Judge Louis DeLacy was a deacon in the Calvary Bible Church, the same church where Jill and Celia were members. Everyone in the congregation called him Louis, because he thought of himself as just another member of the Body, no greater than anyone else just because of the power the city had wielded him. But more important than that was the calling God had given him, the calling to mete out punishments to those who chose not to abide by the law. Normally, his job was fulfilling—satisfying, even, for he’d been responsible for keeping a number of drug dealers off the streets, disciplining drunk drivers no matter who they were, and putting away thieves and vandals.
But he couldn’t remember a day when he’d dreaded his job more than today. He had been prepared for Celia’s case when he’d arrived in his chambers this morning. He’d heard about Stan’s hospitalization yesterday, but when he’d learned that Celia was a suspect, he’d felt sick. Both Stan and Celia were good friends, and he thought a great deal of her. She had worked alongside him to build a Habitat House for a needy family last year after their trailer had burned, and she had served on a committee that he led to raise money for a new organ. He’d had dinner at their house several times, whether alone or as part of a Sunday school class, and he’d attended Promise Keepers rallies nearly every year with Stan.
The thought that Celia would be considered a suspect for attempted murder was beyond his comprehension. Still, as Jill brought her in for her arraignment, he had to keep the emotion from his face and treat her like any other defendant. He tried to avoid meeting her eyes and focused on Jill instead, as the bailiff announced the case. He wanted to know how Stan was, but he wondered if he should address either of them personally. After a moment of thought, he decided that everyone in the room knew he was close to both women, and it wouldn’t surprise them at all to know that he cared about Stan’s condition.
“How’s Stan?” he asked.
Celia looked up, but deferred to Jill.
“Not good,” Jill said. “He’s in a coma. Your honor, my client turned herself in the moment she heard of the warrant for her arrest. She had nothing to do with the poisoning. We’d like to request that these absurd charges be dropped.”
Part of him reacted as a sympathetic friend who had trouble believing that Celia could be guilty. The other part of him, the part that had to keep a certain decorum in his courtroom, reacted with slight resentment.
Troubled, he rubbed his temples. “Then her plea is…?”
“Not guilty,” Celia said. “Absolutely not guilty.”
“Judge,” the prosecutor, Gus Taylor, cut in in a lazy voice, as if the whole process was so obvious that it was an insult to have to spell it out. “We have a solid case here. And we ask you not even to set bond—not for any amount—because of her past record. Her first husband died of arsenic poisoning, the same poison that’s killing Stan right now.”
Louis had read the account in the paper last night, but it still grieved him. This couldn’t be true. It was too bizarre. What did she have? A double life?
“Your honor,” Jill shot back, “I object to the prosecutor’s sneaky and underhanded attempt to cast a bad light on my client by using information that is absolutely irrelevant to this case. My client has never been, nor will she ever be, convicted of any crime. Gus, were you absent the day they taught about relevance in law school?”
Louis tried to shake the troubling allegations from his mind. “She’s right,” he said. He cast a troubled gaze over the lot of them, from Jill to Celia to Gus, and then back to Celia again. There was more to this story, he told himself. If Celia’s first husband had died of arsenic poisoning, that, indeed, was disturbing. But if there was no conviction, he could only determine that there hadn’t been enough evidence. He didn’t know what the evidence was here—now wasn’t the time to hear it. His only purpose in this today was to set bond or deny it.
“Your honor, they also found rat poison in her attic. Its key ingredient was arsenic.”
“Judge, you probably have rat poison in your attic, too, and it probably never occurred to you that it contained arsenic,” Jill shot back.
He tried to think how he would have handled this case if Celia had been a stranger. Finally, he sighed. “I can’t hold her,” he told the prosecutor, “not with a record that’s clean—”
“But your honor—” the prosecutor piped in.
“Unless she was found guilty, then any previous arrest is wiped off the slate,” he said. “As far as the east is from the west, as someone said.”
Jill looked at her feet and tried to suppress her grin. She doubted Gus knew who that someone was or what book it was quoted from.
“However, I can’t drop the charges. I’ll let you out on a hundred thousand dollars bond, Celia, but with the condition that you must not go near Stan or contact him in any way, even when he wakes up.”
“What?” she asked.
Jill grabbed her arm to silence her. “We appreciate it, your honor.”
He closed the file and handed it to the bailiff. “Next case?”
“But Louis,” Celia cried, fighting as Jill tried to drag her out. “His parents won’t let me see him now, but if…when he wakes up, if he wants to see me, I have to go. He needs me!”
Louis shot her a miserable look, then turned his eyes to the next file. He couldn’t let his emotions get tangled up in this. He had to be objective. He had done the best he could.
Outside, Celia collapsed in a miserable heap on a bench against the wall, covering her head and wailing at the injustice of it all. Jill stooped down in front of her. “Celia, at least you can go home.”
Aunt Aggie, who’d been sitting at the back of the courtroom, had come out and was now standing over them. “Home, nothin”. Celia ain’t gon’ be a open target for that killer, whoever he is. She comin’ back to my house.”
Celia was inconsolable. “Jill, you have to do something. You have to talk to the judge. I have to go to Stan when he wakes up.”
“You can’t,” Jill said flatly. “Not until we get this cleared up.”
“Then I might as well stay here. I don’t have a hundred thousand dollars, anyway.”
“That’s not a problem. We’ll get it from a bail bondsman. Celia, you don’t want to stay here. At least if you’re out we can find who did this. I need your help.”
“Why is God doing this to me?”
Jill wished she had the answers. Her instinct was to tell her to trust him, but that was easy for her to say. Jill had never been accused of murder.