The old lighthouse never looked so good as it did to August Jorgensen, rising from the salt flats and the marsh grass against blue sky and bluer ocean. He’d made the drive straight through, fueled by anger and frustration and a single pit stop, just long enough to fill the truck’s tank and empty theirs.

As it always did, coming home had a soothing effect on him. There was something about sand and salt and sea air that calmed his nerves, ironed out the wrinkles of life, and allowed him to remember just why it was he’d chosen years ago to drop out and leave the mainland behind. He belonged here; he fit in. He’d grown out of touch with the rest of the world and was no longer a match for its vagaries and complexities, if ever he had been. Here, things stayed the same. The seasons changed, storms came and went, the beach shifted a bit. But the shifts and changes were natural ones, incremental ones, and afterward, everything pretty much returned to the way it had been before, the way it had always been.

Forget about Kurt Meisner, he told himself. Forget about little Ilsa and young Kurt, Jr. Forget about Boyd Davies. Other than some freakish accident that had left him able to draw like the lens of a camera, he was what he was. The world would barely notice his passing, and his suffering would finally be over. When the time came, Jorgensen would pack a bag, go up to Washington, and argue the case. How hard could it be to stand at a podium and tell nine old men and women that yes, of course it mattered that Virginia wanted to kill a man who was powerless to understand why. They’d interrupt him and ask him questions, and he’d do his best to answer them. Then he’d sit down, and they could do whatever they wanted, whatever they were going to do in the first place. Hell, they’d gone and decided a presidential election, hadn’t they? They hadn’t worried too much about what the Constitution said when they’d done that; why on earth should he expect them to now?

He pulled the truck between two dunes where a dozen storms had been kind enough to carve out a parking space. As soon as he killed the engine and opened the door, Jake jumped across him and bounded out. Jorgensen watched as the dog raced around in circles, the puppy in him rejoicing at being home again.

“You and me both,” said Jorgensen. “You and me both.”

There was an envelope on his doorstep; an envelope wrapped up in one of those little plastic bags they kept in rolls at the supermarket, the ones he could never figure out which end you were supposed to open. Rather than bending down to retrieve it, he simply slid it across the floor with his foot. Only when he’d put down his bag and fed Jake did he get around to picking it up and examining it. His name was typed on it, in large capital letters. the honorable august lars jorgensen. Hell, it had been years since anyone had accused him of being honorable. The return address told him it was from Trial TV.

They’ve changed their minds, he told himself. They’ve fired him and gotten Lawrence Tribe to argue the case instead. Well, good for them. Larry’ll give Boyd a run for his money. And Jorgensen? Well, it was almost March. Soon enough, it’d be time to put the boat in the water, do a little sailing.

He tore the envelope open. Inside was a letter, neatly typed, the right-hand margin as straight as the left. If he lived to be a hundred, Jorgensen would never understand how they did that.

The Honorable August Lars Jorgensen

One Lighthouse Lane

Old Santee Island, South Carolina

-BY HAND-

Dear Judge Jorgensen:

I hope and trust that this letter will find you in good health and spirits. We have received word that the United States Supreme Court has set the matter of Davies v. Virginia for argument the second Tuesday of April, the 10th, at 10:00 a.m. According to the scheduling order, each side will be given forty-five (45) minutes to argue the issue. Under the Court’s rules, as Petitioner, we have the option of reserving up to fifteen (15) minutes of that time for rebuttal.

Within the next several weeks, you will be contacted by a representative of a briefing team, headed by Professor Reynaldo Gilbert, whom you have previously met. The team will be setting up a series of practice sessions to bring you up to speed and fill you in on the nuances of any recent decisions you may have missed.

Very fondly,

Jessica Woodruff

Even before he’d finished reading the letter, Jorgensen felt the rush of adrenaline. Not five minutes ago, he’d been telling himself to forget about the whole thing, that Boyd Davies would be better off dead than languishing in prison. As for Jorgensen himself, he’d fantasized about being rescued by Lawrence Tribe. Anything to get off the case.

And now this. This harmless little single-page, two-paragraph letter, informing him of nothing more than a few ministerial details - a date, a time, and a length of argument - assuring him of assistance, and wishing him well.

