"No."
"You said several bailiffs immediately jumped on her. Did you have to fight Mrs. Frost for the gun?"
"No."
"And she didn't struggle with any of you when you tried to subdue her?"
"She was trying to see around us. She kept asking if he was dead."
Fisher dismisses this with a shrug. "But she wasn't trying to get away from you. She wasn't trying to hurt you."
"Oh, no."
Fisher lets that answer hang for a moment. "You knew Mrs. Frost before this, didn't you, Mr. Ianucci?"
"Sure."
"What was your relationship with her like?"
Bobby glances at me; then his eyes skitter away. "Well, she's a DA. She comes in all the time." He pauses, then adds. "She's one of the nice ones."
"Had you ever considered her to be violent before?"
"No."
"In fact, on that morning, she seemed nothing like the Nina Frost you knew, isn't that right?"
"Well, you know, she looked the same."
"But her actions, Mr. Ianucci . . . had you ever seen Mrs. Frost act like this before?"
The bailiff shakes his head. "I never saw her shoot nobody, if that's what you mean."
"It is," Fisher says, sitting down. "Nothing further."
That afternoon when court is adjourned, I don't go directly home. Risking an extra fifteen minutes'
grace before my electronic bracelet is reactivated, I drive to St. Anne's and enter the church where this all began.
The nave is open to the public, although I don't think they've found a replacement chaplain yet. Inside, it's dark. My shoes strike the tile, announce my presence.
To my right is a table where white votives burn in tiers. Taking a stick, I light one for Glen Szyszynski.
I light a second one for Arthur Gwynne.
Then I slip into a pew and get down on the kneeler. "Hail Mary, full of grace," I whisper, praying to a woman who stood by her son, too.
The lights in the motel room go out at eight, Nathaniel's bedtime. Beside his son, on a matching twin bed, Caleb lies with his hands folded behind his head, waiting for Nathaniel to fall asleep. Then, sometimes, Caleb will watch TV. Turn on one lamp and read the day's paper.
Today he wants to do neither. He is in no mood to hear local pundits guessing Nina's fate based on the first day of testimony. Hell, he doesn't want to guess, himself.
One thing is clear: The woman all those witnesses saw; the woman on that videotape-she isn't the woman Caleb married. And when your wife is not the same person you fell in love with eight years ago, where exactly does that leave you? Do you try to get to know who she has become, and hope for the best? Or do you keep deceiving yourself in the hope that she might wake up one morning and have gone back to the woman she used to be?
Maybe, Caleb thinks with a small shock, he isn't the same person he once was, either.
That brings him directly to the topic he didn't want to remember, especially not now in the dark with nothing to distract him. This afternoon, when Patrick had come to the conference room to bring them the news of Gwynne's death . . . well, Caleb must be reading into things. After all, Nina and Patrick have known each other a lifetime. And although the guy is something of an albatross, his relationship with Nina has never really bothered Caleb, because when push came to shove he was the one sleeping with Nina every night.
But Caleb has not been sleeping with Nina.
