“Her, I dated,” Paul said.

Friday 9/19

DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL HAD BEEN THE ARRANGEMENT BETWEEN PAUL and Nina regarding other recent partners. Even the fact that there was an arrangement had been a don’t tell. In truth, they had never talked about it.

Nina admitted to herself now that she had been cowardly. She herself had nothing to tell that he didn’t already know, and she wasn’t certain how she would react to finding out about Paul’s other lovers. She hadn’t asked him for any details, had taken the news the night before with admirable lawyerly equanimity.

Then at four A.M. she woke up worrying, not about Stefan or Klaus or Bob, but about Paul, thinking, I shouldn’t have moved out of his condo like that, on such short notice, without dealing with the implications first. I could have talked Paul into moving somewhere bigger, where he could have his office and space. Bob could be at the far end of the house with the space apart from us that he needs, too. I should have resolved the marriage issue right away, when Paul asked.

She knew the ostensible reason they had moved here. Aunt Helen’s house, Nina’s house now, had been available, and she hadn’t had much time. But she had lurched gracelessly away from Paul, and she wouldn’t be surprised if he held it against her, even if only unconsciously.

Putting the ostensible reason aside, why had she moved so swiftly?

After half an hour of lying in the dark with thoughts stomping heavily through her mind, she gave up and turned on the bed stand light. Her window was open and she could hear the distant bark of seals. The fog moved around in the room with her, like a living presence. In the little room down the hall, Bob muttered restlessly in his sleep.

Paul should give up on me, she thought with a sudden conviction, experiencing an awful mix of fear, insecurity, and loneliness.

After a year of seeing no one but Paul, and years before of seeing him nonexclusively, she should know what to do, but she felt as if she were balanced in the center of the seesaw, unable to move. Either direction, and she would land with a nasty thud.

They had such differences between them, and those differences could be fatal. She flashed to unhappy pictures of Paul in her mind: Paul cleaning his guns; Paul describing various acts of violence he had committed; Paul drunk one night when she had needed him; Paul telling her what to do, trying to push her around, resenting her for being the lawyer employing him as investigator, second-guessing her, not respecting her opinions.

But then: Paul making love to her so sweetly a few nights before. And: Paul’s smarts, Paul’s jokes, Paul’s charm, his devotion over the past years, even when she had been married to another man.

And the moment that had defined their relationship forever: Paul lying in wait outside her house one night, waiting for a killer to arrive and try to break in; Paul killing for her, burying the body God knew where. No one except Bob had any inkling of it. They never talked about it. “I took out the trash,” Paul had once told her, and she-she had thanked him.

She loved so much about him, and she believed he loved her. He thought he had proved he would do anything for her, but she could never bridge the distance that the killing had opened between them. He had fearsome qualities that scared her. Ultimately, she did not trust him completely.

I love him, she thought as she had so many times before. I can’t do without him. But…

She gave up and wandered into the living room. From outside, a streetlight spilled a soft glow over the old couch. She had loaned her cabin at Tahoe to a woman in trouble who had three kids, who now sat on the new brown couch she had bought, used the plates from Mikasa she and Bob had picked out. Another woman lawyer now sat in the Starlake Building office with the orange client chairs Nina had bought at Ric’s in Reno one snowy day…

What am I doing here? she asked herself. Three hundred miles from Tahoe, where her home and her work were, she existed in a time warp, working for her boss from years ago, Bob not happy.

She answered her own question. She was here for herself and Paul.

Paul, who had told her just a few hours before, “You weren’t available at the time, and Susan is an old friend, so we got together a few times. That’s all.” She had heard the small resentment in his voice, as if it were her fault he’d had to find another lover to fill in the space.

Due to other matters Judge Salas had to take up, court resumed at eleven on Friday morning and was scheduled to run only through twelve, then from one-thirty to three. Nina wore her black suit with the white silk blouse with cuffs. After some hesitation she had also sprayed on some ancient Chanel No. 5 of Aunt Helen’s she found hidden at the back of the bathroom cupboard. Two ibuprofen, Rice Krispies, and orange juice sloshed against each other in her stomach.

As usual, all the seats had been taken. Madeleine Frey had brought a cushion for her leg today, and Larry Santa Ana was talking across her to another male juror, who listened attentively. He was a schmoozer, and Nina didn’t like networking jurors. Silently, selfishly, she prayed for Ms. Frey’s leg to feel better fast, and for Larry to take a header. The two young women she had managed to get on the jury seemed relatively indifferent to Stefan’s charm. His perpetually wringing hands and sagging face went beyond the cute-puppy effect, straying into mangy-dog territory, which didn’t help his cause with them.

Today, trying to follow Klaus’s advice about giving a straight-backed, upstanding-citizen impression, Stefan wore another new suit with squarer shoulders.

Jaime had the staunch posture and sanguine smile of a prosecutor who hasn’t been touched yet. Nina wanted to wipe that grin off his face very soon, yet there was little she could do at this phase of the trial, because the police witnesses in general were competent people who had done their job and weren’t playing games. Kelsey Banta slouched in her seat next to him, as relaxed as if she were watching TV, the hard work over for her.

Paul sat in the audience behind them, a fence between her and the tough world out there. And Klaus, beside Nina and smelling like a rose, predominated over a court in some faraway universe, peacefully next to Stefan, speckled hands folded on the table, not a thought in his head, for all she could tell.

“Call Susan Misumi.” Heads craned. Dr. Misumi was brought in from the hall, where the witnesses had to wait, by the bailiff.

She was no raving beauty, Nina was relieved to see as she stepped into the witness box and sat down, placing her reports carefully in front of her. She wore the uniform of women professionals in California, a black suit jacket with a green, lace-tipped tank T-shirt showing a subtle bit of cleavage, expensive black slacks, and shoes with a slight lift to the heel. About Paul’s age, fortyish, reading glasses that dangled from an artistically beaded chain around her neck. She had classic Japanese skin, very pale and fine, bright eyes, and a face that tended toward the round. The feathery bangs probably cost a fortune to maintain.

A smart woman who took care of herself, great, but why would Paul be attracted to her? Nina couldn’t help remembering his comment about having dated her. In her mind, Paul’s type would be a blonde bimbo, lots of makeup-was this Paul’s type? This important lady answering Jaime’s questions in a measured voice, saying she had in fact gotten her medical degree at Johns Hopkins, received specialized training in forensic pathology at Stanford, and been appointed Assistant Chief Medical Examiner for the County of Monterey some four years before, couldn’t be Paul’s type. She spent her days cutting open dead people! She did have a nice voice, low and musical, though, and a beautiful mouth, with full cushiony lips.