“I do.” I had struggled to convince many jurors over the years that the sexual dysfunction some rapists exhibited was usually quite different from consensual coupling. It was exhibited in a variety of behaviors, including-as with Ferris-the ability to maintain an erection for hours.

“Well, we patted him down at the scene for weapons-”

“Get the knife?” I interrupted.

“Nope, but CSU is searching the stairwell. We had a bit of a chase. Then Ned searched Ferris back at the stationhouse and took this out of his pocket.”

Alan held out a baggie with a white plastic pill bottle inside.

“Viagra,” I said, studying the label. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s probably easier to get this on the street than smack.”

“It isn’t street stuff, and it didn’t fall off the back of the truck. This is your tax dollars at work, Ms. Cooper.”

“What?”

Ned handed me a piece of paper. It was a receipt for a prescription with Derrick Ferris’s name on it-for Viagra-from a pharmacy that filled the request and received payment from Medicaid funds.

“It doesn’t make any sense for the government to do this. Derrick Ferris is a level-three offender,” I said. “I did the hearing myself.”

Ferris was eighteen at the time of his conviction and had been released after serving only eight years of his twenty-five-year sentence. But he had been designated the most-serious-level sex offender, to be tracked by the convicted-felon registry on the underlying facts of his original case and his risk to the community-far more likely to commit similar assaults again than most other criminals.

“I spoke to his parole officer yesterday,” Ned said. “Ferris is actually supposed to be on medication that-what do I say? Suppresses the urge.”

“You know how this stuff works?” I asked, shaking the bottle. “It increases blood flow to the penis. If he was having any trouble performing, this just enhances his ability to complete an act of intercourse. How many of our guys is Medicaid enabling?”

“Sit down for this one, Alex. We did a check last night. All the level-three offenders are registered online. The sergeant’s calling in the names this morning to the Medicaid office as soon as they open, but there’s more than two hundred convicted rapists in this county alone, and they’re all eligible for the drug. He thought you’d want to let Battaglia know this one’s going to hit the media.”

“Thanks a lot. Ask Ryan to do a memo to the boss for my signature. Remind him to emphasize that level-three offenders don’t change their colors. I’ve never met one who’s been ‘rehabilitated’ by a visit to jail.”

“Good luck today,” Alan said.

“My first witness is Curtis Pell,” I said. They both knew the detective who worked Manhattan North, in the office adjacent to theirs, with Chapman. “I’ll be prepping him as soon as he gets here and we go upstairs to Gertz before nine. If the jurors are all there on time, we’ll be on at nine fifteen. If you hear anything from Medicaid on this by then, give me a heads-up.”

Curtis Pell arrived half an hour later with more coffee and breakfast for himself and Laura. We had been over his involvement in the investigation and his written reports four or five times in the last month, so I just walked him through the trim version of his direct that I had fashioned yesterday.

The chatter of assistants arriving filled the eighth-floor corridor as Curtis helped me maneuver my shopping cart from my office to the first of two elevator banks that connected to the courthouse tower above the DA’s Office.

The hallway outside Part 83 was already lined with spectators and a handful of local crime reporters. Two court officers were standing between the metal detector through which they all had to pass and the long wooden table on which handbags and backpacks and briefcases would be searched.

Curtis Pell opened the door for me and we walked down the aisle to counsel’s table.

Lem Howell had the Wall Street Journal spread out before him. His cream-colored suit looked like the cleanest thing in the drab courtroom, a cool contrast to my slim turquoise sheath.

Lem didn’t pick his head up from the market listings but heard the tap of my heels as we approached him. “Good morning, Alexandra.”

“Morning, Lem,” I said. “Hey, Jonetta, how are you?”

The court clerk waved at me, and Artie Tramm was on his way off the bench to fill the judge’s water pitcher. “We got eight jurors, Alex. We should be able to get started on schedule if the next few mosey in on time. Mind if I put Detective Pell in the witness room?”

“He’s all yours.”

Pell followed Artie out the side door of the courtroom. The hallway behind the jury box had several small rooms-the one in which jurors gathered before proceedings and in which they eventually deliberated, and a windowless cubicle in which witnesses waited before they were called to the stand.

When he came back into the part, Artie called out to Lem and me, “Gertz wants to know if you’re ready as soon as we get our full panel.”

“Good to go,” I said.

“You expecting a visitor?” Artie asked.

One of the court officers had let Alan Vandomir into the room. Lem Howell recognized the detective and got on his feet to sit on the edge of my table. “No more monkey business up your sleeve, is there?”

“It is monkey business, actually, but nothing to do with your case. This will only take a minute. You can listen in, Lem. You’ll hear it on tonight’s news anyway.”

Alan and Lem shook hands. “The sergeant got through to the head of the Medicaid office half an hour ago. These Viagra pills, they cost ten bucks a shot, and the government’s been paying for released sex offenders to get them for five years before anybody happened to notice. The bill for keeping these pervs’ private parts up, just in New York alone, runs over twenty-one million dollars. You better call Battaglia, Alex.”

“Will do, Alan.” He turned to leave the courtroom and Artie Tramm walked him out, locking the door behind him so that Gertz could take the bench without any further interruptions.

“Let me understand this,” Lem said, pacing the well as though arguing to an imaginary jury. He was entertaining me and Jonetta Purvis, the court clerk, and Artie Tramm, the last bit of humor before we hunkered down for a day of testimony about Amanda Keating’s homicide.

The two uniformed court officers who would be guarding Quillian for the remainder of the trial-a stooped older man, Oscar Valenti, and the short African-American woman, Elsie Evers, who had worked the part last week-were leaning against the door to the defendant’s holding pen, also watching Lem perform.

“I am all for the underdog, ladies and gentlemen, do not mistake that fact.” Lem gestured with his forefinger. “But when you are taking food out of the mouths of our hungry children-how much money did he say, Artie?”

“Twenty-one million large, Mr. Howell.”

“When you are using money that could be better spent on a pension fund for Ms. Cooper or a fine new robe for the judge or membership at a gym for Artie Tramm”-Lem patted Artie’s paunch as the officer passed behind him-“and instead, you are correcting, you are fueling, you are-hell, Ms. Cooper, you’re the expert here, what’s going on? You, my dear taxpayers, and the United States government, have just declared an end to erectile dysfunction, is that it? Whose lobby is this? Erectile dysfunction is unfair for sex offenders. Watch the ACLU jump in on their side. It’s mind-boggling.”

“I’ll tell you right up front,” Artie said, “I keep waitin’ for one of those four-hour jobs that I’d have to call my doctor and complain about. Four minutes I’m lucky. I see that ad one more time on TV I’m gonna throw something at the set.”

Fred Gertz swept into the courtroom from his robing room. “Who’s complaining about what? I must say, you’re a happy-looking bunch this morning. How many jurors missing now, Artie?”