Ray Delgado kept a plastic visitor badge clipped to his tie because he visited the county jail often enough that the guards waved him through. He set his briefcase on the interview table, nodded at Jesse, and folded his hands.
"Andre, I'm going to talk to you straight, and your brother gets to hear it too."
Andre sat across from him in the orange jumpsuit. Three days in the Redstone County jail had hollowed his cheeks, but his back was straight.
"The state has an eyewitness who picked you out of a photo array," Delgado said. "They have a car matching yours leaving the scene. They have a statement. You go to trial on armed robbery, you are looking at twenty years minimum. Mrs. Whitfield is offering eight. Eight could be five with good time. You take that plea, you walk out of prison before you are thirty."
"She wants me to say I did it," Andre said.
"She wants a conviction. This is what a deal looks like when the evidence is ugly. Andre, I have a hundred and forty cases. I am telling you the truth because nobody else will. You will not beat this at trial."
The room went quiet. The vent rattled overhead.
"I did not do it," Andre said. "I am not signing my name to a lie, Ray. I'd rather take twenty for something I didn't do than eight for saying I did."
Delgado looked at him for a long moment, then packed his briefcase. "Then you are a fool, son. But you're my fool." He stood. "I'll file the paperwork for trial. And Jesse —" He glanced at the boy in the too-big suit. "I heard about the hearing. Pruitt granted you lay counsel status. Don't waste it."
That evening the Cole house smelled of fried chicken and worry. Lena set plates down with the deliberate care of a woman holding herself together by routine. Theo was already there, notebook open, pen ready.
"Delgado told us the offer," Jesse said. "Eight years."
Lena's hand paused. "You said no."
"I said no," Andre answered, from the jail phone pressed to Jesse's ear on speaker. "I won't lie to come home sooner."
Jesse set the phone down gently. "Mama. I need to say something." He stood, and the charcoal suit sleeves slid past his wrists. "Delgado is a good man and he is drowning. If I don't stand beside Andre at that defense table, nobody will fight like he deserves. I am going to represent him myself."
The plate Lena was holding hit the table with a crack. "No."
"Mama—"
"I said no, Jesse Cole. You are seventeen years old. This is not the library. They will eat you alive in that courtroom and they will take your brother for twenty years, and I will not bury one son while the other carries that on his conscience."
Her voice broke on the last word. Theo looked at his shoes.
Jesse did not flinch. "I know every rule they will use, Mama. I have read them all. Daddy's books—"
"Your daddy is dead," Lena said, and the room froze. She pressed her hand to her mouth. "Lord, forgive me. Jesse, baby, I'm scared."
"I know," he said quietly. "So am I."
The knock came soft, almost apologetic. Silas Grant stood on the porch in a coat older than Jesse, his breath fogging in the November air.
"Mr. Grant. Come in."
He declined the chair, declined the plate. He looked at Jesse, then turned to Lena.
"Lena," he said, "when I passed the bar in 1978, the examiners asked me three times if I was sure I wanted to sit for it in this county. I studied in a library where the librarian locked the law section when she saw me coming." He smiled. "Your boy has read more law than half the men with licenses in this courthouse. I watched him in those stacks. He doesn't guess. He knows."
"They'll destroy him," Lena whispered.
"They'll try," Silas said. "But that child walked into Judge Pruitt's courtroom and the judge laughed at him, and your boy stood there and cited the Sixth Amendment until the laughing stopped. I've been waiting forty years to see something like that in Redstone County." He put his hand over hers. "Let him fight for his brother. It's the only honorable thing in this whole mess."
Lena looked at her son — the suit, the rolled sleeves, the steady eyes that were so much like his father's. Tears ran down her face, and she nodded.
"Then we fight," she said.
On the jail phone, Andre's voice came small and rough. "Jesse? You there?"
"I'm here," Jesse said. "And I'm not leaving that table until they say not guilty."
Chapter 7: Discovery