John Grisham

trial and what it was like when I heard the verdict. I wrap it up quickly, then tell her why I’m here.

She’s a thorough listener, and takes lots of notes. I hand her copies of the current divorce file, the old one and the records of Cliffs three arrests for beating his wife. I promise to have Kelly’s medical records by the end of the day. I describe the injuries left by a few of the worst beatings.

Virtually all of these files around me involve men who’ve beaten their wives, children or girlfriends, so it’s easy to predict whose side Morgan is on. "That poor kid," she says, and she ain’t talking about Cliff.

"How big is she?" she asks.

"Five-five or so. A hundred-ten pounds dripping wet."

"How’d she beat him to death?" Her tone is almost in awe, not the least bit accusatory.

"She was scared. He was drunk. Somehow she got her hands on the bat."

"Good for her," she says, and goose bumps cover my thighs. This is the prosecutor!

"I’d love to get her out of jail," I say.

"I need to get the file and review it. I’ll call the bail clerk and tell him we have no objection to a low bond. Where’s she living?"

"She’s in a shelter, one of those underground homes with no names."

"I know them well. They’re really quite useful."

"She’s safe there, but the poor kid’s in jail right now, and she’s still black and blue from the last beating,"

Morgan waves at the files surrounding us. "That’s my life."

We agree to meet at nine tomorrow morning.

DECK, BUTCH AND I meet at the office for a sandwich and to plot our next moves. Butch knocked on every door

of every apartment near the Hikers’, and found only one person who might’ve heard something crash. She lives directly above, and I doubt if she could see me exit the apartment. I suspect what she heard was the column disintegrate when the Babe swung and missed with strike one. The cops have not talked to her. Butch was at the complex for three hours and saw no signs of police activity. The apartment is locked and sealed, and seems to be drawing a crowd. At one point, two large young men who appeared to be related to Cliff were joined by a truckload of boys from work, and the group stood beyond the police tape, staring at the apartment door, cursing and vowing revenge. It was a rough-looking bunch, Butch assures me.

He’s also lined up a bail bondsman, a friend of his who’ll do us a favor and write the bond for only five percent as opposed to the customary ten. This will save me some money.

Deck’s spent most of the morning at the police station getting arrest records and tracking Kelly’s paperwork. He and Smotherton are getting along well, primarily because Deck is professing an extreme dislike for lawyers. He’s just an investigator now, far from being a paralawyer. Interestingly, Smotherton reported that by mid-morning, they were receiving death threats against Kelly.

I decide to go to the jail to check on her. Deck will find an available judge to set her bond. Butch will be ready with his bondsman. As we’re leaving the office, the phone rings. Deck grabs it and gives it to me.

It’s Peter Corsa, Jackie Lemancyzk’s lawyer in Cleveland. I last talked to him after her testimony, a conversation in which I thanked him profusely. He told me at that time that he was just days away from filing suit himself.

Corsa congratulates me on the verdict, says it was big news in the Sunday paper up there. My fame is spreading. He then tells me that some weird stuff is happening at

Great Benefit. The FBI, working in conjunction with the Ohio Attorney General and the state Department of Insurance, raided the corporate offices this morning and started removing records. With the exception of the computer analysts in accounting, all the employees were sent home and told not to come back for two days. According to a recent newspaper story, PinnConn, the parent company, has defaulted on some bonds and has been laying off loads of employees.

There’s not much I can say. I killed a man eighteen hours ago, and it’s hard to concentrate on unrelated matters. We chat. I thank him. He promises to keep me posted.

IT TAKES AN HOUR and a half to find Kelly somewhere back in the maze and bring her into the visitor’s room. We sit on opposite sides of a glass square and talk through telephones. She tells me I look tired. I tell her she looks great. She’s in a cell by herself, and safe, but it’s noisy and she can’t sleep. She really wants to get out. I tell her I’m doing all I can. I tell her about my visit with Morgan Wilson. I explain how bail works. I do not mention the death threats.

We have so much to talk about, but not here.

After we say good-bye, and as I’m leaving the visitor’s room, a uniformed jailer calls my name. She asks if I’m the lawyer for Kelly Riker, then she hands me a printout. "It’s our phone records. We’ve had four calls about that girl in the past two hours."

I can’t read the damned printout. "What kind of calls?"

"Death threats. From some crazy people."

JUDGE LONNIE SHANKLE arrives at his office at three-thirty, and Deck and I are waiting. He has a hundred things to do, but Booker has called and schmoozed

with the judge’s secretary, so the wheels are greased. I give the judge a flurry of paperwork, a five-minute history of the case and finish with the plea for a low bail because I, the lawyer, will be required to post it. Shankle sets the bond at ten thousand dollars. We thank him and leave.

Thirty minutes later we’re all at the jail. I know for a fact that Butch has a gun in a shoulder harness, and I suspect that the bondsman, a guy named Rick, is also armed. We’re ready for anything.

I write Rick a check for five hundred dollars for the bond, and I sign all the paperwork. If the charges against her are not dismissed, and if she fails to appear for any court dates, then Rick has the choice of either forking over the remaining ninety-five hundred dollars, or finding her and physically hauling her back to jail. I’ve convinced him the charges will be dropped.

It takes forever to process her, but we eventually see her walking toward us, no handcuffs, nothing but a smile. We quickly escort her to my car. I’ve asked Butch and Deck to follow us for a few blocks just to be safe.

I tell Kelly about the death threats. We suspect it’s his crazy family and redneck friends from work. We talk little as we hurriedly leave downtown and head for the shelter. I don’t want to discuss last night, and she’s not ready for it either.

AT 5 P.M. TUESDAY, lawyers for Great Benefit file for protection under the bankruptcy code in federal court in Cleveland. Peter Corsa calls the office while I’m hiding Kelly, and Deck takes the news. When I return a few minutes later, Deck looks like death.

We sit in my office with our feet on the desk for a long time without a word. Total silence. No voices. No phones. N(o traffic sounds below. We’d been postponing our discussion about how much of the fee Deck would get, so

he’s not sure how much he’s lost. But we both know that we’ve gone from being paper millionaires to near insolvents. Our giddy dreams of yesterday seem silly now.

There’s a flicker of hope. Just last week Great Benefit’s balance sheet looked stout enough to convince a jury it had fifty million bucks to spare. M. Wilfred Keeley estimated the company had a hundred million in cash. Surely there’s some truth in this. I remember the warnings of Max Leuberg. Never trust an insurance company’s own figures because they make their own accounting rules.

But surely somewhere down the road there’ll be a spare million or so for us.

I don’t really believe this. Neither does Deck.

Corsa left his home number, and I finally muster the strength to call him. He apologizes for the bad news, says the legal and financial communities up there are buzzing. It’s too early to know the truth, but it looks as though PinnConn took some heavy hits trading foreign currencies. It then started syphoning off the huge cash reserves of its subsidiaries, including Great Benefit. Things got worse, and the money was simply skimmed by PinnConn and sent to Europe. The bulk of PinnConn’s stock is controlled by a group of American pirates operating in Singapore. It sounds like the whole world is conspiring against me.