Talk to nicely.

Sitting in the front seat of a rental car, Bertie Baker carefully applied her candy-red lipstick.

She needed to look her best, for the photographers gathered outside the prison.

That had been easier when she was younger, of course.

Though, Lord knows, Bertie had never had much in the looks department.

A fact, her mother never failed to mention.

Checking her reflection in the sun-visor mirror,

Bertie nodded to herself, then grabbed her purse from the passenger seat and stepped out.

Her heels clicked on the pavement, as she made her way from the visitor's lot over to

the security checkpoint at the prison's main entrance, aware that she was being watched

through the chain link fence over at the media zone, where reporters mingled with the many

protesters who were gathering.

Think you'll get the bastard to confess, Miss Baker?

It would be three for three.

Someone called to her.

When's the new book coming out?

Asked someone else.

Think it'll win you another Pulitzer?

Bertie didn't answer, which he smiled politely in their direction,

glancing up at the signs held

by chanting hippies and stern-faced nuns who had come to protest. The slogans on their

signs were the typical nonsense. Capital punishment equals murder. Vengeance belongs to the Lord.

...