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KATHERINE WELSH WALKS JIMMY through the preliminaries as quickly as she can manage, starting with his job description with me, his background as a former NYPD detective. Jimmy answers politely, on his best behavior because he’s promised me he would be.

Welsh is on her own best behavior, steering clear of asking Jimmy about the way his career with the NYPD ended, which means when he was asked, and not politely, to leave.

He is, after all, her witness on this day.

Before he’s all mine.

Welsh gets to it now, walking over to the clerk’s table and picking up the bagged gun that the jury probably hasn’t even noticed until now.

“Let the record show,” she says, holding up the gun, “that this is very much Exhibit 1.”

“Yeah, like you think you’re number one, Barbie,” Norma Banks whispers.

This time I give her a kick under the table.

“Do you recognize this gun, Mr. Cunniff?” Welsh asks.

“Yes, I do.”

“And could you please tell this court why you recognize it?”

“Because I was the one who presented it to Ms. Smith once it was in my possession,” Jimmy says.

“And how did it come to be in your possession?”

Jimmy then explains, almost in cop shorthand, why he went to Rob Jacobson’s town house on Friday, and how he first saw the gun in the hand of one of Jacobson’s houseguests.

“That houseguest is an extremely young woman, correct?”

“I’m not sure what ‘extremely’ means,” Jimmy says. “All women her age look extremely young to me. But I’d guess in her twenties.”

“One of two women that age currently living at Mr. Jacobson’s town house, isn’t that also correct?”

I’m up then.

“Objection, Your Honor,” I say. “I’m not sure the age or the gender of the houseguests is relevant to this weapon ending up in this courtroom, unless Ms. Welsh wants to check their IDs.”

“Now I object,” Welsh says.

“Wait,” I say, grinning at her. “I was first.”

“Sustained and sustained,” Judge Horton says, going to his gavel for the first time today, before telling Katherine Welsh, “Please proceed.”

Welsh then walks Jimmy, whom she’s already preinterviewed earlier this morning, through how and where Kellye found the gun in Jacobson’s closet and how once she handed it over to him, he then drove back out to Long Island and handed it over to the State Police for testing.

“So to be clear,” Welsh says, “it turns out that the murder weapon was in the defendant’s possession all along.”

“Objection,” I say, on my feet again. “This gun being discovered at a place that is no longer my client’s primary residence is hardly the same as possession.”

“Sustained.”

“Let me rephrase, Mr. Cunniff,” Welsh says. “What you’re telling the court is that the murder weapon was found, hidden among some clothes, in the defendant’s closet?”

“According to the young woman, yes, it was,” Jimmy says.

“No further questions at this time,” Welsh says.

But as she walks back to her table she turns to the jurors and says, “To use the same expression I used in my opening statement … what are the odds?”