Уильям Макгиверн - Summitt

She said angrily, “Goddammit, I don’t need a seal of approval from you.”

“You were as frightened as Shana about something that morning out at Vinegar Hill. Why, Brett? Why?”

“I was moved and outraged and showed it, I cracked a little. Are you still holding that against me, along with the fact you’d probably prefer a man on this case?”

“That’s not it at all.” Selby stood and picked up his raincoat.

“Then what the hell are you trying to tell me?”

“I’ve been trying to tell you that I need help, and need it badly.”

Her phone rang. She started and looked at her wristwatch. It was after midnight. “Excuse me,” she said. She picked up the receiver and said hello twice and waited for a few seconds. “Who’s this?” she asked and said hello again.

Shrugging, she put down the phone. “Whoever it was hung up.”

Limping slightly, she moved back to the coffee table, poured two more cups of coffee. “How about my calling you Harry to save time?”

“That’s fine.”

“I think maybe we both need help, Harry,” she said.

“Then let’s talk.” Selby put a small log on the fire and told her about the letter he’d received from Breck, the attorney in Truckee. “Everything that’s happened to me and Shana seemed to start with that trip to Summitt to see my brother...”

When he left he drove twice around her block before he started home, slowing down to check the side streets and alleys. An elderly couple was walking a dachshund, but as far as Selby could tell the neighborhood was peaceful and quiet, nothing stirring but the breezes rising from the river.

When he drove by her house the second time, all the windows were dark.

In the case of the People of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania against Earl Thomson, sufficient evidence was presented by Deputy District Attorney Brett to fulfill the two basic requirements — that a crime had been committed and that there was reason to believe the defendant, Earl Thomson, had committed the crime.

The fingerprints of the accused at the place of the assault and plaintiffs identification of the accused satisfied those conditions.

The test at this hearing was not whether there was reasonable doubt concerning the complaints. Given the Commonwealth’s statutes of criminal procedure, Magistrate Teague was required to entertain only a reasonable belief in the accused’s probable guilt.

Counselor Allan Davic was not obliged to enter a plea of any sort — either guilty, not guilty or nolo contendere . As a result, Earl Thomson was automatically bound over for further action by the Commonwealth’s judiciary system. The defendant was released on his own recognizance.

The trial judge was appointed at a later date by the district’s president-judge, J. Matthew Eames.

The Superior Court’s current rotation and schedules indicated that the assignment would probably go to Judge Nathan Karr. But President-Judge Eames bypassed Karr and appointed Judge Desmond Flood to try the Thomson-Selby case.

Judge Flood was surprised by the assignment. Fie had been a respected jurist in the Superior branch for almost two decades, but since the death of his wife — she had been killed in a private plane crash six years earlier — since then, the judge’s attention span had narrowed, and his performance on the bench had steadily deteriorated. His courtroom — Superior Court Nine in East Chester’s City Hall — was often referred to as Appellate Nine by exasperated attorneys, an allusion to the frequency with which his decisions were reversed in the higher courts. Flood was amused by his court’s nickname, and a local paper’s comment that “the State Appellate Division seems forever awash in a Flood of appeals.”

A tidily built man with gray hair and still keenly alert eyes, Judge Flood lived with a divorcee named Millie Haynes, twenty years his junior. In her youth Millie had been an accomplished gymnast and drum majorette. The judge’s study was now lined with old glossy photographs of his still agile companion on parallel bars and swings, and in white boots and spangled skirts at the head of marching bands.

After his wife’s death Flood had got into financial problems as a result of impulsive speculations. Because of this and because of his intermittent drinking and sick leaves, President-Judge Eames had placed him on a reduced schedule; for the past few years, Flood had been given little court work and then only in relatively unimportant cases.

To Flood’s relief, Millie Haynes seemed to possess sound financial instincts. After consulting with experts, she had consolidated the judge’s debts into one large sum, which was being reduced by monthly payments to a management firm in Camden, New Jersey.

With free time and no financial distractions, Flood busied himself preparing for his retirement. He shopped for the waterfront condo in San Diego that Millie had put a down payment on. To surprise her, the judge bought a yachting cap and a blazer with silver buttons for the Chris-Craft which would be delivered to their marina slip at the end of this court term.

The Commonwealth against Earl Thomson would be Desmond Flood’s last trial. On being notified of his assignment. Judge Flood had instructed his clerk to begin preparations for Thomson’s arraignment and to advise counsel for the People and the Defense that His Honor would be available to consider motions at their earliest convenience. He’d go out in a blaze of glory. So to speak.

Several weeks after the preliminary hearing, Earl Thomson was arraigned for a second time in the presence of Superior Court Judge Desmond Flood, where he pleaded not guilty to Commonwealth charges of sundry crimes against the person of the plaintiff, Shana Selby. The full indictment read: “assault and battery by automobile, assault with intent to do great bodily harm, kidnapping, unlawful confinement of a minor, statutory rape, sodomy and oral copulation.”

After arguments from both sides, bail was set by Judge Flood at ten thousand dollars, a significant victory for Counselor Davic. The judge ruled against the People’s motion for bail of one hundred thousand dollars, holding that this amount would be excessive and inappropriate in consideration of the defendant’s good family background and substantial personal financial assets and since Earl Thomson had no prior criminal record. Also, the higher sum could have an inflammatory effect on the jurors — the larger the bail, Judge Flood felt, the worse the criminal might appear in the public eye.

Discovery proceedings were routinely expedited. Medical reports, X-rays, records of conversations between the plaintiff, Nurse Edith Redden and Dr. Merwin Kerr, Trooper Milt Karec’s reports and time logs — all these were ordered to be made immediately available to the defense. Names and addresses of witnesses, photographs shown to them, statements of intended prosecution witnesses, police officers’ (Slocum, Eberle) taped conversations with Earl Thomson — all conceivably relevant information, had been included in Counselor Davic’s discovery motions.

It was ruled by Judge Flood that a psychiatrist, to be defined as a defense “expert witness,” would be allowed to examine the plaintiff, under a schedule and circumstances agreeable to the People, but that such inquiries by the “expert witness” be consistent and in accord with the regulations of the Commonwealth statutes.

A panel of jurors would be drawn for the consideration of counsel for the Defense and for the People. After consultation with both attorneys, His Honor set a trial date toward the end of the following month in that Year of Our Lord.

Soon after this, Judge Flood met by appointment with an officer from the Camden management firm which handled his business affairs. Over an excellent lunch the officer informed Flood that, as a result of escalating interest rates, and certain improvement “levies” on his properties, his affairs were not in as good shape as the finance company would like them to be. Certain balloon payments had come due on his condominium and motor launch at the San Diego Conquistador Marina. In response to His Honor’s protests, the adviser told him that while Miss Haynes’s financial planning had been blameless, it might now be necessary for Judge Flood to meet in person with an officer of the company, the president himself perhaps, to appeal for an extension of his now-due notes and monies.