more interested in seeing whether the question would upset her. She took a long drag on her cigarette and then stubbed it out. “I wish it all would just go away,” she said.
twenty-one
Seven dead judges peered down on the packed courtroom of the Pine County Courthouse. The portraits hung on walls of polished walnut, circa 1950, rising two stories from shellacked wood floors to a ceiling of pressed tin. Beneath the paintings, townspeople filled every one of the fold-down wooden chairs in ten rows of wrought-iron frames. Elvis and the Audrey’s crowd took up two rows on the prosecution side, just behind Dingus, D’Alessio, and Darlene. Joanie sat across the aisle one row behind the defense table, scrawling notes. I squeezed next to Neil and Sally Pearson standing along the wall on the prosecution side. I scanned the room for my mother. I figured she’d be there, if not for the action then at least for the socializing. A bunch of her bingo partners were sitting in the back, but Mom was not among them.
The room was dead quiet. Atop his tall wooden bench, Judge Horace Gallagher sat reading a piece of paper. On the brown leather of his chair back was the familiar dark spot left by the Brylcreem he wore on his just-so silver hair. Soupy sat before him with his head bowed slightly, his uncuffed hands flat on the table. I couldn’t see his face for the blond locks drooping around it. He wore an orange jumpsuit inscribed Pine County Jail on the back in big black letters. His attorney, Terence Flapp, sat next to him, digging in a folder.
Soupy had pleaded not guilty to a charge of second-degree murder. That was a bit of a surprise, or so thought Sally Pearson, the town florist who in a rushed whisper filled me in on what had transpired so far. Everyone had expected a first-degree charge, but Sally said the prosecutor had cited “mitigating circumstances,” as yet unspecified, that dictated the lesser charge. The assault charge against Teddy Boynton had been dropped. He was now fully awake and feeling somewhat better, despite a slight skull fracture, a broken jawbone, and thirty-six stitches. I didn’t mind hearing about the jaw.
The unpredictable was as integral to Judge Gallagher’s courtroom as the delicate shapes of roses he had personally carved into the front of his bench. He was a distinctive man in Starvation Lake. He did not smoke, drink, swear, or cavort with women, but somehow he had been married six times. All of his ex-wives still lived in town, and all still claimed to be fond of Horace Gallagher, despite their apparent inability to live with him. His house on Main Street, one of the oldest in Starvation, was furnished almost entirely with items he had procured at a rent-to- own store in Traverse City, items that he frequently swapped out for even newer items two or three times a year.
In thirty-two years as a county judge, Horace Gallagher had won a reputation for driving lawyers crazy with his inscrutable questions and head-shaking rulings. He had a habit of interrogating prosecutors and defense counsel alike, even at pretrial proceedings. He was known for ordering hearings moved outside on balmy days-“Let’s play hooky,” he’d say-where he’d then indulge his hobby of bird-watching by noting in the middle of a lawyer’s disquisition that a pileated woodpecker had landed in an oak behind Fortune Drug. (This practice finally came to a halt when the state judicial commission got wind of it.) Yet for all of his eccentricities, he was a judge’s judge. He frequently took months to issue decisions that would be so precise and legally airtight that he had been overturned on appeal only three times, and in one of the cases he was later upheld by the state supreme court.
Now he was about to consider whether to grant bail to Soupy. “OK,” he said, handing whatever he’d been reading to the court reporter sitting below his bench. He squinted at the prosecutor. “Bond, Miss Prosecutor?”
Eileen Martin stood at her table, tall and gawky and looking like she might tip over in her heels. Leave it to Soupy to be prosecuted by a woman he’d once dated, cheated on, and then christened “Rudder Lips” to her face one night at Enright’s in front of five or six of her friends.
“Your Honor,” she said. “The county believes the defendant, Mr. Campbell, poses an unusually high flight risk. He is an unstable man with a long record of unpredictable behavior, as suggested by his various drunken driving arrests, as well as incidents as recent as last night in which-”
Flapp stood. “Objection, Your Honor.”
