page3 (2/2)

She leveled a finger at un “But you nearly were, weren’t you, Doctor?”

“Okay, stop right there,” I said

“You were the prime suspect, weren’t you, Doctor? In fact, initially you were charged with killing her, weren’t you?”

“I said stop!”

“How did it feel, Doctor, to get off the hook for the er at Dr Hamilton?”

“Enough!” I shouted, leaping to my feet “I loved Jess Carter, and I will not…How dare you…” My voice failed me, and I put a hand over my eyes

I felt a hand on my shoulder, warm and steady “I’ huer But believe entle co the trial When he gets up to cross-exa You’re our key witness, so the defense will do everything they can to undermine you, throw you off balance, make you mad”

I looked up, and she aze steadily, compassionately Her eyes didn’t look beady now; they just looked tired, frolass and the darkness of crime “God, this is hard,” I said I fished out my handkerchief, wiped my face, and blew my nose

“I know,” she said, “and I wish I could tell you it’ll get easier But it won’t”

Great, I thought, nothing like an encouraging word

“Think of this as a scria You were doing great till right there at the end It’s okay to get sad on the stand Just don’t get ame They’ll make you look vindictive, and they’ll make him look like a victim”

“But there’s a recording of hi about killing Jess”

“They’ll try to suppress that Or under, and a pretty scratchy one to boot Your testiht with the jurors than that So roll with the punches and hang on to your temper, for God’s sake For Dr Carter’s sake”

We sparred a few more rounds, the prosecutor and I Finally, after two hours of rolling with the punches of her mock cross-examination, I was allowed to step down from the witness stand she’d set up in the practice courtroo Neyland Drive feeling jangled and unsettled It wasn’t until I found hway that I realized I wasn’t heading back to my office but to the Body Farrasp why I was headed there

There were no other cars in the distant corner of the hospital e lot that bordered the research facility The chain-link gate was locked, as was the high wooden gate within Even so, after letting myself in, I called out to make sure I had the place to ate behind me and walked up the hill into the woods

It was the first time I’d had the nerve to visit the spot in the threethe recess in the rocky dirt and laid the slab at the base of the big pine The black granite was dull with dust, so I knelt down and took a handkerchief to it The grime proved more stubborn than I expected, so I wiped ot it plenty daain “Sorry about the sweat, Jess,” I said “You never were the squea you wouldn’t mind”

The moisture loosened the dirt, and after I’d turned and folded the handkerchief several tilea within its depths Closing es of the inscription tugged at

ertips and clutched at my heart IN MEMORY OF DR JESS CARTER, WHO WORKED FOR JUSTICE, the words read WORK IS LOVE MADE VISIBLE I laid my palm on the warm stone, flat and steady, the sa before I thought back to the period when Jess and I had beenthe state’s ist who conferred with corpses as they turned to goo or bare bones It seeh in fact we had collaborated platonically scarcely sixhad changed

“God, Jess, I ether, but that night see And it had cost Jess her life Garland Hamilton had followed , as we made love, and then-just days later-had abducted Jess fro lot, taken her to his baseed her body in a gruesome tableau here at the Body Far me for the murder

It haunted ht have built a reether, a rare partnership of like uess we’ll never know,” I said aloud, but even as I spoke the words, I knew they were false: I did know, all the way down to h to redefine everything else The first was the life I’d built with Kathleen, my late wife, and our son, Jeff The second was the bizarre career path I had half followed, half created The third, I was realizing only in hindsight, was the love I’d begun to feel for Jess