she shouting words you could understand?”

“No. They were just screams.”

“How long did they last? A minute? Two minutes?”

“Not that long. Ten seconds, maybe less.”

“Did you think of going to investigate?”

“I thought of it.”

“But you didn’t go?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I figured if her and Cully was just having a wild time, Cully would be mad if I butted in. Cully has a fierce temper when he’s hitting the bottle.”

Donnelly made an objection, the judge sustained it and Harry’s final sentence was stricken from the record.

Owen continued. “Did you hear Mrs. Pherson’s voice again?”

“No.”

“Did you think everything was all right?”

“Yes, sir, until — until I went to check on a loose cable.”

“What happened at this point?”

“I saw Cully throw something overboard.”

“What was this something?”

“Looked like clothes.”

“His clothes? Hers?”

“I don’t know. I just ducked below before Cully could see me.”

“Were you afraid of this man, Cully King?”

“I never been scared of any man,” Harry said. “But on a ship the skipper is boss. You don’t question him or accuse him, leastways not until you go ashore. Onshore it’s just you and him, nobody’s boss, no holds are barred.”

“What time would you say this occurred?”

“About four in the morning. I saw Cully at the aft rail.”

“What enabled you to witness Cully’s actions?”

“It was a clear, calm night with a first quarter moon, and we had the running lights on full because we were in a shipping lane and we didn’t want to be hit by an oil tanker. I saw him throw something overboard.”

“Did he drop this something into the water, or did he dump it out of a container of some kind?”

“I don’t remember seeing a container. Everything happened so fast. We were doing ten knots at the time. It’s in the log; you and me looked it up together. At ten knots things thrown in the water are left behind real fast, and that includes people, which is not an everyday occurrence. Nobody was ever lost from a boat I was crewing on until this time.”

Owen consulted his notes. “Tell me, Mr. Arnold, is it the skipper’s job to dispose of the boat’s trash?”

“No, sir. On the Bewitched that was up to Richie, my son.”

“So it would have been unusual for Mr. King to be disposing of trash, especially in the middle of the night, would it not?”

“Very unusual, yes, sir.”

“What was Cully King wearing when he threw this stuff overboard?”

“Nothing.”

“He was naked?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What was the air temperature at four o’clock that morning?”

“It’s in the log. I wrote it there myself, forty-five degrees.”

“Would a person feel comfortable without clothes in so low a temperature?”

“Objection,” Donnelly said without rising or even looking up from his notes. “Question calls for an opinion and—”

“Sustained,” the judge said. “But frankly, Mr. Donnelly, the answer is so obvious that an objection hardly seems worthwhile and indeed might even be construed as a waste of the court’s time.”

Harry, who didn’t know whether he was to answer or not, answered anyway. “Maybe an Eskimo.”

One of the spectators laughed, and the judge tapped his gavel sharply. “Witness is to refrain from offering any statements that are not responsive to questions. Proceed, Mr. Owen.”

“Are you sure he was naked, Mr. Arnold?”

“Yes, sir. Funny thing is, if he’d of been black like me” — his voice had a faint note of reproach as he glanced down at Cully — “if he’d been black like me, maybe I wouldn’t of even seen him. But the moon and the running lights caught him square on, and he shone like copper.”

This time the response of the audience was a self-conscious titter at the image Harry had evoked, a copper-skinned man standing naked on the deck of a yacht in the moonlight.

The judge was not amused. “You have been asked, Mr. Arnold, not to volunteer any remarks of this nature.”

“I was only telling the truth.”

“This court is not equipped, timewise or spacewise, to handle all the truths of this world. Please continue, Mr. Owen.”

“Let me ask you a hypothetical question, Mr. Arnold,” Owen said. “If you were caught naked in a burning building, would you stop to put on your clothes before making an exit?”

“No.”

“You’d be in too much of a hurry, would you not?”

“Yes, sir. I’d rather be cold than dead.”

“So your motivation would be one of survival?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think Cully King’s motive was similar?... Strike that. Tell me, have you crewed on many yachts, Mr. Arnold?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Long trips, short trips?”

“All kinds.”

“On any of these occasions, have you seen many people taking a moonlight stroll on deck with the temperature of the air at forty-five degrees?”

“No.”

“Any people?”

“No, sir. Nobody, never. Not that I ain’t seen some hanky-panky on warm nights in the Caribbean.”

This time the gavel came down before the spectators could react. A recess of fifteen minutes was declared.

Only a few spectators remained in the room, along with Eva Foster, Cully and the bailiff, Di Santo.

Di Santo was feeling good. He had convinced his wife that he’d lost five pounds and was promised a steak dinner as a reward. He had managed the weight loss by using a simple trick taught him by one of the other deputies. He moved the scales from a hard surface, the tile floor of the bathroom, to a soft one, the carpeted bedroom. One unexpected result of this deceit was that while convincing his wife he’d lost five pounds, he also convinced himself. His belt felt a little looser, his stomach muscles a little tighter, and the coming steak dinner was beginning to seem like a prize legitimately won.

Eva followed him to the water cooler.

“I’m supposed to drink eight glasses of this stuff a day,” he said. “It helps control the appetite. Notice anything different about me?”

“You’ve lost weight.”

“You really noticed, honest to God?”

“No. But you wanted to hear it, so I said it... Zeke, do me a favor, will you? I want to talk to Cully alone.”

“Why?”

“He needs cheering up.”

“Is that a new duty of the court clerk, to cheer up defendants?”

“This is extracurricular.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were finally getting some normal ideas about a man. He’s a pretty good-looking dude.”

“Really? I never noticed.”

“Okay, I’ll be outside in the hall in case you need me.”

“What would I need you for?”

“Look, this isn’t a kid arrested for cheating at marbles. He’s a killer.”

“Why does everyone assume he’s guilty just because he was arrested?”

“We got more reason to assume he’s guilty than you have to assume he’s innocent.”

“I’m not assuming, I know.”

“Tell it to the judge.”

Cully had not seen or heard any of this interchange. He was sitting with his head bowed and his shoulders hunched. When Eva took Donnelly’s chair beside him, he didn’t even turn his head to look at her.

“Mr. King? Cully?”

He said, “I thought Harry was my friend. Now he’s sending me to the gas chamber. Sure, I knew he was a little jealous, thinking maybe me and his wife — but we never did, I swear it.”

“Mr. Donnelly will straighten things out in his cross-examination.”

“I didn’t hear her scream. She was in the cabin with me, but I was asleep. I’d have waked up if there was any screaming.”

“What did you throw overboard?”

“Old bedclothes I’d been meaning to get rid of. Mr. Belasco insists on a tidy ship.”

“Why were you naked?”

“I told you, I was in bed.”

“Where was she?”

“I don’t know. All I know is when I woke up, she wasn’t there.”

“But she had been?”

