“Have you got a minute to talk? I just saw my client in the jail. I assume Paul Taylor is already out.”

“You bet,” Butterfield says.

“Despite five-hundred-thousand-dollar bail Dick had him out before they could give Mr. Taylor a wiener for supper.”

I smile, thinking how much I’d have liked to have seen Paul seated on his bunk eating a hot dog.

“What kind of bond will you recommend for Class?” I ask, knowing it doesn’t matter.

“Same as Paul,” the prosecutor says, “five hundred thousand.”

“Can we get the hearing done this afternoon?”

I ask, noting that Butterfield has only the slightest trace of a Delta accent. Maybe he went to school up north and they shamed it out of him.

“Can’t do it,” Butterfield says, turning around to check a large calendar on the wall behind him.

“The judge is in Memphis for a funeral and won’t be back until tomorrow afternoon. What about three o’clock? I’ll call down and put it on the docket.”

I have a hot-check case in municipal court tomorrow morning, but no more court appearances.

“Sure, I can be back over here.”

Butterfield pulls out a file from his desk drawer and pushes it over to me. As if we were on the same side of the case instead of opposing attorneys, he confides, “It’d be hard to believe these guys would try to get away with something like this until you see the evidence against them.”

Normally, a prosecutor won’t even talk to you until after the bond hearing and the arraignment, but Butterfield seems down-right eager to discuss the case. I scan the formal charges, which don’t tell me more than I already know. He points out the test results from the FBI concluding that it was Willie’s blood on Bledsoe’s knife and shows me a thick sheaf of statements taken from the other workers in the plant.

“Everybody else we’ve talked to has an alibi during the time the old man was killed.”