John glanced back at the dock for the first time in days, and found K sitting there with a look of shock. Every time he'd seen her before, she looked calm and composed, almost smug. Now she looked like she was finally concerned about being convicted.

Victor Trevor didn't seem to be the most intimidating of witnesses, but he easily seemed the most confident. He wore a suit that looked tailor-made and was of some obviously expensive fabric. He was Sherlock's height, but dark-skinned and with short hair. He even managed to sit down in an elegant manner.

"Hello," Lou said.

"Good afternoon, Mr. George," Victor replied in a cultured tone. "I do hope you're well."

"Very much so. Now, how long have you lived in London?"

"I divide my time between London and Bangalore. I'm currently the head of a small firm that is devoted to tablet technology and a selection of peripheral wireless components. My parents are both retired and also divide their time between the two countries, although they live in a country village when in the United Kingdom."

"Have you lived in the UK for most of your life?" Lou was clearly letting Victor just chat for a bit, most likely to impress upon the jury what an upstanding citizen he was. John looked at the buffalo and most of them were smiling; Victor passed their tests.

"I'm a citizen and I was born here, but my mother's family is still in India and as a result I've spent a great deal of time there as well."

"What did your parents do while they still worked?"

"They were both university professors at the same school. My father was a specialist in ancient history and my mother taught physics."

"Did you live near the school where they both taught?"

He nodded. "Initially yes, but when I was to start secondary school we moved to a town farther away that had a school with an excellent reputation. There were of course public schools willing to accept me, but neither of my parents felt it was a good idea for me to be leaving home for long periods of time. I wasn't too fond of the idea myself." He smiled.

"Did you fit in there?" Lou asked.

"For the most part."

"What sort of friends did you make?"

"All sorts. I joined one of the school football teams and made friends there. I always did well in school and made other friends who were interested in more academic pursuits."

"Was there anyone you didn't like?"

"Not me, no. All the students seemed decent enough people."

"Does 'not me' mean there was someone the students didn't like?"

"Yes," Victor said slowly.

"Who?"

"Sherlock Holmes."

"Do you have any idea why the students didn't like him?"

"There were several things that didn't endear him to the others. He was very intelligent, much more so than anyone else. His marks were usually excellent although he clearly didn't pay attention in class. He didn't try to talk to other students, except for nasty remarks. He didn't follow any sports and said several times they were pointless. And he had a way of knowing things about people from observing them. There were times when he did it to deflect others, but other times he seemed to be just saying what he saw and was true."

"Did you like him at all?"

"Not at first. I felt sorry for him because he had no friends and he seemed so standoffish. I couldn't believe that anyone would be fine with always being alone. It wasn't until I saw him and his mother out for a walk one day that I realized there might be more to it." Victor's face clouded with the memory.

"What did you see?"

"He was on a walk with this small blond woman. I was in the garden, playing with one of the bull terriers my family kept then, and they walked right past our house. I didn't know that was his mother then, but I heard her say that he'd been writing his brother at school again and it was selfish to ask him to come back home and at least he was making something of himself. She went on about how he didn't show any respect to anyone except... Then she noticed that someone was nearby and stopped talking. She glared at me. He met my eyes for a second and all I saw in them was despair. After that I decided someone needed to try to be his friend."

"Because of what his mother said?"

Victor shook his head. "Not that. I started to think about what his life had to be like if his mother spoke to him like that in public, and it seemed like the only person who liked him was away at university."

"Are you referring to his brother?" Lou asked.

"Yes. He was working even during the summer and rarely came home, so I didn't know him at all. Everyone said he was apparently a genius and was going to do big things in the world. I saw him a few times and that's it. I don't think we ever talked."

"So you decided to become his friend."

"I decided to at least try."

"How did you do that?"

"He lived down the street from me so I started to walk home with him after school. He first started to say all sorts of things he had figured out about me. None of it was anything I didn't already know, so I just acknowledged that it was all true. After that went on for a few days he told me he wanted to be alone. I said to him that I didn't think anyone always wanted to be alone. He stopped making those remarks then but he didn't say anything to me until I mentioned a physics lecture my mother had recently attended. He said something about spectrographic analysis that had been in a book he read, and that broke the ice for good."

"So you were friends from that point on?"

Victor folded his hands in front of him. "I wouldn't go so far as to say that. It took more time. At first all we did was walk home from school together. Then I started to sit with him at lunch. When he seemed to be more comfortable in my presence, I invited him to my house after school."

"I see," Lou said. "How did your parents feel about him?"

"They had decidedly mixed emotions," Victor said, his lips forming a straight line. "They both thought he was intelligent and could do a great deal in a good university some day. My mother engaged his intellectual side much more easily; my father's area of study wasn't of a lot of concern to him. They also both thought he was too serious. My father even asked me at one point if I knew his mother. I said I didn't, because I'd really only seen her the one time, but the way he asked it sounded like his real question was if I knew Sherlock was being mistreated at home."

"Did you think he was?"

"I didn't think about it until my father asked me that. I'd seen his mother be horrible to him, but I didn't think that was quite what my father had meant." The microphone made his soft sigh audible.

Lou nodded. "Did it occur to you to just ask him?"

"Yes, but I didn't think he would give me a straight answer. He'd told me his father was dead and his brother was at uni, but other than that he gave the impression that it was a closed subject. I didn't want to press the issue, so that was that."

"Did you still do things together?"

"Yes, of course. He came over to my house a great deal on weekends. He said he liked it better there, and he liked our dogs."

"And you would walk home from school with him?"

"Yes."

"Was this always uneventful?"

"All but once." Victor looked at Lou, looked at the jury, and sighed once again.

"What happened then?"

