"Then we're good for tomorrow morning at eleven? That gives you time to settle in with Ms. Hastings first thing."

The judge knew that Kerry Hastings had flown in twice from her home on the West Coast to meet with Mercer Wallace and me. The first time, after so many years of silence had led her to assume the case would never be solved, was to give her own saliva for the DNA analysis of her clothing and bed linens. The second was for our initial preparation for trial.

"That leaves just the rape shield issue, Judge," I said.

Lamont cupped his hand to his ear again. "Didn't catch that, Alex."

As soon as I spoke, the five men in T-shirts had started to cough. Fake, exaggerated coughs that were loud and disruptive. I tried to ignore them.

"I said we need to address the question of the rape shield law, Judge."

The hacking noise made it impossible for Lamont to hear me. He wiggled his finger at the captain-Louie Larsen-who was standing near the last row of benches. Larsen began ambling to the well of the courtroom.

I looked to see whether Floyd Warren was communicating with the quintet of young men, but he never turned his head.

"Gene, Alex. Come up here to the bench."

I walked forward while the two officers behind the defendant closed in around Warren, anticipating that he might have had a way to orchestrate the small commotion.

"You know these guys?" Lamont asked me.

"No, sir."

"Grassley, they have anything to do with your client?"

"Don't look at me, Judge. They're sitting behind Alex. Thought she imported some cheerleaders to buck her up."

Louie Larsen took his place between Grassley and me. "Pablo Posano."

"What?" My head snapped around and I studied the faces of the five young men. None of them looked familiar.

"You've gone white, Alex," Judge Lamont said. "Who's Pablo Posano? Is he here?"

"He was the leader of the Latin Princes until we put him away this spring. He's in Attica, Judge. Posano's got to do all his time in maximum security. He raped a twelve-year-old girl as part of an initiation rite. I tried the case, Your Honor. Posano hates my guts."

The Princes were among the most dangerous drug gangs in the city. For every member jailed or killed on the street, ten more seemed to sign up the next day. Posano's posse had threatened the trial judge and intimidated several of the witnesses, who thereafter refused to testify in my case. I was as chilled as though someone had held an icicle to my spine.

"How do you know they have anything to do with Posano?" I asked Larsen.

I swiveled to take another look at the unwelcome spectators. I had given Floyd Warren too much by reacting to the punks. He was staring me down.

The kid in the second row stood up, the others behind him rising as if on cue.

"It's on the back of their shirts."

"What is?"

"Pablo Posano. That's what's printed there."

"Stop!" Alton Lamont said, banging his gavel on his desktop.

The five gang members paid no attention.

Now I could see that the black letters on the front of each yellow shirt spelled a single word: FREE. As they turned their backs to Lamont to follow their leader out of the courtroom, the judge got the message as clearly as I did. FREE PABLO POSANO.

Floyd Warren licked his front teeth and laughed. He could see the fear in my eyes.

They didn't threaten me. They're way too smart for that." I dropped the case folder on top of my desk.

"Why can't Lamont just boot their asses out?" Mercer Wallace asked

They didn't do anything. Nothing except sound effects that won't show on the record. By the time we figured it out they were gone."

"And tomorrow?" Mercer was a first-grade detective assigned to the NYPD's elite Special Victims Unit. He had painstakingly reconstructed the case against Floyd Warren and wanted it to proceed without complications.

"Lamont says he'll deal with it if they come back. It's a public courtroom. He can tighten the security but you know he'll never seal it."

"More than that, I know you can't play with the Latin Princes, Alex. To Posano, you're the face of evil. You're the one who put him in jail, when he figured he had everyone else scared away. You stood in front of him day after day, building your case and arguing to the jury, dancing circles around his mouthpiece. It became way too personal with him."

"He's got years to get over it."

"His crew is too vicious. They may not realize you've got some tough innards beneath that pretty packaging. And some powerful reinforcements covering your tail."

I didn't question Mercer's warning. In the last year alone, the Dominican gang leader had ordered the unsuccessful hit of a federal judge who had presided over a drug case that sent three of his lieutenants to jail and intimidated scores of witnesses from appearing in a handful of related grand jury investigations.

"If harassing me is what they wanted, consider it done." I sat down in front of the air conditioner and lifted my hair to let the cool air blow on the back of my neck. "What's the word on Kerry?"

"The flight is on the ground in Chicago. Severe thunderstorms. I don't think she'll land before ten tonight, but I'll pick her up and take her to the hotel."

Kerry Hastings was a twenty-two-year-old graduate student when Floyd Warren broke into her Greenwich Village apartment and raped her. The 1973 trial had been another assault-on her truthfulness, on her integrity, on her spirit-and when the jury failed to agree on a verdict, she retreated from her once pleasant life even further. Mercer was one of the few people who had engendered her trust, from the time of his first phone call, astounding her with the news that she might achieve some measure of justice after all these years.

"I'd still like to have her here at seven thirty in the morning. I want to go over her testimony once more."

"I have the feeling she'll be better rested than you."

"I'm set. Who could imagine that this case would be easier for me to try now than it was for my predecessor thirty-five years ago? Easier for Kerry, too."

"Chapman's here to suck a little more of that energy out of you."

"Where?"

"Down the hall in the conference room. Got someone with him."

I stood up, fanning myself with the manila folder that held Pablo Posano's posttrial motions and his inmate number at the maximum security prison where he was serving time. "I'll check it out. You want to call Attica for me? See if we can get a list of Posano's visitors and his phone log?"

"Sure." Mercer reached for the file as I walked out of the room.

The corridors emptied out earlier than usual during the hot summer days. There were fewer trials as lawyers, judges, and witnesses escaped the city on vacation. Government workers were allowed to leave their offices on afternoons when temperatures, threatening to overload the electrical power grids, climbed above ninety-five degrees. It was six fifteen and the executive wing of the trial division was quiet.

I pushed open the door and saw Mike sitting across the conference table from a young woman who was talking to him. A handful of snapshots were spread out in front of her, and Mike was studying two of them as she spoke.

"Here she is," he said. "Alexandra Cooper, I'd like you to meet Janet Bristol."

The most obvious thing about her when she looked up was the redness and swelling around her eyes. I wasn't surprised. It was rare for me to meet someone for the first time, professionally, who had much to smile about.

"Janet showed up at the First this morning," Mike said. "She saw the squib in the Post. The one about the body."

"I haven't had a chance to read the newspapers today."