Emily testified that afternoon. She wore a pale blue sweater and she kept her hands folded in her lap and she did not make a speech.

She named dates. She named times. She described the shirt and she described the kitchen and she described the moment she understood that Daniel was not trying to win an argument.

I sat behind her. Alan sat two rows back. Barrett stood near the wall.

Daniel did not look at her. He looked at me, for most of an hour, and I have thought since that this was the last mistake he made in that room, because it told the jury exactly who he had always believed the audience was.

Tolliver’s cross was careful. He had been handed a client who could not be defended and a theory that had died on a gas station forecourt, and he was working with what he had.

He asked her about the fabric. Why keep it. Why carry a torn piece of a man’s shirt in your coat pocket for ninety minutes. She said she didn’t know.