JL

By Richard Bartron

Richard "Matlock" Parish, a prisoner in one of Florida's major correctional institutions and maybe the best jailhouse lawyer ever, and Harley Jade, a rising star in Florida's Public Defenders Appellate Division and maybe the most beautiful woman in the whole wide world, fight for the freedom of wrongfully imprisoned Florida prison inmates while locked in a life-and-death struggle with a corrupt and dangerous attorney general.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9781662476730

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JL

Richard Bartron

Copyright © 2023 Richard Bartron

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2023

ISBN 978-1-6624-7672-3 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-7673-0 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Jack's Diamond House

Chapter 2

I Got an Illegal Sentence

Chapter 3

Writ of Habeas Corpus

Chapter 4

Puzzles and People

Chapter 5

We've Got to Do Something

Chapter 6

Marlyss and Billy Tippen

Chapter 7

Matlock and Lenny in the Yard

Chapter 8

Chief Judge Arthur Wembley

Chapter 9

Nancy Dodd-Halliburton Goes to Prison

Chapter 10

There Are Certain Rules of Nature

Chapter 11

Hanna Beard and Mata Hari

Chapter 12

Nancy Dodd-Halliburton

Chapter 13

The Bienville Lake Annual Bass Fishing Tournament

Chapter 14

The Turner CI Inmates Reply

Chapter 15

Cat Got Your Tongue?

Chapter 16

Everything Is Right with the World

Chapter 17

Attorney General Junior Grist

Chapter 18

Blinky Bellows Goes to Work

Chapter 19

Lenny Nero Gets His Hearing

Chapter 20

The Turner CI Laundry

Chapter 21

Harley Jade Gets on Board

Chapter 22

Matlock and Lenny Go to Jail

Chapter 23

Getting Ready for Lenny's Hearing

Chapter 24

Off to the Panhandle

Chapter 25

The Great Roman Aqua Duck

Chapter 26

Hillsborough County Court

Chapter 27

The Great Escape

Chapter 28

Buddy Cale—A Thoughtful Clerk

Chapter 29

Bob Comes Home

Chapter 30

They're Coming for George

Chapter 31

Junior Worries About Blinky

Chapter 32

Matlock Gets a Cellmate

Chapter 33

The Supreme Court of Florida

Chapter 34

Blinky Bellows Goes Missing

Chapter 35

He's Going to Kick Your Butt

Chapter 36

This Isn't the Time to Panic

Chapter 37

A Clarification, Chief Justice

Chapter 38

Blinky Bellows's Samples

Chapter 39

Blinky Bellows RIP

Chapter 40

Do You Always Cheat?

Chapter 41

Harley Jade All Tied Up

Chapter 42

Making Potato Salad

Chapter 43

Patching Up Harley Jade

Chapter 44

The Turner CI Homecoming

Chapter 45

Granny Hanna's Scrapbook

Chapter 46

I Need an Attorney

Chapter 47

Judge Michael Abbot

About the Author

Chapter 1

Jack's Diamond House

Pensacola, Florida

1967

THE KID WASN'T EXCITED, really, or even scared. He was breathless. Back at the trailer park, Auntie Lu wore a huge diamond, milky white and set into a thin gold band, the mission of which seemed to be to strangle Lu's chubby finger until it dropped off her hand. She proclaimed to anyone who would listen, or anybody possessed of such contrary karma to be within earshot, that it was ten full karats. Some of Lu's more cynical renters in the park speculated it wasn't a diamond at all, but one of those cubic zirconia. An obvious realist of the group threw his hat into the ring and said, If a person was to buy a fancy fake diamond, they'd get one that wasn't the color of sour cream.

The diamonds the kid was scooping up with his ungloved hands and depositing into a canvas drawstring bag were not the color of sour cream. Neither were they cubic zirconia. These stones sparkled gloriously out of the duller broken pieces and shards of glass from the display case the kid had smashed and was presently looting. These were miracles, each succeeding handful a sensory banquet. They adorned necklaces, paraded around bracelets, and dangled as earrings.

