I find the prosecuting attorney’s office across from the top of the stairs. There is no secretary, but I can hear a black man’s voice in an inner office. I go stand in the doorway and motion that I’ll be sitting in the waiting room. On the telephone, he nods at me. In contrast to the sheriff’s Hershey’s Kisses color, the prosecutor is polished copper, and his eyes look yellowish from the distance of about ten feet. The sleeves of his white shirt are folded back at the cuffs, and his pink silk tie is flung back over his shoulder as if it has been getting in his way. He sounds agitated, but I can’t make out what he is saying. He motions to me that he will be off the phone in a moment, and I go have a seat across from the secretary’s desk.

Unlike the sheriff’s office, the walls in the prosecutor’s office, as out here, are bare, and it occurs to me that his home base is probably either Forrest City to the north or Helena to the south. Both towns have been more prosperous than Bear Creek, but I remind myself prosperity is a relative term in the Delta these days. As I unsuccessfully try to eavesdrop, it occurs to me that I have deliberately avoided making inquiries about the case through the white community first. Why?

The answer is obvious, now that I permit myself to think about it. I would have been pressured to turn down Bledsoe’s case, and I might have done so. For the first time, I allow myself to guess who Paul has employed to represent him, but I know already that he must have hired Dick Dickerson, who is considered one of the best trial attorneys in the state. A graduate of Columbia Law School, Dick could have gone anywhere. For reasons I’ve never understood, he chose to come back to practice law in a place where ninety-nine percent of his clients couldn’t have cared less where he went to school. He must be at least sixty. I wonder if he has any regrets. I may find out before this case is over.