The Final Judgment by Richard North Patterson

humiliate him again. “Within eight hours.” His voice was clipped now. “More than time enough to sober up.” “I really doubt that.” How to say this, Caroline wondered, without being patronizing? “Sorry if I gave my jury argument.”
    “No, it was interesting. And informative. So why do you doubt it?”
    “Because drugs are a huge problem in San Francisco, and I was a public defender there. Which means that a lot of my clients were screwed up on drugs and alcohol. Of necessity, I began to take an amateur interest in pharmacology. For one thing, Jackson, the dope these kids smoke now isn’t like the pot we tried.” A raised eyebrow. “No?”
    “No. Today’s pot has fifteen percent THC content, three to five times that of our wonder years. If Brett was an amateur doper—and I believe she was—one joint could do things to her that you and I wouldn’t even recognize. “Second, if she drank the wine first—which I also believe—the dope would have had an additive effect. The intoxication is seriously intensified: you get black holes in the memory, some of which never get filled, and there’s a kind of surreal dream state, where the images are more like a slide show than real life. So that you doubt your own experience.” Caroline paused, then added succinctly, “And an experience this terrible is one that you would very much wish to doubt.”
    Jackson looked at her skeptically. “And a single joint would account for all that.”
    “It could account for a lot of things. That she at first tried to administer CPR. That she later had trouble remembering—or believing—that this terrible thing had really happened. And the nausea and vomiting are a typical example of the additive effect, which—like the perceptual problems—are also intensified by orgasm. As you may also recall from your youth.” Suddenly, Jackson looked wary, as if unsure how to answer. What are you doing? his expression said. Then a shrug, the barest hint of a smile. “I didn’t know what it was. Maybe the earth moving.” What were the rules for this? Caroline wondered. She rushed ahead. “The point is, she wouldn’t get over it quickly. The effect lasts not for hours but for days. So that what Brett describes so well—semi-blackout, then flashing on his body, then enough recovery to tell her story—is utterly consistent with the chemistry of memory as affected by drugs. Please, trust me that this is not just defense lawyer’s bullshit.” She added softly, almost reluctantly, “Which does, however, bring me to Miranda.”
    “Somehow I thought that it might.” His eyes were keen now. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”
    “You already know, Jackson. In fact, I already know when you started calling the shots—when they held Brett at the hospital until they got the warrants to search her person and the property by the lake. That’s when they started doing things right. But by then it may have been too late.” Caroline kept her voice quiet, respectful. “When they called to tell you they’d picked up this naked, blood-speckled girl with a bloody knife, taken her to jail, and then gotten her to point them to the lake, what did they say about Miranda warnings?” Jackson’s watchful half smile was no smile at all. “You tell me.”
    “There were none. Which means there’s a good chance that Brett’s lawyer—whoever that is—could suppress the
    first statement about where to find James’s body and all the evidence based on that; perhaps the body itself and certainly the search of the lake, the search of Brett, and her later statement about the circumstances of James’s death.” Caroline snapped her fingers. “Gone, just like that. Leaving you with nothing.” Jackson’s smile had vanished. “Caroline,” he said in a voice of wonderment, “of all the conversations I ever imagined us having, this is not one.” His tone became crisper. “You’re also wrong. The bloody knife was in plain view, giving the police good reason to feel that someone else might have been hurt. But they