Get it all. Glass and everything. We'll sort it out later, Roger had told the kid. Roger had also shown him how to break the front pane of a glass display case so most of it fell into the half-a-dozen packing quilts Johnnie had laid out on the Jack's Diamond House floor. Johnnie, as Johnnie would, cautioned the kid to be careful and not cut himself. But the kid had already failed repeatedly in that regard. The tiny drops of his blood went unnoticed as he filled his canvas bag.

Two Jack's Diamond House employees, a pretty blonde salesgirl, not that much older than the kid, and a fiftyish store manager, whom the kid reckoned was not at all troubled by being trussed up in duct tape to the pretty young salesgirl, were tucked safely, if uncomfortably, inside a back storeroom. Johnnie and Roger busily attended to their own display cases nearer the front of the store. The sun slicing through the spaces in the closed vertical blinds appeared to cut the two busy robbers into sections, making their movements mime-like. Johnnie had spent weeks putting the plan together.

Johnnie cursed, half under his breath, half not, as he watched a little pigtailed girl peering directly at them through the cracks between the blinds. Hide that cannon, Roger!

Roger ignored both the little girl and Johnnie and went about filling his canvas bag, bag and gun in the same hand.

Hurry up, kid, Johnnie ordered, and the kid did, cutting himself again.

The major part of their pillaging completed, the kid was making sure he hadn't missed anything, Johnnie was emptying entire blue velvet displays of gold chains at a time into his bag, and Roger had decided to bust open a small island display of Rolex watches.

Knock it off, Roger, said Johnnie. We can't do anything with those.

Roger again ignored Johnnie, and the glass cracked under the first blow from the butt of his revolver, then burst into shards on the second.

It had been Roger who asked the kid along, wanting another hand without having to part with a full share. Johnnie, the more philosophical of the two, had been against the idea of corrupting the boy, but deferred to the practicality of it. They knew the kid. Quiet. Unafraid. Willing to undertake every crap job Aunty Lu could conjure up for him around her tumbledown trailer park. Lu was neither his aunt, guardian, or employer, and she was most certainly not inclined to pay the kid for such menial tasks.

In answer to Roger's invitation and forty-five-minute stumbling monologue glorifying the rewards of his and Johnnie's planned caper, the kid had simply said, Okay. Of course, any mention of risks or consequences was religiously avoided. Johnnie was the balance.

Once you do something like this, kid, it's near about impossible to take it back. Roger and me, we met in prison. Why do you think we're living in this cesspool of a trailer park?

"I live here, said the kid without a smile, frown, or go to hell." And that was that.

*****

Jimmy Youngman was beginning his second official year on the Pensacola Police Force, but for as long as he cared to remember, Jimmy had been a policeman. His first badge was a cut-out craft paper star secured by his mom to the breast of his Gene Autry pajamas with a safety pin.

Including that sunny Saturday morning in the Pensacola Square, Jimmy had engaged in scuffles with criminal suspects only twice, having to start both of them himself. But Jimmy was always ready. Every morning he dutifully exchanged his authorized .38 Police Special with his unauthorized long-barreled Colt .44 revolver, black as a king snake with hand-rubbed walnut grips. A fast-draw black leather holster tied just above his knee was its lair. Jimmy's assigned cruiser, a 1962 Chevy Impala with a cracked rear window, was the oldest in the carpool and the topic of more than a few sniggers from his fellow officers, as was Jimmy himself, but all that meant nothing to Jimmy Youngman.

Nestled in a rip in the front seat upholstery beside him was the handle of his scratched and dented white metal bullhorn, and next to that was his lunch, lovingly packed in a brown paper sack by his mom from whom he'd never quite managed to pull himself away. Nor did he want to.

People in Escambia County, Florida, take their leisure seriously, especially on Saturday mornings. This Saturday morning was no exception. Far from Officer Jimmy Youngman's liking, Pensacola Square was practically empty. There was hardly anyone to be seen or to see him. To make matters worse, it seemed to Jimmy Youngman, who hadn't been to that many towns, that the searing Florida panhandle sun burned hotter over Pensacola than any other.