“She had been.”

“So all that business about hiring her as a cook was pure bull.”

“No. It was true as far as it went.”

“But it didn’t go far enough.”

“No.”

“Tell me how far it went.”

“Look, it’s impossible to explain to a woman like you that sometimes people do things that feel perfectly right and natural at the time but later seem pretty stupid.”

“Do they?” She was wearing a plain gold bracelet that looked like a giant wedding band. It had a clasp which she kept opening and closing. The soft clicking noise it made sounded like a light switch going on and off.

“It all depends on your viewpoint,” Cully said, “and viewpoints change.”

“Mine won’t.”

A note in her voice made him twitch in his chair as if it had suddenly become uncomfortable.

“Do you want to hear my viewpoint, Cully?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’m going to tell you anyway because it wouldn’t be fair to either of us if I didn’t. This is a terrible place and a terrible time, but I may not get another chance. And I thought it might help you through the trial if you knew that someone loved you, truly loved you and believed in you.”

For the first time since she’d sat down beside him he turned and stared at her. “Stop fooling with your bracelet.”

“What?”

“The bracelet, don’t keep clasping and unclasping it.”

“My bracelet,” she repeated as if it were a foul word. “You’re talking about a bracelet while I’m trying to tell you of my love. How cruel, how terribly cruel.”

“I don’t want your love or anyone else’s. I’m a sailor; I can’t afford an albatross hanging around my neck.”

“Albatross.” It was another dirty word like bracelet, a dead bird and a piece of junk jewelry. “You can’t be serious.”

“Wise up, woman.”

“I think you’re talking and acting like this to put me off. Maybe you’re trying to protect me from being hurt in case you’re found guilty. Well, it won’t work, Cully. Nothing can stop my love. Minds can be changed, but hearts can’t. I bet” — she let out her breath and took in another deep one — “I bet you feel the same way about me as I do about you.”

“Holy shit,” Cully said.

Harry Arnold returned to the stand at eleven-twenty. He looked more at ease this time as if he were no longer awed by the grandeur of the courtroom, the presence of God in a black robe and the twelve apostles in the jury box. This was now an ordinary courtroom with ordinary people.

Owen asked him when the Bewitched had arrived at Santa Felicia Harbor.

“The following morning.”

“Where did you and Mr. King tie up?”

“End tie, Marina five. Only it wasn’t Cully and me; it was Richie and me.”

“Did you see Mr. King that morning?”

“Yes.”

“Did you exchange words with him?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“That he was going ashore right away because he had to see a dentist about his toothache. I asked him did he want breakfast, and he said no, his tooth was too painful.”

“During this conversation was Mr. King doing anything unusual?”

“Yes.”

“What was it?”

“He was holding a handkerchief, a folded handkerchief, against his left cheek with his left hand.”

“Did you believe his story about the toothache?”

“I did at the time. Cully’s a funny guy. He could have a broken arm and not say a word, but a little thing like a cold or a toothache threw him for a loop.”

“Objection,” Donnelly said. “Witness is offering a character analysis neither requested nor relevant.”

“Sustained,” the judge said. “Please confine yourself to answering questions, Mr. Arnold.”

“Yes, sir. Okay, sir.”

Owen tried to conceal his irritation. Useless interruptions like this were part of Donnelly’s strategy planned to annoy him. It was the kind of thing one of his sons might do for the same reason and with the same result. He was annoyed.

“After Mr. King went ashore, what did you do, Mr. Arnold?”

“Made breakfast for me and Richie.”

“Did you see Mrs. Pherson?”

“No. I figured she was sleeping late and maybe would show up later.”

“What did you do after breakfast?”

“Cleaned up the galley. Then Richie and me started going over the boat, making sure everything was in its place, like Mr. Belasco wanted.”

“This tidying up of the boat, did it include the captain’s quarters?”

“Yes.”

“In what condition did you find this area?”

“Perfect.”

“Was Mrs. Pherson present?”

“No, sir.”

“Was there any sign that she had been present?”

“None at all.”

“No lipstick on the pillow, no comb or hairbrush?”

“No.”

“Damp towels or toilet articles?”

“No.”

“Did you look in the wastebasket?”

“It’s part of my job to empty wastebaskets,” Harry said. “Only there was nothing to empty.”

“Not even a piece of tissue?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you look in the laundry hamper?”

“Yes, sir. Nothing in there neither. It kind of surprised me, finding no towels or nothing in there and the bed with fresh sheets. It began to seem like the whole thing never happened, that she never came on board at all. But I knew she had. I remember her blue and white striped coat because one of our spinnakers is blue and white like that, and it caught my eye.”

“Did you ever see her again?”

“No, sir. She just vanished into thin air. If it hadn’t been for that blue and white coat that looked like our spinnaker, I might of thought she’d never been there at all.”

“Would you say, Mr. Arnold, that the cabin was deliberately arranged to make it look as though nobody had been there?”

“Objection,” Donnelly said. “Speculation, opinion.”

“Sustained.”

“Let me rephrase the question,” Owen said. “Did the cabin look as though nobody had occupied it?”

“That’s how it looked, yes, sir, exactly.”

“So would you say somebody must have arranged it that way?”

“Yes.”

“Who could that somebody have been?”

“It had to be Cully King. He was the only one there excepting me and Richie.”

Donnelly’s cross-examination took the rest of the week. Under intensive questioning Harry was forced to concede that the screams might have come from a radio.

Considerable doubt was also cast on his testimony about seeing the clothes thrown overboard.

Donnelly said, “By clothes, do you mean wearing apparel?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of wearing apparel?”

“I don’t know.”

“Shirt? Coat? Trousers?”

“I couldn’t see what kind it was.”

“You couldn’t see any particular article of clothing?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know it was clothing?”

“I saw what I saw.”

“If you’re positive it was clothing thrown overboard, why can’t you name a single article?”

Harry stared down at his own clothing for a minute. “A shirt. I saw a shirt.”

“What kind of shirt?”

“I didn’t see it that clear.”

“What color was it?”

“Counsel is badgering the witness,” Owen said. “The scene lasted only a few seconds. Mr. Arnold can’t be expected to tell us that he saw a pink sport shirt with a button-down size thirteen white collar.”

“Mr. Arnold claims to have seen a shirt,” Donnelly said. “I’m attempting to find out how he reached this conclusion.”

Harry’s eyes shifted anxiously from counsel to counsel, then finally rested on the judge. “I saw clothing. Maybe it wasn’t a shirt, but it was clothing. And those screams didn’t come from no radio neither. When Cully brings a woman on board, it’s not so as they can listen to the radio.”

Laughter spread across the courtroom. Donnelly could have objected and the judge would certainly have ordered Harry’s remarks stricken from the record and from the jurors’ minds. But Donnelly knew that the jurors would not, could not forget, so he decided to take advantage of the situation.

