He shrugged. “The motha’ was comin’ at me with this great big butcher knife, and—”
“Don’t con me. Prisoners don’t walk around carrying butcher knives.”
Wilson’s face tightened and he said, “Get the fuck outa here, lady. I din’t sen’ for ya.” He rose to his feet. “An’ don’t come round heah botherin’ me no more, you heah? I’m a busy man.”
He turned and walked over to the guard. A moment later they were both gone. That was that. Jennifer could at least tell Father Ryan that she had talked to the man. There was nothing further she could do.
A guard let Jennifer out of the building. She started across the courtyard toward the main gate, thinking about Abraham Wilson and her reaction to him. She disliked the man and, because of that, she was doing something she had no right to do: She was judging him. She had already pronounced him guilty and he had not yet had a trial. Perhaps someone had attacked him, not with a knife, of course, but with a rock or a brick. Jennifer stopped and stood there indecisively. Every instinct told her to go back to Manhattan and forget about Abraham Wilson.
Jennifer turned and walked back to the assistant warden’s office.
“He’s a hard case,” Howard Patterson said. “When we can, we try rehabilitation instead of punishment, but Abraham Wilson’s too far gone. The only thing that will calm him down is the electric chair.”
What a weird piece of logic, Jennifer thought. “He told me the man he killed attacked him with a butcher knife.”
“I guess that’s possible.”
The answer startled her. “What do you mean, ‘that’s possible’? Are you saying a convict in here could get possession of a knife? A butcher knife?”
Howard Patterson shrugged. “Miss Parker, we have twelve hundred and forty convicts in this place, and some of them are men of great ingenuity. Come on. I’ll show you something.”
Patterson led Jennifer down a long corridor to a locked door. He selected a key from a large key ring, opened the door and turned on the light. Jennifer followed him into a small, bare room with built-in shelves.
“This is where we keep the prisoners’ box of goodies.” He walked over to a large box and lifted the lid.
Jennifer stared down into the box unbelievingly.
She looked up at Howard Patterson and said, “I want to see my client again.”
6
Jennifer prepared for Abraham Wilson’s trial as she had never prepared for anything before in her life. She spent endless hours in the law library checking for procedures and defenses, and with her client, drawing from him every scrap of information she could. It was no easy task. From the beginning, Wilson was truculent and sarcastic.
“You wanna know about me, honey? I got my first fuck when I was ten. How ole was you?”
Jennifer forced herself to ignore his hatred and his contempt, for she was aware that they covered up a deep fear. And so Jennifer persisted, demanding to know what Wilson’s early life was like, what his parents were like, what had shaped the boy into the man. Over a period of weeks, Abraham Wilson’s reluctance gave way to interest, and his interest finally gave way to fascination. He had never before had reason to think of himself in terms of what kind of person he was, or why.
Jennifer’s prodding questions began to arouse memories, some merely unpleasant, others unbearably painful. Several times during the sessions when Jennifer was questioning Abraham Wilson about his father, who had regularly given him savage beatings, Wilson would order Jennifer to leave him alone. She left, but she always returned.
If Jennifer had had little personal life before, she now had none. When she was not with Abraham Wilson, she was at her office, seven days a week, from early morning until long after midnight, reading everything she could find about the crimes of murder and manslaughter, voluntary and involuntary. She studied hundreds of appellate court decisions, briefs, affidavits, exhibits, motions, transcripts. She pored over files on intent and premeditation, self-defense, double jeopardy, and temporary insanity.
She studied ways to get the charge reduced to manslaughter.
Abraham had not planned to kill the man. But would a jury believe that? Particularly a local jury. The townspeople hated the prisoners in their midst. Jennifer moved for a change of venue, and it was granted. The trial would be held in Manhattan.
Jennifer had an important decision to make: Should she allow Abraham Wilson to testify? He presented a forbidding figure, but if