Chapter 18: Traffic

"This is a painful family moment," the judge said, in the voice that had sentenced half the county. "My daughter-in-law is unwell."

He raised one finger, and four men in dark suits began to move toward the head table.

I did not step back.

"Sit down, Judge," I said into the microphone. "You have a Thursday to get to, and I'd hate you to be late with the lemon bars."

Nobody moved after that.

The four men looked at the judge, and then at the four hundred phones, and then at the floor.

He folded his napkin once more, laid it on his plate, and walked out through the kitchen door.

Grady stayed on the stage with his hands on the lectern and his mouth open.

A woman at table six said, loud and clear, "I gave him two thousand dollars."

By Monday morning it was on every channel in Ohio.

The hearing was at nine, in courtroom four, with the gallery full and the press packed in three rows.

Marshall sat at the table beside me with his grandfather's watch on his wrist and the stolen filing in a clear sleeve.

Lacey sat directly behind us in a gray dress, with her hands clasped.

Cadence watched from the front row with the landlady, in a wheelchair she had been told to use, with her braid over one shoulder.

The sitting judge, a woman in her sixties, took the bench and looked at the file for a long moment.

"Before we begin," she said, "I clerked for the Lindemann family's patriarch for two years, thirty years ago. I'm recusing myself."

The gallery stirred.

"A visiting judge from Warren County will take the matter this morning. We'll recess for ten minutes."