Free White Fire by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child

cell from eight in the morning until lockdown at 10:30 PM . During free time, the prisoners were allowed to hang around the dayroom and read, watch TV, and chat with the other inmates. There was even an adjacent workout room with an elliptical trainer, weights, and treadmills.
    At that moment, Corrie was sitting in the dayroom, staring at the black-and-white checkered carpet. Doing nothing. For the past five days she had been so depressed that she couldn’t seem to do anything—read, eat, or even sleep. She just sat there, all day, every day, staring into space, and then spent each night in her cell, lying on her back in her cot, staring into darkness.
    “Corrine Swanson?”
    She roused herself and looked up. A detention guard was standing in the door of the room, holding a clipboard.
    “Here,” she said.
    “Your attorney has arrived for your appointment.”
    She’d forgotten. She hauled herself to her feet and followed the guard to a separate room. She felt as if the air around her were thick, granular. Her eyes wouldn’t stop leaking water. But she wasn’t crying, exactly; it seemed like a physiological reaction.
    She went into a small conference room to find the public defender waiting at the table, briefcase open, manila folders spread out in a neat fan. His name was George Smith and she had already met with him a few times. He was a middle-aged, slight, sandy-haired, balding man with a perpetually apologetic look on his face. He was nice enough, and he meant well, but he wasn’t exactly Perry Mason.
    “Hello, Corrie,” he said.
    She eased down in a chair, saying nothing.
    “I’ve had several meetings with the DA,” Smith began, “and, well, I’ve made some progress on the plea deal.”
    Corrie nodded apathetically.
    “Here’s where we stand. You plead to breaking and entering, trespassing, and desecration of a human corpse, and they’ll drop the petty larceny charge. You’ll be looking at ten years, max.”
    “Ten years?”
    “I know. It’s not what I’d hoped. There’s a lot of pressure being brought to bear to throw the book at you. I don’t quite understand it, but it may have something to do with all the publicity this case has generated and the ongoing controversy about the cemetery. They’re making an example of you.”
    “Ten years ?” Corrie repeated.
    “With good behavior, you could be out in eight.”
    “And if we go to trial?”
    The lawyer’s face clouded. “Out of the question. The evidence against you is overwhelming. There’s a string of felonies here, starting with the B and E and going all the way to the desecration of a human corpse. That latter crime alone carries a sentence of up to thirty years in prison.”
    “You’re kidding—thirty years?”
    “It’s a particularly nasty statute here in Colorado because of a long history of grave robbing.” He paused. “Look, if you don’t plead, the DA will be pissed and he could very well ask for that maximum sentence. He’s threatened as much to me already.”
    Corrie stared at the scarred table.
    “You’ve got to plead out, Corrie. It’s your only choice.”
    “But…I can’t believe it. Ten years, just for what I did? That’s more than some murderers get.”
    A long silence. “I can always go back to the DA. The problem is, they’ve got you cold. You don’t have anything to trade.”
    “But I didn’t desecrate a human corpse.”
    “Well, according to the way those statutes are written, you did. You opened the coffin, you handled the bones, you photographed them, and you took two of them. That’s what they’ll argue, and I’d be hard-pressed to counter. It’s not worth the risk. The jury pool here is drawn from the entire county, not just Roaring Fork, and there are a lot of conservative ranchers and farmers out there, religious folk, who would not look kindly on what you did.”
    “But I was just trying to prove that the marks on the bones…” She couldn’t finish.
    The attorney spread his thin