Four go up.

“You, sir.” The judge points to an elderly gentleman in the front row. He’s wearing his Sunday best, right down to the perfectly pressed triangle of white handkerchief protruding from his jacket pocket. “Which of them do you know?” Judge Gould asks.

The older man stands, points his hat at Geraldine. “The District Attorney,” he says. “She’s a neighbor.”

“Thank you for telling us. You’re dismissed with the sincere gratitude of the court.” The judge nods to the two officers standing against the back wall and one hustles down the center aisle to usher the disqualified juror out of the courtroom.

The elderly gentleman looks surprised at first, then nods and dutifully follows the uniform toward the back doors. This won’t necessarily end his jury service. He may find himself downstairs in one of the smaller courtrooms before the day is out, on a civil panel. If our DA is his neighbor, defense lawyers will bounce him from all criminal proceedings, even if Geraldine isn’t in the room.

“And you, ma’am?” Judge Gould directs his question to a middle-aged woman six rows back. She points to Geraldine too. “I don’t really know her,” she says, looking a little embarrassed. “I’ve just seen her on the news.”

Most of them have seen all of us on the news, of course. But it’s Geraldine they remember. Always.

“You may be seated,” Judge Gould says. He looks out at the whole panel. “We’re not concerned at the moment about anything you might have seen or heard through the media. We want to know about personal contact, if any.”

A young man who looks not much older than Luke stands in the row behind the woman who just sat down. “Same here,” he says, gesturing toward her. “I just know the lawyers from TV. All of them, I think.”

“That’s fine,” the judge answers.

The final hand-raiser gets to his feet in the back row and the four attorneys laugh. Judge Gould does too. “Mr. Saunders,” he says, leaning back in his tall leather chair, “I guess it’s safe to say you know everyone up here.”

Bert Saunders has been practicing law in Barnstable County since I was in high school. “Four out of five,” he says to the judge. “Haven’t met the defendant.”

“Well, you may as well head back to your office,” Judge Gould tells him. “I’m sure you’ve got plenty of work waiting. And we all know you’re not going to serve on this panel—or any other, for that matter.”

He’s right. Lawyers don’t let lawyers serve on juries. It’s too risky. A lawyer-juror would almost certainly have an undue influence on the others—even if unintentional. And given that Bert has spent his entire career with the criminal defense bar, no prosecutor in the country would allow him to serve on a capital case. Geraldine would sooner seat the defendant’s mother in the jury box.

Bert bends to retrieve his briefcase, then smooths his suit coat and gives us a small salute before heading for the doors.

“Who’s the fat guy?” Holliston asks as we reclaim our chairs.

I wonder if he has an adjective in his vocabulary that isn’t derogatory. “Bert Saunders is one of the best criminal defense lawyers in the county,” I tell him.

Holliston frowns, looking past me to Harry. “Too bad. I could use one of them.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the judge says, “I’m going to read a brief description of the case we’re about to try. When I finish, I will ask each of you to consider whether anything you’ve heard will make it particularly difficult for you to be fair and impartial. I caution you that nothing I say constitutes evidence. What I am about to read is merely a summary of the positions taken by each side.”

It’s far more than that. Geraldine and Harry have been battling for weeks over the content of the short passage the jury is about to hear. Every word a judge utters during a murder trial is taken to heart by jurors. They have a difficult job, to say the least; they look for guidance wherever they can. And when the judge is as obviously fair-minded as Richard Gould, his summary of the case may well end up being theirs.

“Last Christmas Eve,” the judge reads, adjusting his dark-framed glasses, “Francis Patrick McMahon, a Roman Catholic priest assigned to St. Veronica’s Parish in Chatham, was found dead on the floor of the chapel’s sacristy. The collection money from the seven o’clock Christmas Vigil Mass was gone. The Medical Examiner determined that the deceased had suffered multiple puncture wounds, one of which proved fatal. The Commonwealth accuses the defendant of inflicting those wounds. It charges him with first-degree murder, committed with extreme atrocity or cruelty.”

Judge Gould pauses for a sip of water. The citizens seated in the gallery are silent, paralyzed. Even those of us at the tables are frozen.

“The accused, Derrick John Holliston, does not deny inflicting the fatal wound,” the judge continues. “But he does dispute the allegation that his actions constitute murder. He maintains that his conduct on the night in question was entirely lawful, that the deceased was the assailant. More specifically, the defendant maintains that the deceased became sexually aggressive and when he—the defendant—resisted, the deceased became violent. The defendant contends that he acted only as necessary to preserve his own life.”

Judge Gould pauses again. Still, not a sound. Not a breath, even. “The Commonwealth disputes the defendant’s self-defense claim. And the cash from the Christmas Vigil Mass collection has not been recovered.”

This final piece of information is more significant than the potential jurors know. Had the police been able to locate the missing money and tie it to Holliston, Geraldine would have charged him pursuant to the felony-murder rule. And she would much rather have done so. Under that rule, a person who causes the death of another while in the process of committing a felony is automatically guilty of first-degree murder, even if the death was unintended. If the rule could be successfully invoked, Geraldine’s burden would be substantially lightened: no need to prove premeditation; no need to prove intent, and no need to show extreme atrocity or cruelty.

As it stands, though, the Christmas Eve collection is nowhere to be found. Without it, the underlying felony can’t even be charged, let alone proved. As long as the money is missing, the felony-murder rule doesn’t come into play. And if the jurors buy Holliston’s self-defense claim—if they believe he had to stab the priest in order to save his own life—he’ll walk.

The judge removes his glasses, sets them on the bench, and leans on his forearms. “I ask each of you to take a moment now,” he says to the assembly, “and reflect. This will not be an easy case for anyone involved. The evidence from both sides will be graphic, detailed. It will be difficult to see and hear; that’s a given. But I ask each of you to alert us now if you believe you will have particular trouble being fair and impartial, looking at all of the exhibits and listening to all of the testimony with an open mind.”

We attorneys swivel our chairs so we can see the jurors seated behind us. Holliston doesn’t move. For a moment, the silence blanketing the courtroom remains undisturbed. But then a man in an end seat in the center of the room gets to his feet and steps into the aisle. He looks to be about fifty, wearing blue jeans, a flannel shirt, and work boots. “I might have a problem with that,” he says.

Two well-dressed women follow his lead. The first moves into the aisle across from him. She’s about my age, in a tailored, navy blue pants suit and heels. “I may also,” she says. The second woman is probably seventy. She stands in the middle of the back row, her silver hair styled and stiff above the collar of a charcoal gray coatdress. She nods at the judge but says nothing, a silent ditto.

“Thank you,” Judge Gould says to all of them. “Thank you for your candor. Now I ask the three of you to come forward.”