"I can't believe it. Why go to all this trouble? There're plenty of places you can drive to and walk up to and jump off and kill yourself, if that's what you want to do. Don't need any training to do that. All the lessons; the classroom instruction; the tethered training jumps from that steel tower they've got up there: what is it, three or four hundred feet off the ground, and they take you up there and you jump7.

Forget it. I'm finished right there. I wouldn't dare to climb that high, never mind jump off. You want me to conclude he did it all in order to kill himself in style? All the supervised practice jumps with the instructors: everything was preliminary to the big day when Nick Hardigrew got himself killed? Nobody was negligent? No one failed to exercise due care? It wasn't anyone's fault?"

"Well, maybe," she said. "I suppose we never know what hell people could be going through behind their eyes where we can't see it. What they might do to stop the pain they're in." She shook her head. "I can tell you one thing though: The more I hear of this one, the gladder I am it didn't go jury-waived. Let those good people figure it out. I don't envy them for a minute." Then she said: "Well, 're we ready to go now? Tell them to bring down the jury."

"I dunno," Robey said. "When do you want the immunity hearing? Four today or first thing in the morning? I need to know now, so I can have someone get word to the witness's lawyer so he'll know when he has to come down here."

"Sandy," she said. "I already told you: we don't need a hearing. May need one, but don't need one yet. Tell whoever it is down there in the US Attorney's office to send up the order they want me to sign. Then if the witness still takes the Fifth, then we'll have him in and I'll put on my usual impressive performance, plant my brogan right on his neck. What's the matter with the government anyway? This isn't the first one of these things we've ever had here. They should know by now how we do them."