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George and Cindy were visibly upset when they arrived, polite but very apprehensive. They were not very talkative. We made the usual introductions, “How are you, nice to see you,” that kind of thing.

I hadn’t seen them in a while. The last time I had any conversation with either of them was with George at the Frye hearing. Generally, when we saw them at the hearings, there would be a polite nod exchange, though sometimes not even that.

Before the meeting, we’d told Mark that we would speak to him privately and share what we knew with him. Then it would be up to him to decide what to tell the Anthonys. We put Cindy and George in the conference room and took Mark into the office with us.

Linda and I carefully told him the story the shrinks had told us, as he jotted everything down on his legal pad to keep the story straight. He was in complete disbelief. He looked at us and said, “I cannot believe Jose lied to Cindy like that.” Mark asked us a couple of questions for clarification, but not many.

“It’s your decision what you tell your clients,” Linda and I said. “We are going to give you privacy. You tell them that we will wait for them. When you are done, if they have any questions, we will speak to them, but we are not going to interrogate them or ask them any questions.”

Mark left and went to the conference room to talk to the Anthonys for what seemed like twenty to thirty minutes. Linda and I were in a nearby conference room when Mark came to find us. Cindy and George had questions, and we accompanied him back to the conference room. Cindy was sitting at the table just looking down. George was next to her, his face bright red. Cindy looked angry. George looked like he had been crying, like someone had just killed Caylee all over again. He was just devastated.

“I just want you to know that none of this is true,” George said to us.

Cindy patted him on the hand and said, “It’s okay, George. Nobody believes this.”

His words would catch in his throat as he assured us one more time, “I just want you to know that everything I told you is the truth and I am not changing any of it.”

I remember Cindy saying something like, “I don’t know what’s wrong with her,” referring to Casey. At least she was finally willing to admit that there was something not right about Casey. How it would affect her testimony at trial, though, was anyone’s guess.

That said, I didn’t get the sense of hostility I had in the past. I think the realization that Caylee had in fact died in Casey’s custody, at the very least, changed their animosity toward us. While they didn’t turn into supporters of the prosecution, they were not quite as obstinate.

Of course, the Anthonys weren’t the only wild cards in the deck. By now, we also knew to expect some kind of a “surprise” witness from Baez in the middle of the trial; all we could do was hope that whatever it was, we’d be able to handle it on the fly. Over the years, we’d all become pretty good at that, since Baez was not the first defense attorney to practice the ambush tactic. Part of the frequency of these ambushes comes from an unfortunate flaw in Florida’s discovery rule: it is extremely rare that discovery violations by the defense during the trial are punished by the exclusion of that evidence. Most defense attorneys know this, so the risk to the client is minor. A few years ago, the state added contempt against the attorney as one of the punishments in the judge’s arsenal, but unfortunately it is rarely used. As prosecutors, all we could do was adjust and try to prepare for the unexpected.

Heading into the trial, there was no telling how it all would play out. We had confidence in our case. We knew what evidence we had on our side. We knew what evidence they had on theirs. We also now knew what their defense was going to be, and that without the therapists on the stand to be the mouthpiece for Casey’s version of events, Casey herself was going to have to testify. Linda would be ready for the cross-examination.

It all came down to the jury now. Could we get a jury with a modicum of intelligence