RARELY AM I CALLED BY THE DEFENSE. IT’S ALMOST NEVER necessary or even helpful to “the bad guys,” as Marino unfairly calls attorneys who represent people indicted for murder.

If I’m a prosecution witness, and typically I am, the opposing counsel will question me anyway, while enjoying the advantage of stipulating that I’m an expert before the jury hears the laundry list of qualifications that might prove it. In fact, Jill Donoghue’s modus operandi in every encounter I’ve had with her is to shut me up before I can so much as say where I went to medical school or if I did while addressing me as Mrs. Scarpetta and ma’am, to encourage those deciding her client’s fate not to take me seriously.

I don’t know what to expect right now, except I worry that Dan Steward won’t be helpful. After the scolding he just witnessed, he’s not likely to tamper with Judge Conry, whose presence I feel like a towering thunderhead, dark and ready to erupt again, the courtroom electrically charged the way the air is after lightning strikes.

I don’t understand why he is so angry with me, as if what I did was personal and intentional, a slight or injury I can’t fathom. I’ve been late to court before, not often, but it happens, and judges aren’t nice about it. But I’ve never been threatened or reprimanded, much less fined. I’ve never been dressed down in front of a jury. Something is terribly off, and I can’t think of a way to address it, as it’s not possible to e-mail or call a federal judge and ask him what’s wrong with our relationship.

Especially if the real reason is what Steward intimated. Jill’s buddy, he’d said, and his reference to rumors was obvious.

“Good afternoon.” Jill Donoghue smiles at me as if we are in for a pleasant time and are old friends, and only now, as we begin, will I look at her and to the left of her, between her lectern and the jury box, at the defense table. Channing Lott sits very straight, his hands clasped on top of a yellow legal pad with pages of notes folded back.