'In Miami, you're probably right. A deal. No doubt.'

'In Pachoula, death. No doubt.'

'That's the system.'

'Damn the system. Damn it to hell. And one more thing: I didn't do it. I didn't damn do the crime. Hey, I may not be perfect. Hell, up in Newark, I got into a couple of scrapes as a teenager. Same thing down in Pachoula. You can check those out. But dammit, I didn't kill that little girl.'

Ferguson paused. 'But I know who did.'

They were both silent for an instant.

'Let's get to that,' Cowart said. 'Who and how?'

Ferguson rocked back in his seat. Cowart saw a single smile, not a grin, not something that preceded a laugh, but a cruel scar on the man's face. He was aware that something had slipped from the room, some of the intensity of anger. Ferguson changed in those few seconds, just as effectively as he had earlier when he had changed accents. 'I can't tell you that yet,' the prisoner replied.

Bullshit,' Cowart said, letting a touch of displeasure slip into his own Voice. 'Don't be coy.'

Ferguson shook his head. 'I'll tell you,' he said, 'but only when you believe.'

'What sort of game is this?'

Ferguson leaned forward, narrowing the space between the two men. He fixed Cowart with a steady, frightening glare. 'This is no fucking game,' he said quietly. 'This is my fucking life. They want to take it and this is the best card I've got. Don't ask me to play it before I'm ready.'

Cowart did not reply.

'You go check out what I've told you. And then, when you believe I'm innocent, when you see those fuckers have railroaded me, then I'll tell you.'

When a desperate man asks you to play a game, Hawkins had once said, it's best to play by his rules.

Cowart nodded.

Both men were quiet. Ferguson locked his eyes onto Cowart's, watching for a response. Neither man moved, as if they were fastened together. Cowart realized that he no longer had any choice, that this was the reporter's dilemma: He had heard a man tell him a story of evil and wrongs. He was compelled to discover the truth. He could no more walk away from the story than he could fly.

'So, Mr. Cowart,' Ferguson said, 'that's the story. Will you help me?'

Cowart thought of the thousands of words he'd written about death and dying, about all the stories of pain and agony that had flowed through him, leaving just the tiniest bit of scar tissue behind that had built up into so many sleeping nightmare visions. In all the stories he'd written, he'd never saved anyone from even a pinprick of despair. Certainly never saved a life. 'I'll do what I can,' he replied.

3. Pachoula

Escambia County is tucked away in the far northwest corner of Florida, touched on two borders by the state of Alabama. It shares its cultural kinship with the states to its immediate north. It was once primarily a rural area, with many small farms that rolled green over hillsides, separated by dense thickets of scrubby pine and the looped and tied tendrils of great willows and vines. But in recent years, as with much of the South, it has seen a burst of construction, a suburbanizing of its once country lands, as its major city, the port town of Pensacola, has expanded, growing shopping malls and housing developments where there was once open space. But, at the same time, it has retained a marshy commonality with Mobile, which is not far by interstate highway, and with the salt water tidal regions of the Gulf shore. Like many areas of the deep South, it has the contradictory air of remembered poverty and new pride, a sense of rigid place fueled by generations who have found the living there, if not necessarily easy, then better than elsewhere.

The evening commuter flight into the small airport was a frightening series of stomach-churning bumps and dips, passing along the edges of huge gray storm clouds that seemed to resent the intrusion of the twin-engine plane. The passenger compartment alternately filled with streaks of light and sudden dark as the plane cut in and out of the thick clouds and red swords of sunshine fading fast over the Gulf of Mexico. Cowart listened to the engines laboring against the winds, their pitch rising and falling like a racer's breath. He rocked in the cocoon of the plane, thinking about the man on Death Row and what awaited him in Pachoula.

Ferguson had stirred a war within him. He had come away from his meeting with the prisoner insisting to himself that he maintain objectivity, that he listen to everything and weigh every word equally. But at the same time, staring through the beads of water that marched across the plane's window, he knew that he would not be heading toward Pachoula if he expected to be dissuaded from the story. He clenched his fists in his lap as the small plane skidded across the sky, remembering Ferguson's voice, still feeling the man's ice-cold anger. Then he thought about the girl. Eleven years old. Not a time to die. Remember that, too.

The plane landed in a driving thunderstorm, careening down the runway. Through the window, Cowart saw a line of green trees on the airport edge, standing dark and black against the sky.

He drove his rental car through the enveloping darkness to the Admiral Benbow Inn just off the interstate, on the outskirts of Pachoula. After inspecting the modest, oppressively neat room, he went down to the bar in the motel, slid between two salesmen, and ordered a beer from the young woman. She had mousy brown hair that flounced around her face, drawing all the features in tight so that when she frowned, her whole face seemed to scowl along with her lips, an edgy toughness that spoke of handing too many drinks to too many salesmen and refusing too many offers of companionship issued over shaky hands clutching scotch and ginger ale. She drew the beer from a tap, eyeing Cowart the entire time, sensing when the froth from the beer was about to slide over the lip of the glass. 'Y'all ain't from around here, are you?'

He shook his head.

'Don't tell me,' she said. I like to guess. Just say, The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain.' He laughed and repeated the phrase. She smiled at him, just losing a small edge from her distance. 'Not from Mobile or Montgomery, that's for sure. Not even Tallahassee or New Orleans. Got to be two places: either Miami or Atlanta; but if it's Atlanta, then you ain't originally from there but from somewhere else, like New York, and you'd just be calling Atlanta home temporary-like.' 'Not bad,' he replied. 'Miami.'

She eyed him carefully, pleased with herself. 'Let's see,' she said. 'I see a pretty nice suit, but real conservative, like a lawyer might wear…' She leaned across the bar and rubbed her thumb and forefinger against the lapel of his jacket. 'Nice. Not like the polyester princes selling livestock vitamin supplement that we get in here mainly. But the hair's a bit shaggy over the ears and I can see a couple of gray streaks just getting started. So you're a bit too old – what, about thirty-five? – to be running errands. If you were a lawyer that old, you'd damn well have to have some fresh-cheeked just-outa-school assistant you'd send here on business instead of coming yourself. Now, I don't figure you for a cop, 'cause you ain't got that look, and not real estate or business either. You don't have the look of a salesman, like these guys do. So now, what would bring a guy like you all the way up here from Miami? Only one thing left I can think of, so I'd guess you're a reporter here for some story.' He laughed. 'Bingo. And thirty-seven.' She turned to draw another glass of beer, which she set in front of another man, then returned to Cowart. 'You just passing through? Can't imagine what kinda story would bring you up here. There ain't much happening around here, in case you hadn't already noticed.'

Cowart hesitated, wondering whether he should keep his mouth shut or not. Then he shrugged and thought, If she figured out who I was in the first two minutes, it isn't going to be much of a secret around here when I start talking to the cops and lawyers. 'A murder story,' he said.