“Sustained,” the judge said. Sitting back, he looked as neckless as a turtle in his billowing robes. “Confine yourself to the case at hand, Miss Martin.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” she said. “Your Honor, the prosecution urges that bond be denied altogether and Mr. Campbell be returned to the county jail until trial.”
As she was speaking, I noticed Peter Shipman, who had been Leo’s attorney, slip into the jury box and sit down, alone.
Judge Gallagher turned to Flapp. “Counselor?”
Flapp stood, even taller and gawkier than Eileen. “Your Honor,” he said, “I can understand the court’s reluctance to grant bond where there’s an allegation of second-degree murder. Of course we expect at trial to show that my client is innocent. But for now, I beg the court’s mercy. Mr. Campbell is in a precarious time as regards his business, the Starvation Lake Marina. As you may know, Your Honor, the county zoning board is preparing to render a decision that could have a profound effect on this business and, frankly, on the entire town. My client would like dispensation merely to put his affairs in order. We would request forty-eight hours, Your Honor.”
“You want your client freed for forty-eight hours, then he goes back to jail?” Gallagher said. It was an unusual request but, as Flapp well knew, Gallagher was an unusual judge.
“Yes.”
“Your Honor,” Eileen said. “This is preposterous. There is no legal-”
“One moment, Miss Martin,” the judge said. He leaned forward and a sliver of neck appeared. “Mr. Flapp, if we’re going to consider something so out of the ordinary, I think it fair to everyone involved to hear a little more about the charges. This is a hearing, after all. Would you have an objection to hearing the affidavit for the arrest warrant read, or at least parts of it?”
Flapp looked flummoxed. “Well, Your Honor-”
“What I’m thinking, Mr. Flapp, is that perhaps we’ll hear something that might make me more inclined to be, as you say, merciful. Or I can simply rule now, and on the basis of there being a murder charge, I can assure you that your client would be headed directly back to the pokey.”
“No objection, Your Honor.”
Eileen stepped to a lectern in front of the judge and removed a thin sheaf of papers from a file folder. She cleared her throat. Everyone in the gallery leaned slightly forward. This was why they’d stood in line.
“Your Honor,” Eileen said. She began to read aloud. “At approximately eleven thirty-five p.m. on the date in question, the decedent Blackburn was in the forest approximately five miles northwest of the town of Starvation Lake, Michgan. He and an acquaintance, Leo Redpath of Starvation Lake, had been riding snowmobiles. They had stopped in a clearing to build a bonfire. The decedent Blackburn and Redpath heard the sound of a snowmobile approaching. The snowmobile was being operated by the defendant Campbell. The defendant Campbell stopped the snowmobile in the proximity of the bonfire. He appeared to be intoxicated. The defendant Campbell and the decedent Blackburn exchanged words. The defendant Campbell became highly agitated and-”
“Pardon me, Miss Martin,” Gallagher interrupted. “Tell me now, why is it that the county didn’t see fit to bring a charge of first-degree murder? Was this not a premeditated act?”
Flapp stood.
Eileen said, “Yes, Your Honor, we believe it was.”
Gallagher propped his glasses on his forehead and covered his face with his hands. I felt myself holding my breath. He removed his hands and his huge glasses fell into place. “Tell me, Miss Martin,” he said, “the prosecution does have a motive in this case, does it not? You plan to demonstrate precisely why Mr. Campbell would want to kill a man who had been his coach and, presumably, a mentor, even a father figure of sorts, for many years?”
“Yes, Your Honor, we do.”
“And these motivations,” he said, “would these prompt, say, a neutral observer-not an officer of the court, mind you, just regular folk; the lady at Ace Hardware, say, or the propane delivery man-would these prompt that person to conclude that what Mr. Campbell allegedly did was justified, in some, let’s say, moral sense, setting aside the law for the moment?”
“Setting aside the law, Your Honor?”
