A Time to Kill

"Tell him to stay in Boston."

"It’s a trial lawyer’s dream. I just want to be there. I’ll stay out of the way, I promise. Just let me work in the background and watch the trial."

"Judge Noose hates women lawyers."

"So does every male lawyer in the South. Besides, I’m not a lawyer, I’m a law student."

"I’ll let you explain that to him."

"So I’ve got the job."

Jake stopped staring at her and breathed deeply. A minor wave of nausea vibrated through his stomach and lungs and took his breath. The jackhammers had returned with a fury and he needed to be near the restroom.

"Yes, you’ve got the job. I could use some free research. These cases are complicated, as I’m sure you are aware."

She flashed a comely, confident smile. "When do I start?"

"Now."

Jake led her through a quick tour of the office, and assigned her to the war room upstairs. They laid the Hailey file on the conference table and she spent an hour copying it.

At two-thirty Jake awoke from a nap on his couch. He walked downstairs to the conference room. She had removed half the books from the shelves and had them scattered the length of the table with page markers sticking up every fifty or so pages. She was busy taking notes.

"Not a bad library," she said.

"Some of these books haven’t been used in twenty years."

"I noticed the dust."

"Are you hungry?"

"Yes. I’m starving."

Chapter Nineteen

"There’s a little cafe around the corner where the specialty is grease and fried corn meal. My system needs a shot of grease."

"Sounds delicious."

They walked around the square to Claude’s, where the crowd was 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’d you hear that?"

"Newsweek. The article said you were a clean-cut family man, workaholic, devout Presbyterian who drank nothing and smoked cheap cigars. Remember? How could you forget, right?"

"You believe everything you read?"

"No."

"Good, because last night I got plastered, and I’ve puked all morning."

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

"I don’t-remember. At least I didn’t until last night.

_ i, ano i nope it’s my last. I’d forgotten how terrible these things are."

"Why do lawyers drink so much?"

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

"Are you kidding? We’re Catholic. He’s careful, though."

"Do you drink?"

"Sure, all the time," she said proudly.

"Then you’ll make a great lawyer."

Jake carefully mixed the three powders in a glass of ice water and slugged it down. He grimaced and wiped his mouth. She watched intently with an amused smile.

"What’d your wife say?"

"About what?"

"The hangover, from such a devout and religious family man."

"She doesn’t know about it. She left me early yesterday morning."

"I’m sorry."

"She went to stay with her parents until the trial is over. We’ve had anonymous phone calls and death threats for two months now, and early yesterday morning they planted dy***ite outside our bedroom window. The cops found it in time and they caught the men, probably the Klan. Enough dy***ite to level the house and kill all of us. That was a good excuse to get drunk."

"I’m sorry to hear that."

"The job you’ve just taken could be very dangerous. You should know that at this point."

"I’ve been threatened before. Last summer in Dothan, Alabama, we defended two black teenagers who had sodomized and strangled an eighty-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 mere sight of us would cause lynch mobs to form instantly on street corners. I’ve never felt so hated in my life. We hid in a motel in another town and felt safe, until one night two men cornered me in the motel lounge and tried to abduct me."

"What happened?"

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

"A snub-nosed .38?"

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

"He must be a hell of a guy."

"He’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 demanding that the defendant be hanged without a trial or a lawyer. Those are the cases he likes best. He has a full-time bodyguard."

"Big deal. So do I. His name is Deputy Nesbit, and he couldn’t hit the side of a barn with a shotgun. He was assigned to me yesterday."

The food arrived. She removed the onions and tomatoes from her Claudeburger, 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 mouth.

Her face was gentle and pleasant with an easy smile that belied the ACLU, ERA, burn-the-bra, I-can-outcuss-you bitchiness Jake knew was 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 dimples. The smiles were confident, challenging, and mysterious. The metallic green 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 stomach, and for the first time in ten hours he began to think he might live.

"Seriously, why’d you choose Ole Miss?" he asked.

"It’s a good law school."

"It’s my school. But we don’t normally attract the brightest students from the Northeast. That’s Ivy League country. We send our smartest kids up there."

"My father hates every lawyer with 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 incompetent lawyers all his life. Now he laughs at them. He told me I could go to law school anywhere in the country, but if I chose an Ivy League school he would not pay for it. Then there’s my mother. I was raised on these enchanting stories 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’ll end up here."

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

"And you’re not?"

"No, I’m very much in favor of it."

"That’s incredible! Coming from a criminal defense lawyer."

"I’d like to go back to public hangings on the courthouse lawn."

"You’re kidding, aren’t you? I hope. Tell me you are."

"I am not."

She stopped chewing and smiling. The eyes glowed fiercely and watched him for a signal of weakness. "You are serious."