Flat Lake in Winter by Joseph T. Klempner Page B

good-looking man. But his dark hair, nearly black eyes, and chiseled jaw must have presented a stark contrast that morning to Jonathan Hamilton’s blond hair, pale blue eyes, and almost beatific features. In the weeks and months to follow, the media would never run a print article, or carry a televised sound bite regarding the case, without displaying a photo of one man or the other, and often of both. A prominent film producer would go on record as hoping for an eventual acquittal, just so both men could get a chance to play themselves in the movie version.
    The pen adjacent to Part One is large enough to hold a half-dozen prisoners at once, though it is doubtful that it has ever been called upon to do so. That Tuesday morning, Fielder and Jonathan had it all to themselves. Their initial meeting was conducted standing up and separated by iron bars. Fielder, who is an even six feet tall, found himself looking up into Jonathan’s face.
    “My name is Matt Fielder,” he said, extending a business card between the bars. “If it’s all right with you, I’m going to be your lawyer.”
    Jonathan took the card and frowned at it for a long moment, prompting Fielder to wonder whether his client was able to read at all. Then Jonathan began running his thumb over the card, at a spot where Fielder’s own fingers had left a smudge on the surface. When the thumb didn’t seem to do the trick, Jonathan switched to the sleeve of his shirt, rubbing in a determined, circular motion, singularly occupied with the business of ridding the card of its imperfection.
    Fielder had the feeling that Jonathan could have easily spent the next fifteen minutes absorbed with the card. He displayed none of the urgency most defendants did when first given a chance to confer with a lawyer, and asked none of the usual questions. That left it up to Fielder to shape the conversation.
    “Do you know why you’re here?” Fielder asked.
    Jonathan hesitated, then answered rather sheepishly, “I guess so.”
    “Tell me,” Fielder said, in as gentle a tone as he could muster.
    “Grandpa Carter and Grandma Mary Alice?” Looking to Fielder to make sure he’d got the answer right.
    “Right,” Fielder said. He had the feeling he was talking to a small child, a child who had somehow been outfitted with the body of a very large man. “What about them?”
    “They say I hurt them.”
    “ Hurt them?”
    “K-k-kilt them.”
    Fielder hesitated before asking the next logical question. There were times you asked a client if he was guilty, and there were times you didn’t. Fielder was in the process of trying to figure out which kind of time this was, when Jonathan surprised him with a question of his own.
    “Wh-wh-what could they do to me?”
    “What do you mean?” Fielder was pretty certain what Jonathan meant, but he wanted to hear how much Jonathan himself knew.
    “Can they give me c-capital punishment?”
    Fielder’s cardinal rule was, never lie to a client. It wasn’t so much a moral thing as a pragmatic one. Get caught in a lie, and you’d never be believed again. He wasn’t about to break the rule, not even now. “Yes,” he said. “It’s possible.”
    There was a long silence while Jonathan appeared to digest that news. Then he asked, “What is capital punishment?”
    Fielder explained that capital punishment meant the death penalty.
    “When would that be?” he asked.
    “First of all,” Fielder explained, “I’m here to see that that doesn’t happen, ever. But even if I fail, even if I strike out twenty-seven times in a row, I promise you that nothing like that could possibly happen for many, many years.”
    “So it wouldn’t be, like, tonight? ”
    Fielder allowed himself a small smile. As gently as he could, he explained to Jonathan that there could be no execution without all sorts of stuff first - a full investigation, pre-trial hearings, a jury trial, a separate sentencing hearing, and multiple appeals - things that would truly