Rory flipped a page at the staple and peeled away a yellow Post-it note. “In this statement, you say that the Grubbs gang opened fire on you and the rest of the posse. Is that correct?”

“Absolutely. Me and Eric Lofland was walking up—”

Victoria rapped her gavel. “Mr. Simmons, please limit your responses to the scope of the questions that are asked.”

George rolled his eyes again. “Yes, they opened fire on us.”

“And you returned fire, did you not?”

“You bet your ass we did.” That got a chuckle from the crowd.

“Was anyone in your posse hit? Anyone injured?”

“No, Doc, we got the drop on ’em pretty good.”

“Anybody hurt on their side?”

“Oh, hell yeah. Everybody but him was killed.” George pointed at Brandon-Lee.

Rory returned his attention to the papers in his hand. “Your statement doesn’t say who fired the first shot at you. Why is that?”

George puffed out a laugh. “’Cause it came outta nowhere. Damn near hit me, too. I dropped and returned fire.”

“What about the rest of your posse? Were they shooting back, too?”

“Yes.” George held up his hand. “Wait, before you get your knickers in a knot, I saw Major McCrea shooting and I saw his boy Caleb shooting, too.”

“Six of the Grubbs gang died up there that day,” Rory said. “Hypothetically, if I were to put up pictures of those six people, combined with, say, twenty other random pictures, how many of the deceased gang members would you guess you’d be able to identify?”

“Wait,” Victoria said. “Don’t answer that question, Mr. Simmons. Dr. Stevenson, you may not ask the witness to speculate. Stick to facts.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Rory said. He rubbed the back of his neck as he regrouped. “Mr. Simmons, you have a military background, don’t you?”

George sat taller. “Two tours in Iraq, one in Afghanistan.”

“You saw combat, then.”

“I sure did.”

Rory cast a nervous glance at Victoria and took a deep breath. He was headed in a direction that made him nervous.

“Can you take thirty seconds or so to describe what it’s like to be in the middle of a battle?”

“In thirty seconds?” George scoffed. “No way. Absolutely no way. There’s too much going on, all at the same time. You got the noise. You got all your people to think about. People cryin’ out ’cause they’re hit, cryin’ out ’cause they’re mad. You got orders comin’ in from all sides. All this while you’re tryin’ to shoot and not get shot. It’s absolute chaos.”

“Kind of like it was up there on the mountain that day?”

“Battle is battle, Doc. The only difference is how long it goes on and which sides take the most casualties.”

That’s when Victoria saw where Rory was going with the surprise line of questioning.