CHARLES BAYLOR'S OFFICE was on Terry Lane, a block south of Hemingway's house in Old Town. Nine a.m. sharp on Friday morning, holding a box of Dunkin' Donuts in one hand and a box of coffee in the other, I rang his bell with my elbow.

As I waited, I heard a screaming saw at the rear of the house. On the porch, a rusty bicycle sat next to some beat-up diving tanks. What the h.e.l.l kind of law office was this? When the saw stopped, I put down the coffee and whammed on the door with my fist.

A bleary-eyed, tan, s.h.i.+rtless guy wearing a green bandanna, goggles, and an air mask opened the door a minute later. He wiped his hands on his sole visible item of clothing, his cutoff jeans.

"Yeah?" he said.

"I'm looking for Charles Baylor. The attorney?" I said.

"He's not here at the moment," the guy said, grinning like an idiot as he pulled down the mask. "I'm Charlie Baylor, the carpenter. Maybe I can help you out?"

I restrained myself from rolling my eyes. Nice to meet you, too, wisea.s.s, I thought. "I'm Nina Bloom from Scott, Maxwell and Bond. They put me on to a.s.sist in the Justin Harris case. I left you about a dozen messages."

"Well, bless my banjo," Baylor said in an exaggerated hick accent. "You must be Miss New York City here to learn the hillbilly beach b.u.m some lawrin'. I got every one of yours and the righteous Mission Exonerate's calls, all right. You didn't get my e-mail? 'Thanks, but no thanks.' My client is in competent hands. You should check your BlackBerry. My message heading, I believe, was 'Go Find a Tree to Hug.' Guess you'll have to drink all that coffee yourself. Shame. See you around."

Could this guy be a bigger p.r.i.c.k? I thought, as he started to close the door in my face. I drop-kicked the doughnut box into the gap to stop it.

I'd come down here for a lot of reasons. Messing around wasn't one of them.

" 'Competent hands,' huh?" I yelled as he looked down at the crushed doughnuts in pained shock. "What are you building back there, Mr. Baylor? Harris's coffin?"

He pulled off his bandanna and ran a hand through his sandy hair. He looked to be in his early forties, but his lean, brown, weather-beaten face was still boyish somehow. He looked more like a landscaper than a lawyer. One with eyes the color of the sky I'd seen from my balcony last night, but that was beside the point.

"Harris's coffin?" he said with a grin. "That's cold, woman. d.a.m.ned if I'm not starting to like you. Please call me Charlie. When are they changing your firm's name to Scott, Maxwell and Soulless b.i.t.c.h?"

I held eye contact with him, then smiled for the first time myself. "Invite me in, and we can go over it, Charlie."

Chapter 74.

HALF OF THE LAWYER'S HOUSE was beautiful: golden, varnished Dade pine floors; a completely refurbished curving banister and stairway; a white-on-white marble cook's kitchen out of Architectural Digest. The other, gutted half, with its shattered plaster walls and garbage-br.i.m.m.i.n.g joint compound buckets, had a striking resemblance to a crack house.

Luckily, I was quickly escorted through the construction site into an artfully finished oak-paneled office behind the kitchen.

Charlie dropped the salvaged doughnut box onto his immaculate desk and took a Heineken keg can from a minifridge.

"Out of orange juice?" I said, making a show of checking my watch.

"In Key West, this is orange juice," Charlie said, popping the beer can's top and taking a slug.

I almost pa.s.sed out when I noticed the framed Harvard Law diploma on the wall, a little magna c.u.m laude banner bridged across its lower right-hand corner.

"Impressive, isn't it?" he said, rocking back and forth in his chair. "I missed summa by like point-oh-six or some such. I really wanted to go to Yale, but their rugby team flat out blew that year." He took a long sip, burped, and helped himself to a crushed Boston Kreme.

"What are you doing down here?" I said.

"Some people claim that there's a woman to blame," he sang with his mouth full. "But I know-"

"Please shut up," I said.

"Fine," he said, chewing. "Like everybody else, I guess things went south until there was no more south left to go. This is actually my granddaddy's place. He was a Texas oilman. He actually won it in a poker game at the age of seventy. Family legend has it he came down, took one look around, and telegraphed back, 'If all works out, I'll never be sober again.' "

"Touching story," I said.

"Anyway," Charlie said. "A few years ago, I inherited it and his dusty toolbox. After I bring this baby back to its former glory, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I got a friend who works for HGTV, said I'd be a shoo-in for one of those hunky carpenter dudes. How much money they make, you think?"

"You're too old," I said.

He finished his doughnut with another slug of beer and made a growling sound. "Don't tell anyone, but I'm also actually taking a stab at being the next John Grisham or Ernest Hemingway. You been to Papa's house yet? Did you know some of the cats there have six toes?"

"Did you know Hemingway blew his head off with a shotgun?" I said quickly. "This is a lot of fun and everything, but we need to go over Harris's case. I got the brief, but I'd like to hear in your own words, in a nutsh.e.l.l, where it went wrong."

