He made his entrance at six, and it took five minutes to greet everyone, shake hands, slap backs, and say smart things to the waitresses. By the time he sat at his table his favorite girl, Dell, had his coffee and regular breakfast of toast, jelly, and grits. She patted him on the hand and called him honey and sweetheart and generally made a fuss over

him. She griped and snapped at the others, but had a different routine for Jake.

He ate with Tim Nunley, a mechanic down at the Chevrolet place, and two brothers, Bill and Bert West, who worked at the shoe factory north of town. He splashed three drops of Tabasco on his grits and stirred them artfully with a slice of butter-. He covered the toast with a half inch of homemade strawberry jelly. Once his food was properly prepared, he tasted the coffee and started eating. They ate quietly and discussed how the crappie were biting.

In a booth by the window a few feet from Jake's table, three deputies talked among themselves. The big one, Marshall Prather, turned to Jake and asked loudly, "Say, Jake, didn't you defend Billy Ray Cobb a few years ago?"

The cafe was instantly silent as everyone looked at the lawyer. Startled not by the question but by its response, Jake swallowed his grits and searched for the name.

"Billy Ray Cobb," he repeated aloud. "What kind of case was it?"

"Dope," Prather said. "Caught him sellin' dope about four years ago. Spent time in Parchman and got out last year."

Jake remembered. "Naw, I didn't represent him. I think he had a Memphis lawyer."

Prather seemed satisfied and returned to his pancakes. Jake waited.

Finally he asked, "Why? What's he done now?"

"We picked him up last night for rape."

"Rape!"

"Yeah, him and Pete Willard."

"Who'd they rape?"

"You remember that Hailey nigger you got off in that murder trial a few years ago?"

"Lester Hailey. Of course I remember."

"You know his brother Carl Lee?"

"Sure. Know him well. I know all the Haileys. Represented most of them."

"Well, it was his little girl."

"You're kidding?"

"Nope."

"How old is she?"

"Ten."

Jake's appetite disappeared as the cafe returned to normal. He played with his coffee and listened to the conversation change from fishing to Japanese cars and back to fishing. When the West brothers left, he slid into the booth with the deputies.

"How is she?" he asked.

"Who?"

"The Hailey girl."

"Pretty bad," said Prather. "She's in the hospital."

"What happened?"

"We don't know everything. She ain't been able to talk much. Her momma sent her to the store. They live on Craft Road behind Bates Grocery."

"I know where they live."

"Somehow they got her in Cobb's pickup and took her out in the woods somewhere and raped her."

"Both of them?"

"Yeah, several times. And they kicked her and beat her real bad. Some of her kinfolks didn't know her, she was beat so bad."

Jake shook his head. "That's sick."

"Sure is. Worst I've ever seen. They tried to kill her. Left her for dead."

"Who found her?"

"Buncha niggers fishin' down by Foggy Creek. Saw her floppin' out in the middle of the road. Had her hands tied behind her. She was talkin' a little-told them who her daddy was and they took her home."

"How'd you know it was Billy Ray Cobb?"

"She told her momma it was a yellow pickup truck with a rebel flag hangin' in the rear window. That's about all Ozzie needed. He had it figured out by the time she got to the hospital."

Prather was careful not to say too much. He liked Jake, but he was a lawyer and he handled a lot of criminal cases.

"Who is Pete Willard?"

"Some friend of Cobb's."

"Where'd y'all find them?"

"Huey's."

"That figures." Jake drank his coffee and thought of Hanna.

"Sick, sick, sick," Looney mumbled.

"How's Carl Lee?"

Prather wiped syrup from his mustache. "Personally, I don't know him, but I ain't ever heard anything bad about him. They're still at the hospital. I think Ozzie was with them all night. He knows them real well, of course, he knows all those folks real well. Hastings is kin to the girl somehow."

"When's the preliminary hearing?"

"Bullard set it for one P.M. today. Ain't that right, Looney?"

Looney nodded.

"Any bond?"

"Ain't been set yet. Bollard's gonna wait till the hearing. If she dies, they'll be lookin' at capital murder, won't they?"

Jake nodded.

"They can't have a bond for capital murder, can they, Jake?" Looney asked.

"They can but I've never seen one. I know Bullard won't set a bond for capital murder, and if he did, they couldn't make it."

"If she don't die, how much time can they get?" asked Nesbit, the third deputy.

Others listened as Jake explained. "They can get life sentences for the rape. I assume they will also be charged with kidnapping and aggravated assault."

