The trial began with two days of evidence from APD and DEA officers, an expert witness in accounting, and a woman from the DEA's money laundering investigation who went into significant detail on exactly how much money Skyler had laundered and the intricacy of the planning it must have required for her to cover it up to the extent that she did. Kim countered this with a cross-examination focusing on the intricacies of the witness's study and investigation and arguing that any intelligent woman with an accounting background could have done the same thing, and that the tax codes and checks and balances were all common knowledge for anyone with Skyler's training and did not require her to exert any undue effort to conceal this crime.

Then the Prosecution called Marie. She appeared in a very smart brown suit and purple blouse, stated her name and swore on the Bible.

"What is your relationship to the defendant?" The prosecutor asked.

"She's my sister."

"And your husband was ASAC Henry or Hank Schrader, is that right?"

"Yes."

"Could you tell the court what happened to him?"

"Objection!" said Kim. "Relevance."

The judge looked at the prosecutor.

"Permission to approach the bench, ma'am?" said the prosecutor.

"Permission granted." The judge nodded.

"I don't blame Skyler for his death, if that's what you mean," said Marie.

Midway to the bench, the prosecutor spun around.

"She's as much a victim of it as I am."

The judge held up her hand. "Mrs Schrader, please be silent until you're asked to resume your testimony. The prosecution and defence counsel are approaching my bench to discuss a matter of relevance."

Kim watched the red-faced prosecutor as the two of them approached the bench.

"I withdraw the question, Your Honour," he said when he arrived.

Kim's eyebrows rose.

"The manner of the witness's husband's death is not relevant. His actions do, however, form a significant part of the witness's testimony in relation to how she found out about the criminal activity of her sister and brother-in-law, so I will be asking her further questions about him, and I would appreciate it if the Defence wouldn't object."

"Ok," said the judge. "Objection sustained, the jury will please disregard the prosecutor's last question and the witness's response to it."

Marie looked around sullenly.

The prosecutor walked back towards the witness stand. "Mrs Schrader, will you please tell the court how and when you found out that your sister and brother-in-law had suddenly come into a very large amount of money. You said in one of your original interviews with the DEA that they suddenly told you, with no warning, that they had acquired money into seven figures. Is that correct?"

"Yes."

"When was this?"

"Well it was not long after they broke up, actually. Which makes sense, because it was the reason they broke up."

"When?"

"It would've been April 2009. It was when Hank was in the hospital; Hank was shot on the 19th of March 2009, so it was a couple weeks after that."

"To explain to the court, a year before his death Mrs Schrader's husband was badly injured through his work at the DEA-"

"No, it was not through – I mean he was not at work at the time and the DEA gave him no back-up."

"He was injured in March 2009 and he was in the hospital when, in April 2009, your sister and brother-in-law suddenly told you that they were millionaires."

"They told me then because Skyler wanted to help pay for Hank's treatment. She offered that and started to tell me, and Walt said, 'No no,' and Skyler said, 'We have the money, let us help.'"

"And where did she say the money was from?"

"Gambling. She said that Walt had made it counting cards in backroom gambling

games."

"To be clear, it was Skyler who said this, not Walter."

"Yes. But Walt was there, and he was sort of nodding along."

"Nodding along. While his wife told you that he had made millions of dollars."

"Well he said seven figures. Not millions - that just means more than a million. Which is a lot. Skyler didn't know what the amount was - she asked him. Walt said seven figures."

"But Skyler said that he had made it gambling in illegal backroom games."

"Yes."

"Were you surprised?"

"Yes, very."

"Had you had any inkling before that of this sudden influx of money?"

"No."

"Did you question it? Did you look into whether the story was believable?"

"Well I knew they had broken up because of it - it made sense as a reason for that - and I didn't know of any reason for them to lie, and I certainly had absolutely no inkling that Walt would be making drugs, but he was a very intelligent person and very good with numbers, so counting cards made sense."

"So you believed the lie."

"Yes."

"You even believed that this supposed gambling was the reason that your sister and brother-in-law's marriage had broken down?"

"Yes, well… the best lies are close to the truth, aren't they? The truth was that she kicked him out of the house because she was disgusted with the fact that he was making methamphetamine."

"But you didn't know that until much later."

"No."

"So exactly how long did your sister keep from you the knowledge that her husband was making the dangerous drug methamphetamine?"

