Rory laughed. “In conditions like that, you don’t spend a lot of time looking at faces, do you?”

“Oh, hell no. All I see in a firefight is my front sight and the other guy’s center of mass.”

“Up on the mountain that afternoon. How long would you say that fight lasted?”

George arched his shoulders nearly to his ears and made a pouty face. “All told, I’d be shocked if it lasted a minute.”

“That’s a fast fight,” Rory said. He pulled at his lower lip. “You’ve already testified that you don’t know who fired the first shot at you. Truth is, you don’t know which of the people up on that hill shot at anybody, do you?”

George seemed to sense that he was entering dangerous territory. He squirmed in his seat. “I suppose not.”

Here it comes, Victoria thought.

“You don’t even know if Mr. May shot at anyone that afternoon, do you?”

“Oh, they was all shooting, Doc.”

“Even the defendant? Specifically, the defendant, or is this again one of those things that you think you know, but in truth only suspect?”

George had sprung his own trap and he knew it. “I suppose I assumed.”

“When you first saw the defendant up there, did he have a gun in his hand?”

“He had one next to him.”

“Not my question,” Rory snapped. “Did he have a gun in his hand?”

“No, but—”

“In fact, he didn’t have any weapons on him, did he? Other than a folding-blade knife?”

“No, he did not.”

“In fact, what was Mr. May doing at the first moment you saw him?”

George shifted and looked at the floor. “He was minding a woman’s body.”

“Minding?”

“You know, trying to help her, I guess.”

“What was his emotional state at that time?”

“He was cryin’. But then he got mean and we had to wrestle with him to take him into custody.”

Rory took his time with his next question. “Did you ever come to learn the identity of the woman over whose body he was crying?”

“He said it was his mother.”

A gasp rolled through the crowd. Apparently, this was not a widely known detail. Rory let the reality sink in. “For Mr. May, that had to be a really bad minute, don’t you think? I mean, even if you don’t like a guy, well, you stipulate that he loves his mom.”

As Rory walked back to his table, Victoria feared that he was done. He hadn’t sealed the deal yet. But it was a bluff. Rory continued to channel television lawyers. With his hand to his chin, he paused and he turned back to the witness, though cheating his body wide toward the assembly.