“No? I have a copy of the hearing transcript, and it quotes you at length. Was that another forensic anthropologist named Dr. William Brockton?”
“No, that was me testifying,” I said, resisting the urge to mirror her sarcasm. “But I wasn’t testifying against Dr. Hamilton; I was describing an experiment. I tried to reproduce what Dr. Hamilton had described as a stab wound that killed Billy Ray Ledbetter. It wasn’t possible to reproduce it—a rigid knife blade couldn’t make the wound he described.” As I spoke, I used one hand to demonstrate the zigs and zags that Hamilton’s theory would have required. “My testimony disproved Dr. Hamilton’s theory, but I wasn’t attacking him. I was just reporting my research results.”
“Just ‘reporting your research results,’” she said sarcastically.
“And were you also just ‘reporting your research results’ when you told the state board of medical examiners that Dr. Hamilton’s conclusions ‘violated the laws of physics and metallurgy’? Would you call that objective, scientific reporting?”
“I probably wouldn’t use that phrase in a peer-reviewed journal article, but the fact remains—”
“The fact I’m interested in,” she interrupted, “is who initiated the contact between you and the board of medical examiners—the board or you?”
I felt myself redden. “I think maybe I did.”
“You think? Maybe? Do you consider it a trivial matter to call a physician’s competence into question? A matter not even worth remembering?”
“No, I—”
“I’ll ask you once more, then. Who initiated the contact, the board or you?”
“I did.”
“So you could ‘report your research results’ to them, too? Are all anthropologists so eager to report their research results?”
Something in me snapped then. “Damn it,” I said, “Dr. Hamilton nearly sent a man to prison for a murder the guy didn’t commit. A murder no one committed, because it wasn’t a murder. That—that—is not a trivial matter, Ms. Creed. And I am not the one on trial for killing Jess Carter.”
She leveled a finger at me, almost as if she were aiming a gun. “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 murder and be able to point the finger 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’m sorry, Dr. Brockton,” I heard her say, suddenly sounding human and pained. “I hate to put you through the wringer. But believe me, this is gentle compared to what Hamilton’s attorney will do next week during the trial. When he gets up to cross-examine you, he will go for your throat like an attack dog. 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 met my gaze steadily, compassionately. Her eyes didn’t look beady now; they just looked tired, from years spent straining to see the world through a wall of glass 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 scrimmage, or maybe war games, so you’re mentally prepared for the real thing. You were doing great till right there at the end. It’s okay to get sad on the stand. Just don’t get mad. If you get mad, you’re playing their game. They’ll make you look vindictive, and they’ll make him look like a victim.”
“But there’s a recording of him admitting he killed Jess. A recording of him bragging about killing Jess.”
“They’ll try to suppress that. Or undermine it any way they can. Besides, it’s a recording, and a pretty scratchy one to boot. Your testimony will carry a lot more weight 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.”