"I guess it would've been about a year."

"She kept the truth from you for about a year. And for part of that time you believed that Walter had made his money from gambling."

"Yes."

"And how did you find out that it was a lie?"

"My husband told me. He'd figured it out because he'd been investigating Heisenberg all along, but he didn't know who he was. He finally figured it out when he found a book in their bathroom with an inscription that he was certain had been written by a man who was murdered a few months before that. Hank was helping with the murder investigation, and he compared the murder victim's handwriting and it was the same. The inscription, both on the victim's lab notes book, which he had been using to write notes on methamphetamine manufacture, and in the book Hank found in Walt and Skyler's bathroom, said, 'To WW'. Walter White. Hank said that the scales finally fell from his eyes and the pieces snapped into place."

"And when was this?"

"March 2010."

"Your husband Hank discovered that your brother-in-law Walter was the methamphetamine kingpin Heisenberg in March 2010?"

"Yes."

"Hank then met with your sister? Is that correct?"

"Yes, he didn't tell me about it for a couple days because he was doing his own investigating to make sure that it was true. He found that it was, he confronted Walt, Walt didn't deny it but it was clear that he wouldn't give in, wouldn't give himself up. So then Hank met with Skyler."

"What did he tell you about that meeting?"

"Objection! Hearsay," said Kim.

"Sustained," said the judge. "I would remind the Prosecution that a witness is called a witness because they talk about things they were witness to, not things they were told about by somebody else."

"He told me Skyler was scared," said Marie.

The prosecutor exhaled slowly. "So you'd just been told that your brother-in-law had become a methamphetamine kingpin, the very criminal that your husband had been trying to track down for some months, who had been sending enormous quantities of dangerous drugs all over the Southwest and internationally and had murdered several people."

"Objection! Leading statement."

"Sustained. Mr Martin, just the witness speak."

"How did that make you feel?"

"Horrified. I couldn't believe it."

"What made you believe it?"

"Hank showed me the evidence he had, which wasn't much. What really made me believe it was when I went to talk to Skyler."

"Tell the court how that meeting went."

"I went over to her house. We made sure that Walt and Flynn were out first. It was just Skyler and the baby in the house."

"We?"

"Me and Hank. We went over together, but I knocked on the door and Hank hung back."

"What did Skyler say when she opened the door?"

She said, "Just you. Not Hank.'"

"She didn't want Hank to hear what she had to say?"

"Well he was a DEA agent. She knew she was going to go on trial like this - she wasn't gonna say anything in front of a DEA agent without a lawyer present."

"And what did she say to you? When you went inside."

"Nothing. She didn't say anything at all."

"Mrs Schrader, I would remind you that you are under oath and you must tell the truth on pain of being charged with perjury."

"What? I am telling the truth, she literally said nothing. She was crying and gasping and sometimes moving her mouth, but she just couldn't figure out what to say. I was talking to her, I was saying, 'How long have you known?' and things like that, but she just couldn't respond."

"Did she deny it?"

"No."

"Mrs Schrader, in your interview with the DEA the day after your husband was killed, you stated that during that meeting your sister had said, 'I am so sorry.'"

"Oh yeah, that's right. I was talking and asking and she wasn't saying anything, she was just crying and sometimes trying to say something but not being able to say anything, and then she turned to me and said, 'I'm sorry.' She was scared and ashamed and she was -"

"And what happened after that?"

Marie raised her eyebrows awkwardly. "I slapped her in the face and tried to take Holly. It was a snap decision, I hadn't thought it through. Hank stopped me. I mean it was -"

"You reacted with violence?"

"No, it… it was just a slap, I mean, but…"

"How did you feel?"

"At that time, quite angry, but-"

"Why were you angry?"

"Well because she'd… she'd lied to me, and Walt had taken Hank along for a ride and abused his trust and-"

Prosecutor Martin held up his hand. "I didn't ask why you were angry with Walt. Why were you angry with Skyler?"

Marie paused. She looked at Kim, whose eyes were impassive. She looked at Skyler.

"Mrs Schrader?"

"Because she lied to me. Because she hid it from me."

"Any other reason?"

