DURHAM, N.C. — Kathleen Peterson can't say what happened the night she died, but the scene of her bloody death says enough for jurors to convict Michael Peterson of her murder, prosecutors concluded Friday in their closing arguments.

"Ladies and gentlemen, these walls are talking," said prosecutor Jim Hardin, gesturing to a photograph of the red-stained walls in the stairwell where the victim died. "Kathleen Peterson is talking to us through these walls. She's screaming at us for truth and for justice."

A day after defense lawyer David Rudolf leveled an assault on their case against the novelist, prosecutors closed with an appeal to common sense, focusing on the blood spatter evidence and nature of injuries to Kathleen Peterson's body.

Prosecutor Jim Hardin concludes closing arguments.

"Thirty-eight injuries, ladies and gentlemen," Hardin told the jury. "How in the world can someone get 38 injuries over their face, back, head, hands and wrists by falling down the stairs, even if there's two falls? That makes absolutely no sense."

Hardin, who finished the state's closing argument begun by fellow prosecutor Freda Black, told jurors that Peterson's claim that his wife of five years died from a stairway fall was a fabrication.

"It's counterintuitive. It doesn't fit right here in your gut. It's something that's made up," said the soft-spoken lawyer.

Prosecutors claim Peterson, 59, beat his wife with a blunt object on Dec. 9. 2001. He could spend life in prison without parole if convicted.

Black, who began the prosecution's closing argument Friday by reading from a set of wedding vows, said Peterson's claim that he was out by the pool when his wife died was yet another "fictional plot" the novelist was trying to sell.

Part of that plot, said both prosecutors, could have been the dramatic discovery of what the defense has claimed was the missing blow poke. Prosecutors have said that the tool mysteriously disappeared from the Peterson household, but the defense said it was found in Peterson's basement garage.

Addressing the blow poke issue was crucial for prosecutors, after Peterson's defense lawyer, David Rudolf, began his closing argument Thursday by playing a recording of Hardin's opening statement in which the attorney boasted of having discovered the murder weapon.

"We have never told you that we are absolutely certain that it was the blow poke that killed Mrs. Peterson," said Black. "You've heard why we believe it was something of the sort."

Both Black and Hardin questioned the timing of the discovery of the dusty, insect-covered blow poke — two days before the defense rested its case — and suggested it could have easily been procured after the fact on eBay.

Black also focused on the links between the stairway death of Elizabeth Ratliff in Germany in 1984 and Kathleen Peterson's death. On Thursday, Peterson's defense lawyer, David Rudolf, attacked a list of similarities between the two crimes floated by investigators.

But Black urged jurors to consider the similarities "in the totality," not one by one.

Michael Peterson faces life in prison if convicted.

"Do you really believe that lightning strikes twice in the same place?" she asked jurors. "Do you? This defendant knew the blueprint of how to make this look like an accidental fall.  Because it had worked one time. And he tried to make it work again. But it didn't."

The state also bolstered its motive theory that Michael Peterson could have flown into a rage after his wife discovered pornographic e-mails to a Fayetteville male prostitute.

"If he is really a grieving spouse, why did Officer McCullough see him checking his emails on his computer while he was in that study?" asked Black. "Would you really be checking your emails if your spouse was lying out in the hallway with blood everywhere?"

Kathleen Peterson's sister, Candace Zamperini, could be seen quietly crying throughout the two-hour prosecution closing argument Friday.

On Monday, a hearing will be held to deal with the issue of one juror who allegedly went on a drunken tirade Tuesday evening. Judge Orlando Hudson Jr. will then deliver the jury charge, and jurors will get the case more than three months after the first-degree murder trial began.

Court TV is broadcasting this trial live.