“Just don’t abuse it,” he warned, looking as stern as
he could in the face of her sudden smile.
The rain was now a thin drizzle as Dwight took the
courthouse steps two at a time and cut through the
atrium to ring for the elevator that connected the third-
floor courtrooms with the Sheriff ’s Department and the
county jail down in the basement. To his bemusement,
when the doors slid open, there was the same attorney
Deborah had appointed to defend that migrant.
Millard King had the blond and beefy good looks
of a second-string college football player. Courthouse
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MARGARET MARON
gossip had him engaged to a Hillsborough debutante,
the daughter of a well-connected appellate judge. King
was said to be politically ambitious, but no one yet had
a handle on whether that meant he wanted to run for
governor, the North Carolina Assembly, or the US
Senate. As he was only twenty-eight, it was thought
that he was waiting for a case that would give him big-
fish name recognition in Colleton County’s small pond.
Besides, said the cattier speculators, his sharp-tongued
wife-to-be would probably have a thought or two on
the subject.
He nodded to Dwight as the chief deputy stepped in
beside him. “Bryant. How’s it going?”
“Fine. Talk to you a minute?”
“Sure. I was just on my way down to the jail.”
“To see”— Dwight pulled out the napkin Deborah
had given him —“Rafael Sanaugustin?”
“How’d you know?”
“That’s where I was headed myself. I need to have a
talk with your client.”
“About those two little rocks? That’s hardly worth
messing with, is it? Unless you think he’s part of some-
thing bigger?”
“That’s what I want to ask him. I’ll call around and
see if we can find someone to translate.”
“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” King said with an air
of smug complacency. “I’m pretty fluent.”
“Yeah?”
“I’ve studied Spanish since high school. My room-
mate in college was Cuban and we spent our junior year
in Spain. The way things were going even back then, I
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figured it wouldn’t hurt to be able to speak to voters
directly if I ever got in the game.”
Heretofore, Dwight had paid scant attention to ru-
mors that the debutante had cut King out of the pack to