"I was just overwhelmed then, I was just shocked. I couldn't believe that…" Marie took a breath. "I couldn't believe that she would betray our family like that, and I later found out that she didn't; she was trying to protect us and herself from Walt's worst-"

"Were you concerned for the safety of the child?"

"The – the children?"

"You said earlier you tried to take the youngest child from the house."

"Yeah, I was panicking, I-"

"Were you concerned for the child's safety?"

"Yes."

"So to recap what you've said, Mrs Schrader, you met with your sister after your husband had told you what he believed she had done-"

"No, what he believed Walt had done – he didn't think Skyler-"

"-she refused to meet with your husband because he was a DEA agent, she refused to answer any of your questions, she said, 'I'm so sorry,' and you were concerned for the safety of her child."

"No, it wasn't that she refused – she later answered everything I asked, but that day she was just speechless, and-"

"Later? What do you mean? You haven't said that before."

"Just when I asked her later, like..."

"When?"

"Oh, that was weeks after."

"After your husband was murdered?"

"Yeah. Yeah."

"After your husband was murdered, your sister answered your questions?"

"Yeah."

"Before your husband was murdered, she did not speak to you."

"No."

"Objection!" said Kim. "Relevance!"

"That's very relevant, Your Honour, and it makes a lot of sense," said the Prosecutor. "It was only after Mrs Schrader's husband's death that the defendant started talking to Police, also."

"Objection denied," said the judge.

"Thank you, Your Honour. That makes a lot of sense. The defendant only started co-operating with both yourself, Mrs Schrader, and the Police after the proverbial had hit the fan."

"It hit the fan a lot earlier than that for Skyler," said Marie. "She was so scared."

The prosecutor frowned. "Thank you, Mrs Schrader, you can stop there for now. Your Honour, may we adjourn for lunch?"

...

Prosecutor Martin was first out of the courtroom. He charged along the hallway to the Prosecution's rooms, then turned to check that his legal team, ASAC Hoffman and the DEA Prosecutor Viney were following him.

He waited until Viney had closed the door, then said, "Are you sure you want to proceed with her?"

"Yeah," said Hoffman. "Next up you're gonna talk about the blackmail, right?"

"White hasn't been charged with blackmail! Which was why, by the way?"

"Insufficient evidence," said Viney.

Martin dragged his hand across his eyes. "I get that it really sucks for you that the two agents who uncovered these crimes got killed and so they can't take the stand themselves, but putting one of them's wife up there is not an appropriate replacement. Anything she says he told her is dismissed as hearsay, and she's the defendant's sister! She keeps playing into the Defence's hands!"

"She's just talking," said Hoffman. "She's a very talkative woman, she doesn't have a filter."

"She is deliberately saying things that are favourable to the Defence!"

"So turn her around, make her contradict herself!" said Hoffman. "That's your job, isn't it?"

"I'm trying, but she keeps turning it back around – she-"

"If we hadn't called her as a prosecution witness, she would've been called as a defence witness," said Viney. "She's much better off as a prosecution witness because then we can get her to say as many blackening things as possible, turn her around a bit, make her contradict herself so that she stops making sense by the time the cross-examination starts."

"She has clearly been coached by the Defence!"

"What?"

"Did you see the way she looked at Wexler just now, when I was trying to get her to say something, anything bad about the defendant!"

"About that, I wouldn't focus on the child safety thing because people tend to associate children's safety with women's safety, and that might-"

"Oh my god, that's what you're gonna say about that? You didn't notice that she managed to turn every single thing I said around within one sentence – she has been coached by the Defence!"

"We need you to get her talking about her husband's death."

"How? It's been struck off as irrelevant!"

"Why did you let the judge sustain the objection?"

"I had to, because Schrader, the so-called prosecution witness, had just said, 'I don't blame my sister for my husband's death!' The only way I could get that struck off was to withdraw the question!"

"It's not ideal," said Hoffman. "But the fact is that the majority of the information from our early investigation comes from her. She knew more about Walter White's meth operation than her sister did."

"Jesus!"

"From Hank. It was all from Hank - we are still using a lot of his evidence. But it came via Marie."

"That's god damn hearsay!"

"We need a ruling that hearsay evidence is acceptable in this case," said Viney. "I'll draft an application."

"What's the point, Hank Schrader didn't collect any evidence on Skyler!" said Martin.

