The weight of regard should have driven Crandall to his knees, but he remained upright, rigid, hands clenched at his sides, locked in furious eyefuck with Pratt.

“We’ll take a break,” Secrist said evenly.

Neither Crandall or Pratt moved or broke his stare. As the jury filed out, Pratt did not rise, and Crandall did not turn to pay his respects.

One of the jurors apparently could not believe what she had just witnessed. As she and her colleagues filed out, she shook her head, disgust on her face.

“Counsel, I’d like to see you in my office,” Secrist said when the jury was gone.

Secrist stood, unzipped his robe, and nearly leaped from the bench, robe in full billow. At the door, he pulled up short and turned back toward

Crandall and Pratt.

“Mr. Crandall,” he said. “Now would be the best time.”

After another long moment, Crandall blinked and turned on his heel toward the door at the bench. Wood took for himself the role of Crandall’s second. Still standing from the jury’s departure, he applied his best reptile eyes to Pratt, but Pratt would not look back. He shook his head twice, once with a jerk as though to clear it and a second time slowly.

Pratt’s grin was a facsimile of expression, something empty and dark. When Pratt lifted his eyes, they met the Defendant’s. The grin disappeared altogether. No one I talked to later could remember that happening before.

And still we held our breath.

Every juror filed back in looking at Crandall, who ignored them. He said simply he was “finished” with the witness. I was not the only one who thought it a revealing choice of words. Seeing the jurors’ surprise settle into flat stares and pursed lips directed at Crandall, Reardon knew enough to excuse Pratt.

Secrist looked at both lawyers before turning to Reardon.

“I will entertain a motion now, Mr. Reardon.”

Reardon stood. He considered Crandall, who reclined in his chair, legs crossed, eyebrows raised, baiting Reardon with casual curiosity. Reardon considered the jurors, who looked puzzled. They, too, were more than a little curious about what had gone on in Secrist’s chambers while they out.

Still looking at the jurors, Reardon nodded once to himself. “Thank you, Judge,” Reardon said, turning back to Secrist. “I have none. The defense rests.”

Crandall immediately asked for the next day and the weekend to decide whether there would be rebuttal witnesses and, if not, to prepare for closing argument. Reardon said the State had had his witness list for weeks, if not months, and could have decided about rebuttal witnesses long ago. The defense was ready to take this case to the jury.

For nearly two weeks, Secrist’s expressions and demeanor had given away little about what he believed or felt about the case other than a desire to see it through fairly and efficiently. Now, he listened to the argument with a wan face propped on his upraised fist.

Without taking his face off his fist, he twisted around to search each juror’s face. More than a few were haggard.

Secrist turned his gaze back on the Defendant and let his eyes linger. The Defendant returned the judge’s gaze over a satisfied smile.

Secrist broke the stare and looked at Crandall in a way that made me think he wanted to ask the prosecutor something, but he did not. Instead, he dropped the arm he’d been using as a prop to his side, shook the sleeve of his robe back over that bare arm, and cleared his throat.

“Jurors, you know your oath,” he said. “We’ll see you back here Monday. Nine sharp.”

As one, we exhaled, so grateful for respite.

As soon as the bailiff escorted the jury out and Secrist stepped down, the clans bolted toward the rail to get quotes from Crandall and Reardon. Just what was the deal with Crandall and Pratt? What was Secrist talking about when he invited Reardon to offer a motion?

I hung back. There would be no answer to those questions that day. As to the deal, Pratt was long gone, having slipped out the side door, and Crandall would never say, at least not in that setting. As to a motion, neither Secrist or Reardon would not talk about it, then or later.

Behind the scrum at the rail, Moze was hooking up the Defendant. Legs had a hand on Moze’s arm and therefore his attention. My bet was Moze thought she smelled as good as she looked.

She pointed to Reardon, then to the Defendant, then to the door through which they usually removed him from the courtroom. She seemed to think that after Pratt’s performance the cops were no longer concerned with the Defendant’s security.

I backed away from my dickering colleagues and slipped into the side room with the private, spiral staircase that ran down to the clerk’s office. I blew a kiss to the ladies there, grabbed a tough, leftover donut from the box I delivered to them each day of the trial, and made my way out to the side of the courthouse that had the basement entrance to the public men’s room.

I knew I had guessed right when I found a herd of cops around that side; they were bringing him out through the head. Wood saw me coming and held up a hand for me to stop. To show him I was armed only with good faith, I removed my jacket and dropped it to the ground. I put my hands to the back of my head and gracefully turned once on tiptoe like a music-box ballerina. Wood rolled his eyes and let me approach.

Legs and the Defendant emerged about some minutes later. The Defendant was pointing and gesturing at Legs from the waist, where his hands were cuffed and chained. The cops separated them and encircled the Defendant. Once one of the cops removed his glasses and pushed his head down, they began shuffling toward the car waiting for him at the end of the walk.

I put to my face the camera I still had from Lottie’s day on the stand and shouted: “Legs. Hey, Legs. How come your boy didn’t have the balls to testify for himself?”

I won a prize for best spot news photo that year. Of all people, me. Real shooters all over the state were pissed, exceptionally pissed, but once again, I had little to do with it. It was the subject of the photo and pure dumb look.

I did not think silver halide could capture a look of human malevolence so pure it made readers call Marley for a week after we published. The face framed between the shoulders of two cops as the Defendant twisted away from their grasp and back toward me awoke sweating adults from sound sleep and made their children cry, so Marley said, hyperbolically no doubt but not without a trace of pride.

I had tripped the shutter on reflex and instinct, without seeing. I did not know what I had until our shooter processed the film, tossed a souvenir print at me, and stalked off. The glossy sheet shimmered in the fluorescent light, still fresh with the fixer’s sour stench.

But that’s not why I held it as far from my face as my arms would reach. Looking at his face, I regretted asking that damned question and not for the last time.