Jimmy turned the Chevy Cruiser to the right onto the farthest leg of Pensacola Square and smiled his benevolent policemen's smile to the only two people in evidence: an old woman and a pigtailed little girl. The old woman was stooped and gray, the pigtailed little girl freckle-faced and sporting braces. Who was leading whom was anybody's guess. They had passed the bank, and he would soon see their reflection in the first window of Jack's Diamond House. Christie Mills worked there with Mr. Brookwell. Mrs. Brookwell had inherited Jack's from her father, Jonathan Perriman. Christie had told Jimmy's supervisor, Christie's most recent boyfriend, that Mr. Brookwell was a total octopus, a conduct with which Jimmy Youngman was in complete sympathy. In another five minutes, the blinds would be opened, and Christie would be opening them. One spin around the Square with a quick stop at the outside restroom near its center, and he'd be ready to unintentionally see her, maybe even tip his wide-brimmed deputy's hat John Wayne style.

*****

You'd think people would have the common decency to flush the toilet, thought Jimmy Youngman as he walked the cobblestoned footpath from the restroom to his Chevy cruiser. The old woman was still stooped and gray, and the little girl with pigtails was waving at him. Jimmy smiled a second time and waved back, but the little girl refused to quit waving, her waves becoming more and more frantic. Then she was beckoning to him.

Forswearing the cruiser as well as the footpath, Jimmy made his way across the Square's neatly manicured Saint Augustine grass toward the little girl, believing the old woman may be having some sort of difficulty. The day was getting hotter, and Jimmy cursed the emerging wetness under the arms of his uniform shirt, its creases pressed and starched perfectly by his mom.

When he got to them, rather than speaking to the old woman, he bent down so the brim of his hat was equal to the top of the little girl's head. Before he could say a word, she brought her face up close to Jimmy's left ear and whispered something. Then she stepped back and held out her hand. He looked at the pigtailed little girl in complete bewilderment, then reached inside the back pocket of his neatly pressed uniform pants and took out his wallet. The little girl was standing two feet in front of him. The expression on her precocious little freckled face was determined and triumphant. Jimmy stuck his thumb and forefinger into the worn dividers of his beat-up wallet and extracted a similarly beat-up one dollar bill. He gave it to the little girl, bent down once again, and she once again whispered something into Jimmy's left ear.

Officer Jimmy Youngman's brain swirled like cake batter in a mixing bowl, trying to process this new and wonderful information. He excitedly scooted the old lady and the pigtailed little girl a safe distance down the sidewalk into the alcove of the Pensacola State Bank. The little girl didn't want to go, but the old lady took her hand and pulled her along. Then Jimmy got into his Chevy cruiser and maneuvered it up onto the grass, parallel to and just across the street from Jack's Diamond House.

He got out on the driver's side, his head and shoulders low, crouched behind the left front fender, and peeked over the hood. The object of his concentration was a slightly wider slit between two vertical blinds. He'd not radioed in because of the certainty of the chuckles that would ensue upon his explanation that he was acting solely on the word of a metallic mouthed nine-year-old pigtailed brat who wanted a dollar before she'd tell him what she'd seen, Jimmy with only three dollars total in his wallet.

Two men, one with a gun, she'd said. One was big as a house, the other skinny like Jimmy. The big man had the gun. She hadn't seen Christie or Mr. Brookwell.

From where he was, Jimmy couldn't see much of anything, but it wouldn't do to just walk right up and knock on the door—one of them with a gun, maybe. If he called for backup and it turned out to be nothing but a story concocted in the pigtailed little girl's imagination, he knew he would be the butt of months of jokes, teasing, and ridicule. But if he didn't, and—

Jimmy raised the bullhorn, resting the handle on top of the Chevy cruiser's hood where it met with the left front fender, and squeezed the grip lever.