“Are you implying, Mr. Arnold, that the alleged screaming might have indicated, shall we say, sexual excitement?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me.”

“Then your answer is yes?”

“More like maybe.”

Donnelly waited for the spectators’ amusement to subside before taking another tack.

“You testified, Mr. Arnold, that you talked with Cully King after the Bewitched tied up?”

“Yes.”

“And he stated that he was going ashore so he could get treatment for a toothache?”

“Yes.”

“And he was holding a handkerchief against his left cheek with his left hand?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t notice him carrying anything in his right hand?”

“I didn’t notice.”

“The jewel case in question is rather a large object, is it not?”

“Yes.”

“You saw it, did you not?”

“When she came on board, yes.”

“Is it possible that he could have been carrying an object of that size without your observing it?”

“Not likely.”

“Not even possible, is it, Mr. Arnold?”

There was no answer.

“At this time, Your Honor, I would like to offer in evidence a tape recording.”

The tape was brought in by Eva, and the machine to play it on was carried by the bailiff and placed in the middle of the counsel’s table.

“I’m going to ask you to listen to this, Mr. Arnold, and see if you recognize the sound.”

The machine was turned on. The sound was that of a 671 GMC diesel engine powering at ten knots. It had been made by Gunther on a local yacht under the supervision of two deputy sheriffs.

A low-pitched, vibrating hum filled the courtroom.

“Do you recognize that sound, Mr. Arnold?”

“It’s a diesel. Six cylinders, maybe eight.”

“Is the sound similar to that made by the engine of the Bewitched?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What kind of engine does the Bewitched carry?”

“Six-seventy-one GMC. That’s six cylinders.”

Donnelly switched off the tape for a moment. “It has not been established where you were on the boat when you heard the alleged screaming.”

“I was in the engine room with my son, Richie. He liked to fool around with engines, you know, like any kid messing under the hood of a car.”

“Will you please step down here for a moment and adjust the volume of this recording so the jury can hear fairly accurately what you heard?”

Harry turned up the volume, and the vibrating hum increased. A juror in the back row put her hands over her ears.

Donnelly switched it off and resumed questioning. “Tell me, Mr. Arnold, is there anything special about the way the Bewitched’s engine room was designed?”

“Everything on the Bewitched is special.”

“I’m referring specifically to anything that was done to muffle the engine sound.”

“The engine room is well insulated.”

“So that people on deck couldn’t hear the full noise of the engine?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Could it also mean that people in the engine room could not hear the full deck noises?”

Harry didn’t answer.

“Did you hear me, Mr. Arnold? Insulation works both ways, does it not?”

“I saw what I saw,” Harry said. “And I heard what I heard. My son Richie was with me. Just ask him.”

“I will, when I get the chance.”

The chance didn’t come until the following Wednesday. On the first two days of the week court was in recess to allow the judge time to preside at a special psychiatric hearing in the northern part of the county.

On Wednesday morning Richie made his first appearance in court. He’d had his hair cut very short at his father’s insistence, and he was wearing a long-sleeved sweater his father had bought him to replace the tight muscle shirt he usually wore. He looked uncomfortable and sullen, and he spoke in such a low voice that the court reporter had to ask him several times to repeat his answers.

He said he was fifteen, that he’d dropped out of school to take this cruise on the Bewitched because he wanted to and because his father said it would be a valuable experience helping to take a ship through the Canal and up the West Coast.

Most of the time he was speaking he kept his eyes downcast. It was only when he was asked about the night Mrs. Pherson disappeared that he looked directly at Cully, almost as if he were asking permission to answer. Cully turned his head away.

Owen said, “Do you understand the meaning of the oath you took a few minutes ago, Richie?”

“I got to tell the truth.”

“And if you don’t tell the truth, what is it called?”

“Lying.”

The audience was as quick to laughter as a church congregation. The sound of laughter in court irritated Owen. He always felt that somehow it was directed against him.

“Of course, it’s lying,” he said brusquely. “The legal term is perjury, and it is a punishable offense. Now, you wouldn’t want to commit a serious offense like perjury, would you?”

Owen knew from the boy’s expression that he had taken the wrong approach. It might have worked on his own boys, but this wasn’t a boy. He was a man doing a man’s job with a man’s responsibility. He wasn’t a teenager messing around under the hood of his car; he was in the engine room of a million-dollar yacht.

“I was only trying to point out,” Owen added, “the serious nature of being a witness for the people.”

“I’m not a witness for the people. There were no people; there was just me and Harry.”

“Are you referring to the very early-morning hours, say, halfway between midnight and dawn?”

“Yes.”

“Were you in the engine room with your father?”

“Yes.”

“Tell us exactly what happened?”

“I thought the engine was making a funny little thumping sound every once in a while, so I called Harry in, and we were both listening for it. And Harry said, ‘Hey, did you hear that?’ And I said, ‘I didn’t hear any thumping sound,’ and he said no, he meant screams, a lady screaming. I said I didn’t hear nothing, and he said, ‘You crazy kids are all getting deaf from listening to such loud music.’ Then I heard it.”

“You heard a woman screaming?”

“Yes, I think so. I think I heard it.”

“Did your father say anything about going to investigate?”

“He wanted to go, but he was afraid Cully would be mad if he and the lady were, you know, just having, you know, fun or something like that.”

“What happened after that?”

“Harry said the engine sounded perfect to him, and he told me to hit the sack. So I did.”

“You went to sleep immediately?”

“Yes.”

“I have no more questions.”

Donnelly’s cross-examination was short, and he did not repeat Owen’s error in patronizing the boy.

“You told the court that you think you heard screams. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Did you hear them prior to your father calling your attention to them?”

“No.”

“Are you a little deaf, Richie?”

“No.”

“Do you listen to loud music?”

“Sure, like everybody else. Only it didn’t make me deaf.”

“Is it possible, Richie, that you told your father you heard the screams in order to convince him you were not deaf from listening to loud music?”

Owen rose to object, but before the judge could rule on it, Donnelly said he would withdraw the question.

“While you were listening to the engine, did your father bring another noise to your attention and ask if you heard it?”

“Yes.”

“What was your response?”

“At first I said no, and he said all us kids were crazy to let ourselves get deaf from listening to rock music.”

“Did you resent this?”

“It wasn’t true.”

“Did you want to prove to your father that it wasn’t true?”

“He’s always on my back about it.”

“Is that why you agreed with him, to get him off your back about the deafness issue?”

For a full minute Richie sat mute, his eyes fixed on Cully again with a mixture of bewilderment and appeal. Donnelly had the impression that the boy’s answer would depend on Cully’s reaction. There was none, no recognition, no acknowledgment, no attempt to influence the testimony.

“Did you hear the question, Richie?”

“Yes.”

“And what is your answer?”

