'If they execute Sullivan, will anyone ever really know the truth?'

'Know the truth? Hell, I think we know the truth now. The truth is that Ferguson shouldn't be on Death Row. But prove the truth? That's a whole other thing. Real hard.'

'And what will happen to you now?'

'Same old stuff. I'll follow this story to the end. Then write some more editorials until I get old and my teeth fall out and they decide to turn me into glue. That's what they do to old racehorses and editorial writers, you know.'

She laughed. 'Come on. You're going to win a Pulitzer.'

He smiled. 'I doubt it,' he lied.

'Yeah, you will. I can feel it. Then they'll probably put you out to stud.'

'I should be so lucky.'

'You will be. You're going to win one. You deserve to. It was a hell of a story. Just like Pitts and Lee.'

She, too, remembered that story, he realized. 'Yeah. You know what happened to those guys after they got the judge to order up a new trial? They got convicted again, by a racist jury just as damn stupid as the first. It wasn't until the governor pardoned them that they got off Death Row. People forget that. Twelve years it took them.'

'But they got off and that guy won the Pulitzer.'

He laughed. 'Well, that's right.'

'You will, too. Won't take twelve years, either.'

'Well, we'll see.'

'Will you stay with the Journal?'

'No reason to leave.'

'Oh, come on. What if the Times or the Post calls?'

'We'll see.'

They both laughed. After a momentary pause, she said, 'I always knew someday you'd find the right story. I always knew someday you'd do it.'

'What am I supposed to say?'

'Nothing. I just knew you'd do it.'

'What about Becky? Did she stay up to watch me on Nightline?'

Sandy hesitated. 'Well, no. It's much too much past her bedtime

'You could have taped it.'

'And what would she have heard her daddy talk about? About somebody who murdered a little girl? A little girl who got raped and then stabbed, what was it, thirty-six times? And then tossed into a swamp? I didn't think that was too swift an idea.'

She was right, he realized, though he hated the thought. 'Still, I wish she'd seen.'

'It's safe here' Sandy said.

'What?'

'It's safe here. Tampa isn't a big city. I mean, it's big, but not big. It seems to move a little slower. And it's not at all like Miami. It's not all drugs and riots and weird, the way Miami is. She doesn't have to know about little girls that get kidnapped and raped and stabbed to death. Not yet, at least. She can grow up a bit, and be a kid, and not have to worry all the time.'

'You mean you don't have to worry all the time.'

'Well, is that wrong?'

'No.'

'You know what I can never understand? It's why everyone who works at the paper always thinks everything bad just happens to other people.'

'We don't think that.'

'It seems that way.'

He didn't want to argue. 'Well, maybe.'

She forced a laugh. 'I'm sorry if I've rained on your parade. Really, I wanted to call to congratulate you and tell you that I really was proud.'

'Proud but divorced.'

She hesitated. 'Yes. But amicably, I thought.'

'I'm sorry. That was unfair.'

'Okay.'

There was another pause.

'When can we talk about Becky's next visit?'

I don't know. I'll be hung up on this story until there's some sort of resolution. But when, I don't know.'

'I'll call you then.'

'Okay.'

'And congratulations again.'

'Thanks.'

He hung up the telephone and realized that he was sometimes a fool, incapable of saying what he wanted, articulating what he needed. He pounded the desk in frustration. Then he went to the window of his cubicle and looked out over the city. Afternoon traffic was flowing toward the expressway, like so many body nerves pulsating with the desire to head home to family. He felt his solitude surround him. The city seemed baked beneath the hot blue sky, the light-colored buildings reflected the sun's strength. He watched a tangle of cars in an intersection maneuvering like so many aggressive bugs on the earth. It is dangerous, he thought.

It is not safe.

Two motorists had shot it out two days earlier following a fender bender, blazing away in the midst of rush-hour traffic, each armed with nearly identical, expensive nine-millimeter semiautomatics. Neither man had been hurt, but a teenager driving past had taken a ricochet in the lung and remained in critical condition at a local hospital. This was a routine Miami story, a by-product of the heat and conflicting cultures and a populace that seemed to consider handguns an integral part of their culture. He remembered writing almost the same story a half-dozen years earlier. Remembered a dozen more times the story had been written, so frequently that what had been once a front-page story was now six paragraphs on an inside page.

He thought of his daughter and wondered, Why does she need to know? Why does she need to know anything about evil and the awful desires of some men?

He did not know the answer to that question.

There were thick black television cables snaking out the entranceway to the courtroom. Several cameramen were setting up video tape recorders in the hallway, taking their feeds from the single camera allowed in the courtroom. A mix of print and television reporters milled about in the corridor; the television personnel all slightly sharper dressed, better coiffed, and seemingly cleaner than their newspaper competitors, who affected a slightly disheveled appearance to set themselves apart self-righteously.

'Out in force,' said the photographer who walked beside him, fiddling with the lens on his Leica. 'No one wants to miss this dance.'

It was some ten weeks since the stories had appeared. Filings and maneuverings had postponed the hearing twice. Outside the Escambia County courthouse the thick Florida sun was energetically baking the earth. It was cool inside the modern building. Voices carried and echoed off high ceilings so that people spoke mainly in whispers, even when they didn't have to. There was a small sign in gold paint next to the wide brown courtroom doors: CIRCUIT COURT JUDGE HARLEY TRENCH.

'That the guy that called him a wild animal?' the photographer asked.

'You got it.'

'I don't imagine he's going to be too pleased to see all this.' The photographer gestured with his camera toward the crowd of reporters and camera technicians.

'No, wrong. It's an election year. He's gonna love the publicity.'

'But only if he does the right thing.'

'The popular thing.'

'I doubt they're gonna be the same.'

Cowart nodded. I don't think so, either. But you can't tell. I bet he's back in chambers right now calling every local politician between here and the Alabama border, trying to figure out what to do.'

The photographer laughed. 'And they're probably calling every district worker, trying to figure out what to tell him. What d'you think, Matty? You think he'll cut him loose or not?'

'No idea.'

He looked down the corridor and saw a group of jeans-clad young people surrounding an older, short black man, who was wearing a suit. 'Get a shot of them,' he told the photographer. 'They're from the anti-death-penalty group here to make some noise.'

'Where's the Man?'

'Probably somewhere. They're not so organized anymore. They're probably going to be late. Or maybe they went to the wrong place.'

'Got the wrong day, maybe. They were probably here yesterday, got bored and confused, and left.'

The two men laughed.

'It's going to be a zoo,' Cowart said.

The photographer paused in his step. 'Yeah. And there's the tigers, waiting for your tail.'

He gestured and Cowart saw Tanny Brown and Bruce Wilcox slumped up against a wall, trying to stay out of the way of the cameramen.