Free Night Is the Hunter by Steven Gore

row. Eight. A world record. You can look it up.”
    Ordloff tilted his head again.
    â€œThe guy across from him? Skinny, with the specs. Yale undergrad. Harvard Law. Teaches evidence and criminal procedure part time at Boalt Hall at UC Berkeley. The smartest guy in the room—hell, the smartest guy in any room, any time. He did two capital trials and got two death sentences. And they were twoof the weakest death cases that ever came through a California court.”
    Ordloff laughed.
    â€œHarvard Law is the exception. The truth is that most of the lawyers who do capital cases aren’t the best of the best, they’re the best of the worst.”
    He swept his arm like a king gesturing toward his court.
    â€œThe reason we do death penalty cases—and all on the public dime—is because we weren’t good enough to make the cut. Never made it to the big time and the big money cases. And we compensate for that failure by creating a mythology.” Ordloff tapped his chest. “The myth of our great worth to humanity. That’s one of the things we come down here to celebrate. Our great worth.”
    The words reminded Donnally of a discomfort he felt when he saw around the court building what Ordloff was calling the best of the worst. They handled the more exceptional cases that came through, but they, themselves, were so average, so unexceptional, mere day laborers in what was claimed to be the house of justice.
    Their presence had always made the criminal justice process seem disjointed and irrational to Donnally. It sometimes left him with a feeling of having a kind of guilty knowledge—the same sort he was feeling now—like a quarterback who’d just watched the refs make a bad holding call against the other team and who didn’t have the moral courage to refuse the penalty.
    Maybe that was part of the reason he was happy in Mount Shasta. It didn’t have its own courthouse, not even to handle traffic tickets, much less capital cases. Nothing to trigger his imagination, putting him back in courtroom hallways, and giving him the queasy feeling that went along with it.
    â€œIn the end, of course,” Ordloff said, “competence has no bearingon either the verdict or the penalty. In capital cases the outcome is completely arbitrary. Com . . . pletely. It isn’t related to the seriousness of the crime or the strength of the evidence or the worth of the defendant. The consequence, again like a religion, is that a mythology has been built up around it.”
    The alcohol that Donnally thought had been used to build a moat now seemed like a flood that had burst a dam.
    â€œThen why’d you get into it? I’ve seen you in action. You’re not an idiot. Back then you were better than almost all the other lawyers who did these cases.”
    â€œI learned the lesson too late.”
    â€œThen why stay in it?”
    â€œBecause . . .”
    Ordloff’s voice trailed away as though he was contemplating the question, or had arrived at the heart of the matter and had to admit a truth to himself for the first time.
    â€œI guess you could say it’s the continuing punishment for having committed the original crime.”

CHAPTER 10
    Y ou’re not listening to me.”
    Paul Ordloff’s voice rose above the wind-driven waves crashing onto the breakwater along Monterey Bay. He and Donnally were standing on the shore trail, a half mile north of the Ocean View Lounge and the conference grounds.
    Ten minutes earlier, Ordloff had stood up, pushed off from the bar, and then looked around at the lawyers populating the booths and tables and mumbled that he had to get away.
    Donnally hadn’t been sure what Ordloff was fleeing from, but he hadn’t objected to Donnally following him in his flight.
    â€œHe was guilty. He was guilty. He was guilty.” Ordloff’s fist beat the air like a pounding gavel. “It was a first-degree, lying-in-wait