years.'
'Not a chance. I'd be betraying my client. We'll take second degree. Five to ten.'
'I can't do that.'
'What does Martin want?'
'This is my case, not his.'
'He didn't make a recommendation?'
'Nope.'
Venable smiled. 'What a guy,' she said.
'We agree on that,' Shana said, and finally smiled too.
'So - what's the answer, Shana? We can wrap it up here and now.'
'Your way?'
'Hell, girl, you got me into this in the first place,' Venable said with a smile. 'I was perfectly happy sitting up in platinum city making a fortune. I think the question is, do you really want to go to trial on this?'
Shana Parver did not answer immediately. She stared at the ceiling, as Vail often did, thinking. Finally she said, 'How about a compromise? Plead her guilty to first-degree manslaughter if the judge will agree to five to twenty. She could be out in three years.'
'Minimum security prison?'
'I have no problem with that.'
Venable smiled and stuck out her hand.
'Deal,' she said. 'You're a helluva lawyer, Shana.'
'Look who's talking.'
A few days after the arraignment, the governor of Kentucky ordered the state patrol to recover Stampler's body from mine shaft number five. Spring rains had washed away the snow, leaving behind a muddy oasis in the forest with the gaping hole, like a bull's-eye, in the centre of the timbers that covered the old lift shaft. A small crowd of Crikside residents stood in the periphery, watching with anticipation the way crowds will, although there was nothing much to see but a small crane with lights and a video camera that was lowered into the bowels of the Kentucky mountainside, and a half dozen state troopers staring at the video monitor. The mine shaft was empty.
