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By Root 676 0

goatee, and the sallow skin of a prisoner. He made small talk, hunting and fishing talk, while I made sure the girls would stay. He looked as if he had never seen the light of day. I wasn’t certain he had ever had blind rage, or if he had always tolerated, with what to me was a kind of grotesque calmness, the system and those of us who had run amuck. As he shook my hand he said, “Your wife is all right. She wanted me to let you know that she’s going to hold up.” He left the door ajar and motioned for me to sit. “Let me outline my fees first,” he said, “get that out of the way.” Without knowing exactly, or even vaguely, where it was going to come from, I told him I’d have the initial payment for him by September at the latest. “No problem,” he said, writing something down on what looked like the back of a grocery receipt. I was thinking of my mother again, thinking that if she were home by September she could help us. The one hundred thousand that fell from the sky for bail money would be ours eventually, at trial time, and could be used to pay the legal fees. Rafferty reminded me to say nothing to the press, that there had been more than enough damaging publicity already. “I’m sure you know that there’s going to be a meeting at the school tonight? Meetings like those breed germs. It’s best for us, just at the moment, to stay put, to quietly begin to build our case. We’ll see what the other side has to say in a few weeks, at the hearing. I’ve seen it happen before: The temperature goes skyrocketing for a while, but if there’s not really anything there, people get tired of fanning the flame.” He got up and walked to the window. He stood looking out to the street. I wondered if he was thinking about the other kinds of cases, those that start with nothing and then take on a life of their own. There had been plenty of incidents, when in the interest of some lofty virtue the public was more than willing to do away with constitutional rights.

“You don’t know anything about apple trees, do you?” he asked. “I planted a whole line of them along the driveway outside here and they haven’t done a thing in five years.” He turned to look at me. “Dolores Finn tells me it’s all the pollution from the street—” He may have noticed my expression. He may have realized that it was inappropriate to talk about an apple tree when my wife was sitting in jail down the block for no good reason.

“Dolores is probably right,” he said, clearing his throat and walking back to his desk. “I spoke with Alice yesterday, as you know. Your wife is unique, an individual, Mr. Goodwin, as I’m sure you are aware. She is made of very strong fabric.” He pulled up a large vinyl appointment book and studied it, going forward and backwards through the pages as he spoke. “There’s an uproar about this situation, and it’s going to be complicated if other people come forward, and if Lizzy gets dragged into the mess. I talked with Alice for quite a while. I’m going to be very interested in the preliminary hearing, to see the personalities on the other side, to see what they have to say. Usually these cases are the other way around, the respectable people with roots in the community accusing the barmaids. It’s a lot harder in those cases, to represent the barmaids. Now, at the prelim—”

“Could they let her off?” I asked.

He looked up at me from his book. “No, no, let me explain. Preliminary hearings are held for three purposes: first of all, to ascertain whether there is probable cause to support the charge against the accused. Let me warn you that charges are very rarely dismissed. There was a warrant for this arrest, which means the judge has already evaluated the complaint for probable cause. The second reason we have a prelim is for discovery, if you will, for the defense to get information from the prosecution. And last, at the hearing, the judge decides whether or not to bind a person over for trial. The only way you can get her out at this point, right now, is to pay the bond.” He was still looking through his worn date book. If there was anything to like him for