Deployed by Mel Odom Page A

who had stopped by for gas at the time of the robbery.
    Jointer had pulled his weapon and started ordering Darnell to put his gun down. He hadn’t identified himself, and Heath didn’t fault the young officer for that. Adrenalinesharpened the senses and reflexes during conflict, but it also sometimes dulled the thinking. Experience with similar situations would change things, but that day had been the first time Officer Jointer had drawn his weapon during the commission of a crime. Jointer had fired first, missing Darnell by three feet.
    Darnell, heavily under the influence of the drugs that had consumed his life back in those days, had turned and fired automatically. His bullet had caught the young officer dead center in the chest. When he saw what he’d done, Darnell had immediately tried to give first aid. He was still administering CPR when the patrol cars arrived.
    Once the arriving officers learned that Darnell had shot Jointer, they had pulled Darnell from the body and beaten him with their batons. Darnell was unconscious before a shift sergeant arrived and finally got control of his men.
    For six days, Darnell had lingered in a coma, and the doctors caring for him couldn’t say if he would live or die. When he finally came to, Darnell was in a world of hurt. His left arm had been broken in two places, both knees shattered, several ribs broken, and he’d been blinded in his right eye. On top of that, his drug dependency made it hard to administer the proper pain meds to keep him from agony and from overdosing.
    As soon as he’d recovered enough to leave the hospital, Darnell had been taken to lockup. He’d gone from jail to prison and hadn’t been out in the world again except for his brief trial. Darnell’s original attorney had tried to plea-bargain, willing to take life imprisonment without anychance of parole over a death sentence. Darnell had been fine with that too. He’d never tried to deny his responsibility for Jointer’s death.
    The district attorney had rejected the offer, insisting on making an example of Darnell Lester. After all, the man had shot a cop, the case was ironclad—with video footage and witness testimony as well as Darnell’s own continuing admission—and it had been an election year. The trial was everything a politically minded district attorney could hope for, and he wanted to personally pound the nails into Darnell’s coffin. It had been like shooting fish in a barrel.
    Now, all these years later, Darnell was facing death by lethal injection within seventeen months. And the wheels of justice turned slowly.
    If they turned at all.
    Heath looked at Darnell, into the man’s good brown eye and not the dead blue one. “You don’t deserve the death penalty, Darnell. You’re not the same man you were when you pulled that trigger.”
    Darnell took in a breath of air and let it out. His rounded shoulders rose and fell. “None of us stays the same, Counselor. That officer I shot had boys that ain’t the same as they was. Prob’ly gonna be glad when I’m dead. Won’t have to think about me no more.”
    The man spoke without emotion, just a flat expression of a truth he believed in. Darnell Lester wasn’t a cynic. He was just a realist. All those years of being in prison had worn away whatever hopes and dreams he might have had.
    “You have a daughter yourself.” Heath watched Darnelland saw the words hit him hard. His good eye blinked in pain, but he quickly compartmentalized it and put it away.
    “I know I do. I take pride in that girl. She didn’t turn out to be like me.”
    “I think she turned out more like you than you know.” Heath chose his words carefully. Most of the time Darnell would listen, but sometimes—when the pain he kept shut away so long and so hard slipped its bonds—he wouldn’t hear a thing Heath had to tell him.
    Darnell started to object.
    Heath kept speaking. “She’s a survivor. She’s tough and she learns quickly. She doesn’t give