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Of all the luck. There were nine judges in Milton County Superior Court, and we ended up with the one judge who had a personal stake in the matter. And the way she glared at me from the bench, she acted like the entire case was my fault.

One bizarre ruling followed another, and I seemed to be the only one in the courtroom who noticed. Tate would object, and the judge would sustain the objection automatically. If I tried to object, she told me to sit down. Masterson, sitting next to me, was too busy jotting notes for his cross-examination of Caleb Tate to pay it any mind.

And then it dawned on me. I had been so focused on my dad’s results in front of Judge Snowden that I had never checked on Tate’s. What if Tate had wised up after the Antoine Marshall trial? What if he had started paying off Snowden like the other defense lawyers? Or started blackmailing her, or whatever it was my dad had been doing?

It suddenly made sense—the rulings against me, Tate being allowed to strut around the courtroom and say whatever he wanted. I now knew how Tate must have felt all those years ago trying to defend Antoine Marshall and fighting the judge as well.

Things turned truly bizarre when Tate took the stand and Masterson said he had no questions. I stood and objected. I had questions myself! But Masterson was pulling on my elbow, and Snowden was yelling at me to sit down, over and over, her shrill voice drowning out my questions.

Tate started laughing, a truly heinous laugh, taunting me, mocking justice.

And then, when I had reached the breaking point, the alarm broke through. I sat straight up, my heart pounding. I reached over to the nightstand, found my BlackBerry, and turned it off. I struggled to get my bearings.

Relief and dread flooded me at once. Relief that it was all a dream. Dread because part of it could still become reality. We wouldn’t know the judge for our case until Monday morning. And we had a one-in-nine chance of drawing Snowden.

Masterson and I had talked about it at length. If we drew Snowden, we would request a meeting with her and Tate in chambers to tell her about Tate’s anticipated cross-examination of Rivera. Snowden would probably be furious, but we guessed that she would ultimately recuse herself. In the process, Masterson’s investigation of the judge would have lost the element of surprise.

Sitting in my bed, I forced myself to calm down. Justice, lying on the floor, made a sleep noise, a dog grunt that told me to go back to sleep.

Not on your life. I was exhausted, but I got up anyway. Going through the day bone-tired was better than facing the nightmares.

By Thursday night I realized that if I couldn’t stop the anxiety attacks, I would be of no use at trial. As usual, Aaron Gillespie agreed to juggle his schedule so he could see me.

For nearly an hour, I unloaded all of my concerns. We hadn’t been able to prove any affairs by Tate. Our only witness tying him to the drugs was probably lying. The issues about my dad and Judge Snowden. My own role in the execution of Antoine Marshall. The loneliness I felt. The guilt.

Gillespie listened patiently and reminded me that I was under a tremendous amount of pressure. He said I had never properly mourned my dad and that it was catching up with me. “But considering the circumstances, I actually think you’re handling things quite well,” he said.

It helped to hear his calm reassurance. And he had some thoughts about managing the trial pressures as well.

“Have you ever heard about Advanced Performance Imagery?” Gillespie asked.

“I’ve heard of it.”

I had once been an elite kayaker, finishing fourth in the Olympic trials. I knew several of my competitors used API as a sort of “mental steroid” to enhance their performance.

“It’s the company that’s trained a lot of professional and Olympic athletes,” Gillespie said. “I guess you never worked with them.”

“No. I had enough self-confidence on my own.”

I thought groups like API were for athletes with inferior willpower who freaked out during intense competition. The whole idea smacked of Eastern religion and hypnosis to me. I never needed any of that. Or at least I didn’t think I did.

For the next few minutes, Gillespie talked to me about the idea behind what he called “neurolinguistic programming.”

“What you practice in your mind, you perfect in reality.” He explained how numerous athletes had trained their minds for success through visualization. Mary Lou Retton had employed a hypnotherapist named Gil Boyne prior to her 1984 gold-medal performance. Mark McGwire used visualization techniques—along with some less benign assistance—to set the home-run record in 1998. Gillespie ticked off a list of other famous athletes and coaches who used similar approaches to find “the zone.” He had worked with several athletes himself.

“I know you’re going to hate this,” he said, “but I want you to try something.”

He asked me to lie down on the couch and close my eyes. “You’ve been envisioning every bad thing that’s going to happen next week,” he explained. “I want to teach you a few relaxation techniques and then help you reprocess this trial in your mind.”

The whole thing felt a little weird, but I was willing to give it a try. He had me concentrate on my breathing and took me through a protocol of relaxing each muscle in my body, one at a time. He had me picture various parts of the trial—my opening statement, the examination of witnesses, handling Caleb Tate’s antics. I imagined the jury handing the verdict slip to the judge. Deep breaths. Slow. Keep the pulse under control. Purposefully focus on each muscle. Relax.

“Control, Jamie. It’s all about control.”

I envisioned a guilty verdict, and despite my skepticism, I had to admit that this was the most relaxed I had felt all week. I left Gillespie’s office glad that I had taken the time to meet with him. I had almost talked myself out of it. But now, I at least had some tools for when the anxiety hit the hardest.

I used them on Friday at 3 p.m. when we found out who the trial judge was. It wasn’t Snowden, but it was nearly as bad.

“Your old buddy Harold Brown,” Regina Granger told me. The judge who had held me in contempt. One of the clerks had given Regina a heads-up. “Let’s try to keep it civil,” Regina said.

Deep breaths, I told myself. And think positive.