at 75 Temple Grove was empty and too quiet.  The store opened again after Beulah Zeigler and her niece Connie Crawford scrubbed the blood from the floors and rearranged the stock.  But business was slow, and everyone agreed that Tommy should not deal with customers.

The firm of Davids, Henson, and Hadley was located on Dillard Street, several blocks from the store.  Zeigler was at the offices often.

Ed Kirkland left the case after the preliminary hearing.  Hadley, Davids, and the paralegal, Leslie Gift, were the full-time legal team, and only Hadley knew Zeigler well.

Vernon Davids had little contact with Zeigler during this time.  Davids was busy, and he thought that Zeigler was primarily Hadley's client.  From the little time they had together, Zeigler struck Davids as very naive, with an almost childish faith in the legal process.  He seemed to believe that juries were imbued with a supernatural sense of truth and falsehood.  Any trial would be just a formality: he was innocent, and therefore he certainly would be perceived as innocent.

Davids thought that Zeigler had a lot to learn.

Gift had begun to compile ring binders of police reports, statements, and other evidence; by the time the trial began, the binders would contain several thousand pages of cross-referenced material.  Her first strong impression of Zeigler was that he was a classic male chauvinist.  That was not all bad: according to his code, men were at all times expected to show women consideration and kind regard.  But women, for their part, were expected to defer at once to the wishes of men.

Gift found this not so much infuriating as amusing.  She was a good-looking blonde in her early twenties.  She was also bright and capable.  She had been through this before.

Zeigler knew that one of Gift's files contained reports of all the rumors about him that Davids, Annan, and others had heard.  The attorneys had decided that Zeigler should not be privy to the details of the evidence against him.  Among other considerations, they wanted his recollection to be untainted by knowledge of things that only the killer—or killers—could know.  This itself was an act of faith.  If Zeigler was guilty, it would be a risky strategy.

Zeigler had agreed to this.  But he did want to know what was being said about him in his hometown.  One day, instead of asking Hadley or Davids, he waited until he was alone with Gift.  Then he demanded to see the rumors file.

Gift refused.  He fixed her with a scowl that she had seen from him a few times before, glaring disapproval over the rims of his glasses.

It got no reaction from her.

"Don't you know what this means?" Zeigler said.

"I don't know what it means to anybody else, but it doesn't mean a damn thing to me," she told him.