“I heard the lady screaming,” Richie said.

“You weren’t sure of that before. Why are you sure now?”

“I don’t know. I just am. The lady was screaming.”

“If a man says one thing one minute and another the next minute, is it fair to assume he simply doesn’t know? You have said, ‘I think so.’ You have said, ‘I don’t know.’ You have said, ‘Maybe.’ Now you say you’re sure. Doesn’t that mean you’re sure for right this minute, not necessarily next minute?”

Owen got to his feet. “Counsel is harassing the witness.”

“Witness is harassing counsel,” Donnelly said wryly. “I have no more questions.”

At lunch time Judge Hazeltine drove down to the waterfront. He parked the old car along the curb of the boulevard to avoid the fifty-cent-an-hour fee charged for parking in one of the lots closer to the marina. This was a matter of principle, not thrift. He considered the fee discriminatory as well as economically unsound. The revenue which was supposed to have been used for harbor improvements had simply vanished into thin air and water thick with oil and debris, the sea’s flotsam and the seamen’s jetsam.

The judge took off his coat and tie and rolled up his sleeves. He put on a pair of tar-stained sneakers and a Giants’ baseball cap and clipped sunshades on top of his regular glasses. He transferred his lunch, consisting of a bologna sandwich and a hard boiled egg, from the glove compartment of his car to a side pocket of his trousers, the egg especially making an interesting bulge in his silhouette.

Thus disguised, he started walking toward the breakwater, past the yacht club, where he recognized a bail bondsman and an attorney having drinks on the terrace. He passed the row of concrete benches along the seawall where a varied group of people were eating their sandwiches and hamburgers and fish-and-chips.

The tide was receding, leaving the walkway wet and slippery. At the end of the breakwater he sat on one of the huge boulders that formed the base of the lighthouse marking the entrance to the harbor. The foghorn was silent. The revolving warning light was turned on but scarcely visible in the bright sun. It was a typical autumn day, clear and crisp, cool in the shade, warm in the sun.

An old man fishing from the adjoining rock eyed the judge’s baseball cap with disapproval. “Know what I’d do if I was managing the Giants? I’d turn them all into hot dog vendors.”

“An unusual suggestion.”

“Should of been done before. Ten chances to one they’d have botched that, too, probably couldn’t even put a wienie in a roll without dropping it.”

The old man spoke with the bitterness of a disappointed lover. The judge, figuring there wasn’t much to say to a disappointed lover, peeled his hard-boiled egg and ate it with the bologna from inside the sandwich. The bread he fed to the gulls, throwing small pieces into the air. Each piece was caught with speed and grace, only serving to deepen the old man’s gloom.

“Them Giants oughta come out here and take lessons.”

“A good deal depends on the throw, don’t you think? I have,” he added modestly, “rather a decent throwing arm.”

“Nah. They can catch anything.”

“They can’t hit.”

“Probably could if they had a way of holding a bat.”

The judge leaned back against the rock and thought about this. It was a pleasant fantasy, the gulls holding tiny bats under their wings and the air filled with one continual baseball game.

Refreshed by food and fantasy, he started the trip back to his car. He was in the act of unlocking the trunk when his attention was drawn to a woman approaching him from the fifty-cent-an hour parking lot. He didn’t recognize her until she was a few yards away.

In the courtroom she took on some of its regal atmosphere, and her manner intimidated deputies, attorneys and even the judge himself on occasion. Here, against this busy background of Monterey seiners and Boston whalers, of joggers and skateboarders and bicyclists, she looked out of place, almost unreal.

“I followed you,” Eva said.

“Dear me.” The judge looked somewhat baffled. “What on earth for?”

“To talk to you.”

“You’re perfectly free to come to my chambers anytime and discuss court procedures.”

“This isn’t a court procedure. It’s me, my procedures.”

“I notice you’ve been acting a bit odd lately. I thought perhaps it was the full moon.”

“You don’t really believe in that full moon stuff, do you?”

“There’s a full moon once a month. I pretty well have to believe in it.”

“I meant, all those stories about animals getting restless and people behaving irrationally.”

The judge contemplated his answer while he finished changing his clothes. “I had a coonhound once, used to bay at the full moon. It wasn’t of much significance however, since he also bayed at the new moon, fire sirens, garbage trucks, passing trains and automobile horns. He even bayed at my wife, until one day she bayed back at him. It was an interesting confrontation, but I believe my wife won. She had a way with animals.”

The judge closed the lid of the trunk with a bang. He recalled his last personal conversation with Miss Foster regarding bras, and lack thereof, and decided to stick to the relatively safe subject of coonhounds as long as possible. “Have you ever had a coonhound, Miss Foster?”

“I don’t think so.”

“If you had, you’d be sure of it, by the neighbors’ complaints, if nothing else. It’s an unusual breed. I don’t believe mine ever saw a coon. Perhaps that’s why he made so much racket, out of sheer frustration. What do you do when you’re frustrated, Miss Foster?”

“I don’t bay,” Eva said grimly.

“Pity. I’d rather like to hear that sound again. Primeval. I have made a small personal study of primeval sounds. Among birds, for instance, I have found the loon’s call to be the wildest, not in this area, where they are winterlings and haven’t much to say for themselves, but farther north on their breeding grounds. Their call is one of utmost abandon, ecstasy, madness. Human beings have translated these sounds into words, but I must say they’re a poor substitute for the real thing.”

As the judge warmed to his subject, his audience was rather obviously cooling. With a sigh he unlocked the passenger side of his car, and Eva got in. He took his place behind the wheel, unclipped the sunshades from his glasses and returned them to his pocket. He thought of steering the conversation in a more positive direction by complimenting her on her appearance. In fact, she looked quite chic in a black and white print silk dress with a black jacket and a bright red scarf at the neck. But before he could think of the right words, she began to weep quietly.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that, Miss Foster,” he said.

She continued weeping. He sat and waited, wondering about this whole business of tears. Like words, they were a creation of man and a substitute for the real thing. This was fortunate under the circumstances. The prospect of Miss Foster wailing and keening — and possibly attracting a few loons as well — was mind-boggling. Miss Foster would undoubtedly wail and keen just as efficiently as she did everything else.

Finally she stopped crying, wiped her eyes, blew her nose, got out of the car to dispose of the used tissue in a trash container and returned to the car. The judge watched this sequence of events with interest. Grief or no grief, Miss Foster never forgot her training.

“I’ve fallen in love,” she said finally. “It doesn’t make any sense whatever. There are a hundred reasons why I shouldn’t have. I could even see it coming, and I didn’t duck or turn and run. I just stood there and let it happen. Now I wish I were dead.”

At this point the judge would have opted for some wailing and keening, but it was too late. He sighed, reflecting that he did a great deal of sighing lately. Perhaps there were more reasons for it as the years passed. Sighing was, he believed, simply the act of taking in more oxygen to help the brain cope with an unusual or difficult set of circumstances.