So why did reading it suddenly cause his heart to race as though he were back in high school, rounding the final turn of the cinder track in the half-mile run, leaning forward and shortening his stride for the final 100-yard kick?

What was it about April tenth, or ten o’clock a.m., or forty-five minutes, for that matter, that made him forget he was eighty-something, and feel instead like he was eighteen all over again? What was it about the patronizing references to a briefing team that he could laugh at and forgive? He had no answers to those questions, only the vaguest notion that it had to be about him, and about whatever it was that had driven him to the law in the first place, some sixty years ago. April tenth wasn’t just a day, then, or even the day; it was his day. Not Larry Tribe’s or David Boise’s or Alan Dershowitz’s. His. His day to stand up and speak for Boyd Davies, to summon up every ounce of strength and knowledge and wisdom he possessed, in order to do whatever he possibly could to try to save another man’s life.

His life.

He looked at the letter again, but the words on the page kept jumping in and out of focus, and it took Jorgensen a moment to realize that his hands were trembling. He folded the letter and placed it on the table, walked across the room to the weather porthole, and looked out. In the foreground, the cattails and tall spartina grass bent before the breeze. At the water’s edge, sandpipers scurried up and down the sand, emboldened by each receding wave, only to retreat a moment later, just before the next one’s advance. Farther out, herring gulls wheeled and dived and disappeared between the white-caps. And in the distance, where the breakers marked the outer banks, a string of pelicans flew single-file just over the water. With their long beaks and jointed wings, they looked absolutely prehistoric to Jorgensen; they might just as well have been pterodactyls, gliding on the very same currents, above the very same ocean, as they had 100 million years ago.

He drove to the post office the following morning. There were a couple of bills, a solicitation from the local volunteer fire company, and half a dozen pieces of assorted junk mail - nothing he couldn’t have done without. But it was nice to see Edna Combs, just the same.

“Yong man was here the other day,” she told him, “snooping around, looking for you.”

“Oh?”

“Yep. Had some letter for you. Said he had to give it to you hisself, personal delivery.”

“Thanks,” said Jorgensen. “I got it.”

“Musta been real important.”

Jorgensen pretended not to have heard her. With each passing year, it was something he found he could get away with more and more.

“Not bad news, I hope.” This time, too loudly for him to ignore.

“No,” he assured her, “not bad news.”

“Nothing you’d like to share, I suppose.”

But by that time, he’d developed a sudden coughing fit that completely drowned out her voice. It subsided after a moment or two; by then, he was safely out the door.

From the post office, he walked over to Doc Crawford’s, where he bought a few things and exchanged small talk. A brief silence followed.

“I s’pose you’ll be wanting to use the phone,” said Doc.

“Well,” said Jorgensen, “now that you mention it . . .”

He removed a piece of paper from his pocket and glanced back and forth at it as he dialed the number, beginning with its 917 area code.

Jessica Woodruff picked up her cell phone on the first ring, hoping to catch it before it woke the man lying in bed next to her.

“Hello,” she whispered.

“Miss Woodruff?” It sounded like an old man on the other end, an old man with a hearing problem.

“Yes.”

“I can barely hear you. This is August Jorgensen, down in South Carolina.”

“Yes, hello, Judge. How are you?”

“I’m fine, thanks.” He sounded awfully chipper for the middle of the night. But she’d heard about old people and their insomnia. She had a grandmother who claimed not to have slept a wink for the past fifteen years.

“What time is it down there?” she asked him.

“I don’t know, a little after nine?” It sounded as though he were guessing. She tried to place South Carolina on the map, couldn’t remember if it went above or below Georgia. But she was pretty sure they were in same time zone. She looked around for her robe, hoping to take the conversation into the next room, but it was too late: The body next to her was already stirring, and she felt an arm circle her waist.

“What can I do for you?” she asked Jorgensen.

“First of all,” he said, “I wanted to thank you for the letter, and assure you I’ll be up to speed by April tenth.”

The letter, April tenth. Suddenly she remembered. Remembered, in fact, how the courier had been unable to find him and had ending up having to leave the letter on his doorstep.

“Good,” she said, leaning her weight back against the body, allowing its arm to shift and its hand to find its way between her legs.

“And something else,” he said. “I took a little trip.”

“Oh?”