What came out of that scratched and dented white metal bullhorn was a voice amplified to that of God himself, but cut into gibberish by bursts of static, and it wouldn't stop. Jimmy turned it sideways and banged it hard on the ground. Once. Twice. Three times. Finally, it steadied to a loud hum. He fiddled with the volume knob. It stopped. He spoke into it: Whoever—are. If you ha—weap—lay them pan—ome out wi—ands up. You—xry—onds—ly—in—splurp—yoop.

What the hell was that? Roger said, but Johnnie wasn't listening. He was busy tying off his bag of loot and getting ready to get the hell out of there. Roger crept up to the window. He slid aside a slat on the vertical blinds and peeked out. It's a cop. He looked to the left and right. All by himself from what I can see.

I repschzztll—ome oww—gzzztshz—ands up or—gzzztcheezz! shouted the bullhorn.

Roger raised his revolver and pressed the barrel against the glass between two vertical blind slats.

What're you doin'? yelled Johnnie.

Just gonna shut him up, said Roger, immediately after which, he pulled the trigger four times. The first round struck the Chevy cruiser's passenger side window, punching a candy apple-size hole through a spiderweb of sticky safety glass. The second blew out its right front tire, lowering that corner significantly. The third and fourth struck the front fender and wheel well respectively, causing a geyser of boiling steam to shoot up from under the hood where at least one of them had lodged itself in the radiator.

When the first of Roger's rounds struck the cruiser's window, Jimmy dropped the bullhorn, which continued to squeal in defiance, its grip lever stuck. Jimmy pressed his back hard against the cruiser's left front tire where he began losing his accumulated liquid intake for that morning. At the same time the geyser erupted, the final loosed projectile exited the engine well and struck the ground just inches from Jimmy's left back pocket.

Inside Jack's Diamond House, the kid's ears were ringing from the noise of the four shots. The air in the store smelled of smoke and gunpowder. The window glass where the four shots had left Roger's revolver sported a jagged somewhat circular three-inch chink but was, for the time being, amazingly intact.

That oughta do it, said Roger, who returned to sacking the Rolex display case.

You're crazy! Johnnie held out his tied-up bag of loot to Roger and said, The kid and me are outa here. You can find your own way home. Johnnie started for the back of the store where the kid was standing, ears still ringing.

Okay, okay, said Roger. Don't blow a gasket. He made a show of tugging the strings of his canvas bag shut. There. All done, he said, holding out the canvas bag as Johnnie had his, but holding his revolver in the other. No harm, no foul. Let's go.

*****

Every part of Jimmy Youngman's body that he knew about, and most of those he didn't, was shaking, and he'd yet to realize he was crying as well. Oh, Momma, they're going to kill me. Born of overpowering fear, a reaction to the unimaginable began to form in whichever part of Jimmy's brain was not pitifully employed with the petrifying horror of the moment. One trembling hand began hauling up the great, wooden-gripped, long-barreled monster from its black leather fast-draw holster. Oh, Momma.

Jimmy had to rake the tears from his eyes as he wormed, belly to the ground, toward the Chevy cruiser's front bumper. The fear that got him moving also prevented him from exposing himself to the same bullet holes suffered by the cruiser. He found that if he shifted his skinny body around so the cruiser and he made somewhat of a T, he could see the sunny storefront of Jack's Diamond House while in the shadow of the cruiser's underbelly. This was made slightly more difficult than it might have been by the shot-out right front tire. He held the Colt fully extended in front of him, its butt resting on the hot, wet, antifreeze and oil-smelling grass. The geyser still rained down on Jimmy in tiny heated rivulets of whatever had inhabited the cruiser's cooling system. Worse were the ones pouring down the engine block, gathering oil, grime, and leaking power steering fluid before reaching him.