"In a nutsh.e.l.l," Charlie said. "OK, let's see. It all went wrong probably right around the time the cops said, 'Hey, Harris, you have the right to an attorney,' and Harris didn't say, 'Where's the phone?' "

He leaned back in his swivel chair, balancing the can on his bare chest.

"Harris was his own worst nightmare. First he tells the cops he didn't know Foster. Lie numero uno. Then, faced with the DNA results, he claims he remembers having consensual s.e.x with her at the prison where he worked and she was a volunteer. He said the coed scholars.h.i.+p musician was 'quite the little freak,' quote unquote. That she liked to slap and scratch him and for him to cuff her up before they did it in the janitor's closet.

"Which is exactly what he said happened when she came in to volunteer that morning before she went missing. He claimed after he went off s.h.i.+ft that day, he was with another woman, his fiancee, the whole day at the Miami Seaquarium. But when police questioned his alibi, the fiancee completely denied it."

"c.r.a.p," I said.

"On a pointy stick," he said. "That's why my white-shoe firm handed the case to me when his first lawyer was disbarred for bilking his real estate clients. See, like you, I was once moronic enough to believe in Harris, too. Enough at least to take it to trial."

"What happened in court?"

"It came down to the jury not buying that a poor black prison guard could possibly have consensual s.e.x with an angelic white college student who volunteered there. Foster's mother sat in the front row, and she cringed and cried whenever the notion of her daughter and Harris being together came up. The jury wasn't too hot on the idea either. Slam dunk. Capital murder."

Charlie yawned and licked some custard off his finger.

"I left my firm a year later. Couldn't stop thinking about it, I guess. So there you have it. In a nutsh.e.l.l. Trying to dig Harris out of his hole cost me pretty much everything. How you figure you're going to get it done in a week?"

"I don't know," I said standing, "but I'm going to do something that maybe you haven't thought of this year."

"Yeah, what's that?" Charlie said, sitting up.

"I'm going to f.u.c.king try," I said.

Chapter 75.

IT WAS FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON by the time my chartered plane brought me up to Raiford, where Harris was being held on death row.

Raiford, in North Florida near Jacksonville, was about as far from Key West as you can get without leaving the state. Charlie had suggested to Harris that a local attorney might be more practical, but Harris had refused to get someone else.

It was Charlie or no one, Harris had said. Which made me wonder about Harris's judgment.

I pa.s.sed a small group of young protesters sitting on cars parked in the brown gra.s.s across from the maximum security prison. A waiflike teen in a vintage flowered dress waved a sign at me that said, DOWN WITH THE DEATH PENALTY. FREE JUSTIN HARRIS!

"Doing my best," I mumbled as I approached the razor-wire fence of the prison parking lot.

With its king palms, hedged grounds, and whitewashed mission architecture, the entrance of Raiford looked more like a nineteenth-century resort than a prison.

But I nearly forgot that impression forever the moment I stepped inside and took in the stark concrete-and-steel interior decoration. I was buzzed in and felt as much as heard the clack as a door bolt shot home behind my back. It was the first time I'd ever been inside a prison. Movies didn't do justice to the demoralizing horror.

From somewhere and everywhere came indeterminate shouts, overly loud televisions, flus.h.i.+ng toilets, steel on steel.

I thought about that night on the beach so long ago. About Ramon Pena. About the fate I'd dodged.

Or had I? I wondered. Every time I thought I'd gotten away from it, it seemed to pop up again, like a will-o'-the-wisp in reverse.

After being admitted and having my bag searched, I was escorted by a mute, broad-backed Hispanic guard down a bleak cement hallway. I had to wait twenty minutes before Justin Harris hobbled into the death row visitor area in wrist-to-leg shackles. The guard with him actually cuffed him, like a wild beast, to a raised iron ring in the floor beside the table.

And the guard didn't go far. He stood watching us intently from the other side of a large wired-gla.s.s window.

I looked at Justin Harris for the first time. He was heavier than his Fox News picture. He was a big man, gone to fat, his ma.s.sive shoulders and arms and chest crumpled toward the floor as if something at his center had caved in. He sat there breathing raspily as he stared at me blankly. I noticed a raised, bluish b.u.mp on his cropped head.

"Where's Charlie?" he finally said. "I thought they said my lawyer was here."

"I'm Nina Bloom. I work at a law firm in New York, and I was a.s.signed to help out Charlie on your case. What happened to your head?"

"This?" he said, pointing at the bruise with a goofy grin. "I b.u.mped it water-skiing."

I let out a breath as I held eye contact with him. He had a week to live, and he was being a wisea.s.s? Was Harris actually nuts? I wondered.

"I know you didn't do this, Justin," I said quietly. "I'm here to help."