“Yup. Jake and I took a ride on up to Virginia.”

The hand was spreading her legs apart, and she was having trouble concentrating on the conversation. “Jake?” she asked.

“You remember Jake. He’s my dog.”

“Right,” she said, not remembering, but not caring, either. She relaxed her thighs, allowing the hand to open her, feel her wetness. “So where in vagina did you go?”

“Virginia.”

“Right. Virginia.”

“We went to Roanoke.”

Jessica sat up, nearly spraining the wrist that connected the hand to the arm. “Roanoke? What were you doing in Roanoke?”

“Investigation.”

The hand was trying to work its way back. Jessica pushed it away. “Investigation?” she repeated, turning it into a question.

“Yup,” said Jorgensen.

“So did you learn anything?”

“I did indeed. I learned that Boyd Davies is completely innocent.”

“You’re kidding,” said Jessica. She reached for her cigarettes on the nightstand. “That’s incredible.”

“You want to hear about it?”

“No,” said Jessica. “I mean, yes. But not now, not over the phone.” She lit a cigarette. “What’s today, Saturday?”

“Yup.”

“I can be down there tomorrow afternoon,” she said. “Monday by the latest. I want to hear everything, okay? Before you breathe a word of this to anyone else.”

“Not to worry,” said Jorgensen. “I’ll make Jake take an oath of silence.”

She hung up and snapped her cell phone closed. “That was Judge Jorgensen,” she said, rising and beginning to pace the bedroom, momentarily forgetting her nakedness. “He’s been doing investigation. He thinks he’s got it figured out that Wesley Boyd Davies is innocent. I told him to keep a lid on it, that I’d fly down and talk to him in a day or two.”

The man shifted his weight to one elbow, using his recently rejected hand for a headrest. God, he’s one good-looking man, thought Jessica, even at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning. She suddenly became self-conscious, turned her back to him. He’d often made a point of telling her it was her best side, anyway.

“Why don’t you take Duke Schneider with you?” he said.

“Duke Schneider? Wasn’t he a football player?”

“Something like that,” he said. “The guy I’m talking about is Mickey Schneider. But everyone calls him the Duke.”

“I was going to take someone from video with me. You know, to shoot some footage of Jorgensen in his lighthouse or against the ocean, for a ‘Retired-Judge-Comes-out-of-Seclusion-to-Argue-a-Death-Penalty-Case’ bit. Why should I take this Duke guy along?”

“He’s from our security department. They do investigations. It sounds like this thing is rapidly turning into one, right? I just heard you say so yourself.”

“I guess so,” said Jessica, exhaling smoke. “Anyway, you’re the boss. Whatever you say.”

“I say get that cute little ass of yours back over here where it belongs,” said Brandon Davidson.

Jorgensen paid Doc Crawford for the call, thanked him, and headed to his truck. He felt good about his conversation with Jessica Woodruff. He’d half expected her to react with skepticism to his claim about Boyd Davies being innocent, to demand to know what proof he had. And, of course, he had none.

But instead, she’d seemed to have taken him seriously - so seriously, in fact, that she wanted to come down and talk about it. And not next month or in a couple of weeks, but right away - tomorrow or Monday.

He was nothing but an old man, an old man who hadn’t been smart enough to think of bringing along a tape recorder when he’d gone to talk with Kurt Meisner. But Trial TV? They had to be a huge outfit, he was quite sure, with all sorts of money and employees and technical equipment at their disposal. Someone there would be clever enough to figure out how to finish the job he’d started, and how to do it right.

Jorgensen knew one thing: He was going to sleep well that night, confident in the knowledge that he’d set things in motion that, one way or another, were going to lead to Boyd Davies not only avoiding execution, but being completely exonerated and freed.

God, Marge would have been proud of me, he thought, as he climbed into his truck, fired it up, and pulled out onto the road. As soon as they were up to speed - which in this case meant doing a shade under the posted twenty-mile-per-hour limit - he turned to Jake and began booming, “Free at last! Free at last!” in the deepest, most resonating baritone he could summon. “Thank God almighty, he’ll be free at last!”

The dog promptly turned his back, stuck his face out the far window, closed his eyes, and opened his mouth wide, to drink in the salt air. Or perhaps to yawn.