"Is the conviction accurate, Mr. Haskett?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Tell me about it."
"Nineteen ninety-one," said Boone. "I put a man in the hospital outside the Gold Dust Saloon in Cutter Springs. Broke his jaw and his orbital bone. He'd hit a woman I was with, but I want to be clear, ma'am, I'd have done it anyway. I liked it. That's who I was at twenty-eight." He stopped and breathed. "I did twenty-six months at Northern Nevada Correctional. I've had two speeding tickets since. One of 'em I deserved."
Somebody in the back laughed and quickly stopped.
"And your relationship to this child?"
"Her granddad saved my life, Your Honor." He didn't look around. He looked at the judge. "I was sixteen and stealing out of his scrap pile and he gave me a job instead of a sheriff. When I went to prison he drove to Carson City twenty-six times. He was the only one that came. And I never thanked him, and now he can't hear it right." His jaw worked. "This summer his granddaughter fixed my motorcycle in front of the post office with a piece of bicycle tube. Found a fault that a shop in Elko missed for nine days. I asked her to come out and work on some more, because my hands quit on me. That's all it started as. I didn't know whose she was." He looked down at his hands, and then back up. "I know it now. I don't need her to come to my place. I want her to, because she's got the best hands I've seen since her granddad's. But if the court says no, then it's no. Whatever you tell me, I'll do. I just wanted you to know where I stand on this. I'm standing on her side."
"Thank you, Mr. Haskett. You may sit down."
He sat.
"Your Honor," said Mr. Petrie, half rising, "my client would like to address the court, if she may."
Judge Strand looked at Josie for a long moment.
"Go ahead, Miss Etcheverry."
Josie stood. Her knees felt like they belonged to somebody else. She'd thought all night about what she would say, and none of it was in her head now. She looked down at the table, and there was a nick in the wood, and she looked at that.