“No, Your Honor. Now, as to the matter of bond—”
Judge Noyes holds up his right hand. “Before you start gabbling about special treatment, I’m going to set stringent conditions on this bond. Dr. Cage is not to leave the state. He’s to continue practicing medicine, unless prevented by illness. He’s not to contact any member of the victim’s family. He may not consume alcohol or drugs, other than prescription drugs, and he cannot handle firearms.” Noyes looks from Shad to my father. “Is that clear, Dr. Cage?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“All right, then. I hope the powers that be get this mess straightened out before it goes any further.” Noyes looks at me. “Are you prepared to post bond?”
My mother’s voice comes from behind me, quavering with emotion. “We’re prepared to write a check immediately, Judge.”
“Good.” He looks at the deputy. “Dr. Cage is not to be handcuffed again. And make sure that fellow outside doesn’t bother him on his way to his car. You hear me, Wilbur? If that man assaults anybody, use your weapon.”
Wilbur’s face goes pale. “Yessir.”
“Next case.”
Shad says, “But Judge, the state—”
“Next case, goddamn it!”
OUT ON THE SIDEWALK, the sun has banished the cold morning wind and is now heating the concrete to a temperature more suited to spring than December. Thankfully, I’ve seen no sign of Lincoln Turner or his white pickup. Mom, Dad, and I stand before the Justice Court building with tangible awkwardness. Though we are linked by blood and by a palpable sense of relief, the reason for our being here has not been discussed by more than two of us at a time.
“Thank you, Penn,” Mom says softly.
“I didn’t do anything. Judge Noyes is obviously a fan of Dad’s.”
“But it was important for you to be here. Families have to stick together in times like this. Everyone needs to see that.”
I’m anxious to discuss the logistics of getting Dad to a clinic to be swabbed for a DNA paternity test, but my mother has not left his side. Asking her to give us some time alone would not be taken well just now.
“I never knew you were taken prisoner in Korea,” I say to Dad.
He shrugs as though this is nothing of consequence, his eyes seeming to contemplate something far away. “It was Walt and me. We escaped after a few days. We were lucky. Few did. I don’t know how Charlie Noyes knows about it. Another vet must have told him. The upside is, I doubt the Adams County jail could be worse than North Korea in late November.”
“Did Caitlin send that photographer?” Mom asks.
“What photographer?” I ask.
“The one at the back. He slipped in while Shad was talking to the judge. He took some notes, and then he shot pictures during that man’s outburst.”
I try to conceal my alarm. “I didn’t see any flash.”
“He wasn’t using one.”
A pro. I can see the headline now: DID WHITE DOCTOR MURDER BLACK NURSE IN MISSISSIPPI? That kind of story sells a lot of newspapers, even in the twenty-first century. “Shad must have invited a reporter down from Jackson.”
“It’s freezing out here,” Mom says. “Let’s get home, Tom. I have your medicine in my purse.”
“I need to get to the office,” he protests. “You heard the judge. I have to keep working.”
“You can mind the judge later. Right now you’re minding me. We just endured enough excitement for the next ten years. And I want the neighbors to see you coming right back home where you belong.”
“All right,” Dad says, a note of surrender in his voice. “Jack Kilgard sure stood up for me, didn’t he?”
“What’s he talking about?” I ask.
A warm smile lights my mother’s face. “When the deputy handcuffed your father and started walking out to the car, Jack blocked Sheriff Byrd’s way and gave him a piece of his mind.”
A transplanted Yankee, Jack Kilgard is a retired naval engineer who worked for fifteen years at the Triton Battery plant. He probably knew all the Double Eagles personally.
“All six foot five of him,” Dad says. “Jack cussed up a blue streak, and I don’t think I’ve heard him cuss in the forty years I’ve known him.”
Mom shakes her head. “He told Billy Byrd he’d be out of office as soon as the next election came around.”
Dad laughs. “He kept calling the jail the ‘pokey.’ I honestly think he scared Billy.”
“Come on, Tom,” Mom says, knowing that all this bravado counts for nothing in the sausage grinder of the legal system. “We won a battle, not the war. Let’s get home.”
As they walk away, Dad glances back at me, and I signal that he should call me as soon as he gets a chance.
He nods and continues on.
As I watch my mother’s Camry pull away, one thing comes clear. By asking that my father be held without bail, Shad Johnson has obliterated any residual illusion that he means to cut me a break in this case. He is, as Caitlin predicted, going after my father with everything in his arsenal. What I don’t understand is why, when he knows I can end his legal career by e-mailing one photograph to the bar association.
“Penn?” says a voice from behind me.
I turn and find Shad looking up at me, a faint cloud of condensation coming from his mouth with each breath.
“I guess my bond request took you by surprise in there.”
“You could say that.”
He turns up his palms like a man dealing with events beyond his control. “I had to do it. This is the most racially charged case I’ve handled since taking office.”
“That’s why you want my father to sit in a cell for nine months? What the hell, Shad? You know there’s zero risk of him trying to flee.”