'At the hospital. She ain't conscious so she cain't say who done it. That means they ain't got no case. Ain't that right?'

'I want a promise from you… If I get him out, don't you dare put your hand on him.'

'How about you just mind your own goddamn business, then?' he said, and hung up.

The county courthouse was built of sandstone, surrounded by a high-banked green lawn and live-oak trees whose tops touched the third story. The jailer was named Harley Sweet and his mouth always hung partly open while you spoke, as though he were patiently trying to understand your train of thought. But he was not an understanding man. When he was a deputy sheriff, many black and Mexican men in his custody never reached the jail. Nor thereafter did they stay on the same sidewalk as he when they saw him coming in their direction.

'You want to see Lucas Smothers, do you? We feed at twelve-thirty. Better come back after then,' he said. He slapped a fly on his desk with a horse quirt. He looked at me, slack-jawed, his eyes indolent, waiting God knows for what.

'If that's the way you want it, Harley. But from this moment on, he'd better not be questioned unless I'm present.'

'You're representing him?'

'That's correct.'

He got up from his desk, opened a door with a frosted glass window in it, and went inside an adjoining office. He came back with a handful of Polaroid pictures and dropped them on his desk.

'Check out the artwork. That's what she looked like when he got finished with her. She had semen in her vagina and he had it inside his britches. She had skin under her fingernails and he has scratches on his body. I cain't imagine what the lab will say. You can really pick your cases, Billy Bob,' he said.

'Where was she?'

'Thirty yards from where he was passed out.' He started to drink out of his coffee cup, then set it back down. His silver snap-button cowboy shirt shimmered with light. 'Oh hell, you want to spend your Sunday morning with a kid cain't tell the difference between shit and bean dip, I'll call upstairs. You know where the elevator's at.'