“That is correct. Not only no idea—not even an inkling of an idea. It was the furthest thing from my mind.”

“I take it, though, that your wife had spoken about Dana Goodwin?”

“Yes. They worked together.”

“In the week prior to your wife’s murder, what did she say about Ms. Goodwin?”

This earns a hearsay objection, but I suspect LeMarcus hasn’t thought it all the way through. I’m not introducing Lauren’s statements because they’re true. Rather, the point is to show she was lying to her husband.

“Ms. Broden?” Judge Gold says, allowing me to unpack the reasoning behind my question.

“It is the defense’s theory that Mr. Trofino had motive because he knew about the affair. He just testified that he did not know of the affair. What his wife told him about her relationship with Ms. Goodwin speaks to his state of mind, and therefore meets that exception to the hearsay rule.”

“That it does,” Judge Gold confirms. “Proceed.”

“Please tell the jury what your wife told you about Ms. Goodwin in that last week of her life.”

“The night Lauren was murdered, she told me that Dana was going to return to General Crimes.”

“What was your reaction to this news?”

“I was surprised. Even though I’d be the first to admit that I don’t know all the ins and outs of the DA’s office, I understood that being a deputy chief was a promotion from being a line ADA. Later that night, I said this to Lauren, but she told me that it didn’t always work that way, and that Dana missed doing trial work.”

“Did you believe your wife when she told you that?”

“I did. It made sense at the time.”

“And now?”

“Well, knowing that Lauren and Dana were lovers makes me think about Dana’s decision to leave her job at Special Vics and to go back to General Crimes very differently.”

LeMarcus objects. This time he’s right.