Niceville

toads. The Fogartys attended almost every trial, large and small, like retired horses that can’t stay away from the track.
    Judge Monroe’s steel eyeglass frames glittered in the late-afternoonsunlight streaming in through the western windows. He straightened his papers into a pile, lifted them up, and tapped the fat sheaf into squared-off order on the desk, and laid it down again, resting his blue-veined hands on top.
    “Kate—Ms. Kavanaugh—is there anything you would like to add before I render my decision?”
    While he was presiding over a case, as a matter of ethics, Ted Monroe worked to suppress his soft spot for Kate Kavanaugh, who had effectively taken over his family law practice when he was elected to the bench. He and Kate’s father, Dillon Walker, had both gone up to the University of Virginia, many long years ago now, and Ted Monroe had watched Kate grow from a long-legged coltish child with wild auburn hair and wary blue eyes into this self-contained and forceful young lawyer now appearing before him. Her marriage two years ago to an ex–Special Forces officer she had met while attending Georgetown Law in D.C. had broken the hearts of at least three young Niceville men.
    Monroe had worried about the match—Nick’s heart, according to Tig Sutter, was still in the covert wars, but after Tig had managed to talk Nick into taking a job with the CID instead of going on to the judge advocates, Nick had seemed to settle into the insular Niceville world without too much difficulty, quickly building a reputation as a hard cop, ruthless but fair. Ted Monroe, who had met him several times, inside the court and out, felt there was something troubling the man, something buried deep, but it had been his experience that this was true of most men who had lived complicated lives.
    In short, as Ted Monroe sat there on the leather chair looking out at the scene that lay before him, he felt that Kate Kavanaugh was a happy young woman who was exactly where she was supposed to be and doing precisely what she was born to do.
    Kate glanced briefly at her client, a meager and bruised-looking young woman with home-streaked hair and a pinched look in her thin face. The woman stared wide-eyed back at Kate, her tiny red hands raw as they twisted a scrap of blue polka-dot scarf. Kate gave her a reassuring smile and turned back to the bench.
    “Thank you, Your Honor. Only that, should the court grant sole custody to my client, Miss Dellums wishes to inform the court that she intends, if the court allows, to accept an employment offer in Sallytown,which would involve a move of eighty-eight miles away from her ex-husband, Mr. Bock, whose employment with the Niceville Utility Commission would very likely prevent him from following, and that this move may affect the nature and construction of the court’s directions concerning subsequent rules of access to the daughter.”
    “Thank you, Ms. Kavanaugh, for being scrupulous, but the court was aware of that development, and has already taken it into account. Miss Barrow?” He turned to the other table, addressing a tall, broad-shouldered woman in a well-cut gray pantsuit, with a pink complexion, no makeup at all, a wild aura of steel gray hair, and an air of disorder and distraction that clung to her like cigarette smoke.
    “Thank you, Your Honor. Only to stress once again that my client—” Here she turned to indicate a Mr. Christian Antony Bock, a short, rather bulging young man with wide-set gray eyes, bright pink cheeks, full, feminine lips, and a blunt, petulant face, his features not quite forming into a unified whole, as if he had been composed of spare parts left over from a more successful incarnation. His nose was flat and dotted with blackheads, his skin patchy and pockmarked, his thin black hair receding, even at his young age, into an inverted vee, which had the effect of seeming to crowd all of his features into the lower third of his face.
    Most people react to the random defects of their physical appearance with equanimity and humor and thereby manage, with grace, to transcend these defects and make themselves appealing, very often lovable. Tony Bock was not one of those people.
    Bock straightened his sloping shoulders, adopting a parody of the military’s at-ease position, and assumed what he thought was an ingratiating look as Miss Barrow turned back to the judge.
    “Only to stress again that Mr. Bock has voluntarily and successfully undergone an