“But here’s the deal, folks. Judge Samuels has given us a very specific charge. We have to answer one important question: Is there enough evidence to convict the Reverend Raleigh of this crime?

“Direct. Physical. Evidence.” Ferris tapped the table with each word. “Let’s for a minute agree with everything Mrs. Malone has put forth. Let’s say Raleigh typed the death-threat letters, let’s say he was having an affair and wanted to kill Mrs. Raleigh. Let’s say he disappeared that night and all the phone calls and notes to librarians were alibis. Fine. Oh, and the suicide note? Just further incrimination.

“Then all I have to say is . . .” Ferris searched the faces of the other eleven jurors for eye-to-eye connections. “Prove it.”

Anne loudly balled up the butcher paper and napkins for her sandwich and shot them into the trash. Literal minded, reductive, and certain.

“Show me the evidence. Show me the blood on his hands,” Caruthers chimed in, a bit too eagerly, and Ferris gave him that friendly fairway wave again.

“Now, it’s especially troubling that an ordained minister could lie and commit sin like this, and that can bias our judgment, but we are here to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. And there is no evidence in Reverend Raleigh’s car, in the driveway, the garage, the house, or on his body or on Peggy’s body, that he committed this crime. But . . .”

What do you want? A signed confession? Oh, wait . . . we have that. Anne had enough. “If I commit a murder and lie about it and then clean up all the evidence and cover up my crime, am I not still guilty of murder? Can a reasonable person not find me culpable?”

“Yes, but where is the proof?” Ferris smiled like sugar. “That’s conjecture.”

“Yeah, we don’t know,” Keller said, practically growling at Anne. He had a pig face as he rooted through the last bites of his roast beef.

What these men don’t know could fill a goddamn airplane hangar. Anne knew they were ganging up on her. The direct evidence is weak. My only shot is motive, opportunity, and the cover-up.

“Find me one eyewitness who has him in the neighborhood during the window of time Peggy was strangled,” Ferris calmly added. “There is plenty of evidence that Raleigh was a philanderer and a liar, but there’s zero evidence that he’s a killer.”

Three loud knocks at the door. Sergeant Redman, the Muscle Beach court bailiff, bounded in with pen and paper. Anne glanced up at the clock. Already three thirty p.m. That late lunch killed the afternoon.