"Well, I'd had football practice that day, and Sherlock waited for me, even though he didn't watch any of it. I was hungry and I suggested we stop at the supermarket for something. He agreed although I didn't think he wanted anything there; he never ate much. We went inside, I got a juice and some crisps, and we were in the aisle with the sweets and just about to head to the registers when he just stopped in his tracks. I was just about to ask him what was wrong when I heard a woman say 'Aren't you going to introduce me to your friend?' I turned around and there was a small woman standing in front of Sherlock. He looked afraid. I'd never seen him look afraid before. His eyes were just glazed over. She asked him again 'Who is he?' and after a moment he said 'Victor' and she said 'And I've never met him?' He didn't say anything then, and I was about to take his arm and lead him away, but she said 'I suppose this means that you're not going to visit me after school today,' caressed his shoulder and left on her own."

"Was it just unusual because someone else was close to him, or for some other reason?"

"Well, I didn't like the woman when she came up to us. There was something not right about her tone of voice. But it was the bit at the end that made me think something was wrong. She didn't just give him a pat on the shoulder. It was more like a lover's caress." Victor visibly shivered. "And he didn't seem to like it, but he didn't seem to think that was wrong, either." Even now he looked distressed. "It just felt wrong, for lack of a better word."

"And what happened after that?"

"W e paid for the food, left the store, and went to my house. I just wanted to make sure we were alone, and thankfully my parents weren't at home. Once we got there we sat down on the steps and I asked him who that had been. He said 'a friend,' and after a second 'She's a doctor in town, Dr. Martin,' in this monotone. I asked him how they'd met and at first he didn't say anything. Then he asked me if I'd promise not to tell anyone what he said. I wanted to hear what he had to say, so I said yes."

"What did he say?"

"He repeated that I had to promise not to tell anyone. Then he started telling this story about when he was a little kid and his brother went away to school and he went looking for a friend. Apparently that woman invited him into her garden. And then he said..." Victor trailed off, and John could see tears in his eyes. After a moment to compose himself, he went on. "Then he said she'd swung him around, but he also said something about her touching his genitals through his clothes. I just about passed out from the shock, but Sherlock didn't seem to think he'd said anything unusual. He kept talking about her and although he never was very specific he basically said they'd been having sex since he was five. I don't think he realized what he was saying, really. Not how wrong it was. He seemed to think he started it, and I really didn't know what to say to that."

"What did you do then?"

"I asked him if he'd mentioned it to his mother, and he said no. I said then I thought he should tell her about it. Looking back that was an incredibly stupid thing to say, but I thought if she knew about it she'd put a stop to it. I was thinking more about my mother than his in that situation, I'm afraid. He made some excuse and said he was going home, although I think he was really doing to that woman's house."

"When did you talk to him next?"

"I didn't, really. He avoided me at school and started going in the other direction if he saw me walking along. And I was all torn up. He had told me not to say anything. That's all I could think of. 'You can't ever tell. Promise that you won't ever tell.' Over and over again. After a few weeks of that I did something quite stupid, although it made sense at the time."

"What?" Lou leaned towards the judge's stand. He looked very tired all of a sudden and John suddenly realized the impact the trial had on him.

"I pretended to be ill and stayed home from school. Then I went to Sherlock's house. I thought about telling my parents or even the police, but I didn't want to break that promise I had made. I thought it would be the easiest to just tell his mother, like I had said he should. So I went to her house and knocked on the door. She took one look at me and asked what I wanted. I asked her if she knew Dr. Martin, and she said she did, that one of her son's was friends with her. I asked her if he spent a lot of time with her, and she said yes. Then she asked if he'd gotten himself hurt again, and I said 'not really' and then I told her that she'd been assaulting him for years and I didn't think he should spend time with her anymore."

"How did she respond to that?"

Victor looked down for a minute. "Horribly, but not in the way I expected. She started raving about how horrible of a son she had and how he was a liar and he was just trying to force his brother to come home. She said it was the last straw and slammed the door in my face. I went home and was sick for real. You see, from the look on her face I think she had suspected that all along. She just didn't care."

"Did you ever find out what happened after that?"

"I know that his brother came home and raised hell, but since Sherlock's mother didn't know who I was she never mentioned me and I suppose he never asked that woman. Sherlock was sent off to a boarding school within the week. His mother died a few months later, and right after that I read in the local paper that Dr. Martin had married someone in town and they'd moved to London. I wondered which school Sherlock had been sent to, but after his mother died I never saw his brother again and I hadn't thought to ask him before."

"So the two of you haven't spoken since that day in the supermarket?" Lou smiled slightly, like he knew this would be their trump card.

"Sherlock and I? No."

"How did you find out about this investigation?"

"I saw the news one evening and I realized it was the same woman. I hadn't thought about it for a long time, but before the broadcast even finished I rang up Scotland Yard and said I could help them. Maybe I hadn't done things right the first time, but this time it was going to work."

"And this was the only victim you could give any information about?"

"Yes. I hadn't heard anything about that woman after she married."

"Is this woman present in court now?"

"Yes," Victor said, sitting up straighter.

"Can you point to her?"

Not only did he point, he even added: "She is sitting right there in the dock."

With the satisfied smile still on his face, Lou said "No further questions." As Lou walked back to the stand, both Harvey and Clark came up to the judge's stand. They exchanged a few words, looking back at Lou and Susan. Lou turned around and went right back up, Susan following. An usher led Victor off to one side while the solicitors talked to the judge. John couldn't hear any of it, but from the facial expressions and the hand gestures, something significant was going on.

Suddenly, Judge Foster banged his gavel down, causing the entire court to startle. "The court will now adjourn for today," he said. John felt baffled, and from the looks on the faces of the buffalo and media no one else understood it either. "Tomorrow's hearing will be closed to the media and public. Statements will be made to the press only after the session."