He had never actually shot the Colt at anything but paper targets, cans, and bottles, but aim was unimportant. He just needed to fire the thing one time. It was his right. Look what they'd done to him. Jimmy felt his fingers squeezing against the resistance of the trigger. The Colt exploded, kicking his knuckles hard up into the cruiser's steel frame, bloodying them. The Colt fell from his hands onto the grass and managed to let go one more round of its own accord, which disintegrated the cruiser's right rear tire. Jimmy was immediately blinded by the flash of superheated gasses, powder, and microscopic lead particles released so close to his face. At the same time, the white metal bullhorn fell from the cruiser's hood, bounced on the grass, and screamed its final scream.

*****

Before the kid heard the first explosion from Jimmy Youngman's Colt, he heard the clink of lead through the glass at high speed and the thud of the round when it struck Roger under the arm as he held up his canvas bag to show Johnnie he was ready to go. Roger was propelled with such velocity into Mr. Brookwell's grandfather clock at the rear of the store, the clock chimed three times and died. Roger, on the other hand, a large portion of his upper torso now inside the old clock, was not dead. Yet. Ohhhh. Shoot him, Johnnie! Shoot him! He's killed me.

The kid couldn't believe Johnnie would shoot anybody, but then Johnnie turned, tossed his canvas bag to the kid, and crouched only barely as he made his way to Roger. He put two fingers to Roger's throat, picked up Roger's canvas bag, and tossed it to the kid as well. Johnnie left Roger's revolver and drew from his own waistband a shiny expensive-looking nine-millimeter automatic. The vertical blinds had been blown asunder, and the kid could see the skinny policeman groping around in the grass in front of his police car.

In the silence of the aftermath of the death of the grandfather clock and then Roger as well, the kid swore he heard someone say, Momma.

Johnnie straightened his arms, took careful aim, and fired three times.

All three hit Jimmy Youngman, who had just then managed to locate and get hold of the heavy Colt and rise to his knees. The impact of the three nine-millimeter blobs of hot lead sent Jimmy spinning around like a pinwheel, then backward dead onto the grass, the Colt inexplicably belching out one last round as he collapsed.

When the kid heard the second clink and the rest of the front window glass cascade onto Jack's thick green carpeted floor, he saw Johnnie catapulted through Jack's Diamond House in much the same trajectory as Roger and land in a heap at Roger's feet. He froze solid. He couldn't move. He couldn't breathe.

Go, moaned Johnnie as he died, more of his insides out than in.

And the kid took off. With all three bags.

Chapter 2

I Got an Illegal Sentence

Turner Correctional Institution

Conner, Florida

2002

Turner Correctional Institution, TCI for most practical purposes, has a story for every blade of grass and three people to tell every story. Toby O'Toole knew all of them, the stories and the people. The joke was that Toby was sitting there when they came to build the place, and they just built it around him. It wasn't a funny joke.

Since 1979, over twenty years, Toby O'Toole had been scribe, clerk, and friend to Richard Parish, known throughout the Florida Division of Corrections as Matlock—every prisoner's last best hope. Richard Parish was a JL, a jailhouse lawyer. The nickname Matlock, from the Andy Griffith television character, had originated from a much-repeated 1987 slight by an assistant state attorney on the steps of the Cooper County courthouse attempting to deride the obvious talents of the author of Emanuel J. Hannity's habeas petition, thinking Hannity had written it himself:

Who the Sam Hill does he think he is, Matlock? This was followed by an obviously disappointed No, we will not appeal.

Of course, Emanuel Hannity hadn't written his own petition. He hadn't the slightest idea how. Jailhouse lawyer Richard Parish had. The relief Parish requested for Hannity was subsequently granted. The case was remanded to the trial court, and Emanuel Hannity was released. The Cooper County judge who had ordered Hannity's release issued this simple comment: "Upon due consideration, this court has no choice. The argument proffered was lawfully correct and its reasoning flawless. Emanuel Hannity's constitutional protections were irreparably violated.''

The news had hit TCI's 1,600 inmate population just before the noon count when everybody was supposed to be sitting on their bunks to be counted. They called him Matlock! It was whispered then from bunk to bunk, room to room, and dorm to dorm like a leaky steam pipe. Within days, it was DOC wide. The Hannity case was but one of a hundred others. The nickname stuck.

