Guilt

'I hope you're wrong,' he said.

'Why?'

'Cause if you're right, it's only a matter of time before she's next.'

In the defense room, when the door closed behind them, Christina hung the coat of her suit over a folding chair and walked to her window as she always did. The winter night was closing in, and over the Hall across the street, Christmas lights were coming on in some of the downtown towers.

Now Mark spoke quietly. 'You're thinking I might have done it after all, aren't you?'

Still facing the night, she was silent. He slid off the desk and she felt him begin to come up behind her before she saw his reflection in the window. 'Please,' she said, 'don't.'

He stopped. 'I have no explanation for the blood, Christina. I don't know anything about it.' A pause. 'We joked about it at lunch, about it being Wes's finest hour, but in fact what he said was the truth. The problem with being innocent is you don't know what happened.'

'Yes. I've heard that a couple of times now. It's got a nice rhythm to it, as though it's a universal law, as though it's got to be true.'

'It is true.'

Crossing her hands over her chest, she barely trusted herself to breathe. Mark stood behind her. 'Christina, we've known about this blood all along. You've known about it.'

Finally, she turned around. 'All right, I've known about it, Mark. It's been there all along, no doubt. I guess I just figured there had to be some explanation, and eventually it would come out. Well, eventually just happened and nothing came out.'

He just looked at her.

'What I'd like to know is how a vial of blood from your doctor's office came to find its way into your wife's bed.'

'I don't know.'

'You don't know?' With an edge of despair.

'Don't you think I wish I knew? Wouldn't it be great if I could make something up, something you'd believe, that we could tell the jury?'

She didn't trust herself to answer, to say anything. The silence roared around her.

'I'm going to say a few things, Christina.' His voice, when it finally came, was strangely beaten down. She didn't remember ever hearing that tone before. 'I know you'll probably have thought of most of them, but I'm going to go over them again, then we'll see where we are.'

He was sitting now, behind her. She hadn't noticed when he'd moved. She held herself, cold, wrapped in her own arms.

'The first question,' he began. 'How the vial from my doctor's office got in Sheila's bed. Well, listen, how do we know that happened? How do we even know blood is missing? How do we know that, if it is, it ended up at the scene?'

She whirled. 'Don't patronize me, Mark.'

He shook his head. 'You think that's it? You think I'm condescending to you? That's the last thing I'd do, Christina.'

She waited, arms crossed.

'I'll tell you what we don't know, and the first thing is that we don't know any blood is missing. How do we know some lab technician at Harris's didn't just drop a test tube and not want to admit it? Maybe he's done it before and if it happens again, he's fired. Maybe Mr Banderas's blood is still sitting at the lab with the wrong label on it.'

He held up a hand, his voice low. 'I'm not saying it is, Christina. I don't have a clue what is anymore, but let's go on down with what else could have happened, okay? Look at what they say they have – a vial of A-positive blood. They don't know it's Banderas. They didn't run DNA, for Christ sake, did they?

'Why isn't it just as likely that the police lab here made a mistake? Did you see that guy Drumm? This is the guy whose testimony's gonna put me away? I don't think so.'

'Maybe there was some of this EDTA left on the last slide they looked at. Maybe the guy who killed Sheila had A-positive blood and bled all over the place and the lab screwed it up. Are you saying people don't make mistakes on blood tests? And if they did that to begin with, you think they'll admit it now?'

She was leaning now, half sitting against the window sill.

'So what's easier to believe? That the guy who killed my wife got hold of a vial of A-positive blood and poured it all over the room? Or that the killer just bled?'

'And why -I don't really get this part at all – why in the world would I -assuming I did all this – why would I dream up this blood idea at all? What does it accomplish? You've known me now for almost a year. Am I a moron? If I'm trying to make it look like somebody else did it, why do I use my own knife, why do I leave my fingerprints all over it?'

At last he ventured a step towards her. 'All right,' he said levelly. 'I'll admit at this point it's a matter of faith. You can't know. But why do you assume that everybody else has done their job, that nobody made a mistake, that everybody is telling the truth except me?'

She raised her eyes. 'I don't assume that, Mark. I'm trying. I'm listening.'

His shoulders slumped. His face, for the very first time, looked old to her. Diminished. This was not arrogance, she was sure, but nakedness. She was looking into the core of him.

'I didn't do this,' he whispered. He was not even pleading, which would have made him suspect. 'I swear to you. I don't know what happened.'

When the doorbell rang, Wes assumed it was the pizza delivery and buzzed the downstairs entrance. Opening his door, he stepped out into the hallway to wait. Bart came up around him, sniffed, and walked to the head of the steps, where his tail began to wag and he started making little whimpering noises.

'Bart!' Farrell moved forward, raising his voice. Delivery people got nervous around big dogs. 'It's okay,' he called out, 'he's friendly. He won't bite.'

The dog started down the steps, which he'd been trained against. 'Bart!'

'It's okay. He's missed me.' Sam stopped where she stood, three steps from the top, one hand absently petting Bart. The other hand clutched a leather satchel which hung over her shoulder. 'Hi,' she said.

'Hi.' His gut went hollow.

She was wearing a green jacket with the hood still up, hair tucked into it. Jeans and hiking boots. Her face was half-hidden, unreadable, looking up at him, and then she was fumbling with the satchel.

'I wanted to bring you something.'

'We shouldn't be talking, Sam.'

'I'm not here to talk.' She pulled a red accordion file out of the satchel. 'You need to see something.'

He knew what he needed to see. He needed to see her. To have things be back the way they'd started. But that couldn't happen. They'd come to here, and he was in the middle of a trial and she was with the enemy. He couldn't forget that, or he would lose.

'I'm pretty busy right now. I don't have time to read anything else. I've got about all I can handle, unless your friend Diane's changing her story.'

Holding the file against her, she threw back the jacket's hood. Her eyes glistened with rage or regret. 'Wes, please?'

'Please what?'

'This is important. This is critical. Not just for the trial. For you.'

But she didn't move, and neither did he. Finally, she nodded, gave Bart another pat, lay the folder down on the steps, and turned. When she got to the door, she didn't pause – as he thought she might. He would have a chance then to call out, to see if… but there was no hesitation at all.

The door closed behind her.

His intention was to leave it on the stairs. But he didn't do that.

Then, once it was inside, he decided he would just throw the damn thing in the trash, but he didn't.

He'd read all of the newspaper and magazine articles about Diane Price, and he'd about had it up to his earlobes with them. Clearly, the woman was some kind of publicity hound who'd struck gold with the touching story of the brutal rape that had cut short her promising future and forced her to a life of drugs and promiscuity.