'You're pleading your man innocent?' she said.

'You bet… You think I'm firing in the well?'

'I just wondered,' she said, and didn't speak again until we pulled into the shade of the live oaks that surrounded the courthouse.

I walked to my car, then turned unexpectedly and caught her watching me, her sunglasses hanging from her fingers.

I stopped the prosecutor outside his office just before Lucas's arraignment. The corridor was empty, and our voices echoed off the old marble floor and high wood ceiling.

'You're not going to jam us up on the bail, are you, Marvin?' I said.

'Don't expect any slack on this one, Billy Bob,' he replied.

He wore a bowtie and seersucker suit, and his face looked at me with the quiet moral certitude of an ax blade.

'You don't have a rape case. You're not going to make assault and battery without a weapon, either,' I said.

'Oh?'

'Lucas doesn't have a bruise on him.'

'You see the medical report on her genitalia? Or maybe that's just Lucas's idea of rough sex… You want to talk about weapons? How about if he beat her face on the side of the truck?'

'You have evidence of that?'

'It poured down Saturday night. The whole crime scene was washed clean.'

'Pretty convenient, Marvin.'

'No, pretty sickening. And the charge isn't assault and battery. Where have you been this morning?'

I stared into the righteous light in his eyes and knew, with a sinking of the heart, what was coming next.

'She died an hour ago. The doc says it was probably a brain hemorrhage. You want to plea out, give me a call. He's not going to do the big sleep, but I guarantee you he'll get to be an expert at picking state cotton,' he said.