"Yes he did," said Hoffman. "I didn't really think it was worth it, but... the tape. From when he tried to interview her. Play that after lunch, with Marie Schrader out of the room - that's direct evidence, not hearsay. Then we call her back in and she talks about the blackmail."

"Let's call for an adjournment for the rest of the day so we can apply to have hearsay evidence admissible," said Viney. "For us to get anything from that tape, it needs to be accompanied by Marie telling the jury how Hank told her that Skyler then told him that she needed a lawyer, and then jumped up and ran away from him. That was a pretty guilty move."

...

Kim poked her head into the alleyway behind the courthouse and saw Skyler sitting on the steps smoking a cigarette. "Hey," she said, sitting down next to her.

Skyler didn't say anything.

"They've adjourned for the rest of the day. The prosecution is applying to make hearsay evidence admissible. Sounds like they want to have Hank Schrader speak through Marie, which is a pretty bizarre move, I mean it was pretty clear that she was rooting for you!" Kim smiled. "So don't worry. I am opposing hearsay evidence because it is really not relevant; the main problem you face is everybody blaming you for things your husband did. That's not right, and it's not fair and it's not relevant. Our case relies on convincing them to separate you from him."

"They want me to be the scapegoat."

"Yeah. So I'll get back in there and submit to the judge about it - it was pretty obvious they were gonna make that move so I've already got a submission mostly prepared. It does mean, though, that Marie won't be called back until tomorrow or later, and you can't speak to her until she's done. There are no actual rules against it, but anything you say to her she can say in court, and if she does anything to change her testimony she could be discredited. At this point, the Prosecution is probably weighing up whether they should have called her at all. We want her evidence to stand, so it's best if you stay right away until she's done. I'm gonna phone her now and tell her the same thing, so if you have anything you have to ask her or organise to do with your kids or whatever, I can ask on your behalf."

Skyler sighed and leaned back. "Thanks. Just tell her I'm going to collect Holly now and take her home. I'll take advantage of the extra time to pack up my house."

"What about your son, is he…?"

"He's independent, it's fine."

"Ok."

...

The Prosecution spent all of that afternoon and part of the next morning trying to get a ruling from the judge that hearsay evidence was admissible, being opposed strongly by Kim, and finally giving up because the only hearsay evidence they had was from Marie, and she was already proving to be a less than reliable witness. The trial resumed on Thursday afternoon with the tape of the truncated recording Hank had made during his meeting with Skyler in the diner.

"I wanna ask you to tell me everything you can, umm, take as long as you like - just start from the beginning, when you first became aware of Walt's activities, and just try to be as... as detailed as you can."

"Ah, what, right here, right now?"

"Sure, why not? While it's still fresh, you know? And just ah, just ah remember to, ah, state your name and-and the date before you start."

"Hank, do… Do we...have to do this right now?"

"No, we-we don't, we don't have to -"

The recording cut out.

A tear fell down Skyler's cheek, and she closed her eyes.

"The recording ends there," said Prosecutor Martin. "It's believed ASAC Schrader stopped recording because the defendant had indicated her unwillingness to tell him anything. I'd like to call Marie Schrader back to the stand."

Marie was lead back to the witness box.

"Mrs Schrader, yesterday you told us that you and your husband's suspicion that your sister had been involved in criminal activity was confirmed when you went to her house to ask her about it, and she refused to say anything other than, 'I'm sorry.'"

"Objection! Leading statement," said Kim.

"Sustained," said Judge Stephens.

"No, she didn't refuse, she was speechless, she didn't know what to say, and it wasn't our suspicion of her criminal activity, it was our suspicion of Walt's criminal activity," said Marie. "All Hank had discovered regarding Skyler was that she had known about it or parts of it but hadn't said anything."

Martin's left eyebrow twitched and a vein in his temple pulsed. "That is also illegal," he said.

"Well yes, but it's not criminal activity in the same sense as what Walt was doing."

"When did you next see the defendant?"

"I next saw Skyler two days later at Garduno's Mexican restaurant."

"Who else was there?"

"Hank and Walt."

"A family dinner at Garduno's."

"No, the kids weren't there."

"If you could run us through it from the start. What was said?"

