Amy clips Jessie’s leash to her collar.

“I promise,” she says, “but you’ll need to remember I’m pretty slow at figuring things out.”

I am, too. And what I need is time. Part of me wants to take Amy into my arms and swear everything will be fine, but I can’t do that.

“Let me get her dog food,” I say, and go out to the garage to get it.

But when I return my dog and girlfriend are gone. Sick at heart, I open a beer and wash the dishes, wishing I had lied. Amy has been the best thing in my life for a long time. Still, I feel a distant odd sense of relief.

At precisely three o’clock Monday, with me standing by his side and his wife and twenty onlookers in the spectator section. Class Bledsoe enters his formal plea of not guilty. After he sits down, Dick Dickerson comes forward (Paul had his arraignment last week), and Judge Johnson, over both our objections, sets the trial for the week of May 26. I complain that I won’t have enough time to prepare my client’s defense in a case like this, but Judge Johnson looks at me with a bemused air. Since he was just elected last year, he has no discernible track record. In private practice in Helena until he was elected, according to Dick, Johnson was by himself and like most small town practitioners, took everything that walked in the door. When I protest, he gives me a withering look.

“You don’t have the burden of proving your case, Mr. Page, do you, sir?” he says, with excessive courtesy.

“Doesn’t the prosecutor have the burden of proving his case, and you merely have to show reasonable doubt?”

I ignore his sarcasm and argue, “Of course, your honor, but the prosecution has worked on this case for six months. I’d like to have at least that long.”

Beside me, Dick tells Johnson he has a heavy trial schedule in the next two months, and adds, “Judge, in order to do an adequate job of investigating this case, we’ll have to track down everyone who was in the plant that day. It is my understanding not every one of the workers is still there.”