Neely Tucker - Only the Hunted Run

Estes nodded. “I’m going to find probable cause, which, by federal statute in the District of Columbia, requires me to order that the defendant be held until further notice.”

“Could we get a twenty-four-hour screening at St. E’s, Your Honor?” Janice said. “Mr. Waters has had lifelong mental-health issues, apparently, and has been without a fixed address for quite some time, at least since his father died. It’s been difficult to communicate.”

“You’re saying he can’t assist in his defense or he’s psychotic.”

“Either. Both. I would argue he meets both prongs of the standard. I think we’re going to wind up with a thirty-day eval at St. E’s, but for now, if we could just get the screening.”

“Counselor?” Estes said, turning to Wesley.

“No problem with that.”

“And, Your Honor,” Janice said, “let me introduce this to the court now. Should the issue of forced medication arise, we’re going to object as invasive and prejudicial to-”

“Okay, problem,” Wesley cut in.

“-basic best interest, I know, I hear you, I’m just making sure we’re on record as-”

“This seems preemptive, Ms. Miller,” Estes said.

“-as, as, I, well, Your Honor. I suppose. It is. But this is very clearly going to come before the court, and I wanted our position clear.”

“You can argue that over at 333 Constitution at the appropriate time.”

“Of course.”

“Other business?”

The attorneys shook their heads.

“It is so ordered that Mr. Waters will have a twenty-four-hour screen. This matter will be taken up on Monday by Judge Arrington, in district court, but we are likely looking at a full thirty-day psychiatric eval in St. E’s, given this case’s nature.”

Bang bang went the gavel and it was done, Wesley and Janice putting away their papers, the deputy clerk asking the marshal, over an open mic, if there were any more cases. The man turned to ask his colleague and Sully saw it, even before it happened.

Terry Waters leaned back from the hips, as if he were a man leaning out of his window trying to see something on his roof. Then he rocked forward and snapped his forehead into the marshal in front of him. It caught the man off guard and in the temple. It made a sound like two croquet balls colliding. The marshal dropped, out cold even before his knees buckled.

Janice and Wesley turned. The marshals behind and to Waters’s right came forward. The gallery audience bolted to their feet, the court artist dropped his sketch, the room off kilter and gone wrong, erupting, as Waters bunny-hopped in his leg chains toward the bench.

“DO YOU THINK YOU CAN CONTAIN ME, YOU BLACK-ROBED PIECE OF SHIT? DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA OF MIRIAM’S POWERS? DO YOU KNOW THE REIGN OF DEATH YOU-”

He was at the front of the dais by then, the deputy clerk ducking below her seat, Estes rising, banging his gavel and yelling, the marshals tackling Waters from the back and the side, Sully standing to see it, Waters’s head hitting the wooden dais, going down to his left and sideways, the two marshals piling on top of him. And still, you could hear him, cackling, bursting into a laugh that ricocheted off the ceiling and the cheap fluorescent lights, words that shot over those assembled in their spittle-flecked madness:

“THIS IS THE SHIT, WHOOO!!!”

“THAT LITTLE SHIT STAINis going to be at St. E’s a lllonnnggg time,” R.J. muttered, looking at the story on the computer screen.

Sully and Keith were standing behind him, looking over either shoulder, the newsroom all but empty at this hour. Eddie was in his office, reading the story on a printout, glasses down on the end of nose, copy editors at their desks, eternally slouched in front of their screens, the last barricade against reportorial failures of grammar, common sense, and third-grade mathematics.

The rest of the place, save for the guys in Sports, had gone dark. It gave the low-slung cubicles and filing cabinets a lonesome atmosphere, where sound traveled and the dimmed lights in the hallways absorbed the echoes.

“Shoots up the Capitol, goes ape shit in C-10?” R.J. rattled, twiddling the cursor back and forth. “He’s going to be the next Hinckley up there at St. E’s. An institution at the institution.”

“Nobody is happier about that than Jodie Foster,” Keith said, staring at the screen. “R.J., let’s put ‘bizarre’ back in the lede. ‘Waters’s bizarre outburst.’”

R.J. half turned in his seat, arching a bushy eyebrow.

“You don’t think a mass killer breaking into a Glen Campbell song and assaulting a marshal in court is bizarre on its face?” He put it back in, his fingers on the keyboard. “You think we got to explain that?”

They all looked at it.

“Never liked ‘Galveston,’ all that much, myself,” Sully said, thinking it over. “Now, ‘Gentle on My Mind,’ that’s your quality Glen Campbell.”

“He sang ‘Rhinestone Cowboy,’” R.J. said, “I’da shot him myself.”

“Okay, you’re right,” Keith said. “Take it back out.”

Eddie came out of the office, flipping the sheets on the story, not even looking up, coming to an abrupt stop at the side of R.J.’s desk. “Do we know who this ‘Miriam’ is that he was raving about?”

“No,” Sully said. “That whole thing was off, you ask me. He was not anything like that, the times we talked.”

Eddie shifted his feet, staring at the papers in front of him, deciphering his scribbled notations. “Maybe his meds wore off once he was in lockup. And look, there’s nothing in the piece, no charges, about him shooting up La Loma, taking potshots at Sully.”

“He’s not charged with it,” Keith said. “Yet.”

“They arrested him at the scene with the gun in his hand.”

“Right,” Keith said, “but they are drowning in the paperwork, the filing, on the Capitol. They’re wanting to get that straight.”

“And then, what, they fit-”

“Eddie,” R.J. cut in, softly. “The hour.”

He looked up at them. Sully could see the irritation flare in the upper reaches of his face, the eyes, the forehead. It wasn’t like Eddie didn’t spend a good chunk of his life threatening or intimidating people himself. Man lived in a Georgetown mansion. Sully pitied the dude repointing the brickwork who didn’t get it right the first time.

Eddie looked down at R.J., then at his Rolex. “Jesus. Alright. Do we know for certain where he, Waters, is at the moment?”

“Central detention facility,” Sully said, “the cells beneath police HQ. They’ve got isolation cells. Or he’s already at St. E’s. Or in transport.”

“And they’ll put him in Canan Hall, same as Hinckley? That’s c.q.? Even though he’s pretrial?”

Keith nodded. “It’s the building for the criminally insane, yeah, but, legally, it’s a hospital ward. The question is danger to himself or others. It’s like gen pop at D.C. Jail. You got guys waiting for trial, guys serving time. Like that.”

“Gen pop?”

“General population.”

“Okay,” Eddie nodded. “Okay. Not bad work here. Not shabby at all. Any update on his physical condition? The marshals?”

“Nah,” Sully said. “They shut down C-10 for the night after the dustup. Estes was plenty pissed, that sort of thing going down on his watch. Marshals are just saying bumps and bruises, a laceration to one guy’s forehead. It might be worse, but they’re not going to want to own it. Waters, for the record, had ‘minor’ injuries. They called it a ‘scuffle.’”

R.J. snorted. “Bet it wasn’t a scuffle once they got him back in the cell.”

Eddie, playing the principal to the classroom, didn’t smile. “This strategy from Miller, that’s going to be the legal tangle. She’s just predicting what the AUSA’s office is going to do, but of course they’re going to want to force-medicate him.”