Barrett turned to scan the courtroom. Phil Duvall should have been there and wasn’t. Detective Riley shouldn’t have been yet was, seated alone in the last row of spectator seats. Barrett immediately got up and made his way back there. “Detective,” he said. “I’m surprised to see you here. Considering your case is closed.”

Riley looked up through his rheumy eyes. “They’re never closed until there’s a conviction, Mr. Barrett. And all appeals have been exhausted. Not to mention habeas writs.”

“But your work is done. Surely.”

“Never hurts to double-check.”

Barrett eyed him. Riley was a short-timer, he reminded himself. He was only punching a clock until his pension kicked in. He’d probably come here to kill some time while he pretended to work. It was Cruz who actually worked the case, and since he wasn’t here, there couldn’t be anything to worry about.

The bailiff cried “All rise,” and Barrett returned to his seat as the judge took the bench. Margaret Delacorte. A hatchet-faced fifty-year-old and a legal lightweight who’d managed to parlay her husband’s political connections into a lifetime appointment to the federal bench. She’d all but flirted with Mark Ivins in their last appearance on this case, and Barrett braced himself for more of the same.

The original motion to disqualify class counsel, filed the same day Lambert was sprung from jail, was based on nothing more than that. Ivins, having no prior relationship with Lambert, was obviously banking on gaining access to privileged information. But Ivins had changed the landscape when he doubled down in his opposition papers, admitting that he’d not only posted her bail but made her one of the Associates in Mark Ivins & Associates. That he’d bailed her specifically for that purpose, but only because she was a brilliant and talented lawyer. Not because he was seeking any confidential information. Harrington then amended the motion, arguing the more conventional basis for disqualification: that Lambert had a conflict of interest that had to be imputed to Ivins and the rest of his firm.

Barrett was called first to the stand. He testified that he’d hired Lambert specifically to work on the Palmer case, which she had done exclusively for the one month of her employment. That in the course of her work she’d become familiar with a great deal of confidential and privileged company information. Information that was protected from discovery in the litigation. Information to which Mark Ivins was definitely not entitled.

Barrett was prepared to testify to much more: that on February 1 he discovered her résumé fraud; that on February 2 he instructed the company’s director of human resources to fire her; that said director did so that evening; that she subsequently died of a gunshot in an elevator occupied only by herself and Ms. Lambert; and that the police subsequently arrested Ms. Lambert and charged her with murder.

But Ivins stood in objection to Harrington’s opening question. “Your Honor, this line of examination has no relevance to the disqualification issue. Moreover, the facts are hotly disputed. Unless Your Honor wishes to try the criminal case and decide the guilt or innocence of Ms. Lambert—”