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"There&039;s a little cafe around the corner where the specialty is grease and fried corn rease"

"Sounds delicious"

They walked around the square to Claude&039;s, where the croas thin for a Saturday afternoon There were no other whites in the place Claude was absent and the silence was deafening Jake ordered a cheeseburger, onion rings, and three headache powders

"Got a headache?" Ellen asked

"Massive"

"Stress?"

"Hangover"

"Hangover? I thought you were a teetotaler"

"And where&039;d you hear that?"

"Neeek The article said you were a clean-cut fa and sht?"

"You believe everything you read?"

"No"

"Good, because last night I got plastered, and I&039;ve puked all "

The law clerk was amused "What do you drink?"

"I don&039;t-reht

_ i, ano i nope it&039;s s are"

"Why do lawyers drink so much?"

"They learn how in law school Does your dad drink?"

"Are you kidding? We&039;re Catholic He&039;s careful, though"

"Do you drink?"

"Sure, all the tireat lawyer"

Jake carefully ed it down He grimaced and wiped his mouth She watched intently with an amused smile

"What&039;d your wife say?"

"About what?"

"The hangover, froious family man"

"She doesn&039;t know about it She left "

"I&039;m sorry"

"She went to stay with her parents until the trial is over We&039;ve had anonymous phone calls and death threats for twothey planted dynamite outside our bedrooht the h dynaood excuse to get drunk"

"I&039;m sorry to hear that"

"The job you&039;ve just taken could be very dangerous You should know that at this point"

"I&039;ve been threatened before Last suers who had sodohty-year-old woman No lawyer in the state would take the case so they called the Defense League We rode into town on black horses and the ht of us would cause lynch mobs to form instantly on street corners I&039;ve never felt so hated in my life We hid in a ht two e and tried to abduct me"

"What happened?"

"I carry a snub-nosed 38 in my purse and I convinced them I kne to use it"

"A snub-nosed 38?"

"My father gave it to me for my fifteenth birthday I have a license"

"He uy"

"He&039;s been shot at several times He takes very controversial cases, the kind you read about in the papers where the public is outraged and deed without a trial or a lawyer Those are the cases he likes best He has a full-ti deal So do I His name is Deputy Nesbit, and he couldn&039;t hit the side of a barn with a shotgun He was assigned to me yesterday"

The food arrived She reer, and offered him the french fries She cut it in half and nibbled around the edges like a bird Hot grease dripped to her plate With each small bite, she carefully wiped her entle and pleasant with an easy smile that belied the ACLU, ERA, burn-the-bra, I-can-outcuss-you bitchiness Jake kneas lurking somewhere near the surface There was not a trace of makeup anywhere on the face None was needed She was not beautiful, not cute, and evidently determined not to be so She had the pale skin of a redhead, but it was healthy skin with seven or eight freckles splattered about the small, pointed nose With each frequent smile, her lips spread wonderfully and folded her cheeks into neat, transient, hollow di, and reen eyes radiated a soft fury and were fixed and unblinking when she talked

It was an intelligent face, attractive as hell

Jake chewed on his burger and tried to nonchalantly ignore her eyes The heavy food settled his stoan to think he ht live

"Seriously, why&039;d you choose Ole Miss?" he asked

"It&039;s a good law school"

"It&039;s htest students froue country We send our smartest kids up there"

"My father hates every laith an Ivy League degree He was dirt poor and scratched his way through law

_-- - ,6,i ,v o cuuuicu me snuos from rich, well-educated, and incohs at theo to law school anywhere in the country, but if I chose an Ivy League school he would not pay for it Then there&039;sstories of life in the Deep South, and I had to see for myself Plus, the Southern states seemed determined to practice the death penalty, so I think I&039;ll end up here"

"Why are you so opposed to the death penalty?"

"And you&039;re not?"

"No, I&039;m very much in favor of it"

"That&039;s incredible! Co froo back to public hangings on the courthouse lawn"

"You&039;re kidding, aren&039;t you? I hope Tell me you are"

"I a The eyes glowed fiercely and watched hinal of weakness "You are serious"

"I am very serious The probleh"

"Have you explained that to Mr Hailey?"

"Mr Hailey does not deserve the death penalty But the two hter certainly did"

"I see How do you deterets it and who doesn&039;t?"

"That&039;s very simple You look at the crime and you look at the criuns down an undercover narcotics officer, then he gets the gas If it&039;s a drifter who rapes a three-year-old girl, drowns her by holding her little head in a e, then you take his life and thank God he&039;s gone If it&039;s an escaped convict who breaks into a farht and beats and tortures an elderly couple before burning them with their house, then you strap him in a chair, hook up a feires, pray for his soul, and pull the switch And if it&039;s two dopeheads who gang-rape a ten-year-old girl and kick her with pointed-toe cowboy boots until her jaws break, then you happily, as chamber and listen to them squeal It&039;s very simple"

"It&039;s barbaric"

"Their criood"

"And if Mr Hailey is convicted and sentenced to die?"

