A time to kill

"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."

"I am very serious. The problem with the death penalty is that we don't use it enough."

"Have you explained that to Mr. Hailey?"

"Mr. Hailey does not deserve the death penalty. But the two men who raped his daughter certainly did."

"I see. How do you determine who gets it and who doesn't?"

"That's very simple. You look at the crime and you look at the criminal. If it's a dope dealer who guns down an undercover narcotics officer, then he gets the gas. If it's a drifter who rapes a three-year-old girl, drowns her by holding her little head in a mudhole, then throws her body off a bridge, then you take his life and thank God he's gone. If it's an escaped convict who breaks into a farmhouse late at night and beats and tortures an elderly couple before burning them with their house, then you strap him in a chair, hook up a few wires, pray for his soul, and pull the switch. And if it'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, merrily, thankfully, gleefully lock them in a gas chamber and listen to them squeal. It's very simple."

"It's barbaric."

"Their crimes were barbaric. Death is too good for them, much too good."

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

"If that happens, I'm sure I'll spend the next ten years cranking out appeals and fighting furiously to save his life. And if they ever strap him in the chair, I'm sure I'll be outside the prison with you and the Jesuits and a hundred other kindly souls marching and holding candles and singing hymns. And then stand beside his grave behind his church with his widow and children and wish I'd never met him."

"Have you ever witnessed an execution?"

"Not that I recall."

"I've watched two. You'd change your mind if you saw one."

"Good. I won't see one."

"It's a horrible thing to watch."

"Were the victims' families there?"

"Yes, in both instances."