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KATHERINE WELSH TRIES TO clean things up as best she can once I sit down, leading Brooke Milligan into answers about how revenge had nothing to do with this, how she was just looking out for a friend.

Brooke says, “It was like he had her under some kind of spell.” Then she pauses and exhales and says, “I knew the feeling, at least until I came to my senses.”

But I can see in Welsh’s body language, because if you do this long enough you have to be able to read the room, that she knows the damage has been done.

She was blindsided by a prior relationship between her witness and my client that she clearly had known nothing about.

Maybe her own investigator hadn’t gone as deep as Jimmy had, or simply hadn’t asked the right questions, or enough of them.

I know the jury isn’t going to stop thinking of him as a predator, for having had sex with a seventeen-year-old virgin, whether that age was legal in the great state of New York or not. Now, because of Brooke Milligan’s testimony, he was a predator times two.

I’ve at least limited my own damage, to my very own client, as best I could, as much as I absolutely hate the way I just did it.

Whether the jury members will believe that Morgan Carson feared, maybe even for her life, the consequences of breaking it off with Rob Jacobson is another matter entirely.

In the afternoon session, Welsh calls a couple of witnesses who testify to having also seen my client with Lily Carson in the weeks leading up to the murders, just to add more spice to the sauce.

The last is a woman named Julie Barry, who’s attractive enough that she gets me wondering how, if Rob Jacobson spent so much time in Garden City during the period in question, he missed hitting on her.

Maybe if he’d known her back in high school, the way he’d known Lily Carson, she would have had more appeal for the sonofabitch.

By now I have given up on trying to understand his obsession with mothers and daughters, and all other women who somehow ended up under the spell Brooke Milligan described, including my own sister.

But I just keep telling myself—or perhaps rationalizing with myself—that he isn’t going to be judged here on being a serial man-whore, just a serial killer.

Katherine Welsh waits until the end of her questioning of Julie Barry to ask if she was aware that Lily Carson had accused Rob Jacobson of sexually assaulting her after being his prom date in another lifetime for both of them.

“I frankly had no idea about that,” Julie Barry says. “She just said they’d dated briefly and that it had ended rather badly. She tried to convince me that he had changed, despite their history.” She looks over at Rob Jacobson. “Obviously he hadn’t.”

“Objection,” I say, not even bothering to get up.

“Sustained,” Judge Horton says.

“Your witness,” Katherine Welsh says.

“Yes,” I say, keeping my voice low as I pass her table, speaking loud enough that only she can hear. “She certainly is.”

“Ms. Barry,” I begin, “did you find it at all surprising that Lily had reconnected with an old high school flame, even after she told you that their prior relationship had ended badly?”

“Surprising?” she says. “I really didn’t, to tell you the truth.”

I smile. “Always a good thing.”

“High school has always been complicated for high school girls,” she continues. “I know it was for me. I just assumed that she still had feelings for him.”

“But this was more than just an old feeling coming on strong, wasn’t it?” I smile again. “Truth be told.”

“I’m not sure what you’re asking me.”

“The question,” I say, “is when did you become aware that Lily was having an affair with my client?”

Her eyes narrow. “You mean when he was having a sexual relationship with her daughter ?”

She steps as hard as she can on the word “daughter.”

“That’s changing the subject, isn’t it?” I ask.

“Is it?”

I knew the risks of this line of questioning before I got out of my chair, but in moments like these, it always comes down to risk and reward, the same old tightrope. But I feel as if the reward is going to be worth it.

“Respectfully,” I say, “I wasn’t asking about my client’s relationship with Lily’s daughter. I was asking about his relationship with Lily.”

“I knew they were having an affair, yes,” she says. “Exactly when I knew, I can’t say.”

“But you did know she was cheating on her husband.”

Julie Barry doesn’t immediately respond, but shifts just slightly in her chair.

“It’s a pretty simple question,” I say, “but I’m happy to repeat it.”

“I knew, okay? I knew, ” she says. “But I want it made clear that it is not my intent, even as I’m doing my best to answer your questions honestly, to dishonor my friend’s memory.”

“I completely understand,” I say, trying to make my tone sound reassuring. “And if you weren’t under oath, and if my client wasn’t on trial for murder, I happily would change the subject. But he is on trial for murder. So I can’t. And we can’t.”

She briefly tents her fingers underneath her chin, almost as if giving herself a moment to regroup.

“It was well known in our circle that even while living in the same house, Lily and Hank had been living separate lives for some time,” she says. “Another way of putting it is that it wasn’t a very well-kept secret that both of them saw other people from time to time.”

I nod.

“Other people,” I say.

“Yes.”

“So in addition to my client, there were other men in Lily Carson’s life, weren’t there?”

She shifts again in her seat. “I tried not to judge,” she says. “But yes.”

“Then let me ask you this,” I say. “Are any of those other men with whom Lily Carson was sleeping around on trial for her murder?”

Wait for it, I think.

Three … two …

“Objection!” Katherine Welsh says. “That is a ridiculous question, even for opposing counsel. For whom, I have to admit, I now set a pretty low bar.”

“Sustained,” Judge Horton says. “Let me put this in language I’m sure you’ll understand, Ms. Smith: Cut the crap.”

Whoa.

“I withdraw the question,” I say, “and have nothing further for this witness at this time.”

“Redirect,” Welsh says, almost before the words are out of my mouth.

“If it would please the court, Your Honor, I am requesting that your deputy be so kind as to read back the parts of Mr. Salzman’s previous testimony about the DNA found at the crime scene,” Welsh says to Judge Horton.

Horton nods. The deputy, a woman, types furiously away at her laptop, before looking back up and nodding at the judge.

It hasn’t taken Katherine Welsh long to adjust to what I just did to another one of her witnesses, and on the fly, but she has.

She really is very good.

But I already knew that.

And I was setting a very high bar for her.

The deputy, a woman, begins reading the relevant testimony about the DNA, and where it was found near the bodies, with about as much inflection as if she were reading a grocery list.

When she’s finished, Katherine Welsh walks over to the witness stand.

“Now Ms. Barry,” she asks, “did you hear anything from the man who collected scientific evidence the night Lily Carson and her family were murdered in cold blood about finding DNA that didn’t belong to the defendant?”

“I don’t think anybody heard that,” Julie Barry says.

“So the only man with whom your friend Lily Carson was involved who left DNA behind at the Carson home was the defendant.”

“Objection,” I say, not expecting to do much more than slow Katherine Welsh’s roll. “Was there a question in there, Your Honor?”

Katherine Welsh turns and gives me a withering glance. “I frankly didn’t think I needed one.”

“Well, I’ve got one for you, Madam District Attorney,” I say, knowing I am way out of line, but wanting to get in one last shot. “Didn’t you mean to say DNA that someone planted at the Carson home that night?”

Welsh objects, the judge sustains, it’s all by the numbers from there until Judge Horton says that court is adjourned until tomorrow morning.

“And by the way? The jury will ignore Ms. Smith’s last comment,” Horton says, getting in one last shot of his own.

Then he pounds his gavel so hard it sounds like a gun going off.

We all rise, and then he’s gone, but not before the last big sound in Judge Michael Horton’s courtroom is him slamming the door behind him.

I turn to Norma Banks.

“You think it was something I said?”

“I’d tell you that you need to do a better job of getting on his good side, missy,” she says, “except that it’s been my experience that once he puts that robe on, he really doesn’t have one.”

I turn to my right and see Thomas McGoey shaking his head.

“You,” he says, “are a very bad girl.”

“Thank you.”

“I didn’t mean it as a compliment,” McGoey says.