One most valued piece in his collection, a thirty-inch-high sculpture of a horse and rider, an original Remington bronze, was still in the custody of the prosecutor’s office. That was what they said she had used to smash the back of Gary ’s head.

Sometimes, when she was sure her parents were asleep, Molly would tiptoe downstairs and stand in the doorway of the study and try to remember every detail of finding Gary.

Finding Gary. No matter how hard she tried, when she thought back to that night, there was no single moment when she remembered talking to him or approaching him as he sat at his desk. She had no memory of picking up that sculpture, of grasping the front legs of the horse and swinging it with enough force to cave in his skull. But that’s what they said she had done.

At home now, after another day in court, she could see the growing concern on her parents’ faces, and she could feel the increased protectiveness with which they hugged her. She stood stiffly inside their embraces, then stepped away and looked at them dispassionately.

Yes, a handsome couple-everyone called them that. Molly knew she looked like Ann, her mother. Walter Carpenter, her father, towered over both of them. His hair was silver now. It used to be blond. He called it his Viking streak. His grandmother had been Danish.

“I’m sure we’d all welcome a cocktail,” her father said as he led the way to the service bar.

Molly and her mother had a glass of wine, Philip requested a martini. As her father handed it to him, he said, “Philip, how damaging was Black’s testimony today?”

Molly could hear the forced, too-hearty tone of Philip Matthews’s answer: “I think we’ll be able to neutralize it when I get a crack at him.”

Philip Matthews, powerful thirty-eight-year-old defense lawyer, had become a kind of media star. Molly’s father had sworn he would get Molly the best money could buy, and that comparatively young as he was, Matthews was it. Hadn’t he gotten an acquittal for that broadcasting executive whose wife was murdered? Yes, Molly thought, but they didn’t find him covered with her blood.