"A hit?"

  "A hit is a microexpression that accompanies a falsehood."

  "How many hits did Mr. Adams have?"

  "Two hundred and two. Give or take a margin of error of plus or minus three."

  "He lied two hundred and two times?"

  "No, he presented facial expressions that confirmed a lie. Sometimes one lie produced two, three or even four hits. In other words, a lie can be one microexpression or it can be several microexpressions rolled into one lie."

  "How can we use this, Chris?" asked Winona.

  "Will it be admissible in court, you mean? Most likely it won't, though you never know. I mean, all scientific methods had a first time to be used in court and each time it was an uphill battle. I think the first DNA evidence allowed in U.S. courts was as recent as twenty, twenty-five years ago. Now it's used thousands of times a day in courts all over the world. But like I said, everything has a first time."

  "Cool," said Winona. "I'm not above recommending we use this in court."

  "I'm with you there, Win," said Christine. "I fully plan to present it. We'll need Jamie's testimony, too, and we'll need to present him as someone qualified to create this kind of methodology. But in the end, no one ever said an expert witness has to have umpteen college degrees and two thousand hours in court. That's not the rule."

  "Great," said Jamie. "I bill my time at one hundred dollars per hour and expect a two thousand dollar advance."

  The family room fell silent. Christine's eyes widened as she stared at her son.

  "Hey," he came back. "All expert witnesses get paid. I've done my research about this. Also, most of them charge five hundred or a grand an hour. I'm letting you off cheap."

  "I guess you have to," said Christine with a smile. "After all, your methodology involves untested software and unproven methods and interpretation by a machine that hasn't been vetted. One hundred per hour seems pretty nervy to me."

  "That's my bottom line," said Jamie. He began closing up his laptop.

  "Open that right back up," Christine said. "We want to see the video workup you've done."

  "Actually, I didn't do it. The software did it."

  "What do you call your software?"

  "I call it FACCE. Stands for Facial Analysis Criminal/Civil Evidence. You pronounce it 'face'."

  "Face," said the lawyer and the detective together.

  "I like that," said Christine. "You're sure this copyright is solid?"

  "Sure I'm sure."

  "Would you mind if I had an intellectual property lawyer look it over?"

  "Don't mind at all, Mom. Thanks for that."

  Christine hit a button and a video screen lowered at the far end of the table. Jamie connected his laptop to the video system and the playback began.

  "Now, let’s hold it right there," said Jamie, and he paused the video action. "Right here is where the software is normalizing his face. We're doing this through the use of an accretion of frames where the innocent questions were being asked, such as name, residence, job, and so forth. The software is creating a database of the guy's normal expressions. We have to know normal before we can differentiate. Follow me?"

  "Yes."

  "Yes."

  "All right. Now listen to the next couple of questions and answers."

  QUESTION: Were you present in a room at the house that night when a member or members of your fraternity had sexual intercourse with Bussie Speers?

  ANSWER: Who's Bussie Speers?

  QUESTION: You still don't know?

  "Now look at the feedback in the crawl. The FACE says he's lying right now, and it's 87 percent sure of that."

  "Shit," said Winona.

  "I know," Christine said. "Go on, Jamie."

  "Well, watch the next three seconds. He looks down at his hands. His hands are moving all around in his lap. See the microexpressions on the face? The eyes breaking away, the grim mouth. Now, the other part of FACE is something I haven't told you about yet. It's the surprise."

  "Which is?"

  "FACE also analyzes voice. A lie is said in a moment of stress. When there's stress in the diaphragm, the air supply is compromised and the voice involuntarily lowers. That's what the second line of crawl is on the screen, the graph. You can see the graph head down where he says he doesn't know Bussie."

  "Which corresponds to the eighty-seven percent certainty of lie in the next lie above it. Amazing!"

  "Jamie, you're a genius," said Christine. "I am so proud of you."

  "Okay, keeping on--"

  QUESTION: Now back to my question about your presence when a sexual assault was made on Bussie Speers. Were you present?

