knocked down as he entered the dark showroom, that he had tried to shoot at one or more of the assailants and then had been shot.

The next day Hadley was in his office on Dillard Street when he took a call from the hospital.  One of the sheriff’s detectives was at ICU, asking to speak to Zeigler or to Zeigler’s attorney.

Hadley went to the hospital and met Don Frye.  Frye wanted permission to interview Zeigler.  Frye told Hadley that he was sure that Zeigler had committed the murders.  As Hadley remembers the conversation, Frye’s words were: “Give me half an hour with him, I’ll have a confession.”

Hadley refused.  He wondered whether Frye could actually be so naive: no attorney would allow his client to be questioned by a policeman bent on extracting a confession.

Later that day Hadley walked through the store with Frye and Lawson Lamar, the assistant state attorney.  Hadley found the scene dreadful.  The blood, he thought, so much blood. 

Frye showed Hadley the evidence that he regarded as proof of Zeigler’s guilt.  Hadley thought the evidence was unconvincing, and he didn’t believe that Zeigler was capable of such violence.  He also remembered that Zeigler had told him, months before, of having been threatened because of his involvement with the West Orange loan sharks.

To Hadley, Frye seemed young and earnest and much too taken with his own deductions.  He was like a crusader on a white horse, Hadley thought, going out to do battle with evil.  And to Frye, Tommy Zeigler was evil.

Hadley didn’t understand how Frye could be so certain.  As yet the police had no test results. Many shots had been fired, but Frye could not yet know which guns had fired them.  Much blood had been spilled, but Frye could not show whose blood had made any particular stain.  No fingerprints had been studied.  Even the footprints were of little value until experts analyzed them.

Frye did have the statements of Edward Williams and Felton Thomas.  On the basis of their stories, Zeigler should be a suspect.  But Hadley thought that Frye had gone much farther than that: Frye already seemed to have closed his mind to any possibility except Tommy Zeigler’s guilt.

That afternoon Zeigler and his family formally asked Hadley to represent him, and Hadley agreed.  He knew that he had a fight ahead.  The crime deserved a thoughtful, unprejudiced police investigation; but after listening to Frye, Hadley feared that a stampede to judgment was already under way.