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down with the morning Sarasota paper. The headline shouted that a local man had been indicted for murder. The story was about Logan and Connie and had information that I didn’t think would have been given to the press in the normal course of things.
    I picked up the phone and called Chief Lester. “Bill,” I said when he came on the line, “How did Logan end up on the front page?”
    “I don’t know, Matt. But it didn’t come from here.”
    “I’ll bet Banion knows somebody at the paper. What is his problem, Bill?”
    “Banion is maybe the best detective I’ve ever seen. He hates lawyers because he’s seen too many bad guys get off because they had good legal counsel. His wife died two years ago, and I think the stress of the job and of losing her turned him into a real problem drinker. But I promise you, Matt, he’s a better detective drunk than most of them are sober.”
    “Why would he leak something like this to the press? What does he gain by it?”
    “He probably thinks a bad press will make it tougher for a jury to give Logan a break when he’s tried. Have you heard from him, Matt?”
    “Banion?”
    “You know who I mean, Matt.”
    “Bill, you’re my friend, and I hope when this thing is over you’ll still be my friend. But I’m Logan’s lawyer, and I can’t discuss this with you.”
    “I understand, Matt. No sweat. But you know it’s going to go a lot easier if he turns himself in. If he’s caught, it’s going to be bad.”
    “Have they decided who the prosecutor is going to be yet?”
    “Elizabeth Ferguson. Know her?”
    “I’ve seen her name in the paper. She does only capital felonies, right?”
    “Yeah. And she’s beautiful and a real ball buster. Every cop and lawyer in the twelfth circuit has hit on her. Nobody gets anywhere. They call her the ice queen. And her name is Elizabeth; never Beth or Liz or Betty. You’ll do well to remember that.”
    “Thanks, Bill. I’ll be talking to you.”
    I had met Logan’s brother Fred on one of his visits to our key. I called him in Boston. He did not know where Logan was but told me that Logan had called. He would be checking in regularly with Fred, but wanted to keep Fred ignorant of his whereabouts.
    “Logan says you’re going to represent him,” said Fred.
    “For now. Until we can get a real lawyer for him.”
    “Logan doesn’t have any money. He’s afraid he’ll end up with a public defender.”
    “Come on, Fred. Logan has been doing good. He’s probably got more money stashed away than most of us.”
    “Not really. He lost a bunch in a bad investment that he doesn’t like to talk about, and he spent a lot sending our dead brother’s daughter through college. I think he’s about broke. I know he took out a large second mortgage on his condo last year.”
    “What about your folks? They’ve got money.”
    “No they don’t. My father was a commercial fisherman. Worked the boats out of Gloucester and barely made enough to keep us in food and clothes. Logan just made up all that malarkey about having wealthy parents.”
    “I’ll be damned.”
    “Yeah.”
     
    That afternoon I cranked up my computer and went onto the internet to find Elizabeth Ferguson. One of the first things a trial lawyer learns is to know the opposition. In the internet version of the national legal directory I found the bare bones information on the prosecutor. She was born in Statesboro, Georgia, graduated from Georgia Southern University with a bachelors degree and three years later from Mercer University School of Law in Macon, Georgia. She had been admitted to the Florida Bar ten years before, and she was thirty-five years old.
    I searched the archives of the Sarasota newspaper and found several articles about Ms. Ferguson. She had tried a number of high profile death penalty cases in the last three years, and had lost none. Before that she would occasionally show up in the paper while prosecuting other felons. One article was a personality