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Because the temporal lobe is intricately tied to emotional response and arousal, there is plentiful evidence that once a patient has reached such a fragile state, the final mental break can be triggered by an emotionally intense event.” The doctor polished his glasses on a monogrammed handkerchief. “While there’s much that we know about the brain—”
    “There’s so much more that we don’t know,” Harriman finished with an accommodating grin.
    During the six months before my surgery, I’d been no stranger to migraines, certainly, even a few that had blotted my vision. At first I’d presumed the usual suspects—stress, computer monitor, dehydration—but then I’d blacked out over the washing machine, coming to after fifteen lost minutes feeling little more than a rise in my stomach and liquid detergent dripping across my knuckles.
    “But isn’t it true that most people with this type of tumor don’t cross the line into psychosis at all ?”
    The neurologist replied, “Erratic, violent behavior is not uncommon, espe—”
    “Perhaps you didn’t hear my question. I asked if it was true that most people with this type of tumor never cross the line into psychosis.”
    “Statistically speaking.”
    “Is there another manner of speaking that better answers a medical question like the one I posed?”
    There was not.
    “Is there a single medical precedent that you can cite for a person”—she’d shrewdly dropped “patient”—“with a left anterior temporal ganglioglioma committing murder?”
    The doctor rolled his lips, his face bunching. “No.”
    In quiet concert, Donnie, Terry, and I exhaled. Katherine Harriman did not. “Do most individuals with a left anterior temporal ganglioglioma experience postoperative retrograde amnesia?”
    “Most do not, but when paired with acute stress, more than thirty percent—”
    “So it is possible that an individual with a tumor such as the defendant’s could be perfectly rational right up until surgery?”
    “A lot is possible. The body is amazing, and constantly defies our expectations. The brain, more yet. The mind, even more than that.”
    “So that’s a yes?”
    “It is.”
    “And is it also possible,” Harriman continued, wheeling on me and piercing me with a top-shelf stare, “that a very clever individual, someone much like our defendant, might use all these conditions that you’ve so generously laid out as smoke cover for a premeditated plan?”
    As my lawyers leapt to their feet with objections, Harriman remained perfectly still, a slight smile tensing her lips, her eyes never leaving mine. She was articulate and sharp, attuned to the inherent ridiculousness of matters. Her calm unnerved me. There was much murmuring and disorder in the court, and the judge nodded to the bailiff, who called for recess.
    After we returned, the onslaught continued. Our witnesses. Their witnesses. Detective Three Bill Kaden assumed the stand, every bit as sturdy as he’d been in that moment when I’d returned to consciousness. Bristly mustache, thick wrists, golf shirt under a blazer. Scrappy, chinless Ed Delveckio watched from the gallery and nodded along with Kaden’s testimony, twenty courtroom feet and one rank separating him from his senior partner. The boning knife made an appearance, stained nearly to the end of the handle, swinging crudely in an evidence bag. I did my best not to break down or react with anger.
    Next up was Lloyd Wagner, a criminalist who’d lent me his time on several occasions to process fictitious bodies and who’d responded with the lab team to Genevieve’s house. Yet another disturbing spillover from my prior life. We got along well, and I had found him alarmingly adept at helping me massage plot elements, so much so that on occasion I’d brought him whole scenes to put his skills to work on. Dressed in his dated court suit and holding a duplicate knife taken from my very own kitchen, Lloyd offered me an apologetic little nod