to access the new presence in his court. At the table on the right, an equally busy and equally suited younger man was going through his own stack of files. He would be some low-on-the- seniority-scale attorney for the prosecutor’s office. He too stole a look at Billy.
At exactly nine, a barrel-chested officer who had been standing near the bench, apparently flirting with the judge’s clerk, became serious and opened an adjoining door. Twenty men filed in, handcuffed in twos, a left wrist to a right wrist.
They were instructed to sit in the row of chairs in front of the short wall. They came in with the sound of shuffling feet and the soft clinking of loose stainless steel. Some were still wearing the street clothes they had on when they were arrested. Others were dressed in orange jumpsuits. They all had tired eyes and unshaven faces. A few looked tentatively around the room, into the gallery to find a family member or a friend. There were twenty of them and eight of us.
O’Shea was the twelfth man in, attached to a huge black man in a jumpsuit. His face was a stoic mask. He would not have said a word all night. He would have stared at a spot on the wall with the smell of gang sweat and alcohol puke and the single open toilet for ten men in the holding cell without comment or expression. His reaction to any attempt at conversation or query would have been that same hard stare that held his face now. I could not measure the anger or frustration behind his eyes as he came in and looked around the room, finally finding me and raising his stubbled chin in acknowledgment.
There was no formal call to order. When the men were seated the judge simply nodded his head and the clerk began to call out names. Each man would stand with his handcuffed partner, who was forced to rise with him. After the first few calls the named arrestee learned to raise his unshackled hand when the judge repeated, “Which of you is Mr. Whomever.”
The charges against the man were then read. He was asked if he was represented by counsel or wanted the judge to appoint the public defender to act on his behalf. Again, it took only a few examples before the next man repeated: “Public defender, sir.”
The P.D. would then walk over to his newest client with paperwork and have a quick and far from private discussion, and then return to his table.
“Status, Mr. Marsh?” the judge would repeat.
Marsh would then request bail, in the standard amount that he no doubt had memorized: $10,000 for a DUI or battery charge to $1,000 for loitering. The judge would ask the prosecutor for an opinion, which was a standard: “The state has no objection, your honor,” and the rhythm moved on.
They were halfway through the alphabet when I picked up on movement near the entrance to the room and turned to see Detective Richards enter. She too was in a dark suit. Her hair was pulled back. She was with a man who had the look of a supervisor. I looked away for a few moments and by the time I did a double take, she had spotted me, and probably Billy, too. Her eyes met mine and they were as cold as O’Shea’s and I wondered why the hell I’d even gotten myself involved in this duel. Richards and her companion sat somewhere behind me and I did not turn around again. Billy continued his reading, though he could have memorized the few pages by now. If it was his protection against nervousness, it was a good one.
The clerk called out “Oglethorpe, Richard,” and the black man next to O’Shea stood, bringing his partner the ex-cop up with him.
“Mr. Oglethorpe?” the judge said.
“Yes, sir.” The man raised his free hand. He was as tall as O’Shea but outweighed him by a good sixty pounds and I could tell by the way the orange fabric stretched across his back that most of it was muscle. His skin was the dark brown color of a water tupelo trunk and from the back it appeared that the man was not in possession of a neck.
“Mr. Oglethorpe,” said the judge, shuffling the papers and rereading for the first time this morning. “Mr. Oglethorpe you have been arrested on charges of two counts of murder in the first degree, two counts of aggravated sexual assault