"If that happens, I&039; out appeals and fighting furiously to save his life And if they ever strap him in the chair, I&039;m sure I&039;ll be outside the prison with you and the Jesuits and a hundred other kindly soulshyrave behind his church with hisand children and wish I&039;d never met him"

"Have you ever witnessed an execution?"

"Not that I recall"

"I&039;ve watched two You&039;d change your mind if you saw one"

"Good I won&039;t see one"

"It&039;s a horrible thing to watch"

"Were the victims&039; families there?"

"Yes, in both instances"

"Were they horrified? Were their htmares were over"

"I&039;m surprised at you"

"And I&039;m bewildered by people like you How can you be so zealous and dedicated in trying to save people who have begged for the death penalty and according to the law should get it?"

"Whose law? It&039;s not the law in Massachusetts"

"You don&039;t say What do you expect from the only state McGovern carried in 1972? You folks have always been tuned in with the rest of the country"

The Claudeburgers were being ignored and their voices had grown too loud Jake glanced around and caught a few stares Ellen ss

"What do you think of the ACLU?" she asked, crunching

"I suppose you&039;ve got a membership card in your purse"

"I do"

"Then you&039;re fired"

"I joined when I was sixteen"

"Why so late? You must have been the last one in your Girl Scout troop to join"

"Do you have any respect for the Bill of Rights?"

"I adore the Bill of Rights I despise the judges who interpret theers in silence, watching each other carefully Jake ordered coffee and two more headache powders

"So hoe plan to win this case?" she asked

"We?"

"I still have the job, don&039;t I?"

"Yes Just remember that I&039;m the boss and you&039;re the clerk"

"Sure, boss What&039;s your strategy?"

"Hoould you handle it?"

"Well, fros and shot them in cold blood, six days after the rape It sounds exactly like he knehat he was doing"

"He did"

"So we have no defense and I think you should plead hias chahter"

"Just kidding Insanity is our only defense And it sounds impossible to prove"

"You&039;re fahten Rule?" Jake asked

"Yes Do we have a psychiatrist?"

"Sort of He&039;ll say anything ant him to say; that is, if he&039;s sober at trial One of your more difficult tasks as my ne clerk will be to make sure he is sober at trial It won&039;t be easy, believe es in the courtrooht Row Ark, take a pen Here&039;s a napkin Your boss is about to give you instructions"

She begannotes on a paper napkin

"I want a brief on the M&039;Naghten decisions rendered by the Mississippi Supreme Court in the past fifty years There&039;s probably a hundred There&039;s a big case from 1976, State vs Hill, where the court was bitterly divided five to four, with the dissenters opting for a more liberal definition of insanity Keep the brief short, less than twenty pages Can you type?"

"Ninety words a minute"

"I should&039;ve known I&039;d like it by Wednesday"

"You&039;ll have it"

"There are soruesome pictures of the two bodies Noose norore, but I&039;d like to keep them away from the jury See if there&039;s a way"

"It won&039;t be easy"

"The rape is crucial to his defense I want the jury to know details This needs to be researched thoroughly I&039;ve got two or three cases you can start from, and I think we can prove to Noose that the rape is very relevant"

"Okay What else?"

"I don&039;t know When ain I&039;ll think of more, but that will do it for now"

"Do I report Monday ?"

"Yes, but no sooner than nine I like my quiet time"

"What&039;s the dress code?"

"You look fine"

"Jeans and no socks?"

"I have one other employee, a secretary by the name of Ethel She&039;s sixty-four, top heavy, and thankfully she wears a bra It wouldn&039;t be a bad idea for you"

"I&039;ll think about it"

"I don&039;t need the distraction"

Monday, July 15 One week until trial Over the weekend word spread quickly that the trial would be in Clanton, and the s steadily at the three motels as the journalists and their crews confirmed reservations The cafes buzzed with anticipation A county maintenance crear and polishing Ozzie sent the yardboys from the jail with their mowers and weed-eaters The old men under the Vietnam monument whittled cautiously and watched all this activity The trusty who supervised the yard work asked therass, not on the sidewalk He was told to go to hell The thick, dark Beriven an extra layer of fertilizer, and a dozen lawn sprinklers were hissing and splashing by 9:00 AM

By 10:00 AM the temperature was ninety-two The merchants in the small shops around the square opened their doors to the hu fans They called Meo for inventory to be sold at special prices next week

Noose had called Jean Gillespie, the Circuit Court clerk, late Friday and informed her that the trial would be in her courtroom He instructed her to summon one hundred and fifty prospective jurors The defense had requested an enlarged panel froreed Jean and two deputy clerks spent Saturday co potential jurors Following Noose&039;s specific instructions, they culled those over sixty-five One thousand na with its address ritten on a small index card and thrown into a cardboard box The two deputy clerks then took turns drawing cards at random from the box One clerk hite, one black Each would pull a card blindly fro table with the other cards When the count reached one hundred and fifty, the drawing ceased and a master list was typed These were the jurors for State vs Hailey Each step of their

selection had been carefully dictated by the Honorable O If there was an all-white jury, and a conviction, and a death sentence, every single elementary step of the jury selection procedure would be attacked on appeal He had been through it before, and had been reversed But not this time