“My life has always been so orderly,” Eva said. “Look at the mess it’s in now. I’m in love with a man on trial for murder, a black man with kids and a common-law wife. And that isn’t the worst of it. He doesn’t love me back. I think I could make him love me back if I had the chance. Am I going to get that chance?”

“Are you asking me to predict what the jurors’ verdict will be? Nobody on earth can do that. No mind reader, no computer programmed with every detail of every juror’s life from day one can give a readout on what a verdict will be.”

“Can’t you please give me your opinion on how strong the case is against him?”

“That would be highly irregular.”

“I know.”

“And you’re asking me to do it anyway?”

“Yes.”

The judge removed his glasses, wiped them with a handkerchief and put them back on his nose. The images seen through them were no clearer: the rear of the car in front of him; his own hands on the steering wheel, misshapen with age; and Miss Foster’s face, pale and strained. In the distance there were all the masts of pleasure boats like a leafless forest.

“The evidence against him is purely circumstantial, of course,” he said almost as if he were talking to himself. “He took a woman on board the Bewitched with him, and that woman was later found dead in the water, tangled in a bed of kelp. An autopsy clearly revealed grooves on her throat, which the prosecution contends were left by thumbs during the act of strangulation. When the Bewitched docked, the defendant went ashore and pawned the diamond studs the dead woman customarily wore in her earlobes. He lied to the pawnbroker, as he had to Harry Arnold, about having a toothache and needing the pawn money to pay a dentist. His teeth, according to a deposition given by the jail dentist, are in almost perfect condition. The prosecution contends that what he needed the money for was to pay his living expenses while he holed up in some motel until the scratches on his cheek healed. The question that immediately arises is: Why would a man be so anxious to hide some scratches on his face? The obvious answer, indeed, the only one I can come up with, is that those scratches implicated him in a crime.”

“Not necessarily murder,” Eva said.

“True. There is no incontrovertible evidence that the woman was strangled since the pathologists are not in full agreement in interpreting the grooves on her throat, whether they occurred before or after death. The defendant’s tendency to drink too much and lose his temper easily while drunk has been hinted but not actually proved.

“Missing from the prosecution’s case is a case of another kind — to wit, the green leather one containing Mrs. Pherson’s valuable heirloom jewelry. It was in her possession when she came on board, but no trace of it or its contents has shown up. Sometime after the woman’s body was found, a fisherman retrieved her coat from the sea. It proved a significant find because it was still buttoned. Mrs. Pherson, the testimony has shown, always hung her clothes carefully on hangers, buttoned or zippered to retain their shape. She could not have been wearing the coat when she went overboard. Wave action can tear a coat off a body, but there is no way it can rebutton it. Common sense tells us it was thrown overboard, and since Harry Arnold claims to have seen the defendant toss some clothing into the water, it’s possible or even likely the coat was disposed of in that manner by Cully King. Still, it’s not evidence of murder.

“The possibility of suicide has been suggested but not taken seriously. True, Mrs. Pherson had been despondent after the death of her mother, with whom she’d been planning a trip to Hawaii. That this was the destination of the Bewitched may have been a contributing factor in Mrs. Pherson’s decision to accompany Cully King. We’ll never know. We can’t read a dead mind. Mrs. Pherson’s actions resembled those of a woman bent not on suicide but on having a hell of a good time getting away from the structured life she led with a rather puritanical husband. You may recall the chambermaid hearing her talk to herself in her room before leaving the hotel as well as her conversation with Mr. Elfinstone at the hotel desk. It was the happy, excited talk of a woman who, in her own words, was going to do something she’d never done before and would never do again.

“There is still another addition to the list of questions that haven’t been answered and actions that haven’t been explained. Cully King cleaned and tidied the cabin so no signs remained that it had been occupied. Why? Having sex with a woman was not a crime he had to hide but something for a man like Cully to boast about. After all, this was no ordinary dock hooker. Mrs. Pherson had class and money. But he didn’t boast of his conquest. Instead, he removed every single trace of her presence as if he were erasing her very existence. Why?”

“We’ll find out when he takes the stand.”

“Donnelly will never put him on the stand. He can’t afford to. Cully King would tie himself in knots trying to answer all the questions and explain all his actions. I hope I’m right about this. I’d like to be out of here by Christmas. And I mean Christmas this year, not next year.”

He stared at his hands on the steering wheel, the knuckles swollen as if he’d hit someone with his fist.

“I feel time is passing like a train,” he said. “And everybody in the courtroom is being left behind, that all our lives have come to a stop at the station. Eventually another train will come along, and we’ll get on it and resume our lives.”

“Perhaps there won’t be another train,” Eva said.

“There always is.”

“Not for me. I’ve been waiting a long time for this one.”

“This one isn’t a train for you, Foster; it’s a carousel. Jump off before you get hurt.”

“I’m already hurt.”

“Then don’t make it worse. I’ll do my part by arranging a leave of absence for you or a transfer to another courtroom.”

“No, thanks. I must stay where I am.”

“Why?”

“In case he needs me.”

The judge’s sigh this time was the longest and deepest yet. “Isn’t there anyone you can discuss this with, a family member, a minister, someone who is older and wiser?”

“I don’t want to discuss it with anybody.”

“Well, dammit, you must have wanted to discuss it with me or you wouldn’t have followed me all the way down here. Dammit, I can’t afford to lose a good clerk in a morass of mush. You’ve got to talk to someone about the situation.”

“I’ve already talked to the only one who counts. You want to know what he said?” She tugged at the red scarf around her neck to loosen it. “He said, ‘Holy shit.’ ”

The judge’s face was caught in a grimace between a smile and a frown. “Are you sure you understood him correctly?”

“I m sure.”

“Well, at least you were left without any doubt.”

“I was left without any anything. But don’t feel sorry for me. I’m going to fight. If he’s found innocent, I’m going to fight for him. And if he’s found guilty, I’m going to fight alongside him all the way to the Supreme Court.”

“Holy shit,” the judge said under his breath.

Before the first witness of the afternoon session was called, District Attorney Owen addressed the bench.

“Your Honor, I would like the following information included in the transcript. Lieutenant Sommerville, who will now be taking the stand, was supposed to be my first witness. A postponement was necessary because Lieutenant Sommerville is in charge of the locally based Coast Guard cutter Priscilla, which was scheduled to go on a two-week training cruise. Because of the length of time required to pick this jury, his appearance conflicted with the training cruise schedule. So I am calling him now instead of as originally planned.”

