68

I felt myself spinning out of control the week before the biggest trial of my life. Like any young lawyer, I always got nervous before an important case. But this was different. I was so jittery I could hardly concentrate or get anything done.

Part of it was my certainty that Tate would figure out a way to inject the information about Judge Snowden and my father into the case. Even if he didn’t take the stand and testify, he would leak it to the press. He would also let them know that he had shared the information with me nearly three months ago and I had been sitting on it even when Antoine Marshall was executed. Tate would figure out a way to turn the tables so he wouldn’t be the only one on trial. I would join him. And so would my dad.

There were times during the week when I thought about the trial, imagined all the terrible things that could happen, and felt my heart start racing, my breathing becoming short and shallow. I checked my pulse and a few times found my heart beating over 150 times per minute. When it happened at work, I closed my office door and sat at my desk, eyes closed, forcing myself to calm down. At home, I would pace back and forth or lie down on the bed until I relaxed enough to think straight.

I took Lunexor at night and muscle relaxers during the day. I told myself that these anxieties were no different from the nervousness an athlete experiences before a big game. Once the trial started, I would be all right.

But I had been an athlete, and I had never experienced anything like this. At times I honestly thought I was losing my mind.

It got worse when LA and I prepared Rivera for his testimony via Skype. Not surprisingly, the man came across as surly and defensive. “He’s lying,” LA said as soon as we hung up.

I had my own suspicions, but I was hoping we were both wrong. “How could you tell?”

LA looked at me for a moment as if trying to weigh whether he should further destroy my confidence.

“Tell me,” I insisted.

He shrugged. “You asked.”

We had been using his computer for Skype, and I didn’t realize he’d had a software program recording the video. For the next thirty minutes, he played back portions of Rivera’s testimony. He pointed out microexpressions that had flashed across Rivera’s face. He showed me a graph of pacing and voice pitch that his software program had computed. Rivera’s word flow slowed and his pitch changed when he answered questions about providing drugs to Caleb Tate.

“The most reliable signals of deception come from the cognitive efforts and emotions that surround a lie. It takes more mental horsepower to construct a lie than to remember the truth,” LA explained. “As a result, our pace and pitch change in ways that are usually imperceptible to the naked ear. But a computer program can pick it up.”

The most fascinating clues were the nonverbal signals Rivera gave off. LA called it “duping delight”—the joy a sociopath takes in deception. “Look at that—did you see that sinister little smile flash across his face?”

He was right. It wasn’t something I had noticed in real time, but I could see it when LA ran the tape in slow motion. “He’s playing us,” LA said. “Caleb Tate may be guilty. But this guy is lying through his teeth.”

The whole experience created more anxiety for me. I couldn’t prove Rivera was lying, but I knew in my gut that LA was right. And so Jamie Brock, the by-the-book prosecutor, the woman who valued integrity and justice above all else, the same woman who had recently withheld information from Mace James, was getting ready to put a lying witness on the stand in a high-profile murder case.

But how could we win the case without him?