“Messing up like me, only worse. Mama got him a few legitimate jobs—the doctor she worked for did, too—but Jelks always managed to get himself fired. He still tried to rope me into cons, but by then I knew that if I was convicted of a felony, I’d never be a lawyer, and for some reason that was what I’d made up my mind to be.”

“Why did you want that?”

“I guess Mama put it in my head. She was tired of all Daddy’s lies and crime. I think she wanted something she could be proud of. She’d named me after Abraham Lincoln, you know.”

Shad vouchsafes the witness a supportive smile, and he makes sure he’s facing the jury when he does it.

“And did you go to law school?”

“Yes, sir. Night school. It took me longer than most, because I had to work my way through. But I passed the Illinois State Bar in 1995. I was twenty-seven years old.”

“How did your legal career go?”

“Pretty good, for a while.”

“And today?”

Lincoln looks into his lap like a sinner in church about to come to Jesus. “I no longer have a license to practice.”

Shad feigns surprise. “Why is that, Mr. Turner?”

Like any good prosecutor, Shad is removing all chance of Quentin making capital out of forcing Lincoln to admit he’s been disbarred.

“Daddy did a stretch in prison from 1997 to 2001,” Lincoln says quietly. “After he got out, I got him a legit job as a runner with a law firm.”

“Excuse me? A runner? Do you mean a gofer?”

“Uh, no. In some places, a ‘runner’ is somebody who recruits clients for attorneys. Hangs around ERs and places like that, drumming up business.”

“I see.”

“Well, Daddy managed to stay straight for almost three years. Or at least he didn’t get caught during that time. But then he got busted for a big con. It was either the public defender or me, so I defended him in court.”

“How did that go?”

“Not well. He was a three-time loser, and the prospects for acquittal were zero. I was hoping for a reasonable plea deal, but the ADA was being a hardass—excuse me, Judge.”

“Keep it civil, Mr. Turner.”

Lincoln ducks his head like a disciplined child. “Well, not long before Daddy’s trial date, he told me he’d got word through a contact in the courthouse that we’d hit the jackpot with the judge we drew. For seventy-five thousand dollars, our judge would supposedly see that Daddy did no more than a year behind bars, then a year of house arrest, and the rest on probation. At that time he was looking at fifteen years without parole, so this deal was like a gift from the gods.”

“You’re talking about bribery, Lincoln.”