“The traffic helicopter called it in,” answered the trooper. “Saw the wreckage and asked if we knew about it. Detective Wall here says you think this is yesterday’s hit-and-run?”
“Yeah. So pay attention to the front right fender, okay? And copy us on all the pictures and reports.”
The rain had stopped completely by the time they climbed back up the slope, but the ground was so muddy that the pink umbrella was a wreck where Wall had jabbed it in the ground to help haul himself up.
“One good thing,” Wall said. “He’s saved the state the cost of putting him on trial and then keeping him in prison for the next thirty years.”
“Yeah,” Edwards agreed. “Just hope we find out why he killed Jeffreys before they pull us off the case. I can understand running down Fitzhume. He was afraid the judge could place the two of them in the restroom right before the murder, but what was his beef with Jeffreys in the first place?”
“Who knows?” Wall said, and glanced at his watch. “I’ll run by the office and get the paperwork started and then call it a day. What about you?”
“I think I’ll stop by the hospital and tell Mrs. Fitzhume and then maybe ride back out to the beach, see if Judge Knott’s learned of a link between Armstrong and Jeffreys.”
Andy Wall smiled at the younger man. “And maybe ask her friend out to dinner now that the case is practically closed?”
“Maybe.”
CHAPTER
25
Our last session of the day was a lively update on family law by Cheryl Howell, a brainy blonde professor from the School of Government.
Just as Nina Totenberg can clarify and explain to her NPR audience the most arcane rulings of the Supreme Court, so Cheryl manages to make the acts of our legislature sound almost logical. There are times, though, when the lack of clarity in the specific language of a statute causes a disconnect between what the new legislation is supposed to do and what it actually appears to do. Last year we spent an inordinate amount of time on civil no- contact orders (restraining orders in cases other than domestic violence situations). Stalking had earlier been defined as, and I quote, “Following on more than one occasion or otherwise harassing.”
What we needed to know was if the “more than one occasion” applied to harassing or only to the act of following. Could we issue a civil restraining order after one harassment or must it be at least twice?
At such times, even Cheryl throws up her hands and says, “You’ll just have to use your best judgment on this until it comes before the high court and they make a ruling on it.”
It’s the ever-recurring sticky flypaper between what is meant and what is said, which is why we have a Supreme Court still parsing the words of our Constitution more than two hundred years later. Did the framers mean that every citizen could own an assault rifle? Does free speech include hate speech? Does freedom
On a more mundane level, today’s thorny issue was parent versus nonparent custody and visitation, as modified by the appellate court’s recent rulings on third-party custody—in other words, the rights, if any, of stepparents, grandparents, blood relations, or any other third parties who have been ceded (or
It’s hard enough making custody and visitation decisions when you start with a traditional two-parent family unit and the third party is a grandparent. Stir in lovers who claim they did all the parenting, or a sibling who’s been raising the children for years, or same-sex couples who are breaking up with the same regularity as heterosexual couples, and you’ve got a witch’s brew of tricky complications.
We were still arguing about certain aspects of the case studies Cheryl had brought us and comparing how we had ruled on similar issues as we spilled out into the lobby at 5:30 and headed up to Room 628 for drinks.
The rain had finally stopped and when the balcony doors were thrown wide, everyone crowded outside to ooh over a vivid rainbow that seemed to touch down in the ocean.
Chuck Teach pointed to that spot and said, “Somebody get me a boat. That pot of gold can’t be more than twenty feet under the water.”
“Anybody heard from Martha?” I asked.
“Yeah, I talked to her at the break,” said Andy Corbett, the chief judge over in the next district from mine. “No change. Fitz is still in a coma and still in intensive care.”
Across the room, Roberta Ouellette was opening a can of soda and I went over to her. She gave a friendly smile and said, “Interesting session, wasn’t it? But I’m sorry. I do think that a blood relationship gives automatic standing and if grandparents want to see their grandchildren on a regular basis and they aren’t pedophiles or raving lunatics, I’m going to keep trying to let them. Children can’t have too much love in their lives.”
“I agree,” I said, adding a light splash of bourbon to my own diet cola. “And what about godparents? There’s often no blood relationship.”
“True,” she sighed. “But again, don’t you find that a little judicial reasoning can sometimes mitigate a vindictive parent’s desire to cut all ties to the past relationship?”
We took our drinks out to the terrace and leaned against the railing to enjoy the return of sunshine. Big patches of blue sky appeared amid the retreating clouds and our rainbow had faded into nothingness.
“When you were telling us how Pete Jeffreys gave custody of that burned child to his father and stepmother, you didn’t mention that he was Bill Hasselberger’s godson,” I said.
