The Big Kahuna (Fox and O'Hare #6)(53)

Baker turned back to face the judge as the charge was read: one count of felony hit-and-run resulting in injury or death. “Do you have a lawyer, Mr. Baker?” the judge asked him.

“Caroline Perry, Your Honor.”

“Mr. Baker, how do you plead?”

“Not guilty.”

I had read somewhere that most defendants entered not guilty pleas at arraignments, so this answer was to be expected, but I worried that the presence in the courtroom of so many people who supported Baker gave additional credibility to his plea. The judge rested his chin on the heel of his hand and waited for the lawyer to speak.

“Your Honor,” Caroline Perry began, “my client has no criminal record.” The ease with which she spoke to the judge suggested that she knew him or had argued cases before him in the past. In just a few broad strokes, she drew a flattering portrait of the man standing beside her: Anderson Baker was a business owner with strong ties to the community; he was a native of the Mojave whose family all lived within a few miles of one another; he was seventy-eight years old and had owned a home here for forty-five of those years; and he was a veteran of the Vietnam War. “Your Honor, this accident was very unfortunate, but the evidence will show that my client believed he hit a wild animal; he had no knowledge that he hit a human being. This was a tragic mistake, not a crime.”

Was this a harbinger of what would happen when the case went to trial? The jury would be hearing two stories about what happened on the night of April 28, one told by the prosecutor and one told by the defense attorney. It didn’t really matter which one was true, it only mattered which one the jury found more convincing. And I could already see that Baker’s attorney was a good storyteller. She could neither retract Baker’s confession nor deny the overwhelming physical evidence—the extent of my father’s injuries, the paint chips recovered by the forensics team, the three-foot dent on the Crown Vic. So she had chosen to focus on awareness: Baker didn’t know he had killed a man.

But a coyote weighed, what, thirty or forty pounds? How could Anderson Baker have possibly mistaken the impact of a small animal for that of a hundred-and-seventy-pound man? The case seemed so clear-cut to me that I had to swallow the protest that was rising in my throat, and wait for the prosecutor to speak.

The assistant D.A. was a small, chubby man by the name of Thomas J. Frazier (the J. stood for Jefferson). He seemed to be in his early thirties, and either new to his job or completely overworked, because he had to sort through his papers for a few excruciating minutes before he was ready to address the judge. “Your Honor, given the age of the defendant, the state is not opposed to bail.”

“All right. Bail is set at $10,000.”

I turned to my mother in disbelief. “Mom, I think that’s it. It’s over.”

“What do you mean, it’s over?”

“I mean, it’s done. He can post bail and be out before dinner.”

“He’ll be free?”

Free, yes. I buried my face in my hands. Perhaps if I had done a better job of explaining to Coleman and the D.A. the threat that Anderson Baker posed to my father, we might have seen a more serious charge. Or if Salma had come today and brought the twins with her, the outcome of the bond hearing might have been a little different. I was overwhelmed with the feeling that I had failed my father somehow. He hadn’t even been mentioned in the proceedings; the focus had been on Baker’s history and Baker’s service and Baker’s family, and so he’d received the benefit of the doubt. But if the roles had been reversed on the night of April 28, and Mohammed Driss Guerraoui had killed a man he’d been fighting with for many years, would he have been charged only with a count of hit-and-run? Would the D.A. have so readily agreed to bail? Growing up in this town, I had long ago learned that the savagery of a man named Mohammed was rarely questioned, but his humanity always had to be proven.

“We should go,” my mother said.

All around us people were shuffling in and out of seats. I stood up as if in a daze and followed my mother through the swinging doors. In spite of the air conditioning, the place felt hot. The hallway was loud and crowded and as I stepped aside to let someone through to the courtroom I found myself face to face with A.J. He looked the same as he had in high school, tall and blond, except that his face had filled out over the last ten years. In his crisp black suit and red tie, he could have passed for a businessman who had come here for a minor transgression, a traffic-ticket challenge or a hunting-permit violation, but the effect was contradicted by the presence of his mother, who carried the sleeping toddler in her arms, and the young woman who was rummaging through her purse. “A.J., honey,” she said, “I can’t find my keys.”

But A.J. didn’t hear her; he was staring at me. Then he detached himself from the group and crossed the hallway. “Nora,” he called.





Jeremy




“So what did you say?” I asked. I was leaning against the kitchen counter, watching her stir a stew in the pot. Three silver bracelets jingled on her wrist with each turn of the wooden spoon. She was still in the white blouse and gray pants she’d worn that morning to court and her hair was tied in a bun. Such a different look on her. So formal. Severe, even. I’d wanted to take her to dinner that night, but she said she wasn’t in a mood to go out, and suggested that we eat here, in the cabin.