executing prisoners faster than Saddam Hussein in his heyday. When the call had come tonight, he had jumped at the opportunity to represent a sexual predator facing death by lethal injection.
Crane McWhorter, on the advice of its marketing consultant, had begun accepting death penalty cases a year after Vic had joined the firm. At first, the firm took only appeals, the sanitized version of the crime. Reading the transcript of a gruesome murder trial was considerably less painful than reading a legal thriller, and the firm’s Ivy League-educated lawyers didn’t have to personally meet face-to-face with a stone-cold killer. Appeals courts address only legal technicalities, not whether the defendants were actually guilty, which of course they always were. But, to the firm’s dismay, appeals cases generated minimal publicity, not all that surprising since the cases were argued a year or two after the verdict, long after the victim had faded from the public’s short attention span. The time to reap the full publicity value of a vicious murder was at trial, when emotions and media interest ran the highest. So the firm began taking cases at the trial stage.
Vic had tried his first death penalty case four years ago and his sixth last summer, a black man accused of raping and murdering a white woman in Marfa, Texas-in godforsaken West Texas. The trial had lasted ten days: ten days of hundred-degree heat, ten days of popping Tums after Tex-Mex and chicken-fried lunches, ten days of media briefings on the Presidio County Courthouse steps after each day’s testimony, dozens of reporters and TV cameras-even the BBC-all focused on Vic Neal, defender of the oppressed.
He had especially enjoyed the BBC reports, whose correspondent had always said something like: “Ian Smythe reporting from Marfa, Texas, a desolate spot in a vast desert frontier known as West Texas, a dusty locale whose only claim to fame is that Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson filmed the American movie Giant here in 1955. Now, fifty years later, another American drama is being played out here in a Presidio County courtroom, starring a dashing young American lawyer from New York, Vic Neal, fighting to prevent the State of Texas from executing yet another impoverished black man…” That case had made Vic Neal a “prominent” trial lawyer. The defendant- what was his name? — had been convicted and executed last year. Which was surely the fate of this defendant.
“Gary.” No response. “Gary, I’m Vic Neal, your lawyer. The court appointed me.”
Jennings slowly rolled over and sat up.
“Shit, what happened to your face? The cops beat you up?”
Jennings shook his head.
“The FBI? That’s even better.”
Another shake of his head. “The mother,” he said.
“The mother? Elizabeth Brice kicked your… did that to you?”
A nod of the head. “She kneed me in the balls, too.”
“Ouch.”
Vic knew of Elizabeth Brice-white-collar defense, tough as nails, foul-mouthed, great body. Criminal defense was man’s work and she fit right in.
“Well, guess we can’t make anything of that.” Vic thumbed through his notes. “Did you really have stock options worth a million bucks?”
Jennings nodded.
“And you threw that away to have sex with your boss’s ten-year-old daughter? Well, I suppose we could plead insanity.”
A little gallows humor to break the ice. Vic chuckled; Jennings didn’t.
“Our goal, Gary, is to keep you off death row. To do that you must show remorse. Juries like that. And you can start showing some remorse by telling the police what you did with the girl’s body.”
“I didn’t take the girl!”
Vic leaned back in the chair and sighed. How many times had he heard that? Every death penalty defendant he had represented was utterly and completely innocent- I was framed! — right up to the moment they strapped him to the gurney and inserted the needle, then he’s begging God to forgive him for brutally killing a family of four because he wanted a new stereo.
“You know, Gary, if you lie to your lawyer, I can’t help you. Understand, this case isn’t a question of acquittal or conviction, it’s a question of life or death. Your life or your death. Life without parole would be a great victory, given the overwhelming evidence against you.”
“I want a lie-detector test!”
“Well, yeah, Gary, you could do that. And when you fail and the D.A. tells the world you failed, you will absolutely get the death penalty because every juror will know you’re guilty before the trial even starts. We won’t have a chance for any sympathy from even one juror to get you a life sentence.”
“But I didn’t do it! I was framed! Why don’t you find who put that picture in my truck, and her jersey, and made those calls? I’m innocent!”
“Her blood in your truck, but you’re innocent?”
“Gracie’s blood?”
Vic nodded. “FBI confirmed it’s hers with DNA tests. Media’s already got hold of it, but it’ll be officially announced tomorrow morning, right before your arraignment. So don’t even think about bail. This is home sweet home, pal.”
“But how did Gracie’s blood get in my truck?”
What an innocent face this guy could put on! Vic couldn’t help but laugh.
“Save the O.J. imitation for trial, Gary. Nobody planted blood in the white Bronco and nobody planted blood in your black truck.”
Vic checked his watch and stood.
“Look, I gotta go, I’ll see you at the arraignment. I’m gonna be on Nightline, railing against the death penalty. Time I’m through, I’ll have that McFadden broad crying like a baby wanting a bottle.”
Network television that night was like election night, all focused on one subject: Grace Ann Brice. Strangers abduct children for sex. A child abducted by a stranger has a life expectancy of three hours. Grace’s blood in Jennings’s truck. Presumed dead. Every channel, the same words, over and over again. Elizabeth was in bed crying when John walked into the master suite. She muted the TV and quickly wiped her face.
John disappeared into his bathroom without saying a word. She hit the volume and switched channels. She stopped again on Nightline. Jennings’s court-appointed lawyer wasn’t claiming his client was innocent, only that the death penalty was barbaric. How can he represent a guilty pedophile? Her guilty clients had only stolen money, not a child’s life.
Fifteen minutes later, John reappeared in plaid pajamas; his hair was wet and combed back. With the black glasses, he looked like a skinny Clark Kent. She again muted the TV. He walked to the bed and paused as if he wanted to say something, then decided against it and continued to the door.
He had slept in Grace’s room the first two nights; Elizabeth had thrown him out of their bedroom last night and the remote control at him. The rage. Now she was scared and alone and her child was presumed dead- God, her blood in his truck — and she needed someone to hold her, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask her husband, not after what she had done to him. What the rage had done to him.
If she asked, he would come and hold her. He would say he loved her. He would forgive her. He always forgave her. If she could ever let go of the past- Let go? If she could ever escape the past — perhaps she could love John as he loved her. He wanted her love, and she often found herself wanting to love him. There was something inside John R. Brice, something beneath the brainy geek facade. Something worth loving. But she could not love him as long as she hated herself. Her past wouldn’t allow it.
John stopped at the door, turned back, and said. “She was my daughter, too. I loved her just as much as you did.” He walked out and shut the door behind him.
Ben stood at the door to the command post. Agent Devereaux was gone, as were most of the agents. The young female FBI agent he had met-Jorgenson, he thought-sat at one computer station, telephone headset on, talking and typing. But the intensity level of the command post had noticeably decreased, as if the battle were
