Mairs lifted a palm as if to say “Have at it” and sat back in her chair.
“As the State well knows,” Berkshire said, “every person in the state of Washington is entitled to bail. Mrs. Collins has not been convicted of any crime, let alone been charged. She is innocent until proven guilty, and that presumption of innocence applies here. The only issues here are Mrs. Collins’s ties to the community, whether she is a flight risk, and her criminal history, with which I will start. The defendant has never had so much as a parking ticket. She has been an upstanding member of the community. She has a seventeen-year-old son who lives with her, as well as parents who live in the area. She is far from a flight risk. We would ask that the court release Mrs. Collins on personal recognizance.”
Mairs looked to Cerrabone.
“Your Honor,” he said, “Mrs. Collins purchased a handgun while the couple was in the midst of a contentious divorce that was approaching trial. She admitted in a 911 call that she shot her husband. She also admitted that she called her attorney. When officers arrived at the home, she again admitted to shooting her husband, and she asked to be read her Miranda rights. All of this is evidence of someone operating with all of her faculties, and possibly evidence of premeditation. As for self-defense . . . she shot Timothy Collins in the back.”
“She bought the gun because of a long history of physical and verbal abuse by her former husband,” Berkshire said, not waiting to be asked to respond, “including the night of the shooting. And she asked for her Miranda rights at her attorney’s instruction.”
Mairs sat forward. She’d clearly made up her mind, and she was ready to get on with it. “I don’t believe the defendant is a flight risk, nor do I believe she is a danger to the community. I am going to order that she surrender her passport and any weapons she possesses. The defendant will be placed on home confinement with an ankle monitor. Bail will be set at two million dollars.”
“May I be heard on the amount of bail?” Berkshire said.
“No.”
“Your Honor—”
“It’s a murder case, Counselor. Bail will remain at two million dollars. Madame Clerk, call the next case.”
Berkshire took another moment to speak softly to his daughter before she departed. Angela Collins would be taken back to jail, processed, fitted with an ankle monitor, and released, assuming she could come up with a couple hundred thousand dollars and a bail bondsman willing to cover the difference. That likely meant signing over a deed of trust on the house to the bail bondsman, or borrowing from her father.
Tracy and Kins followed Cerrabone out of the courtroom and into the hall. “I have another hearing. I’ll call you later,” Cerrabone said.
As the prosecutor departed, Tracy made her way outside the courthouse with Kins. On a Friday afternoon, Third Avenue was already congested. The commute home was likely going to be a bitch. She and Dan O’Leary, the man she’d been dating a year, had no chance of easily getting out of Seattle on their drive south to Stoneridge, a small town on the Columbia River.
“I’m sorry to be bailing on you,” Tracy said to Kins as they walked up the hill to the Justice Center. She and Dan were attending a funeral—for the father of Jenny Almond. Jenny had been the only other woman in Tracy’s Academy class.
“Don’t sweat it,” Kins said. “Faz says you promised him a lunch if he helped out. You should have just bought him a car. It would have been cheaper.”
CHAPTER 3
By the time Tracy and Dan rolled their suitcases into the lobby of the Inn at Stoneridge, the sun had already set. The restaurant and garden patio had closed, and rather than the “awe-inspiring images of the mighty Columbia carving its path through canyon walls,” as the inn’s website proclaimed, the river looked like the world’s largest blacktop highway.
At least the room was as romantic as advertised. The soft light of the bedside lamp colored the cedarwood walls gold, and soft jazz played from the nightstand stereo. Dan pulled back the curtain covering a sliding glass door. “Can’t see the mountain,” he said. It was too dark and overcast to see the snowcapped peak of Mount Adams to the north.
“I’m sorry we didn’t make our dinner reservation,” Tracy said. Dan had gone to considerable effort to get them a table at the inn’s four-star restaurant. They’d had to cancel when it became apparent they wouldn’t get there in time. Instead, they stopped and ate fast food.
“But consider the carbo-loading we did for our morning run,” he said, smiling but not able to completely mask his disappointment.
“We’re running in the morning?” she said.
“We are now.”
“Ugh. I’m going to take a shower,” Tracy said. “Care to join me?”
Dan had picked up the remote control. He gave her a sheepish smile. “I’m really beat,” he said. “I know you are too. I vote we veg—watch some TV, and crash. That okay?”
She knew he was tired; Los Angeles lawyers were wearing him out in a contentious personal injury lawsuit, but she was concerned Dan was becoming frustrated at their inability to find quality time together. They’d grown up childhood friends but had lost touch until Tracy returned to their hometown of Cedar Grove for answers about her little sister’s disappearance twenty years before. Hunters had found Sarah’s remains buried in a shallow grave, and Tracy wanted a new trial for the man accused of killing her, because she’d believed he was innocent. She’d hired Dan, the best attorney in town, and they developed a romantic relationship. But Tracy lived in Seattle, two hours away, and no sooner had she returned home when she became embroiled in the hunt for the Cowboy.
She wrapped her arms around Dan’s neck. “Are you upset?”
He set down the remote. “If I was upset, I’d be upset at you, which I’m not. I’m disappointed at the situation—that we didn’t get to enjoy the evening we’d planned.”
“We can still have part of the weekend we had in mind,” she said.
“Sort of a ‘you wash my back and I’ll wash yours’?” he said.
She smiled. “That assumes you’re taking me up on my offer, and one of us is turning around in the shower.”
They didn’t make it to the shower, and Dan didn’t seem too disappointed he had to postpone watching ESPN. They made love on the bed until, exhausted, they fell asleep wrapped in the Egyptian cotton sheets.
CHAPTER 4