  ANSWER: No. I wasn't there, no. I don't know what happened except what other guys say.

  "Read it and weep, kid," Jamie said to an imaginary Noah Adams. "Eighty-eight, and look at the voice analysis nosedive. Straight into the back forty. Ladies, this guy was in the room the night the girl got hurt. Trust me on this."

  "Sick," said Winona. "I hate these bastards. Excuse my French, Jamie."

  "That's all right," said Jamie. "It's nothing like middle school between classes out in the hallways. Nothing."

  "Jamie," said Christine. "You understand this isn't just about a girl being hurt?"

  "Yes."

  "You understand it's about rape? Probably the worst thing you can do to a woman besides taking her children away?"

  "Yes."

  "Okay. We're going to call it sexual assault when we talk about her situation, okay? That just works better than to say she was hurt. She was hurt, yes, but what those boys did is an extremely serious crime. They'll spend many years behind bars after we track them down and sort it all out."

  "I hope you put them away for a long time. But I get what you’re saying.”

  "Okay. Now go ahead with your presentation, please."

  "Okay, here we go."

  QUESTION: Were you talking about it?

  ANSWER: Well, the CU police came around and talked to a bunch of guys. Told them what the girl was claiming. That's what got everyone talking. Truth be told, I think she's making it up.

  QUESTION: Making what up?

  ANSWER: The rape. I don't think she was raped. I think she had sex and got herself knocked up or something and tried to blame someone for it. I think she's the one at fault.

  "Right here he's at ninety-three percent. Lying through his teeth. And voice analysis has him a minus thirty-five. It's the lowest the chart has swung."

  "All right," said Winona. "We have one of them."

  "Agree," said Christine. "Let's go forward, Jamie."

  QUESTION: Did you have sex with Bussie Speers that night?

  ANSWER: No, I had a date. We're in a committed relationship so we don't sleep around.

  QUESTION: Do you know the names of any boys who had sex with Bussie?

  ANSWER: No.

  QUESTION: Or who were there?

  ANSWER: No.

  Jamie flipped on the lights. "That's about all. But the last part is beyond not only a reasonable doubt but beyond any doubt. You have one of Bussie's rapists in Noah Adams. I make you that promise."

  "Okay," said Christine. "So what do we do next?"

  Winona fielded it. "You go out and talk to the girl. Suggest going to her place rather than making her leave her home, just for right now. She's injured and laying low, poor kid."

  "Okay, I'll give her a call and set it up. What are you going to do?"

  Winona smiled. "I was saving the best part for last. You know the palm print we got off the bed where she was assaulted?"

  "Yes."

  "Guess whose print matches it? Noah Adams!"

  "Bingo! Defendant number one, please stand and identify yourself to the studio audience."

  Jamie spoke up. "You're doing What's My Line, Mom. That's a TV show out of the Jurassic era."

  "It's not that old, buddy boy."

  "Mom, can I ask you one other thing?"

  "Sure. What's up?"

  "Remember I said I needed two thousand for a retainer?"

  "Yes."

  "Mom, where's my check?"

  10

  "You said you wouldn't be comfortable coming downtown, and I can appreciate that," said Christine. She was standing just outside Bussie's front door, waiting to be asked inside. "So I agreed to come here and talk to you woman-to-woman. May I come inside?"

  "Come in, please. Dad said you would be coming and I did get your phone message. Forgive my getup. It's just too hard anymore to worry about how I look."

  Bussie was dressed in sweats, wool socks and running shoes, and a nondescript red top that was several sizes too large. Christine knew it was the typical type of non-revealing clothing often chosen by female victims of sexual assault in an effort to hide their body contours.

  Christine had reviewed file notes from the girl's father. Bussie Speers was eighteen years old, had scored in the ninetieth percentile on the SAT test, was modest and tasteful by nature, and had always been challenged by social functions where the serial meeting of people was expected.

