"See"-Farrell, rubbing his new bruise, turned to Gina-"it's sad. He still believes it."

"It's easy to believe things if they're true," Hardy shot back.

"I'm just saying, Gina, don't get your hopes up."

"No, you wouldn't want to do that. You wouldn't want to believe anything good was ever going to happen."

"Okay, then," Wes said, "as long as that concept is clear." He looked down at his dog. "C'mon, Gert, she's going to be all right. It's time for us to go home."

Dismas Hardy stood in the doorway for another moment and made sure that Wes and his dog had gone up the stairs, then he stepped inside the Solarium and closed the door behind him. "So how's it looking?"

"Bad enough." Gina flashed him a weary, hopeful, evanescent smile. "Then this new discovery I got an hour ago." Discovery was, of course, supposed to be all of the evidence that the prosecution had collected in a case-police reports, witness testimony, forensic and medical records, photographs, everything. Gina had gotten the first box of these records from Gerry Abrams' office within two days of Stuart's arrest. The rest of it-further transcripts with witnesses, more police write-ups, whatever came in-tended to arrive in dribs and drabs. "If I didn't keep getting ugly surprises, I'd be happier."

Hardy pulled up a chair next to her. "Like what?"

She grabbed at a manila folder and passed it across to him. As he turned over the photographs contained in it, she explained their significance. "Juhle went up to Stuart's mountain retreat at Echo Lake with a warrant last week. He thought he might find some evidence of deliberation or premeditation. I'm thinking he hit the mother lode."

Hardy turned the picture over. "What happened here? It looks a hurricane hit the place."

"Either that or some guy named Stuart."

"You didn't know about this? He never mentioned it?"

"It's never come up."

Hardy was flipping through the folder, his second time through. "This is the wife, I presume." He held up a close-up of a smiling woman in a frame behind a web of shattered glass. Another picture showed a table and chairs knocked over or lifted up on their sides, lying in a scattering of broken plates, bowls and other glassware; in another, the mattress was halfway off the bed, its stuffing coming out. "Well," Hardy held up the bed picture, "at least now you know why he couldn't sleep. I couldn't get comfortable with the bed like this either." Then, seriously, he asked, "Have you talked to him about this yet?"

"No. I just got it this afternoon after I'd spent half the day with him. And oh, did I mention my charming half hour with Clarence this morning too?"

Thinking it might be better news, Hardy took the bait. "How'd that go?"

"I can't decide which part was worse, my ethical failings or my incompetence." She gathered the folder of pictures back to her, then sighed deeply. "He was as mad at me as I've ever seen him, Diz. It was bad, maybe irreparable."

"I doubt that," Hardy said. "He's eaten me for breakfast a few times and we're still pals. He'll get over it if you will."

Gina nodded, the picture of glumness. "Let me ask you something, Diz. You're up on this case, right?"

A shrug. "Just what's in the news."

"What's it look like to you? Honestly."

Hardy killed a second or two admiring the ferns, then came back to Gina with a somber look. "I might be wrong," he said, "but since your Px"-a preliminary hearing-"has a probable-cause standard of proof, which is a long long way from a reasonable-doubt standard, bottom line, the judge holds him to answer." This was legalese, telling Gina that she was going to lose tomorrow and her client was going to have to go to a full trial. "Of course, that's assuming I'm a reasonable mind, which is not a slam-dunk assumption. But if you'll grant me that, then you've got a reasonable mind with a strong suspicion that a crime has been committed and that your client committed it. And that's what the statute mandates." "Even without any physical evidence?"

Hardy's brow went dark. "What are you talking about? They got physical evidence up the wazoo. An autopsy. Probably a murder weapon. Pictures of a torn-up cabin, plus a strong motive, an eyewitness, prior domestic violence, a bunch of lies your client told, and- oh wait, before I forget-he grabbed a gun and took off before the police could get him in jail. Did I leave out anything? Of course he did send his daughter to threaten a witness too, but maybe that was her idea. Your client's going to trial, Gina. You better get used to it." Hardy gave her a shrug. "You asked me." On a less confrontational note, he added, "You got anybody else to point at?"

Gina shook her head no. "Wyatt's talked to Caryn's business partner, whose life got way better when Caryn died. Plus, he had an affair with her a while ago. His alibi is weak too. But we can't put him at the scene. He even provided fingerprints to Wyatt-voluntarily- and no match. Beyond that, there's nobody else close except maybe this guy who sent Stuart a couple of threatening e-mails. His car is what's killing us; the neighbor girl seeing it."

Hardy reflexively corrected her. "You mean saying she saw it."

"I didn't say that? I thought I did."

"No, what you said was, 'The neighbor girl seeing it.' And not to beat on you when you're down, that's the kind of slip that'll kill you."

"You're right. You are so right." Gina's face went blank, her voice hollow. "You know," she began, "Stuart wanted to fire me this morning.

I talked him out of it. I'm thinking now that maybe that was a mistake, that I'm not ready for this."

"Everybody feels that way, Gina. It's performance time. You'll rise to it like you have before a hundred times."

"But never in a murder case."

Hardy embodied nonchalance. "Same rules, same procedures, same people in the courtroom. You'll get your sea legs and be fine. But let me ask you one."

Sighing again, she nodded. "All right. Shoot."

"You believe your man didn't do it, right? He's factually innocent. And forget about Wes. You don't have to explain why to me, if it's good enough for you."

"Okay. Yes. He's innocent."

"So use that. If he's innocent, what really happened? What's your theory on the case?"

Gina pursed her lips, looked into the middle distance. "She was expecting somebody. He came and they had a disagreement about something important. No, more than important-life-altering. Somehow she was going to ruin this guy's life. So he had to kill her."

Hardy contemplated that for a moment. "So she was having an affair?"

"Yes."

"Definitely?"

A beat, then, "Yes."

"Okay, then, there's your case. So here's ten cents of free advice: Prove it."

It was still dark out when Gina heard her morning Chronicle hit her front door and, since she wasn't sleeping anyway, reached out in her pajamas and brought it in. The end of the balmy spell, prefigured for the past several days by increasing winds and scudding cloud cover, was now reality enough that the paper was wrapped in plastic to keep it dry, and although the actual rain hadn't begun to fall, clearly it was going to be wet and cold.

Gina had stayed at the office with her discovery folders until nearly nine o'clock, then packed them up in her lawyer's briefcase. Thinking it might bring her luck and wondering all the while at the same time if it was a good idea, she had taken a taxi to the Rue Char-maine, the restaurant directly under David Freeman's old apartment on Mason, one block straight downhill from the Mark Hopkins Hotel that had been their favorite. Rick came out of the kitchen and showered her with attention. Then, in a custom long-established by David, Rick first determined what wine she'd be drinking-in this