I also put on the evidence of the affair, just to break up the monotony a bit. Although talk of secret hotel visits perks up the jurors, they fall back into their sleepy daze when they realize that there won’t be any prurient details. Still, I establish that Lauren made a $300 cash withdrawal from her ATM nearly every week for close to six months, almost always on Tuesdays, with the occasional Wednesday thrown in. During some of those withdrawals, Dana Goodwin was captured beside Lauren by the ATM camera, and so I show the jurors the two of them together; sometimes their faces are much closer than I’m certain any jurors have ever gotten to their own bosses. The hotel clerk from the Best Western testifies that Dana and Lauren were regulars, and then he points them out on the hotel’s grainy black-and-white surveillance footage, hand in hand in the lobby, wearing the goofy grins of high schoolers.

On cross, Burrows drives home one point repeatedly: none of the evidence I’ve put on directly ties Dana Goodwin to the crime. There are no fingerprints, DNA, or eyewitnesses that place her at the duck pond on the night of the murder. There’s no record of her ever owning a Glock 19. Burrows doesn’t even question the Citibank representative about the cash withdrawals or the Best Western clerks as he’s conceding the affair.

A representative of Dana Goodwin’s cell-phone carrier, a tired-looking man with heavily hooded eyes, testifies that Dana’s phone was off for most of the evening of the murder, which was a rare occurrence for her. For that reason, there was no way to trace where it was, as he explains that even an idle phone sends pings to towers that indicate location, but not one that has been powered down.

“It went back on at about one o’clock in the morning, in the vicinity of Central Park,” the witness says.

“Let me see if I have this right,” Burrows says when it’s his turn. “Your testimony is that by studying cell-phone tower pings, you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Ms. Goodwin’s phone was shut off while it was at One Hogan Place, at about six thirty on the night of the murder, and that it did not go on again until approximately one in the morning, or within a half hour of the murder. And you can further determine, conclusively, that when the phone went back on, it was in the vicinity of Central Park. Do I have that all correct?”

“Yes.”

“Would this same ping occur if, for example, someone stole Ms. Goodwin’s phone from her office at six thirty on the night of the murder, and turned it off at that time, and then that person turned it back on while standing in Central Park at one a.m.?”

“Yes.”