Cold Wind - C. J. Box [54]
“Your mom isn’t the first celebrity tried here,” he said. “Big Nose Bart was found guilty here back in the range war days. Lots of Old West outlaws were tried here. Most of them found innocent.”
“Joe,” Marybeth said with exasperation, “my mother is not an outlaw.”
“Sorry,” he said. “Just trying to provide some historical perspective.”
“That doesn’t help,” she said. “My colleagues at the library tiptoe around me like there was a death in the family.”
“There was,” Joe said, before he could catch himself.
She turned on him. “You are not being helpful. What I mean is, good people don’t know how to act around me. I don’t know how to act around me, either. Do I go about my business as if my mother wasn’t accused of murder, or do I walk around with my head down, ashamed?”
Joe reached out and stroked her cheek. “Keep your chin up,” he said. “You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.”
She nodded and thanked him with her eyes. “Which way?” she said. “I’ve never been in this building before.”
Judge Hewitt was small, dark, and twitchy. He’d been a judge for seventeen years and Joe appreciated Hewitt’s lack of pomposity and almost manic insistence on a fast, no-nonsense pace in his courtroom. He was known for cutting off long-winded questions and statements and ordering lawyers to get to the point. He often asked especially verbose attorneys, in front of the jury and their clients, “Are you being paid by the word?”
Joe and Marybeth entered the courtroom. It was narrow and ancient with a high stamped-tin ceiling and the acoustics were hollow and awful. The pine-paneled walls were covered by old paintings depicting 1940s versions of local Western history: politically incorrect renderings of Indian massacres filled with dripping scalps and war paint, cavalry charges, grizzly bear hunts, powwows, covered wagons loaded with cherubic children. Joe was intimately familiar with each and every one of them since he’d spent so much time over the years in the room waiting to testify in game and fish violation cases. Joe disliked being inside courtrooms nearly as much as hospitals, and always felt uncomfortable, constrained, and false when he was inside either.
“There she is,” Marybeth whispered, almost to herself.
Joe looked up. Missy sat in the first row on the left side with her back to them, next to the broad buckskin-covered shoulders of Marcus Hand. Missy had her hair up in a matronly bun and was wearing a light print dress. The effect, Joe thought, was that she looked older than her age. He was shocked.
He wondered if Hand had coached her. After all, she’d been at home on the ranch for a week since she made bail, sharing the rambling mansion with Hand and his team of attorneys, paralegals, and investigators. She’d had plenty of time to regroup since the arrest and to work on her appearance, to work her magic. But for those without that knowledge, it looked as though she’d thrown on a dress minutes before court in her jail cell and had been denied makeup or a mirror.
On the other side of the aisle, Dulcie Schalk studied notes on a legal pad. She wore a dark business suit with a skirt and black flats. Sheriff McLanahan lounged next to Schalk, arm flung back over the bench, chin up, and looking smarmy and bored, Joe thought.
Four people stood in front of the bench as Judge Hewitt glared down at them. The two men in the middle were in orange jumpsuits and boat shoes. They had long black hair and dark skin. Joe recognized them as Eddie and Brent Many Horses, Eastern Shoshones from the reservation. They’d been long-distance runners in high school and he’d checked their fishing licenses more than once. Bookending the Many Horses was public defender Duane Patterson on their left, and Dulcie