"Walt said that he had called us there to talk about the kids. Particularly Flynn - Holly was a baby then so she couldn't understand anything about it, but we, Hank and I, wanted to tell Flynn about it, and Walt and Skyler were preventing us from doing that. I also said that I wanted the kids to come and live with us because I didn't think they were safe with Walt. So we had a fairly emotion-charged discussion about it, mostly between me and Hank and Walt."

"Skyler was silent again?"

"No, Walt was just controlling the situation, he was trying to speak for her all the time. She didn't get a chance to say very much."

"What did she say?"

"She only spoke when I addressed her directly about wanting the kids to come to our house. She said that there was no longer a safety issue for the kids because Walt was no longer doing what he'd been doing."

"What words did she use?"

"'This is not an ongoing situation,' something like that. Both of them were saying that there was no evidence, nothing ongoing and that therefore they thought it wasn't worth splitting apart our family and telling Flynn about it because it would upset him - yes, of course it would upset him, but our family had already been split apart at that point and it's not as if Flynn was ever not going to find out, it's -"

"Just stick to what was happening at the restaurant. It was a discussion about family?"

"Well that was what Walt wanted to talk about because he wanted to pull our heart strings about Flynn. That was how he operated - he was very adept at using emotional blackmail to manipulate people into doing what he wanted them to do. Hank turned the discussion around to what we wanted to talk about, which was Walt's criminal activity, and he was telling Walt that he couldn't get away with it and he should just admit it and so on, and then Walt stood up and he said to Skyler, 'Let's go,' and then he placed a DVD on the table in front of Hank."

"What did this DVD look like?"

"It was blank, it didn't have any writing on it. It was in a small plastic case."

"It was a home-burned DVD?"

"Yes."

"What happened next?"

"Walt and Skyler left, and Hank and I had dinner and then we went home and watched it."

"And what was on this DVD?"

"It was a video of Walt talking. He started by stating his full name and address, and he said that this was his confession." Marie wiggled her fingers to show that the word 'confession' was in parentheses. "He said that he had been making methamphetamine but he said that Hank had been making him do it. Which is obviously not true, but this was his threat to us that if we didn't back off, he would show this video to people to try and discredit Hank."

"So it was a blackmail video?"

"Yes."

"Did Skyler say anything when her husband handed this video to Hank?"

"No. She was just looking down. She wasn't happy about it."

"Do you think she knew what was on the DVD?"

Marie nodded. "Yeah."

"She used blackmail on a member of her own family to save herself and her husband?"

Marie paused, then nodded again. "Yeah. She later told me that she had thought it was better to work with Walt on it because she thought that if she didn't, he would go off and do something worse by himself."

"This is information that both of you did not reveal straight away in your police interviews."

"Not deliberately. The early interviews had more pressing problems in them - Hank and Steve were missing, Walt had skipped town. I found all of that very hard to deal with obviously, and the blackmail was... that was one of the hardest things, actually. So it took me a while to get it straight in my head and be able to figure out what to say about it. It came out when I was being questioned on why Hank hadn't called it in. Which was, as I recall, pretty early on."

"It was. It was in your interview with ASAC Ramey and then Agent Hoffman on March 17th 2010." Prosecutor Martin turned to the jury. "The defendant did not mention it at all. After Mrs Schrader reported it, agents asked the defendant about it directly, and then she confessed to it." He turned back to Marie. "What happened after that? You and your husband were blackmailed. Did that gag you? Did that stop you from taking further action?"

Marie shook her head. "We decided not to take any further action on the kids at that time. Hank said that the only way we could make sure they were safe, and make sure Skyler was safe, was to do things the right way: to find the evidence to put Walt behind bars. He set about doing that."

"What did he do?"

"He convinced Walt's business partner Jesse Pinkman to give evidence against him. He told Agent Gomez what was going on and the two of them worked together to interview Pinkman at our house."

"At your house? They couldn't do that at the DEA because of the blackmail?"

"No, it was because Hank was concerned that if he took Pinkman into custody officially, Walt would have him killed in jail."

"When did you next see the defendant after the night at the Mexican restaurant?"