Turner CI laundry supervisor Vernon Sanders got a kick out of Toby O'Toole. Toby was a magician when it came to sewing, repairing hundreds of uniform shirts and pants, sheets and blankets, and washcloths and towels in a week than most professionals could manage in a month. Everything Toby O'Toole did, he did meticulously, and Toby had worked for Vernon Sanders longer than any other inmate. In fact, Toby had been sitting at his old table model commercial Singer sewing machine the day Vernon Sanders first reported for work at Turner CI and stepped through the laundry door. Toby was sitting there this morning nine years later.

Anyone could have guessed something was cooking when Vernon Sanders walked over to Toby O'Toole's sewing station before going into his office. The moment Mr. Sanders cleared his office door, Toby puffed up like a mating pigeon. His bony old chest was stuck out, his pointy cheeks and pointier ears red as a sugar beet, and his slice of a mouth was turned up in an I-told-you-so boast of a smirk that was about as close to a smile as you'd ever get from Toby O'Toole. Toby had one of those faces a person sees once and never forgets. It was as if his original head had been lopped off clean at the shoulders, and before what was left had a chance to drop, out of the sky swoops this gray-silver-and-white-feathered owl, clamps his talons deep into the meat of the body that had supported the previous noggin, and took up permanent residence. Toby O'Toole seldom blinked his harrier eyes, and even then, with a shutter speed so rapid, not even the most trivial detail of anything in his field of vision escaped his scrutiny. He ran out of the laundry at a clip.

By the time Toby got to the D dormitory dayroom, he was openly gushing. He placed a bony hand on either corner of Matlock's table, leaned to where his hooked beak was just inches from Matlock's ear, and fairly croaked, Christabol is free, Richard. He was referring to the most recent of Matlock's habeas petitions. It had been filed just a month earlier. Toby stepped back, arms folded, and waited.

Matlock eased away from the table, resting all his weight against the back of his metal folding chair. Even Toby, who had known Richard Parish longer than anyone, came up empty when trying to read his expressions. Are you sure? Matlock asked.

His brother called Hanna last night from Miami. Hanna being Toby's older sister who lived in Tallahassee. Said Christabol was asleep on his couch. Told Hanna he'd already ate everything in the fridge. That bit of news seemed to please Toby the most.

Matlock looked up. To an outside observer, he might have appeared to be examining the ceiling for cracks. Toby figured he didn't even see it. Good. And that was all Richard Matlock Parish ever again had to say about the case of Christabol Nolic.

But such could not be said for the remaining 1,599 Turner inmates. Matlock had not only bested the Dade County State Attorney who had won Nolic's conviction and the attorney general's office who had argued to preserve it, but he also won the appeal to Falls Church, Virginia, which gave permission for Nolic to live with his family in Miami and not be deported to Guatemala.

The Nolic hullabaloo sent Toby's daily routine into chaos. Always before, with a Matlock success, he would expect to see a rise in inquiries. If it can be said that prison inmates have any one desire in common, it would likely be their freedom, and nothing stokes the flames of desired freedom more than seeing somebody else achieve it. But this latest bout of disorder was off the charts. Toby's self-inflicted responsibility of being the buffer between the other Turner CI inmates and Matlock's impractical, often infuriating tolerance of their often impolite, more often ignorant, and most often pointless questions and unrealistic expectations was being sorely tested.

What! Toby snapped at the diminutive skinhead whose decision to have mirror-image lightning bolts tattooed across his forehead was probably not the worst of his young life. It's going to be at least three weeks before Matlock can talk to you.

Where is he? Everybody said he'd be in the laundry this morning, said the skinhead.

He's never here, said Toby. I'm here. You tell me what you want, and I tell him.

I got an illegal sentence.

Don't we all, said Toby. It'll be three weeks. How're your finances?

What?

Your finances. Your inmate bank account. Does your family send you money? Matlock doesn't charge for what he does for you, but you can't expect him to provide paper, pens, stamps, things like that.

I thought the prison did that.

