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Marchuk fits the physical description of Ernst the Enforcer, a guard notorious for his brutality.’”
    “And your work, Professor, as we’ve heard here in this courtroom, is designed to exonerate those accused of heinous crimes, is it not?”
    “Not at all. I—”
    “Please, sir. Surely the defense would not have engaged your services if they hadn’t thought your testimony could be used to convince the honest men and women of this jury that some people just happen to be psychopaths, that God made them that way, that they can’t help themselves, that they shouldn’t be held accountable to the highest standard of the law, isn’t that so?”
    “Objection!” said Juan. “Argumentative.”
    “Sustained. Careful, Miss Dickerson.”
    “Mr. Marchuk, sir, how would you characterize the relationship between your family history and your area of research? Isn’t it true that the one inspired the other?”
    “I told you I didn’t know about my grandfather.”
    “Come now, sir. I can understand wanting to put your family’s shame—
Canada’s
shame—behind you, but, really, isn’t it true that you, in fact, had made up your mind in this case before you ever met Devin Becker? For to find Devin Becker accountable, to insist he answer for his crimes, his perversions, his cruelty, would require you to demand the same of your grandfather. Isn’t that so?”
    “Even if I’d known about my grandfather,” I said, feeling dizzy now, “the cases are vastly different, separated by decades and thousands of miles.”
    “Trivialities,” said Dickerson. “Isn’t it true that you’ve been called ‘an apologist for atrocities’ in print?”
    “Never in a peer-reviewed journal.”
    “True,” said Dickerson. “I allude to Canada’s
National Post.
But the fact of the matter remains: is it not true that every aspect of yourtestimony here today is colored by your desire to see your grandfather as a blameless victim of circumstances?”
    “My research is widely cited,” I said, feeling as though the wooden floor of the witness dock was splintering beneath me, “and it, in turn, cites such classics as the work of Cleckley and Milgram.”
    “But, unlike them, you come at this with an agenda, do you not?”
    It seemed utterly pointless to protest that Stanley Milgram’s family had been Jews slaughtered in the Holocaust—his work was all about trying to make sense of the senseless, to fathom the inexplicable, to comprehend how sane, normal people could have done those things to other thinking, feeling beings.
    “That would not be my position,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.
    “No,” responded Belinda Dickerson, looking once more at the men and women in the jury dock, all of whom were sitting up in rapt attention. “I’m sure it wouldn’t be.”
    —
    Judge Kawasaki finally called the recess, and I exited the Atlanta courtroom, my heart pounding again, which, given my history, is a feeling I hated. Juan Sanchez was going to have lunch with Devin Becker, but I doubted they wanted me to join them. I headed out into the afternoon heat, air shimmering above the parking lot’s asphalt, used a shaking hand to put my Bluetooth receiver in my ear, and called my sister in Calgary. The phone rang, then a woman said, “Morrell, Thompson, Chandler, and Marchuk.”
    “Heather Marchuk, please.” My sister’s marriage had fallen apart long ago—way before mine had—but she’d always used her maiden name professionally.
    “May I ask who’s calling?”
    “It’s her brother Jim.”
    “Oh, Mr. Marchuk, hi. Are you in town?”
    I’m usually pretty good with names, and I suspect if I wasn’t so distraught, I would have come up with the receptionist’s. I could picture her, though—blond, petite, round glasses.
    “No. Is Heather in?”
    “Let me put you through.”
    I saw a husky man looking at me—probably a reporter hoping for a quote. I turned and walked briskly away.
    My sister and I talked a couple of