More Twisted

please.”
    “Yes.”
    “And did you deliver this check in person?”
    “I don’t remember,” he said weakly.
    “After you left work, you didn’t drive to Gilroy and, during the course of your . . . visit, give Ms. Henstroth a check for five hundred dollars?”
    “I might have.”
    “Have you written her other checks over the past several years?”
    “Yes.” Whispered.
    “Louder, please, sir?”
    “Yes.”
    “And did you give these other checks to Ms. Henstroth in person?”
    “Some of them. Most of them.”
    “So it’s reasonable to assume that the check you wrote on June third was delivered in person too.”
    “I said I might have,” he muttered.
    “These checks that you wrote to your ‘friend’ over the past few years were on your company account, not your joint home account, correct?”
    “Yes.”
    “So is it safe to assume that your wife would not be receiving the statement from the bank showing that you’d written these checks? Is that correct too?”
    “Yes.” The witness’s shoulders dipped. A slight gesture, but Lescroix was sure a number of the jurors saw it.
    They all saw the prosecutor toss his pencil onto the table in disgust. He whispered something to his sheepish assistant, who nodded even more sheepishly.
    “What was this money for?”
    “I . . . don’t remember.”
    Perfect. Better to let the evasive answer stand than to push it and have Cabot come up with a credible lie.
    “I see. Did you tell your wife you were going to see Ms. Henstroth that afternoon?”
    “I . . . no, I didn’t.”
    “I don’t suppose you would,” Lescroix muttered, eyes on the rapt jury; they loved this new movement of his symphony.
    “Your Honor,” the prosecutor snapped.
    “Withdrawn,” Lescroix said. He lifted a wrinkled pieceof paper from the file; it contained several handwritten paragraphs and looked like a letter, though it was in fact an early draft of a speech Lescroix had given to the American Association of Trial Lawyers last year. He read the first paragraph slowly, shaking his head. Even the prosecutors seemed to be straining forward, waiting. Then he replaced the letter and looked up. “Isn’t your relationship with Ms. Henstroth romantic in nature, sir?” he asked bluntly.
    Cabot tried to look indignant. He sputtered, “I resent—”
    “Oh, please, Mr. Cabot. You have the gall to accuse an innocent man of murder and you resent that I ask you a few questions about your mistress?”
    “Objection!”
    “Withdrawn, Your Honor.”
    Lescroix shook his head and glanced at the jury, asking, What kind of monster are we dealing with here? Lescroix paced as he flipped to the last page of the file. He read for a moment, shook his head, then threw the papers onto the defense table with a huge slap. He whirled to Cabot and shouted, “Isn’t it true you’ve been having an affair with Mary Henstroth for the past several years?”
    “No!”
    “Isn’t it true that you were afraid if you divorced your wife you’d lose control of the company she and her father owned fifty-one percent of?”
    “That’s a lie!” Cabot shouted.
    “Isn’t it true that on June third of this year you left work early, stopped by Mary Henstroth’s house in Gilroy,had sex with her, then proceeded to your house where you lay in wait for your wife with a hammer in your hand? That hammer there, People’s Exhibit A?”
    “No, no, no!”
    “And then you beat her to death. You returned to your car and waited until Jerry Pilsett showed up, just like you’d asked him to do. And when he arrived you took off your glasses to look at your cell phone and called the police to report him—an innocent man—as the murderer?”
    “No, that’s not true! It’s ridiculous!”
    “Objection!”
    “Isn’t it true?” Lescroix cried, “that you killed Patricia, your loving wife, in cold blood?”
    “No!”
    “Sustained! Mr. Lescroix, enough of this. I won’t have these theatrics in my courtroom.”
    But the lawyer would not be deflected by a mule-county judge. His energy was unstoppable, fueled by the murmurs and gasps from the spectators, and his outraged voice soared to the far reaches of the courtroom, reciting, “Isn’t it true, isn’t it true, isn’t it true?”
    His audience in the jury box sat forward as if they wanted to leap from their chairs and give the conductor a standing ovation, and Charles Cabot’s horrified eyes, dots of steely anger no more, scanned the courtroom in panic.