Only if you're indigent. That means you don't have any money. If you have money in your account, you pay. And if you don't have any money, what they do provide is never close to what you need.

I got a little. My mom sends me twenty a month when she can. I only got three bucks now. What's an illegal sentence cost?

You a Christian?

What?

Are you a Christian?

Why? You tellin' me I should pray?

Couldn't hurt, said Toby, who toted his Bible around with him like a favorite old suitcase, always packed, always at the ready. What's your name?

Josh. Josh Peterson.

What dorm?

B-2.

Work?

Kitchen. AM.

Toby was sitting behind his sewing machine, writing the young skinhead's answers on a clothing repair request form on his clipboard. His sewing cubby doubled as a triage for putting on paper whatever facts Richard would need to decide who would and who wouldn't receive the considerable benefit of his legal expertise. Then all eighteen of the laundry workers looked up at once, and Josh showed his four gold teeth, the top four in the front, each with a single letter cut into it, the four spelling out J-O-S-H. Hey, Mr. Matlock. You doin' okay?

Yes. How're you doing, Josh?

Josh frowned. How did—oh. Then he smiled again. I got an illegal sentence.

How is that? asked Matlock.

I did some burglaries. When I was fifteen. My dad and I went to juvenile court, and I pled guilty.

Toby set his clipboard down, fiddling with his fingers—lifting, turning, replacing, shifting—the dozens of bobbins, needles, tiny tools on his sewing table. He was recognizably flustered.

How many burglaries? asked Matlock.

Maybe twenty—or so, said Josh.

So why are you in prison now?

Josh's smile got wider. Burglary.

Matlock smiled as well. What's your sentence?

Twenty-five years, said Josh.

Matlock paused then asked, Occupied dwelling?

Yeah.

Well, Josh, the maximum sentence for burglary of an occupied dwelling is thirty years. That would make your twenty-five years within the statutory maximum.

Toby dropped a bobbin and tried unsuccessfully to chase it across his cubby's floor without leaving his swivel chair.

It would be legal, said Matlock. How much time have you served?

Six years. The look in Josh's eyes had changed from hopeful to pleading.

How many counts? asked Matlock.

Burglaries? asked Josh, and Matlock nodded. Just one, said Josh, trying not to be distracted by Toby's runaway bobbin.

If you fell in 1996, before October 31—

May, said Josh.

You'd come under the old guidelines. Which score sheet did they use?

Score sheet?

Never mind. So how do you believe your sentence is illegal?

I shoulda been a first offender. Everybody says that. I shoulda got probation or maybe five or six years. Not twenty-five. They used my juvenile convictions against me. They said so.

The law says they can do that, Josh. They used to only use juvenile offenses going back three years, but now they go back five, explained Matlock.

You sure? But Josh wished he hadn't said it. Everybody knew Matlock was sure of every word he spoke.

You said you and your father went? Did you pay a lawyer, or did the court appoint you one?

When?

When you went to juvenile court.

We didn't have no lawyer. My dad waived it.

Waived? repeated Matlock as he reached down with two long fingers to capture the fugitive bobbin. He dropped it into Toby's odds and ends tray. How exactly did your dad waive it?

He signed a paper.

"Then the judge accepted your guilty plea?"

Yeah.

And the court that sent you here used your juvenile convictions to enhance the punishment for your adult conviction? Nothing else? No other convictions of any kind?

No, sir. It was the first time I got caught since I was seventeen.

Matlock turned to Toby, who was doing little to conceal his annoyance, an impossibility in any event, because the plumes of his silver and white eyebrows, already pronounced, had a habit of fanning out dramatically whenever he was ruffled. Toby, please set aside some time for Josh this week, would you? And, Josh, we'll need any papers you have. Okay?

Yes, Mr. Matlock. Thank you, sir, said Josh, and he nearly tumbled over a canvas blanket cart in his excitement as he made his way to the laundry door.

Before Matlock had a chance to tell Toby why he'd visited him, Toby let go. "Richard, you've done it again. How can I possibly have a place