John Lescroart - Guilt

Somehow, he couldn't find the will to turn it off. He'd been consciously avoiding country music since he and Sam split, but this song, intelligently invoking passion and spark and inspiration, was ripping him up. Sitting back, he ran his hands through his thinning hair, then reached for one of the mugs of tepid coffee. He forced down a swallow.

His eyes roamed the empty apartment – the same blank walls, thrift-store furniture, the same space.

He'd called Sam twice after the first big fight and they'd had a couple of bigger ones after. And now Thomasino had ruled that Diane Price was going to be allowed to testify after all, and Christina was going to take her part, and Sam would probably be in the courtroom, counselling her.

Shaking his head to clear it – this was going nowhere – he flipped off the radio. He and Sam were finished. Pulling his typewriter through the debris, he thought he'd put this negative energy to some good use by working on some notes for his opening statement, but as he reached for his legal pad, he had to move the morning Chronicle, and The Picture hit him again.

Jesus, he thought, could it be?

Aside from the strategic disaster the photo represented, he was having trouble overcoming his own sense of personal betrayal. Though Mark and Christina had both denied that anything untoward had taken place between them, the fact that they'd met at Mark's house, at night, alone, without telling him about it, was more than unsettling.

It had thrown him back on his own demons.

This was the real reason for the tantrum he'd thrown at them this morning before they went to court. This wasn't just another trial for him, where he'd have to pump himself up with some second-hand, third-rate rationalization that his actions were relatively important.

It was far more personal – a last opportunity, dropped into his lap by a benevolent fate, finally to do something meaningful with his life. With the responsibility and the commitment to Mark's defense, something had already changed inside himself, motivating him to summon the discipline he needed to lose the extra weight he'd carried for years, giving him confidence to try a new face-softening mustache, a crisp and stylish haircut. He'd present the new, improved Wes Farrell to the world, and to that end had bought five new suits (one for each day of the working week), ten shirts, ten ties, two pairs of shoes. Perhaps these changes weren't fundamental, but they indicated that his image of himself, of who he could be, was changing. He even started vacuuming his apartment, cleaning up his dinner dishes on the same day that he ate off them. Unprecedented.

This trial was going to be his last chance. It was life itself, a test of all he was and could be.

He had to believe.

And then this morning he'd opened the newspaper, and in a twinkling the foundation seemed to give – psychically, it shook him as the earthquake had. And, following that, he'd sat at this table trying and failing to ignore the other signposts on the trail that had led them all to here – the party at Dooher's, Mark's decision to bring Christina on as a summer clerk, Joe Avery's transfer to Los Angeles, which had pre-ordained Joe and Christina's break-up, Sheila's death, and now, finally, the two of them – Mark and Christina – nearly united.

Viewed from Farrell's perspective, the progression was linear and ominous.

He tried to tell himself that it didn't necessarily mean what it could mean.

Wes knew Mark, who he was, what he was. And Mark could never have done what he was accused of. It was impossible.

Wes wasn't religious, but Dooher's innocence was an article of faith for him. If he didn't know Mark, he knew nothing. This was why, as the preparation for trial had uncovered enough unpleasant assertions about Mark to make even Farrell feel uncomfortable, he had never truly doubted.

Assertions were just that, he had told himself time and again. They weren't proven. People, often with axes to grind, would say things.

Farrell had tried to look objectively at all this alleged wrongdoing, and came away convincing himself that it was all smoke and mirrors. There was absolutely no evidence tying Mark Dooher to any other murders or rapes or anything else.

But now there was Christina. She was a fact, as was her connection to Mark. And worse, because of her the seed of Wes's own doubt had germinated. He closed his eyes, picturing her in his mind. A beautiful woman, no question about it. He himself was not immune to the power of beauty – what man was? But that did not mean his friend had killed to have her.

Farrell kept trying to tell himself that Mark's lifelong luck had delivered Christina to him at the moment he needed her most, after his wife was gone, for whatever comfort and hope she could give him.

But suddenly, after last night, this was a hard sell.

'Christina, this is Sam. Please don't hang up.'

'I won't.'

'I argued with myself all day about calling you.'

'I kissed him good night, Sam. That's all there was to it. This whole media frenzy is insane.'

'But you know you're… with him.'

'I represent him. I'm his lawyer.'

'That's not what I mean. I know. I knew back… when we were still friends.'

'I'm sorry, I have no comment.'

'Okay, that's all right. I don't need a comment. But I just had to try to tell you – because we were friends, because you do know so much about the psychology of rape – that you and Wes are both wrong about Mark Dooher. I can prove-'

'Sam, stop! You'll get a chance to prove everything you want to at the trial.'

'That won't prove what I'm talking about. I'm telling you – sit and talk to her, you'll be convinced. She's telling the truth, she's-'

'I'm going to hang up now, Sam. Mark didn't do that. He couldn't have done that.'

'Why are you so blind? Why won't you even consider it?'

'Goodbye, Sam.'

Farrell was running on pure adrenaline. He'd slept less than five hours, but this was precisely the moment that all the nights of insomnia had been in service of.

He reminded himself that the trial was simpler than life – all he had to do here was refute the prosecution's arguments, and Mark Dooher was going to walk. He could do that in his sleep.

In California, the defense has the option of delivering its opening statement directly following the prosecution's, where it has the general effect of a rebuttal; or it can choose to wait and use its opening statement to introduce its own version of events, its case in chief. Farrell chose the former.

He didn't believe he was going to get surprised by any prosecution witness. He knew the direction he was going to take – deny, deny, deny. And he wanted to prime the jury, at the outset, that there was reason to question every single point Jenkins had raised.

He'd thought it out in detail. He would begin casually, standing beside Dooher at the defense table. He would not consult any notes – his defense was from his heart. He wouldn't use a prepared speech. His body language would scream that the truth was so obvious, and he believed it so passionately, that it spoke for itself. By contrast, Jenkins had stood delivering the rest of her opening statement for the better part of the morning, consulting her legal pad over and over, laboriously spelling out her case in chief.

Farrell sipped from his water glass and stood up.

'You've all heard Ms Jenkins's opening statement. She's given you a version of the events of June 7th that she says she's going to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. There is no way she can do that because those actions of Mr Dooher that she got right did not happen for the reasons she contends, and the rest of them she simply got wrong.