  Her father had noted that it was beyond comprehension that she had been a willing attendee at the type of party described in the initial police reports. Which had led Christine to consider that the girl had either been duped into attending or she had a more adventuresome streak than her father gave her credit for. Either way, it had been her first time at a function where the goal was to drink to intoxication, vomit, and drink some more.

  "According to the registrar's records, you had a 3.8 GPA at mid-terms. It must be terribly hard to give that up."

  "It wasn't by choice. Would you like something to drink? We have coffee, water, and I can make tea."

  "Nothing right now. I want to just get to know you, Bussie. Kind of get a feel for who you are and how this ordeal has impacted you. I'd also like to know about the night of the party."

  "It was just a dumb party, Ms. Susmann. I didn't know I was going until my roomie's best friend came down sick. I was a fill-in. So we ripped the sheet off my bed and made me a toga. My sheets hadn't been washed since September, beginning of school."

  "I remember being eighteen."

  Christine did remember. She knew it would be devastating at that age--or any age--to have your nude pictures posted worldwide. She shuddered and plunged ahead.

  "Why don't you tell me a little about the party."

  "Cindy--that's my roommate--talked me into going. But I was curious anyway. It wasn't that I was a goody-goody, I was just slow to grow into someone who would go to a drunk-o-rama. That just wasn't in me. Until that night, when I sort of got teased into it. So we walked to the TKA house and the front door was wide open. There was a sign on the wall with a giant arrow pointing downstairs. It said 'Enter if ye dare.'"

  "What did that mean to you?"

  "I guess it meant what it said. But I didn't figure that out until it was too late. Anyway, we go downstairs and it's so noisy we can't even talk to each other. There's a band playing reggae and everybody's either dancing or making out or screaming at each other to be heard. Girls Gone Wild kind of scene."

  "Have you ever seen a Girls Gone Wild video?"

  "No, I just know about them. Three boys immediately ask me to dance. So I figure what the heck and I go dance with all three of them at once. They're doing sexually explicit things while they're dancing."

  "Such as?"

  "Oh, pretending to be masturbating or humping. Stuff like that."

  "Sounds romantic."

  "I should have left right then. Truth was, the place was so crowded it was almost impossible to get back to the stairs. Besides, I didn't want to leave Cindy there alone."

  "Where was Cindy while you were dancing?"

  "A boy had come up to her and spilled some beer on her white shirt. She had gone back upstairs to use someone's blow dryer. It was stupid."

  "As college parties can be. I'm no prude, Bussie. I've been to these shindigs myself."

  "Anyway, I should have left but I didn't. Then this boy named Jackson something--he handed me a red plastic cup filled to the top with beer. They wanted me to chug with them and I did."

  "Why?"

  "It just seemed like the thing to do. I knew I wouldn't get drunk on one cup of beer and I would leave after. Peer pressure, I guess."

  "I totally understand. So what happened next?"

  "I drank maybe half and that's the last thing I remember."

  "What happened next?"

  "It was just before sun-up and somebody had taken me into the living room and put me on a couch. I woke up and immediately was hurting. I ran into the bathroom and looked, but I wasn't bleeding. But lots of stuff was coming out. I figured I must have met someone and gone to bed with them."

  "Had you done that before?"

  Bussie looked away. "Is this confidential?"

  "Yes. Totally."

  "My dad won't see your notes--ever?"

  "I promise."

  "Well, I did do it one time with my second cousin. I was fourteen and he was nineteen. I never did it again because it didn't feel all that great."

  "Would you say you passed out that night?"

  "Definitely."

  "Why would you say that?"

  "Because I remember nothing. The whole night is gone from my memory. It was never in my memory."

  "Do you have any idea who the boys were who took your picture while you were nude?"

  Tears flooded the young woman's eyes. "No. If I did, I would take my dad's gun out of his desk and go shoot them."

  "Please don't. I know you don't really mean that, Bussie."

