From then on, Jenna was an unofficial aide in the defense camp. It felt good to contribute. At the same time, she had never felt worse. What did it matter that she was helping to prepare for Malik’s trial, when with a few words, she could set him free? It was as if there were two Jennas, one a loving sister and dedicated professional, the other a hypocrite who lied with every breath.

“It’s not too late,” she told Malik in the jail’s visiting room. “Why won’t you let me …” She left the question hanging.

“Absolutely not. Listen. I’m going to win this thing, and then it will be over with.”

No, it won’t, she thought. It will still be going on—forever.

“Laila asked me again if she could visit.”

“Tell her I’m sorry—but no. I don’t want her to see me in this.” He indicated the orange jumpsuit, then broadened his gesture to include the room, the jail, the courthouse. “I don’t want her involved in any of this. Don’t forget that her own experience with the law was … very hard on her.”

Jenna went away feeling as if she were only treading water in an endless, empty sea of moral ambivalence.

The first days of the trial did nothing to ease her mind. The forensic evidence was literally sickening. Photos of Ali’s body, with blood everywhere. Close-ups of the wounds. The shocked looks on the jurors’ faces told her how they saw it.

A string of police testified, from the Palm Springs officers who had answered the 911 call to a noted homicide detective brought in from Los Angeles.

The district attorney, Jordan Chiles, was trying the case himself. It was a risky tactic—he was far more of a politician than a trial lawyer—but it would bring priceless publicity for his reelection campaign. Tanned, athletically trim, he could easily have been one of those slightly over-the-hill actors who still turn up full of hope at every casting call.

“In your experience—your expert experience,” he asked the Los Angeles detective, “how would you characterize the shooting?”

“We see a lot of this in drug situations,” the man replied. After a rain of objections from the defense, the jury was instructed to disregard the reference to drugs, but the witness was allowed to continue. “I would characterize it as an execution-style shooting,” he said.

No! Jenna wanted to shout. You don’t know what you’re talking about! Yet, in a way, hadn’t it been an execution? She tried to make herself answer that question. She couldn’t.

After a few pro forma witnesses, the prosecution rested. The point of the state’s presentation was not that Malik had committed the killing—the defense had stipulated that from the first—but that he had done so in a way that precluded self-defense.