Mr. Logiudice: Well, that’s not quite true, is it? There is some evidence that Hope Connors’s windpipe was crushed before she went into the water.

Witness: That inference is not supported by the evidence. The body was badly degraded. The cops down there-there was so much pressure, so much media. That investigation was not conducted properly.

Mr. Logiudice: That happened quite a bit around Jacob, didn’t it? A murder, a botched investigation. He must have been the unluckiest boy.

Witness: Is that a question? Mr. Logiudice: We’ll move on. Your son’s name has been widely linked to the case, hasn’t it?

Witness: In the tabloids and some sleazy websites. They’ll say anything for money. There’s no profit in saying Jacob was innocent.

Mr. Logiudice: How did Jacob react to the girl’s disappearance? Witness: He was concerned, of course. Hope was someone he cared about.

Mr. Logiudice: And your wife?

Witness: She was also very, very concerned.

Mr. Logiudice: That’s all, “very, very concerned”?

Witness: Yes.

Mr. Logiudice: Isn’t it fair to say she concluded Jacob had something to do with that girl’s disappearance?

Witness: Yes.

Mr. Logiudice: Was there anything in particular that convinced her of this?

Witness: There was something that happened at the beach. It was the day the girl disappeared. Jacob got there-this was late afternoon, to watch the sunset-and he sat on my right. Laurie was on my left. We said, “Where’s Hope?” Jacob said, “With her family, I guess. I haven’t seen her.” So we made some kind of joke-I think it was Laurie who asked-if everything was all right between them, if they’d had a fight. He said no, he just hadn’t seen her for a few hours. I-

Mr. Logiudice: Andy? Are you all right?

Witness: Yeah. Sorry, yes. Jake-he had these spots on his bathing suit, these little red spots.

Mr. Logiudice: Describe the spots. Witness: They were spatters.

Mr. Logiudice: What color? Witness: Brownish red.

Mr. Logiudice: Blood spatters? Witness: I don’t know. I didn’t think so. I asked him what it was, what did he do to his bathing suit? He said he must have dripped something he’d been eating, ketchup or something.

Mr. Logiudice: And your wife? What did she think of the red spatters?

Witness: She didn’t think anything at the time. It was nothing, because we didn’t know the girl was missing yet. I told him to just go jump in the water and swim around until the bathing suit was clean.

Mr. Logiudice: And how did Jacob react?

Witness: He didn’t react at all. He just got up and he walked out on the dock-it was an H-shaped dock; he walked out the right-hand dock-and he dove in.

Mr. Logiudice: Interesting that it was you who told him to wash the bloodstains off his bathing suit.

Witness: I had no idea if they were bloodstains. I still don’t know if that’s true.

Mr. Logiudice: You still don’t know? Really? Then why were you so quick to tell him to jump in the water? Witness: Laurie said something to him about how the bathing suit was expensive and Jacob should take better care of his things. He was so careless, such a slob. I didn’t want him to get in trouble with his mother. We were all having such a good time. That’s all it was.

Mr. Logiudice: But this was why Laurie was upset when Hope Connors first went missing?

Witness: Partly, yes. It was the whole situation, everything we’d been through.

Mr. Logiudice: Laurie wanted to go home immediately, isn’t that right?

Witness: Yes. Mr. Logiudice: But you refused.

Witness: Yes.

Mr. Logiudice: Why?

Witness: Because I knew what people would say: that Jacob was guilty and he was running away before the cops could pick him up. They would call him a killer. I wasn’t going to let anyone say that about him.

Mr. Logiudice: In fact, the authorities in Jamaica did question Jacob, didn’t they?

Witness: Yes.

Mr. Logiudice: But they never arrested him?

Witness: No. There was no reason to arrest him. He didn’t do anything.

Mr. Logiudice: Jesus, Andy, how can you be so damn sure? How can you be sure of that?

Witness: How can anyone be sure of anything? I trust my kid. I have to.

Mr. Logiudice: You have to why?

Witness: Because I’m his father. I owe him that.

Mr. Logiudice: That’s it?

Witness: Yes.

Mr. Logiudice: What about Hope Connors? What did you owe her?

Witness: Jacob did not kill that girl.

Mr. Logiudice: Kids just kept dying around him, is that it?

Witness: That’s an improper question.

Mr. Logiudice: I’ll withdraw it. Andy, do you honestly think you’re a reliable witness? Do you honestly think you see your son right?

Witness: I think I’m reliable, yes, generally. I don’t think any parent can be completely objective about his kid, I’ll concede that.

Mr. Logiudice: And yet Laurie had no trouble seeing Jacob for what he was, did she?

Witness: You’ll have to ask her.

Mr. Logiudice: Laurie had no trouble believing Jacob had something to do with that girl’s vanishing?

Witness: As I said, Laurie was very shaken by the whole thing. She was not herself. She came to her own conclusions.

Mr. Logiudice: Did she ever discuss her suspicions with you?

Witness: No.

Mr. Logiudice: I’ll repeat the question. Did your wife ever discuss her suspicions about Jacob?

Witness: No, she did not.

Mr. Logiudice: Your own wife never confided in you?

Witness: She did not feel that she could. Not about this. We’d talked about the Rifkin case, of course. I think she knew there were some things I just could not discuss; there were some places I just could not go. Those things she would just have to handle by herself. Mr. Logiudice: So after two weeks in Jamaica? Witness: We came home. Mr. Logiudice: And when you got home, at that point did Laurie finally voice her suspicions about Jacob?

Witness: Not really.

Mr. Logiudice: “Not really”-what does that mean?

Witness: When we got home from Jamaica, Laurie was very, very quiet. She wouldn’t discuss anything at all with me, really. She was very wary, very upset. She was scared. I tried to talk to her, draw her out, but she didn’t trust me, I think.

Mr. Logiudice: Did she ever discuss what you two ought to do, morally, as parents?

Witness: No.

Mr. Logiudice: If she had asked you, what would you have said? What do you think your moral obligation was as parents of a murderer?

Witness: It’s a hypothetical question. I don’t believe we were parents of a murderer.

Mr. Logiudice: All right, hypothetically then: If Jacob was guilty, what should you and your wife have done about it?

Witness: You can ask the question as many ways as you like, Neal. I won’t answer it. It never happened.

What happened then I can honestly say was the most genuine, spontaneous reaction I ever saw out of Neal Logiudice. He flung his yellow pad in frustration. It fluttered like a shotgunned bird tumbling out of the sky, settling in the far corner of the room.

An older woman on the grand jury gasped.

I thought for a moment it was one of Logiudice’s phony gestures-a cue to the jury: Can’t you see he’s lying? — the better because it would not show up in the transcript. But Logiudice just stood there, hands on hips, looking at his shoes, faintly shaking his head.

After a moment he collected himself. He folded his arms and took a deep breath. Back to it. Lure, trap, fuck.

He raised his eyes to me and saw-what? A criminal? A victim? In any event, a disappointment. I rather doubt he had the sense to see the truth: that there are wounds worse than fatal, which the law’s little binary distinctions-guilty/innocent, criminal/victim-cannot fathom, let alone fix. The law is a hammer, not a scalpel.

Mr. Logiudice: You understand this grand jury is investigating your wife, Laurie Barber?