  Tears began rolling down the girl's cheeks. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

  "No, I do mean it. I would shoot them so they could never hurt someone that bad again. You can't even begin to know what it feels like to know there are boys around the world leering at you and getting off on you."

  "No, I can't. But please, no shooting. Leave the payback to me, okay?"

  "I'll try."

  "That's more like it. I can promise you, Bussie, that I will find these guys and I will make them pay. That's a solemn promise and you can count on it."

  "I believe you, Ms. Susmann. Dad says you're the best prosecutor he's ever seen."

  "Well, that's nice of your father."

  "He wouldn't say that if he didn't mean it."

  "Okay, good. Now, according to my notes, you found out about the pictures the next morning?"

  "Yes. Janessa--one of my best friends--texted them to me. She knew I had to see them and she wanted them to be from someone who cared."

  "What did you do?"

  "I went into shock. I couldn't even talk."

  "What happened?"

  "Cindy took me back to the dorm. I finally got up the nerve to call my dad and he came and got me. We drove home. Then Winona had a doctor examine me at University Hospital. He had a nurse and they did swabs and stuff. Then Winona Lindsey questioned me. She's a detective in my dad's office."

  "She's working with me on your case."

  "Oh, great!" exclaimed Bussie. "I like her. She was the first woman besides Cindy that I told about this. And she was so gentle with me."

  "Have you talked to your mom about it?"

  "My mom was in France, studying watercolors. It was her first chance to do something for herself, now that I was away at school. There was a course there she was taking for eight weeks this past fall. She came right back, though, and we told her what had happened."

  "What did she do?"

  "We cried and hugged. She held me and let me cry until I went to sleep the night she got home. It was the first night I was actually able to sleep."

  "Good for Mom."

  "She's my truest best friend."

  "How about your dad?"

  "He is, too. Best man friend."

  Christine sat back in her chair. "You know, I would like that coffee now. Does that work for you? I'm just not quite done and I know you must need a break."

  "Be right back."

  Bussie bounced up and excused herself as she headed for the kitchen.

  Christine looked around the living room. It was very formal, and she guessed that Bussie's father probably saw business associates--police and detectives--here during off hours.

  Floral designs on the couch under the front window. Wingbacks on either side of the couch, done in a light shade of pink with a pattern of yellow fleur-de-lis. A giant glass coffee table ran the length of the couch and was supplied with automotive magazines and daily newspapers, presumably for guests to while away time with while they waited to meet with the DA. Various chairs and a love seat with throw pillows completed the furnishings. The walls were festooned with Impressionist prints, mostly Degas, as the owners seemed to prefer the raw earthiness of the dancers and cabaret depicted. Which told Christine something about the occupants, though she wasn't sure exactly what.

  Bussie returned with the coffee and an eggshell-colored tray. Cream and sugar and two silver spoons were provided, so Christine helped herself and then took a sip.

  "Thank you. Now, Bussie, we need brighter days ahead for you. What are you thinking might come next?"

  "Two choices. One, I think Cindy was right the very first time we talked. Dye my hair, cut it short, colored contact lenses, name change, California or New York. A whole new life."

  "And what's two?"

  "Two is becoming a nun."

  "Seriously? You would do that?"

  "My parents are very Catholic. I guess I am too. We even talked about it one time when I was about fourteen. I'd just had sex with my cousin--second cousin--and I was feeling guilty, so I guess I brought it up. At that age, the last thing I wanted was another boy in my life and I figured the nuns were a way to avoid them."

  "What about now?"

  "We're very religious. I'm seriously considering it. Maybe working in a third-world country."

  "But you wanted to be a doctor, your father said.”

  "Wanted. Past tense. That was before."

  "You don't think you could do that now?"

  "Truthfully? I haven't given it much thought. Mostly I just sit around and look out the window. It's almost winter, you know. We've already had two light snows. I love winter. I love that insular feeling of being inside in front of the fireplace in the den, all snuggled up with a comforter.”