September 15, Tuesday
DETECTIVE JACK Terry came back into the courtroom looking like a man who'd lost a fight with the last five weeks.
I recognized him immediately from his testimony in August—the broad shoulders, the way he carried himself.
But everything else about him had frayed at the edges.
His eyes had a grayish cast beneath them, the kind that no amount of coffee erases, and his shirt had the faint crumple of fabric that had been slept in, or not slept in at all.
His tie, a rich navy silk with a subtle geometric print, was knotted a half-inch off center, tugged loose at some point during the day and never quite reset.
I set my knitting in my lap and studied him while McDavid arranged her notes at the podium.
That tie didn't belong to a man who dressed himself in a hurry.
Somebody with an eye for these things had picked it out—his wife, probably, standing behind him in a bathroom mirror months ago, smoothing his collar before he left for a job that apparently ate mornings, evenings, and everything in between.
I wondered how many other cases were stacked on his desk right now, how many other courtrooms were waiting for their turn with him.
It struck me, watching him settle into the witness chair, how much had to line up for a single case like this one to move forward—detectives, forensic techs, an army of lawyers on both sides, court reporters, marshals, sixteen ordinary people pulled out of their ordinary lives and locked in a hotel for months.
An entire small city's worth of effort, funneled toward the question of one man's guilt.
Or innocence.
McDavid walked Terry through new ground this time—records recovered since his last appearance, a ballistics match connecting the gun used in Horatio Alvarez's murder to a separate firearm seized months later in an unrelated raid, one traced through serial number and chain of custody back to a supplier with known ties to the Blackthorne organization.
Terry answered in the same low, unhurried voice as before, laying out dates and evidence.
Then Bryan Stone rose for cross, buttoning his jacket with theatrical slowness.
"Detective, isn't it true this so-called match relies on a database with a documented error rate?"
"The FBI's database, yes. Every forensic database has a margin of error. This wasn't within it."
"But there's a margin of error."
"There's a margin of error on everything, counselor."
A ripple moved through the gallery. I saw McDavid's mouth twitch, suppressing something.
Stone pressed harder, needling at chain of custody, at delays in cataloging, at whether evidence handling protocols had been followed to the letter every single time.
Terry's answers stayed even, unhurried, professional—but I noticed his jaw tighten with each question, a muscle working beneath his cheek.
I couldn't decide where the anger was aimed.
At Stone, certainly, for the insinuations dressed up as questions.
Maybe at Blackthorne himself, sitting untouched and faintly amused at the defense table.
Or maybe it had nothing to do with either of them—maybe it was simply exhaustion curdling into something sharper, the accumulated weight of too many crime scenes, too many crooked ties, too many nights that ended with a phone ringing instead of a bed.