Marie leaned back and pressed her lips together. "It was only four days after that. It was a Saturday afternoon. Hank phoned me to…" Marie swallowed, and she closed her eyes briefly to compose herself. "He phoned me from To'hajiilee - well I didn't know then that it was To'hajiilee, I found that out later. He phoned to tell me that he had arrested Walt. I thought that that was fantastic. I'd just really wanted him to be gone so that I could go in and check if my sister and my niece and nephew were ok. I had to decide whether I could forgive Skyler for not being forthcoming. After Hank called I thought about that for a couple hours and I decided that I could. I decided that I wanted to help her out. So I went to their house and they weren't there, so I went to the car wash, and they were all there - Skyler, Holly and Flynn. I talked to Skyler first and I told her that Hank had arrested Walt."

"And what you didn't know was that your husband had been murdered, probably only minutes after arresting Walter, in a gun fight with Walter's associates-"

"Objection!" said Kim. "Relevance."

Prosecutor Martin paused and turned slowly. Marie stood, stony-faced.

"ASAC Schrader's death was a very significant thing that happened on that day, Ms Wexler."

"So just say that he was killed – there is no need to mention Walter White's gunslinging associates because this is the trial of Skyler White, not Walter White, who never met these people and never had anything to do with that and who, at the time Mrs Schrader was discussing, was just as ignorant as she was."

The prosecutor's lip curled. The judge took a breath and looked between the two lawyers. "Sustained," she said.

The prosecutor sighed and cleared his throat. "Mrs Schrader," he said. "At the time when you went to speak to your sister at her car wash, did you know that your husband had been killed?"

"No. I thought he had arrested Walt and taken him to the DEA. I told Skyler that and I told her that I was willing to support her and so would Hank, and I told her that we had to tell Flynn."

"How did she react?"

"She cried. But she wasn't concerned about Walt, she was concerned about Flynn. She really didn't, and she still doesn't, want him to know stuff because she's always worried about him being hurt. But in the end you have to know, of course, and so we told him that day in the car wash. And that was the day that that 16-year-old grew up."

Skyler gave a faint whimper, and Marie looked at her.

"What happened next from your perspective? What did you do?"

"I told Skyler to take the kids home and try to relax and regroup. She was still crying and Flynn was kind of angry. So I gave them a hug and I told Skyler that I would come by later. I went home."

"I'm interested as to why you were being so supportive of your sister after she had blackmailed you. Why was that?"

"That was my condition. That was one of the first things I said after I told her Walt had been arrested. I said I would support her if she gave me all copies of the video. She said she only had one and she gave it to me right away."

"Right away as in at the car wash? Before you went home?"

"Yes, she had it in her office there. She said that the condition she had made Walt agree on was that she would keep it, not him."

"She wanted to be in control of the blackmail?"

"Just to stop him from… she said that was why she worked with him on it, to stop him from having control of it because if he controlled the video then he might actually use it, and she didn't want him to use it."

"That wasn't in your original statement."

"Oh no, it wouldn't have been, because I made that statement before I talked to Skyler about it."

"You spoke to her about it afterwards?"

"Yes."

"When was that?"

"A couple weeks later. I went around to her house to ask her about it."

The prosecutor sighed and looked languidly at his notes. "How did it make you feel? When your sister blackmailed your husband?"

"When my brother-in-law blackmailed my husband. Skyler went along with it, she said she helped him do it so that she could control how it was carried out, and that she could control how many copies were made and she kept them herself, she didn't allow Walt to keep them. She also said that she destroyed the SD card of the camera it was filmed on and-"

"Mrs Schrader, none of this is in your original statement about the blackmail. Do you want to change your statement?"

"No, I'm just adding to it. When I made my original statement, Skyler had not yet told me that. The DEA never asked me about it again. You're asking me different questions than they did anyway."

"Mrs Schrader, do you know the reason why this court case was adjourned yesterday?"

"Something about hearsay evidence."

"This is hearsay. You're giving me hearsay right now. You're here to talk about what you witnessed, and actually we were in the middle of talking about the day your husband died when you went off topic and started giving hearsay evidence about something your sister told you two weeks later."

"I did not go off topic, you started asking me about the blackmail!"

"Which I had previously asked you about earlier in this conversation and you had not mentioned this extra information. Just like you didn't mention it in your original DEA interview about it."

"In my original interview I didn't know, and in our earlier conversation today you didn't ask me about that, you asked me what did the DVD look like and what was on it, not -"

Kim stood up. "Your Honour, can we check the transcript of Mrs Schrader's testimony? I'm pretty sure she did actually mention this earlier."

Prosecutor Martin closed his eyes and exhaled through his nose.

