The Brass Verdict

hear this,” the judge finally said.
    I nodded in agreement and waited.
    “Very well,” the judge said after another long moment. “Let’s bring the defendant out.”
    Jerry Vincent garnered no further delay. Whether the judge had suspicions about Jerry or the life he led, she didn’t say. But life would move on in the Criminal Courts Building. The wheels of justice would grind without him.

Ten
    The message from Lorna Taylor was short and to the point. I got it the moment I turned my phone on after leaving the courtroom and seeing Edgar Reese get his five years. She told me she had just been in touch with Judge Holder’s clerk about obtaining the court order the bank was requiring before putting Lorna’s and my names on the Vincent bank accounts. The judge had agreed to draw up the order and I could just walk down the hallway to her chambers to pick it up.
    The courtroom was once again dark but the judge’s clerk was in her pod next to the bench. She still reminded me of my third-grade teacher.
    “Mrs. Gill?” I said. “I’m supposed to pick up an order from the judge.”
    “Yes, I think she still has it with her in chambers. I’ll go check.”
    “Any chance I could get in there and talk to her for a few minutes, too?”
    “Well, she has someone with her at the moment but I will check.”
    She got up and went down the hallway located behind the clerk’s station. At the end was the door to the judge’s chambers and I watched her knock once before being summoned to enter. When she opened the door, I could see a man sitting in the same chair I had sat in a few hours earlier. I recognized him as Judge Holder’s husband, a personal-injury attorney named Mitch Lester. I recognized him from the photograph on his ad. Back when he was doing criminal defense we had once shared the back of the Yellow Pages, my ad taking the top half and his the bottom. He hadn’t worked criminal cases in a long time.
    A few minutes later Mrs. Gill came out carrying the court order I needed. I thought this meant I wasn’t going to get in to see the judge but Mrs. Gill told me I would be allowed back as soon as the judge finished up with her visitor.
    It wasn’t enough time to continue my review of the files in my roller bag, so I wandered the courtroom, looking around and thinking about what I was going to say to the judge. At the empty bailiff’s desk, I looked down and scanned a calendar sheet from the week before. I knew the names of several of the attorneys who were listed and had been scheduled for emergency hearings and motions. One of them was Jerry Vincent on behalf of Walter Elliot. It had probably been one of Jerry’s last appearances in court.
    After three minutes I heard a bell tone at the clerk’s station and Mrs. Gill said I was free to go back to the judge’s chambers.
    When I knocked on the door it was Mitch Lester who opened it. He smiled and bid me entrance. We shook hands and he remarked that he had just heard about Jerry Vincent.
    “It’s a scary world out there,” he said.
    “It can be,” I said.
    “If you need any help with anything, let me know.”
    He left the office and I took his seat in front of the judge’s desk.
    “What can I do for you, Mr. Haller? You got the order for the bank?”
    “Yes, I got the order, Your Honor. Thank you for that. I wanted to update you a little bit and ask a question about something.”
    She took off a pair of reading glasses and put them down on her blotter.
    “Please go ahead, then.”
    “Well, on the update. Things are going a bit slowly because we started without a calendar. Both Jerry Vincent’s laptop computer and his hard-copy calendar were stolen after he was killed. We had to build a new calendar after pulling the active files. We think we have that under control and, in fact, I just came from a sentencing in Judge Champagne’s in regard to one of the cases. So we haven’t missed anything.”
    The judge seemed unimpressed by the efforts made by my staff and me.
    “How many active cases are we talking about?” she asked.
    “Uh, it looks like there are thirty-one active cases – well, thirty now that I handled that sentencing. That case is done.”
    “Then, I would say you inherited quite a thriving practice. What is the problem?”
    “I’m not sure there is a problem, Judge. So far I’ve had a conversation with only one of the active clients and it looks like I will be continuing as his lawyer.”
    “Was that Walter