A Time for Mercy (Jake Brigance #3) - John Grisham Page 0,72

down or get out.”

He rumbled back to his table and for a few minutes the café was quieter. Bill West finally said, “I suppose you’re gettin’ a lot of that these days.”

Jake replied, “Oh yeah, but it’s just part of the job. Since when are lawyers admired by all?”

* * *

—

HE LOVED THE office at 7:00 a.m., before the day began and the phone started ringing, before Portia arrived at 8:00 with a list of things for him to do and questions to answer, before Lucien rolled in mid-morning and stomped upstairs with his cup of coffee to disrupt whatever Jake was doing.

He turned on the lights downstairs and checked each room, then went to the kitchen to brew the first pot. He went upstairs to his office and took off his jacket. In the middle of his desk was a two-page motion Portia had prepared the day before. It was a request by the defense to transfer Drew Gamble’s case to youth court, and when filed it would set off another round of nasty gossip.

The motion was a formality and Noose had already promised to deny it. But, as the defense lawyer of record, Jake had no choice. If the motion were granted, an impossibility, the murder charge would be tried before the youth court judge with no jury. When found guilty, Drew would be sent to a juvenile facility somewhere in the state and kept there until his eighteenth birthday, when the court surrendered jurisdiction. At that point, there was no procedural mechanism to allow the circuit court to assume jurisdiction. In other words, Drew would be allowed to go free. After less than two years behind bars. There was nothing fair about this law but Jake couldn’t change it. And it was precisely for this reason that Noose would keep the case.

Jake could not imagine the backlash if his client walked after serving such a short sentence, and frankly, he was not in favor of it. He knew, though, that Noose would protect him while at the same time protecting the integrity of the system.

Portia had attached a four-page brief that Jake read with admiration. As always, she was thorough and discussed a dozen prior cases involving minors, one reaching back to the 1950s. She argued persuasively that minors are not as mature as adults and do not possess the same decision-making skills, and so on. However, each case she cited had ended with the same result—the minor was kept in circuit court. Mississippi had a long history of putting minors on trial for serious crimes.

It was an admirable effort. Jake edited the motion and brief, and when Portia arrived they discussed the changes. At nine, he walked across the street and filed the paperwork. The assistant clerk accepted it without comment and Jake left without his customary flirting. Even the clerk’s office seemed a bit cooler these days.

* * *

—

HARRY REX COULD always find a reason to get out of town on business, away from the turmoil of his contentious divorce practice and away from his quarrelsome wife. He sneaked out the rear door of his office late in the afternoon and enjoyed the long, quiet drive to Jackson. He went to Hal & Mal’s, his favorite restaurant, took a table in a corner, ordered a beer, and began waiting. Ten minutes later he ordered another one.

During his law school days at Ole Miss, he had downed many beers with Doby Pittman, a wild man from the coast who had finished first in their class and chose the big-firm route in Jackson. He was now a partner in a fifty-lawyer group that did well representing insurance companies in major damage cases. Pittman was not involved with Smallwood but his firm was lead counsel. Another partner, Sean Gilder, had drawn the case.

A month earlier, over beers in the same restaurant, Pittman had whispered to his old drinking buddy that the railroad might approach Jake and discuss the possibility of a settlement. The case was frightening for both sides. Four people had been killed at a bad crossing poorly maintained by the railroad. There would be enormous sympathy for the Smallwoods. And Jake had impressed the defense with his aggressiveness and demands for a trial. He had shown no reluctance in ramming through discovery and running to Noose when he thought the defense was stalling. He and Harry Rex had hired two top railroad-crossing experts, plus an economist who would tell the jury that the four