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morale, and make a mockery of the public trust, which, all fashionable cynicism aside, was enormous, elemental. You have a fire and call the firemen; you expect them to show. Your daughter is murdered, you call the police, they catch the murderer; you expect that man to be put in prison, preferably for as long as possible. There was a precious covenant between the victim and the victim’s advocate in the courtroom confrontation of a murderer. It was a responsibility he humbly hoped he could uphold, it was a responsibility he cherished.
    LATER. TIME HAD PASSED and Peter could not remember his cross-examination of Morgan’s witnesses nor what his thoughts had been, except that those thoughts had circled back to Janice. He wanted to get out of his suit and felt sleepy in the dry, hot air of the courtroom. He would call Janice in the evening to find out where the hell she was hiding. Judy Warren’s father was watching him, and he worried suddenly that he’d missed something. From habit he scribbled notes on the pad while floating in and out of attention, relying on his instinct to follow the rhythm of drama, even a drama so worn and ritualized and predictable as a third-rate murder case. But the case was airtight. Morgan had nothing. The office had been scrupulous about the discovery procedures, not only because it was the law, but because the more you told the defense attorney about the stuff you were digging up on the defendant, the sooner he would angle toward a faster, potentially lenient resolution, usually a negotiated guilty plea. Morgan, who was now summarizing the defendant’s movements on the night of the murder, was going forcomplete acquittal; it was a real waste of city resources. Deputies, support personnel, court reporter, court officers, and judge; each case that went to trial cost the taxpayer hundreds of dollars an hour. Peter would have preferred someone who knew the courts, an ex-A.D.A. perhaps, who, in the face of the overwhelming evidence, would have pled guilty pragmatically and never taken the case to trial. On the other hand, it would be another conviction. Peter was thirty-six and three on homicide, one of those three lost on changed testimony, one on a runaway jury, and one on his own stupid evidentiary mistakes—not that he kept score, which, of course, he did, and not that he saw himself running for public office, which, of course, was always a possibility.
    Then—already—it was past five o’clock, and the judge told the jury not to discuss the case with anyone—no smart criminal lawyer ever assumed they all complied—and they filed out. The spectators stood up. The victim’s family, drained from hours in court, floated toward the exit, a day farther from the death of their Judy, a day closer, Peter hoped, to some sort of emotional release. Usually he chatted with the family about how things were progressing, but he was too tired now to talk with them. And felt guilty about it. He spread his papers on the table and searched for his calendar. It was under the black-and-white glossies of Judy Warren’s corpse.
    He rode the elevator down, pulling even further into himself, too tired and anxious about Janice to nod again to the detectives and cops in City Hall. Outside, he headed home, his loneliness made worse by the empty beauty of the dark office buildings with their random patterns of lighted windows high above the street. The new towers kept going up, sheathed in granite, glass, and metal. It used to be that by custom the immense statue of William Penn, the patron Quaker of Philadelphia, looked over all buildings in the city from atop the clock tower of City Hall. In a plain hat—his curling hair falling to his shoulders—waistcoat, knickers, and buckle shoes, Billy Penn could see everything in the city he founded and designed and loved. This was no longer true.
    THEIR TOWNHOUSE STOOD ON THE SOUTH SIDE of the two hundred block of Delancey. It was a narrow street, with two-and