Crawford snapped his fingers. “They were at side-by-side urinals.”
Neal continued unflappably. “On or around one forty p.m. Monday afternoon, Otterman arrived for his appointment at the DA’s office. As he was going in, he saw Rodriguez on the courthouse parking lot.” He paused, took a breath. “Talking to you.”
Chapter 22
Two policemen in a squad car followed Holly home from the courthouse. She pulled her car around to the back of the cottage where she parked and got out. One of the policemen saw her safely inside, then returned to his car out front.
The moment Holly locked herself in, she shed her professional reserve and composure along with her suit jacket and high heels. She’d been keeping up appearances all day. Now, she gave over to her fatigue and despondency.
Greg Sanders’s foretelling that she would “mess up” seemed disturbingly close to coming true.
Before leaving her office, she had received a reply email from Governor Hutchins. The best thing she could say about its content was that it was noncommittal. He neither commended nor chastened her for recusing herself from Crawford’s custody case, saying only that, even though he was away, he’d been kept apprised of the ongoing investigation into the shooting and that upon his return from the conference, he wanted to discuss certain aspects of it with her.
The ambiguous tone of the email worried her. If he was second-guessing appointing her to the bench, if he withdrew his support, it would be disastrous for her professionally, and even more crushing from a personal standpoint. She would have failed to live up to Judge Waters’s expectations. She would have failed to meet her own.
The troublesome email had come on the heels of the incident in the park where she’d had the devil’s own time negotiating those five minutes for Crawford.
“There’s no question that this is in violation of the restraining order, Mr. Gilroy. He was very wrong to attack you. But look at them.” She’d gestured toward the merry-go-round where Crawford and his daughter seemed to be discussing the sequin appliqué on her top. “Think how traumatic it would be for her to see him arrested and taken away.”
To close the sale, she’d offered to monitor their conversation and set a time limit.
Further, she asked that when his five minutes were up, he be allowed to leave without being apprehended.
Both Mr. Gilroy and Neal Lester had balked at that. But she asked them to consider the situation. “That video struck fear in him. Despite the likelihood of being fined and/or arrested, he raced here, without regard to anything except Georgia’s safety.”
Joe Gilroy wasn’t easily persuaded. “To hear you tell it, he would slay a dragon to save her.”
“I believe he demonstrated that.”
“Am I supposed to forgive and forget that he attacked me?”
She’d reminded him that he would have an opportunity to testify to the incident at the full restraining order hearing.
“Well, that’s not good enough,” he’d said.
He then had laid down the condition under which he would give Crawford a free pass for today. “That’s the only way he’s getting off the hook for this.”
Her choices were to accept his condition, or for Crawford to be shackled and taken to jail.
Now, as she trudged toward her bedroom, she felt as though there were an anvil hanging from her neck. When Crawford found out about her agreement with his father-in-law, he would hate her.
It would come as another blow to him, more severe even than the others. As she thought on it, she realized that the fallout from the shooting had been far more consequential to him than to her. Since Monday, he’d taken hit after hit, and, now, thanks to her, he stood to lose his child for good.
She might have been the intended target in the courtroom, but it was Crawford who—
Suddenly she stood stock still, her jacket and shoes dangling from hands gone listless. Mentally, she backtracked, rethought what had only now occurred to her, then dropped her jacket and shoes to the floor and quickly retraced her footsteps to her kitchen, where she’d left her handbag.
After retrieving her cell phone from it, her fingers couldn’t move fast enough to punch in Crawford’s number. It rang once, then went to voice mail. “Damn!” Again, with butterfingered haste, she accessed Neal Lester’s cell number and called it.
He must have seen her name on his caller ID because he answered briskly, “Judge Spencer? Are you all right?”
“Perfectly all right. But I need to talk to you about Crawford Hunt.”
“What a coincidence. I was just about to call and advise you to avoid him. I had him taken off the case.”
With forced calmness, she said, “You are overreacting to what happened in the park. He—”
“It has nothing to do with that. Not directly.”
“Then why have you removed him?”