enough to drink he'll admit that he loves it. He's the number two man in the department, which is the highest nonelected position. That's exactly the way he wants it, since if he were to go any higher he'd have to trade in the courtroom for an executive throne.

From a defense attorney's standpoint, the good news about Wallace is that he doesn't bullshit; you basically know where he stands and why. The bad news about Wallace is he doesn't bullshit, which means you can't expose his bullshit and make him look bad.

My theory about prosecutors is that they are the dishwashers of the legal profession; their main goal is to clean their plates. The problem is that criminals keep dumping more and more food on those plates, and they never can get them clean. But they keep trying, and Wallace is no doubt hoping that I'll help him put the Willie Miller plate in the dishwasher.

We sit down at two-thirty, right on schedule, and by two-thirty-one he has finished chitchatting and made his offer. Willie can plead guilty to murder one and take life without the possibility of parole. “It's an excellent offer,” he says with a straight face.

“Wow!” I say. “Life in a shithole cage for the rest of his natural life. He'd have to be crazy not to go for it. Damn, I wish you'd offer it to me. I'd jump at it myself.”

“If he doesn't take it, you might as well tell him not to unpack his things. He'll be back on death row before he knows it.”

“He won't take it.”

Wallace shakes his head as if saddened by my response. “Andy, this trial has already taken place. You've read the transcript; it'll be like putting a tape in a VCR and replaying it.”

“You're not allowing for my brilliance.”

“Hatchet is not big on your kind of brilliance. He'll cut you up in little pieces and feed you to the bailiffs.”

I'm not in the mood to be lectured right now, even if every word he is saying is true. Especially because every word he is saying is true.

“So this is what you asked me to come down here for? Life without parole?”

“That's it. And we'll get killed in the press for that, but we'll have to deal with it.”

“You're a regular profile in courage.”

He smiles. “That's why I get paid the little bucks.”

“This time you're going to have to earn them,” I say. “Willie is going to pass on your offer.”

He's not surprised by my answer, but he's not pleased that he's still got this dirty plate. “Then I guess I'll see you in court, Counselor,” he shrugs.

I growl at him on the way out, as a way of starting the intimidation process, but he's already talking on the phone, so it doesn't seem to have much effect.

Since I have a few hours before meeting Laurie, I go out to the prison to get the conversation with Willie behind me. Behind us.

Willie has been moved off of death row and into maximum security. It is a subtle distinction; you get to trade tension and dread and the stench of death for the right to be surrounded by twice as many murderers and rapists as before. Willie is already a celebrity of sorts, since not too many people come back from the other side. It doesn't seem to have put him in a great mood.

I tell him the offered deal and he tells me to go fuck myself. I realize that he is talking to me as a representative of the system, but I tell him that he shouldn't kill the messenger. He tells me that not only wouldn't he kill the messenger, but he also wouldn't have killed Denise, so he's not pleading guilty.

“Willie, there's a very good chance you're going to lose this trial.”

“Why?”

“Look at it this way. Suppose Dinky University's football team goes down to Florida State and gets beat a hundred and ten to nothing. Then somebody says, ‘Hey wait a minute, the water boy Florida State used wasn't eligible because his grades are shit and he used too big a bucket.’ So they rule that the game doesn't count, and decide to replay it the following week.”

“You gonna get to the point before the trial starts?” he asks.

I nod. “When they replay the game, you think Dinky is going to win?”

“That depends,” he answers, “on whether Dinky is bringing the same team down there.”

“Same team.”

“But I ain't going back to trial with the same team. I got me a new coach. You.”

“It won't be enough. Dinky is still Dinky. You get Bill Par-cells to coach 'em, they're still Dinky.” I may be carrying the analogy a bit far, but he's still into it.

“So you're asking me to crash the Dinky team plane before it even gets to Florida. Can't do it, Andy. I'm on that plane.”

There is certainly no way I'm going to convince him, and I don't really want to, since I'd probably do the same thing. If I were put in prison without any chance of parole, the first thing I would try to do is kill myself. Might as well let the state do it. Besides, I'm not just doing this for Willie, and I'm not just doing this for me. I'm doing it for good old Dinky U.

I call Nicole and tell her I won't be home until very late, and she's disappointed, because her father is in town for summer recess and wanted to have dinner with us. I tell her that I can't make it, and that she should go with him. I leave out the part about meeting Laurie at an XXX adult movie theater.

DENISE AND EDWARDHAD GONE TO A movie the night of her murder. In the years since, the theater they attended has not exactly thrived in the face of competition from the malls out on the highway. Back then it was called the Cinema One and showed first-run movies; it is now the Apex, and tonight is proudly presenting Hot Lunch and The Harder They Come. I want to go in so that we can really re-create the experience of the evening, but Laurie doesn't think it's necessary.

We stand in front of the theater, as Edward and Denise must have. Just another couple out on a date, except one of them only had about one hour left to live. Denise isn't here to tell us about the rest of the evening, so all we have to go by is Edward's testimony. So far I have no reason to doubt it. At least not this part of it.

“So they leave here,” I say, “just after midnight.

” Laurie nods. “And they decide to go for a drink.

” I point down the street. “They walk that way, although Edward had parked down there. Which means they didn't just happen to pass the bar … they were intending to go there.”

“Edward said it was a bar he used to go to when he was in college.”

Edward had gone to Fairleigh Dickinson University, less than a mile from where we were standing. I nod. “Care for a drink?”

We walk the three blocks down to the bar. The inside seems to have made the transition from trendy to seedy, and the ten or so patrons do not look as though they're waiting for their book club meeting to start. The television above the pool table is tuned to wrestling, and it has captured the attention of most of the group.

The bartender is a burly guy, about forty, with a friendly but grizzled face. It is as if we called Central Casting and asked them to send us a bartender. He comes over.

“Help ya?” he asks.

I point to the television. “Any chance you can change that to CNN? There's a Donald Rumsfeld press conference coming on.”

Laurie and I have developed a strange kind of synchronization between us. As soon as I open my mouth, she starts rolling her eyes. “Don't mind him,” she says. “He can't help himself.”

The bartender shrugs. “No problem.” You would think he hears Donald Rumsfeld jokes every day of his life. He directs his next question at Laurie. “What can I do for you?”

“We're looking for a guy named Donnie Wilson.”

“You found him.”

Surprised, Laurie says, “The same Donnie Wilson that was working here seven years ago, the night Denise McGregor was murdered?”

He nods. “My career ain't exactly taking off, you know?”

“Do you remember much about that night?” I ask.

“Are you kidding? Like it was yesterday.”

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