"They already have."

"Then they can get twenty years for the kidnapping and twenty years for the aggravated assault."

"Yeah, but how much time will they serve?" asked Looney.

Jake thought a second. "They could conceivably be paroled in thirteen years. Seven for the rape, three for the kidnapping, and three for the aggravated assault. That's assuming they're convicted on all charges and sentenced to the maximum."

"What about Cobb? He's got a record."

"Yeah, but he's not habitual unless he's got two prior convictions."

"Thirteen years," Looney repeated, shaking his head.

Jake stared through the window. The square was coming to life as pickups full of fruits and vegetables parked next to the sidewalk around the courthouse lawn, and the old farmers in faded overalls neatly arranged the small baskets of tomatoes and cucumbers and squash on the tailgates and hoods. Watermelons from Florida were placed next to the dusty slick tires, and the farmers left for an early-morning meeting under the Vietnam monument, where they sat on benches and chewed Red Man and whittled while they caught up on the gossip. They're probably talking about the rape, Jake thought. It was daylight now, and time for the office. The deputies were finished with their food, and Jake excused himself. He hugged Dell, paid his check, and for a second thought of driving home to check on Hanna.

At three minutes before seven, he unlocked his office and turned on the lights.

Carl Lee had difficulty sleeping on the couch in the waiting room. Tonya was serious but stable. They had seen her at midnight, after the doctor warned that she looked bad. She did. Gwen had kissed the little bandaged face while Carl Lee stood at the foot of the bed, subdued, motionless, unable to do anything but stare blankly at the small figure surrounded by machines, tubes, and nurses. Gwen was later sedated and taken to her mother's house in Clanton. The boys went home with Gwen's brother.

The crowd had dispersed around one, leaving Carl Lee alone on the couch. Ozzie brought coffee and doughnuts at two, and told Carl Lee all he knew about Cobb and Willard.

Jake's office was a two-story building in a row of two-story buildings overlooking the courthouse on the north side of the square, just down from the Coffee Shop. The building was built by the Wilbanks family back in the 1890s, back when they owned Ford County. And there had been a Wilbanks practicing law in the building from the day it was built until 1979, the year of the disbarment. Next door to the east was an insurance agent Jake had sued for botching a

claim for Tim Nunley, the mechanic down at the Chevrolet place. To the west was the bank with the mortgage on the Saab. All the buildings around the square were two-story brick except the banks. The one next door had also been built by the Wilbankses and had just two floors, but the one on the southeast corner of the square had three floors, and the newest one, on the southwest corner, had four floors.

Jake practiced alone, and had since 1979, the year of the disbarment. He liked it that way, especially since there was no other lawyer in Clanton competent enough to practice with him. There were several good lawyers in town, but most were with the Sullivan firm over in the bank building with four floors. Jake detested the Sullivan firm. Every lawyer detested the Sullivan firm except those in it. There were eight in all, eight of the most pompous and arrogant jerks Jake had ever met. Two had Harvard degrees. They had the big farmers, the banks, the insurance companies, the railroads, everybody with money. The other fourteen lawyers in the county picked up the scraps and represented people- living, breathing human souls, most of whom had very little money. These were the "street lawyers"-those in the trenches helping people in trouble. Jake was proud to be a street lawyer.

His offices were huge. He used only five of the ten rooms in the building. Downstairs there was a reception room, a large conference room, a kitchen, and a smaller storage and junk room. Upstairs, Jake had his vast office and another smaller office he referred to as the war room. It had no windows, no telephones, no distractions. Three offices sat empty upstairs and two downstairs. In years past these had been occupied by the prestigious Wilbanks firm, long before the disbarment. Jake's office upstairs, the office, was immense; thirty by thirty with a ten-foot hardwood ceiling, hardwood floors, huge fireplace, and three desks-his work desk, a small conference desk in one corner, and a rolltop desk in another corner under the portrait of William Faulkner. The antique oak furniture had been there for almost a century, as had the books and shelves that covered one wall. The view of the square and courthouse was impressive, and could be enhanced by opening the French doors and walking onto a small balcony overhanging the sidewalk next to Wash-

ington Street. Jake had, without a doubt, the finest office in Clanton. Even his bitter enemies in the Sullivan firm would concede that much.

For all the opulence and square footage, Jake paid the sum of four hundred dollars a month to his landlord and former boss, Lucien Wilbanks, who had been disbarred in 1979.