"I'll allow that," said the judge.

The court transcript writers started scrolling back through what they had typed. Kim watched them for a moment, then walked over to them and bent over the desk in front of them to look over their shoulders. "Here it is," she said after a few seconds. "Just ah, from there to there," she said to one of the transcript writers, a young nervous-looking man with glasses. "Can you read that out?"

"Witness Schrader: Yeah. She later told me that she had thought it was better to work with Walt on it because she thought that if she didn't he would go off and do something worse by himself. Prosecutor Martin: This is information that both of you didn't reveal straight away in your police interviews. Witness Schrader: Not deliberately. The early interviews had-"

"That's enough," said Kim. "Thank you." She returned to her seat.

"Thank you for your meticulousness, Ms Wexler," said Prosecutor Martin, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "You have proven that Mrs Schrader hinted at this information earlier in this conversation. Only hinted. The fact remains that it was not in any of her police interviews; she has changed her statement, and it remains hearsay evidence which, thanks to you, has been ruled inadmissible in this court case."

"Alright, enough," said the judge. "Mrs Schrader, do you wish to change your statement about the blackmail?"

"No, I'm not changing it, I'm just adding some information that I got after I first told the DEA about it!"

"And this is information that was given to you by the defendant when you said you went around to her house two weeks later to ask her about it."

"Yes. I asked her why did she go along with the blackmail. She said that Walt was going to do it either way so she figured if she did it with him she could control how it was done and limit the damage."

"Alright. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you will please disregard everything that's been said in the last ten minutes, as it was hearsay evidence. Stenographers, can you please take us back to the part of Mrs Schrader's evidence when she was discussing meeting with the defendant and her son in the defendant's car wash. Read out what was said then, please."

"Your Honour, if I may" said Prosecutor Martin. "The reason I asked the witness about the blackmail again was that she had stated that on that day she had offered support to her sister, and I wanted to know why she would do that after her sister blackmailed her. The witness said that she had told her sister at that time that she would only give her support if she surrendered to her all copies of the blackmail video. She then stated that it was the defendant who had kept all copies of the blackmail video, and not her husband."

"One," said Marie. "She only kept one copy because she didn't want to -"

"Mrs Schrader, please do not speak until you are addressed again," said the judge. "Stenographers, take it up to that point, what was said then?"

"Ahh," said the other transcript writer, a plump older woman in a green cardigan and glasses. "Witness Schrader: I said I would support her if she gave me all copies of the video. She said she only had one and she gave it to me right away. Prosecutor Martin: Right away as in at the car wash? Before you went home? Witness Schrader: Yes, she had it in her office there. She said that the condition she had made Walt agree on was that she would keep it, not him."

"That's hearsay," said the judge. "Cut it at, 'She gave it to me right away.' Members of the jury, please disregard everything that was said in this courtroom after Witness Schrader said, 'She gave it to me right away.' Witness Schrader, you will please restrict yourself to reporting things you have directly been involved in, rather than things you have been told. Prosecutor Martin, you may continue your examination of the witness."

Marie frowned.

"Ok, let's regroup ourselves here," said Prosecutor Martin. "We were talking about your meeting with the defendant in her office at the car wash when you told her that your husband, Hank Schrader, had arrested her husband, Walter White."

"Yeah," said Marie sullenly.

"You said that at your encouragement she had told her son what his father had been doing and he had been angry and she had been crying. Did she give you her copy of the blackmail DVD after this?"

"No, before. I asked her about the blackmail before Flynn came in the room."

"Why didn't you say that before?"

"Because you didn't ask!"

"I asked you to tell me exactly what happened on that day in the order that it happened in."

"You did not, you did not say in the order -"

"You said that you had told the defendant that your husband had arrested Walter, you told her you would support her, you encouraged her to tell her son, and then you told her to take her kids home and you said you gave them all a hug. Is that what you said?"

"Yes, and I said that my supporting her was conditional on her giving me the blackmail video, which she did."

"You only said that after I asked you why you had offered to support her after she had blackmailed your husband."

"Alright, whatever, the point is I said it!"

"Can we check the transcript again?"

"Why? I'm not denying what I said, it's there in black and white!"

"Mrs Schrader, I will remind you that you are a prosecution witness - it is not for you to argue with the Prosecution!"