Naomi took a clean shirt out of a drawer and handed it and his suit to Vail.
'There isn't room in here for me and my clothes,' he griped, and pulled the door shut behind him.
'Twenty minutes,' Naomi called out, and went to her desk.
Fifteen minutes later Parver and Vail bumped into Harvey St Claire, who was getting off the lift as they were leaving. He seemed either tired or deep in thought.
'Missed you at breakfast, Harve,' Vail said.
'May I talk to you for a minute?' St Claire answered, his tone more serious than usual.
'I have to go down to the Stoddard bail hearing with Shana. Then lunch with Rainey. Can it wait until this afternoon?'
'Uh, yeah, sure.'
'Incidentally, Okie was at Butterfly's this morning acting the fool. The bodies in the landfill? Three homeless people got in a Dumpster and froze to death. Well, actually one of them suffocated. Anyway, you can forget working the network and get back to business.'
He and Parver headed for the lifts.
'Ohhhh, I don't think so,' St Claire drawled half aloud as he watched them leave.
Two guards led Edith Stoddard down a long, dismal hallway towards the back stairs to courtroom 3 on the second floor. Her hands were shackled behind her, but Venable had convinced the jailers not to shackle her legs by embarrassing them.
'This is a fifty-three-year-old woman,' she said. 'You think she's going to outrun you two and make a dash for the border?'
As they approached the door to the stairwell, a TV team from Channel 7 burst through the back door with lights blazing and microphone ready. Edith Stoddard cried out and lowered her face in alarm.
'Damn them,' Venable snapped, and glowered at the two jailers. It was an old media trick, slipping the security men ten bucks apiece to tell them where and when they could get a shot at the defendant. She rushed Stoddard along, but the TV crew caught them at the door. Venable opened it and urged Stoddard through, followed by the guards. Then she stood in the doorway. Questions came at her in a jumble.
'When did you take on the case?'
'Did Edith Stoddard call you?'
'Are you going for reduced bail?'
'Is it true that she's already confessed?'
And on and on. Venable finally held up a hand, and when that didn't quiet them, she raised her voice and bellowed, 'Listen!' She waited until they shut up. 'I will answer no questions. This is a bail hearing. If you want to know what's going on, go upstairs to the court like everyone else. Other than that, no comment. And I'll have no comment after the hearing, either. Is that clear?'
She stepped inside the stairwell and slammed the door in their faces. The stairwell smelled of Lysol, an odour that sickened Venable.
'Please, please…' Edith Stoddard said. Tears welled in her eyes.
'This will take about five minutes,' Venable said. 'Just hang in there and trust me.' She held her breath until they got to the security room at the top of the stairs.
Parver was already at the prosecutor's desk. There were a thin file folder, a large yellow legal tablet, and a handful of freshly sharpened pencils on the desk in front of her. She watched as the guards led Edith Stoddard and Jane Venable to the defence desk. They sat down and Venable leaned over and spoke to her in a whisper. She did not acknowledge Shana.
In the back of the room, Vail settled back to watch the first brief skirmish between the two lawyers. Venable's objective would be to get bail as low as possible - perhaps even have her client released on her own recognizance - without giving away any of her case. Parver's objective: No bail, period.
Vail looked at Edith Stoddard. One day had beaten her down. Her shoulders were rounder, her head down. He thought for a moment about the irony of the Darby and Delaney cases. In both murders, a shot to the head was key. In Darby's case, it came first and proved premeditation; in Delaney's case, the head shot was second and proved malice.
Judge Ione Pryor, a tall, hawk-faced woman in her forties with a