Anger flashed in Harris's suddenly wide eyes. His chains jingled as he sat up. "Oh, really. How do you know I didn't do it? Because I'm black, and you voted for Obama? Listen, I fought for this country with honor with the Army Rangers in the first Iraq War, and now they're closing down Gitmo. Maybe you and your ACLU pals should skip me and try springing a terrorist."

"I know you believe in this country, Justin," I said even quieter now, as I took his medal out of my bag.

"Who gave you that?" he said, outraged.

"Your mother. I'm here for her as well as you."

He stared at the medal. He took a breath, held it. He shook his head, quickly closing his eyelids before a tear could escape.

"They executed Ted Bundy here. Did you know that?" he said matter-of-factly. "The electric chair is down the hall. They said there's a new portable one I could choose if I want. Or I can go the needle route. Problem is, they botched one a few years back when they missed the vein. Left foot-long chemical burns up both of the guy's arms."

"I'm going to get you out of here, Justin," I said.

He huffed out a breath, then looked at me for a long beat. Finally, he smiled at me. A genuine smile for the first time. He had straight teeth, dimples. For a split second, I saw the resemblance to the young, grinning drum major on the Carnegie Hall stage.

"I'm sorry about the Obama crack. I didn't mean it," he said, squeezing his hands together as if in prayer. "I understand what you're trying to do, Miss Bloom. I admire it. Trying to help out desperate people is a nice thing. You really seem like a nice person, and I thank you for believing in me. But the governor of Florida isn't going to grant me a stay. I got myself into this mess, and I'm resigned to suffer the consequences. I lived my life. It didn't turn out so hot. Now it's going to end."

"Look at me," I said pa.s.sionately. "I'm not talking about a stay. I'm going to get you out of here, Justin. I know your DNA was from consensual s.e.x with Tara Foster and that your fiancee lied about you. I'm going to straighten the whole thing out. Can you remember anything at all that can prove your alibi?"

"It's been really nice talking to you, Nina, but I need to get back to my reading now," Justin said, knocking on the wired gla.s.s.

As the guard was taking him away, Justin turned back. "Wait, there actually is one thing," he said.

"What? What is it?" I said, sitting up.

"If you hear from my mom, tell her I love her, and that I'm OK, and that I don't want to see her at the execution, OK?"

I nodded and let out a breath as I watched Justin be led away.

Chapter 76.

CHARLIE WAS ON THE FRONT PORCH of his Key West bungalow, playing an electric steel guitar, when I arrived at his house at around nine on Sat.u.r.day morning. He actually had an amplifier and everything. His eyes were closed as he maneuvered the gla.s.s slide over the strings, really getting into the jangling blues tune he was playing.

He opened his bloodshot eyes immediately when I stormed up the stairs and yanked the amplifier's plug.

"I see that writing isn't the only occupation that you share with Papa Hemingway," I said as I kicked the half-empty box of Heineken keg cans between his feet. Had he been drinking all night? Or just all morning?

"How's Justin? Still as optimistic as ever?" Charlie said, finally looking up at me after a slow sip of breakfast beer. "Did you know the Today show called me to see if I wanted to go on and plead Justin's case? I asked Justin, and he went crazy. He wouldn't let me do it. He doesn't want to be defended. He's sick of living in prison, sick of living, period. How do I fight for the life of a man who so obviously wants to die?"

Charlie really was playing the blues, I realized. He looked depressed as well as drunk. It was obvious that Justin wasn't the only one who was listening to the ticking of a dwindling clock. Charlie was blaming himself for Justin's fate. He felt that he'd let the man down.

Worst of all, like Justin, he seemed to think the whole thing was over. I had to change that.

"Justin is hopeless, as hopeless as his lawyer," I said, waving Harris's thick case file along with the printer sheets from the research I'd done at my hotel the night before. "Which has to change right now. We need to turn this around, Charlie. We need to go over this case with a fine-tooth comb. What about justice?"

Charlie tipped up his can and dropped the empty on the porch floor.

"Ours is a world where justice is accidental and innocence no protection. Someone said that. Euripides? Smart f.u.c.k, whoever he was," Charlie said as he cracked open another beer.

I went over and s.n.a.t.c.hed it out of his hand and threw it off the porch before I sat down next to him.

"Did you know that at the time of Harris's arrest," I said, showing him my papers, "the local West Palm news showed his picture and broadcast his perp walk? Several local newspaper editorials called for swift justice before the trial even began. A motion to move the trial upstate to a neutral venue by his first lawyer was dismissed out of hand. You and I both know Harris was ramrodded."

"I hit on those points at his direct appeal and at the writ of certiorari we sent to the state supreme court, but no sale," Charlie said. "I was at that trial, sweet peach. I actually held the envelope that had Foster's underwear and Harris's DNA. I killed myself on that case. I did everything possible. I brought in the phone-book-sized record of all the men in South Florida who have been in Airborne units to show how circ.u.mstantial the state's evidence was, but they didn't want to hear it. Harris getting capital punishment is what got me to hang up my briefcase. I'm against the death penalty."