But she was facing a deadline, and there were things she had to know before she could continue. She described her research needs to a writer at the colony one evening, a somewhat older man with suave moneyed ways, and in particular her desire to interview Junior Baxter on death row somehow, there being some things she had to know that only he could tell her, and he said he might be able to help. He loaned her a car to take wherever she wished, a fast road-hugging foreign sports car unlike any she’d ever been in before, much less driven — she felt hot in it — and he introduced her to an activist lawyer friend from the city, Simon Price of Price & Price, whom she was able to convince to help her fight the Brunist death penalties. The other Price was Simon’s wife, a lawyer who specialized in human rights cases — women’s rights, in particular. “Looks a lot like Haymarket all over again,” Simon said after studying her typed-up notes. Several routine gestures had not yet been made, so he was immediately able to get all the November and December executions delayed another six months while he prepared legal briefs and affidavits, and she brought this good news the next time she saw her wealthy friend at the colony. Though he seemed to know everything about literature, he didn’t seem to be much of a writer, usually just smiled when she asked him what he was working on. When not talking about her book, they discussed music, art, literature, politics, and in provocative engaging ways she’d not enjoyed before. He was the coolest man she’d ever met, and he seemed to like her, too. He laughed generously when she was being funny in her wiseass way, listened carefully when she got serious. He liked her enough that he invited her to his house one evening, promising to get her back in time not to disrupt her writing rhythms. They drove for an hour or so through thick forests to a luxurious home with beautiful views, a lot of art on the walls, thousands of books, a grand piano in the middle of a room set aside for it. Everything in its place, but as though unused. Like Dracula’s castle, she thought, but she didn’t say it. The sex on satin sheets was easy and good — maybe not passionate, but fun — the wine he served her sensational. It turned out he was one of the writing colony’s principal benefactors (an expensive dating club for him, she imagined) and a U.S. Congressman, wealthy enough to pay for his own campaigns, but a guy with a serious agenda, an agenda she mostly shared; she would vote for him. Much of the forest they had driven through was his, he said. They drove through it at least once a week after that and he always got her back to the colony by her usual bedtime. She was quite ready to stay over, to hell with the discipline, but he seemed to need her Cinderella hour even more than she did. Maybe there were other wives and lovers awaiting their turn, she thought, and her time was up.
Meanwhile, the writing rhythms he was protecting she was disrupting by note-taking travels through Brunist country, consultations with Simon, meetings with her agent and editors, prison visits, yet even so she managed to work on the book every day wherever she was, even if only for an hour or two. She had to. The days were dropping away like those calendar pages in the old movies, and she only had half-starts so far and a messy heap of loose notes. And the end of her fellowship loomed. What then? The peace of her studio and use of the car were each hers for only a short time longer, and she needed them both. So she drove back and forth a lot, reserving at least three days a week for her studio at the writers colony, the evenings with her wealthy friend unless he was in Washington — and once she met him there while traveling, and he seemed pleased, showing her off proudly (she felt proud) to his colleagues.
Her leash wasn’t long enough for her to reach Florida or Alabama or congregations to the west, but she managed to visit over a dozen Brunist churches along the eastern seaboard, large and small, attending services for the first time in years, taking notes, keeping her mouth shut. In one of them the preacher stopped her as she was leaving and said she looked familiar, hadn’t he seen her somewhere? She didn’t think so. Possibly at the Mount of Redemption? Oh, maybe, she said, and he continued to stare at her, his eyes narrowing. She eventually learned where Clara Collins-Wosznik and her friends from the Brunist camp were living, but she was refused permission to speak to them or even get near. She was told that Mrs. Collins was quite ill, and prayers for her were often a part of the services she attended. She didn’t know the name of either of the boys’ hometowns, but she had a rough idea where Billy Don came from and spent some note- and picture-taking time in several small towns in the area until she grew uncomfortable with the grim, thin-lipped attention she and her jazzy sports car were drawing. She did know how to find the Bible college Billy Don and Darren attended and spent one of her best half-weeks there. The staff and faculty were aware of their former students’ notoriety and were chillingly unhelpful (maybe her hair put them off; definitely not part of the local culture), but she was able to capture some of the school’s atmosphere, became acquainted with several students, some of whom later entered her narrative pseudonymously, and located many of the places Billy Don had described. Which in turn triggered her first completely satisfying book chapter, in which, sitting in the student cafeteria (which really did have homemade lemonade and boiled peanuts, just like Billy Don said), looking out on an autumnal campus (how she saw it, what her camera recorded), Darren lays out, in his riveting soft-spoken way, his vision of the approaching End Times, and Billy D’s life begins to change.
Simon had obtained all the trial transcripts and was studying them, and he passed on to her those of Young Abner’s murder trial. A close read turned up a few minor notes, not themselves very significant, but possibly useful in conjunction with more substantial evidence. The arresting officer, for example, declaring that the accused, found hiding in the nearby woods, was sullen and only resentfully cooperative, said that when he handed over his weapons, the officer remarked: “Let’s see if this gun matches the one that killed that kid in the ditched car,” and Junior, who said very little, said: “What kid?” The officer and prosecutor used the exchange as evidence of Junior’s duplicity—“He was just playing dumb,” the cop said. “You could tell by the cold-blooded look on his face.” The defense attorney did not argue with this. Simon was enraged at the lawyer’s obtuseness and the stupidity of the temporary insanity plea—“That sonuvabitch should be dragged into the dock on the same grounds!” he said — and by now, hoping to secure a retrial, had a list of some eighteen to twenty examples of ineffective counsel if not gross incompetence, including outright procedural errors by both lawyers. The unchallenged use of hearsay evidence, for example, as when a witness remarked that Junior was “a pal of the bikers, they raped a kid together,” the judge, too, failing in his duty. That rape scene had become important to her after her rescue of Carl Dean Palmers from ignominy, and she was convinced and had convinced Simon that Junior was as much a victim as the girl was. “I suppose it’s a problem with court-appointed lawyers,” she said to Simon, and he replied: “Nah, I’m often one. He’s just a shit lawyer. Maybe a chum of the prosecutor, doing him a favor. Probably how he got appointed an administrative law judge after the elections.”