Lieutenant Sommerville was in uniform, a ruddy-faced, serious-looking man in his early thirties. He stated that his permanent residence was in Los Alamitos. He had been in the Coast Guard for twelve years, ever since he graduated from the University of California at San Diego with a degree in marine biology. He was in command of the Coast Guard cutter Priscilla when a member of the crew spotted the body of a woman entangled in a kelp bed. Two crewmen were sent in a rubber raft to retrieve the body and bring it on board the Priscilla.

The body was tested for vital signs to determine the fact of death. Death had apparently occurred some hours before. Since the body had been found within the three-mile limit, jurisdiction belonged to the sheriff’s department, which sent a patrol boat to take the body to the police morgue.

Sommerville identified the pictures offered previously in evidence by the prosecution as being those of the dead woman taken on board the Priscilla.

“How much time elapsed before the woman’s body was transferred from the Priscilla to the sheriff’s patrol boat?”

“Roughly about an hour and a half.”

“During that period did you form an opinion as to the cause of death?”

“That’s not my job. Anyway, I covered her with a blanket as soon as I determined that she was dead. Then I called the sheriff’s office and told them we had a floater.”

“Is that police jargon for a body found in the water?”

“Yes.”

“After the body was transferred to the patrol boat, what did you do?”

“I asked the deputy to be sure and return the blanket.”

The audience laughed, and the lieutenant added hastily, “That may seem like a trivial thing to you, but I’m held accountable for every single item on board my ship, and it is my duty to see that items removed are brought back.”

“Was it?”

“No.”

“I have no more questions. Thank you, Lieutenant.”

The judge looked at Donnelly. “Are you ready to cross-examine, Mr. Donnelly?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

Donnelly replaced Owen at the lectern. “Lieutenant Sommerville, you stated that you had a degree in marine biology?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Would you tell us what you meant when you referred to a bed of kelp?”

“It is called by biologists a forest of kelp. We see only the top of this forest on the water surface. The stalks, or stipes, go all the way down to sea bottom, where they are anchored by holdfasts which keep the plant in place.”

“Are there several kinds of kelp found in this area?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Referring to the bed or forest where Mrs. Pherson’s body was found, can you identify the species?”

“It’s one of the larger varieties, Macrocystis. Boatmen hate the stuff since it can foul up propellers, anchors, keels, but it’s an important part of the food chain.”

Donnelly went over and spoke to the bailiff, who then left the courtroom and returned with Bill Gunther. Gunther was carrying a large plastic bag and a folding table.

He wore a dirty gray warm-up suit, wet at the seat, wrists and ankles. He was in his bare feet and looked cold and disgruntled. He had filed a protest over the assignment: “I can’t think of a single reason why I should row out to the kelp beds when I could pick up a hunk of the stuff from the beach.”

“I can,” Donnelly told him. “I’m ordering you to.”

“I hate the water. What if I drown?”

“I’ll send flowers.”

Gunther set up the table in the area between the witness stand and the jury box. He emptied the contents of the plastic bag on the tabletop, and the unmistakable odor of the sea drifted across the room. The kelp was a long single strand, light brown and slimy-looking.

“Would you step down here a minute, Lieutenant, and identify this seaweed which my assistant has just gathered?”

“I can tell from here it’s Macrocystis.”

“Commonly found around here?”

“Yes, sir. At a certain water depth there are dense forests of it parallel to the shoreline.”

“You stated that Mrs. Pherson’s body was entangled in the kelp. Would you explain this more fully?”

“Wave action had rolled her over and over and her body was — well, there’s no better word than tangled.”

“Was it wrapped around her whole body?”

“Yes, sir. She had to be extricated by cutting away the kelp that held her.”

“And how was this done?”

“With a serrated knife.”

“So that when the body was taken aboard the Priscilla, it was not in exactly the same condition as when it was first spotted, a good deal of the kelp having been cut away before the body could be moved. Is that correct?”

“Yes, sir. The stuff’s strong and rubbery. Kids often use it on the beach as jump ropes.”

“You have explained what the holdfasts of the plant are, and the stalk, or stipe. What are these leaflike things?”

“They’re called blades.”

“And these bulbous protuberances about the size of thumbs, what are they?”

“Hollow, gas-filled chambers known as floats. The name is self-explanatory.”

“Would you explain it anyway for the benefit of those of us not so biologically oriented?”

“Kelp, like an ordinary plant that grows on land, needs light for the process of photosynthesis, and floats keep it close to the surface where the light is.”

Donnelly addressed the bench. “At this point, Your Honor, I would request that Miss Foster bring in the three pieces of modeling clay I gave her earlier. They will be my next exhibits.”

This was done, and the first piece of modeling clay was put on the table beside the fresh kelp.

“This is ordinary modeling clay,” Donnelly told the jury, “and I’m going to ask Lieutenant Sommerville to press into it two of the floats of this kelp so that we may study the impressions. Will you do that please, Lieutenant?”

“How hard do you want me to press?”

“Just as hard as you think the kelp was wrapped around Mrs. Pherson’s throat.”

“I can’t be sure of that, but I can make a rough guess.”

The impressions were made, and the piece of clay was shown to the district attorney, then passed to the judge and then to each member of the jury. When this procedure was concluded, the lieutenant was asked to press each of his thumbs into the second piece of clay, exerting approximately the same amount of pressure. At Donnelly’s request he initialed the impressions with a felt-tipped marking pen. This second piece of clay was also passed to the district attorney, the judge and the jury, and the lieutenant returned to the witness box.

“Would you say, Lieutenant, that the indentations left by the two kelp floats and those left by your thumbs are about the same size?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is there any noticeable difference?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What is this difference?”

“My thumbnails left a semicircular impression that is clearly visible.”

“In other words, the fleshy tip of each thumb is defined by the indentation of the nail?”

“That’s what I perceive, yes, sir.”

“At this juncture,” Donnelly said, “I would like to ask the court’s permission to have my client, Mr. King, be allowed to follow the same procedure with the third piece of clay as the lieutenant did with the second. Do I have Your Honor’s permission?”

“This is quite irregular,” the judge said. “But at the moment I can think of no valid reason why it shouldn’t be allowed.”

Cully had not been forewarned of this move, and he registered the surprise Donnelly had hoped he would. Even the most obtuse juror could see the surprise was genuine and not just part of a ploy arranged by defendant and counsel.

Handed the piece of modeling clay, Cully pressed one thumb and then the other into it and initialed the marks with the same pen used by the lieutenant. Again the clay was passed to the district attorney, the judge and jury and, finally, the man on the stand.

“Lieutenant Sommerville, do these two impressions resemble those made by your own thumbs?”

“Yes, sir.”

“There are similar indentations left by thumbnails, are there not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I believe that at this point the jury should have the opportunity to reexamine plaintiff’s exhibits through sixteen-P. For this reason I would ask that thirteen-M, four-teen-N and fifteen-O be passed among the jurors and that sixteen be put on the display board.”

Exhibit M-13 was a normal-sized photograph of Mrs. Pherson’s head and throat as first seen by the pathologist, Dr. Woodbridge. N-14 and 0-15 were enlargements of the throat itself, and P-16 was an enlargement of the grooves found on it.

“Lieutenant, I would like you to examine all these photographs carefully. Will you do that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very carefully now, would you tell us which of the pieces of clay these photographs resemble?”

“I strongly object,” the district attorney said. “Human flesh is not clay. To compare the two is absurd.”

Donnelly went along with the objection without argument. “Very well, I withdraw the question and would instead ask that the next ten items be lettered as defendant’s exhibits. I’ve forgotten what letter we’re at now, but I’m sure Miss Foster knows.”

The ten exhibits were books on homicide investigation and forensic pathology. All of them contained bookmarks, and a few had several. Viewing the formidable pile of books, the judge declared a twenty-minute recess.

During the recess Oliver Owen called his wife from the pay phone in the main corridor. It was something he often did when he was frustrated and annoyed. He would never have admitted it to anyone, least of all to Vee herself, but the sound of her voice was soothing and made him feel that even if she disagreed with him verbally, she was completely on his side.

Vee was at her desk in the small alcove of the kitchen, paying the more urgent bills and setting aside the others. There was never enough money to pay all of them at once.

“Is that you, Vee?”

“I think so. There’s no one else here.”

“I wanted to tell you I’ll probably be late for dinner.”

“That’s all right. We’re having beef stew and French bread. Both can be heated up in a jiffy.”

“How are the boys?”

“They were fine at breakfast. I assume they’re still fine since I haven’t heard anything to the contrary... What’s wrong, Oliver?”

“That creep Donnelly is trying to pull a fast one. What intelligent person would believe that that woman fell overboard into a bed of kelp and was strangled to death by one of the strands? But we’re not dealing with intelligent persons; we’re dealing with jurors.”

“I hope you’re in a place where you can’t be overheard.”

“Of course I am. Do you take me for a fool?”

“It’s easy to get a bit careless. To be on the safe side, you could lower your voice slightly.”

He lowered his voice. “Have you ever heard of anyone being strangled to death by kelp?”

“How did she get into the kelp?”

“Donnelly implies that she fell overboard, and while unconscious but still technically alive, she became entangled in the kelp.”

“That’s dumb. Boats stay away from the kelp beds, especially big boats like the Bewitched.”

“What did you say?”

She repeated it word for word.

“Why, Vee,” Oliver said in a surprised voice. “Why, Vee, what an amazing piece of reasoning. You’re right, you’re absolutely right.”

“Once in a while us morons get lucky and come up with something intelligent almost like real people.”

“You mustn’t put yourself down, Vee.”

“Oh, I won’t. I always have someone to do it for me.”

“I mean it. Sometimes you’re very intelligent.”

“Hurray for me.”

“Of course, the boat didn’t go anywhere near the kelp. In order to get into the stuff, she’d have had to swim for it. If it was just a matter of wave and current action, it would probably take hours. In water that cold a person might be able to live a short time but definitely not hours. Even staying alive a short time is highly unlikely. Vee, you might help me win this case yet.”

“Why is winning it so important to you, Oliver?”

“You know why. It will help me get reelected.”

“Yes, but why is it so important to you to be reelected? God knows it can’t be the salary. You could do much better in private practice.”

“I want to be somebody my sons will look up to and want to emulate. I can’t be just an ordinary lawyer. You know what most people think of lawyers. But district attorney, that’s a position of authority, a position that demands respect. It gives the boys something to aim at, shoot for.”

“You’re forgetting that this is an iconoclastic generation, Oliver.”

“What’s ‘iconoclastic’?”

“What I really mean to say is that teenagers nowadays are likely to consider the position of district attorney something to shoot down, not at.”

“That doesn’t apply to my sons. They respect authority.”

Vee thought of the epoxy glue episode and the Latin graffiti in the bathroom, but she said smoothly, “I’m sure your sons would have just as much respect for you if you were an ordinary lawyer.”

“Do you really think that?”

“I’m sure of it.” There was the faint metallic taste of irony in Vee’s mouth, but she swallowed it quickly. After all, the epoxy and graffiti stages would soon pass and Thatcher would be able to memorize all twenty-six amendments and everyone would live happily ever after. And I’ll be the Queen of Rumania.

“Oliver, before you hang up, I want to tell you that the boys and I will always love you no matter how things turn out.”

There was a silence. Then: “I’m sorry. My mind was wandering. What did you say?”

“Nothing. Go look for your mind.”

“I have to hang up now. Thanks for calling.”

“I didn’t call you. You called me.”

But the line was dead. Slowly and sadly she replaced the phone on the desk. She couldn’t help loving Oliver, but she reserved the right to think he was often a damn fool.

It was a long afternoon. Court didn’t adjourn until nearly six o’clock. The interval between recess and adjournment was taken up by the process of showing to the jurors each of the marked photographs in the ten books Donnelly had offered in evidence. All of the photographs were of female strangulation victims taken in autopsy rooms throughout the country: a prostitute in Omaha, Nebraska; two young sisters from Brownsville, Texas; a housewife from Visalia, California, and another from Bend, Oregon; a Chicago nurse; an Atlanta waitress; a Los Angeles meter maid; a Miami drug dealer; a dental hygienist from Albuquerque; an English tourist visiting Philadelphia; and a New Orleans real estate agent. Photographs of each of these victims were projected on a large screen brought in by the bailiff. The enlarged picture of the grooves on Mrs. Pherson’s throat remained on the display board beside the screen. Each photograph flashed on the screen for comparison, showed one noticeable difference from Mrs. Pherson’s photograph. The grooves left by the fleshy tips of thumbs were defined by indentations of thumbnails in every victim except Mrs. Pherson.

As each picture was shown, Donnelly used a rubber-tipped pointer to draw this difference to the jurors’ attention. Then once again the pieces of modeling clay were passed around among the jurors, and Donnelly’s message came across loud and clear: According to the physical evidence available, Lieutenant Sommerville or Cully King might have strangled all the other victims, but neither of them could have strangled Mrs. Pherson because no thumbnail indentations were left on her throat.

Owen’s objections were feeble and overruled. By this time he was really worried, knowing better than anyone in the courtroom except the judge that Donnelly didn’t have to prove Mrs. Pherson was strangled by kelp, he had only to show reasonable doubt that she was strangled by Cully King. That such doubt had been cast was evident not only on the face of each juror but on that of Lieutenant Sommerville.

When court was finally adjourned for the day, Sommerville waited in the corridor to speak with Owen.

“I thought you said it was a sure thing he was guilty, Mr. Owen.”

“It’s a sure thing.”

“That’s not the way it looks right now. I’d hate to have a part in convicting an innocent man.”

“You have nothing to worry about,” Owen said sourly. “As far as evidence is concerned, you might as well have been a defense witness, not mine.”

“I did the best I could.”

“Thanks. Meanwhile, don’t forget that Donnelly picked those books and those pictures. There must be hundreds of others. And I’m going to find them.”

“I hope you don’t call me back to the stand.” Sommerville took off his cap and wiped his forehead with his hand. “I hate looking at pictures like that.”

“Nobody enjoys it,” Owen said. “But we owe it to Madeline Pherson, a human being.”

In the courtroom only four people remained, Cully King and Donnelly and the bailiff standing at the door talking to the deputy who’d come to take Cully back to the jail.

“You did great,” Cully told Donnelly. “That was real convincing. Now I know why you told me to stop biting my nails.”

“I told you what?”

“To stop biting my nails. You remember that night when you came to the jail—”

“I don’t recall the episode.”

“Sure you do. You came in late. I distinctly remember.”

“Whatever you distinctly remember, you will now distinctly forget.”

“Sure. Okay. Consider it forgotten.”

“Communication between lawyer and client is privileged — that is, strictly private. But it sometimes leaks out, occasionally through the lawyer but more often through the client after a few drinks or a little softening up of one kind or another. There is nothing wrong in what I said to you or what you did in response, but it might possibly be misinterpreted as an attempt to obstruct justice. A chatty guy like you might open up to a nice, friendly cellmate who likes to listen. But that cellmate could be a police informant. So what did I tell you to do on the night I came to the jail?”

“Nothing.”

“Good. That settles that.”

“Not quite,” Cully said. “Where’d you get the idea that I was a chatty guy?”

“You and Miss Foster seem to find a lot to talk about.”

“I got nothing to say to her.”

“Your lips moved. I assume when a person’s lips move, he is talking. Is that a fair assumption?”

“I hate sarcastic know-it-all bastards like you.”

Cully pushed back his chair, got up and walked quickly to the door. Donnelly heard him exchanging greetings with the deputy about being late and missing the jail bus.

“So you ride in style, Cully boy,” the deputy said. “Courtesy of the sheriff, you got a limo all to yourself.”

“Do I get to drive?”

“Sure, if you have a key.”

Cully laughed, and the two of them walked out together.

Donnelly sat alone at the counsel’s table for a long time, his head in his hands.

The bailiff’s voice sounded hollow in the empty room. “Mr. Donnelly, don’t you want to go home?”

“I’m... not in any hurry.”

“Well, I have to lock up now. The main doors are already bolted. When you leave, you’ll have to use the sheriff’s entrance.”

“All right. Thanks.”

To avoid the evening rush on the freeway, Donnelly drove home through the city streets. He loved these streets and knew them well. As a new arrival he used to walk around downtown during lunch hours like a tourist, and after twenty-five years he still felt like a tourist, privileged to visit a city whose main street went all the way down to the sea. In each of the other directions there were mountains, changing color every hour, every season, from green and gray to pink and violet and sometimes, in the winter, white. On overcast days the mountains disappeared entirely, and the city became a stage setting without a backdrop, and the most imposing part of the setting was the courthouse. Its pure white tower was a symbol of truth and justice, and its massive clock chimed the hours and their message: Son, observe the time and fly from evil.

When he reached home at seven-thirty, Mrs. Killeen was the only person in the house. She met him as he came in the side door from the garage.

Her greeting was characteristic. “I suppose you’ll be wanting dinner.”

“It occurred to me.”

“I go off duty in half an hour. Why don’t you send out for some pizza?”

“I don’t like pizza.”

“Everybody likes pizza.”

“I don’t.”

Mrs. Killeen consulted her wristwatch. “I have twenty-three minutes left according to my contract. I suppose I could throw something together in the microwave. How about a baked potato and some lamb chops?”

“Fine. I’ll eat in the den.”

“And remember, don’t give my dog any of the bones. They make her upchuck.”

“I think I can remember that,” Donnelly said. “Did the hospital call about my wife?”

“No. All’s quiet on the western front.” Mrs. Killeen turned to leave, then changed her mind. “You probably never tasted pizza.”

“I have tasted pizza, and I don’t like it.”

“Well, don’t blame me if things don’t turn out right. It’s cook’s night out, and her sub called to say she had to go to a funeral. And I said, you pull this stunt on me again, and the funeral you go to will be your own.”

“You have a real gift of language, Mrs. Killeen.”

He went upstairs, took a shower, put on pajamas and robe and came back down to the den adjoining the dining room. It was 8:03, and true to her word and contract, Mrs. Killeen was off duty, but she had left his dinner tray beside the leather chair in front of the television set.

Beside the plate was a note which proved that even in absentia Mrs. Killeen could have the last word: “We were out of baking potatoes and lamb chops. I had to make do. Pizza would have been better. S.K.”

The plate contained mashed potatoes, asparagus and pork chops. The potatoes tasted vaguely like cardboard, the asparagus had come out of a can and brought some of the can with it and the pork chops were stringy. But the coffee was hot and fresh, and so was the French bread.

When he’d finished the meal, he called the hospital in Long Beach, and after going through the proper channels, he heard Zan’s voice on the line.

“Zan, it’s Charles.”

“I know. They told me.” She sounded tired and irritable but under control.

“How are you, Zan?”

“What do you care?”

“You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to.”

“Yes, I do. They told me, ‘Be a good girl and talk to your husband.’ If I’d said, ‘what husband?’ they’d accuse me of having amnesia or being irrational and some earnest young doctor would come along and ask me, ‘Do you recall being married, Mrs. Donnelly?’ You know what my real answer would be? ‘I recall going to a wedding dressed up like a bride, but no, I don’t recall being married.’ ”

“Are your wrists healing?”

“What do you care?”

“I didn’t want you to die. Dying wouldn’t solve anything.”

“Living isn’t solving much either,” she said. “Look, why don’t you just leave me alone for a long time and I’ll leave you alone? I’m going to get over what’s bothering me, I’ll get over it. But you’ll never get over what’s bothering you. You’re stuck with it, Charles. Do you hear me, Charles? Are you listening? You’re stuck with it for the rest of your life.”

He didn’t answer. There was nothing to say. He put the telephone back on the table as if it had become too heavy to hold. Even from a distance of three feet her voice still came across sharp and clear: “When I’m better, I’m coming home. It’s my home, it belonged to my parents, and I don’t want you there when I return. You’ll have to get out. Do you hear me, Charles? Get the hell out of my house.”

He looked around the room. There was nothing in it, nothing in any other part of the house, that he couldn’t walk away from without a backward glance. It was as if he’d never lived there at all.

He thought of the poem written by a young client of his in part payment for legal services, a poet who had committed the unpoetic act of embezzling from his employer. Donnelly couldn’t understand the poem at the time, but he remembered it now: