Chapter 7: The Arraignment
The arraignment was set for two o'clock.
Sandra advised us not to attend.
I went anyway.
Amy stayed at Laurel's with Frederick, and I didn't argue with her about it.
The courtroom was smaller than I expected.
Teresa was brought in wearing a gray detention uniform, her hair pulled back.
Without the new dress, without the party around her, she looked older.
She sat at the defense table and did not look at me.
Her attorney, a man named Pratt, entered a not-guilty plea on her behalf.
The DA's office presented the forgery count, the fraud count, the conspiracy count, and the false instrument filing.
When the organized scheme enhancement was read aloud, Pratt leaned over and said something in Teresa's ear.
She shook her head once, sharply.
The judge set bail at one hundred and twenty thousand dollars.
Teresa turned then.
For the first time since she'd been brought in, she looked directly at me.
I had been waiting for something in that look — anger, or guilt, or some remnant of the woman who had taught me to ride a bike in a parking lot when I was six years old.
I had been half-afraid of what I might feel when I saw it.
There was nothing there.
She looked at me the way you look at a problem that hasn't been solved yet.
She turned back to the front of the room.
Pratt was speaking to the judge about bail conditions.
I stopped listening.
Outside the courthouse, Sandra was waiting on the steps.
"How are you?" she asked.
"She looked at me like I was an obstacle," I said.
Sandra didn't offer anything in response to that.
She just nodded once, the way people nod when the truth is too specific to argue with.
"Raymond Coble was picked up this morning," she said.
"Ohio authorities flagged him the moment Hale ran the alias.
He was at a bus station in Knoxville." She checked her phone.
"He's waiving extradition."
"Why?"
"Because three other victims in Ohio have been waiting six years for him to surface.
His attorney told him cooperation here is his only path to a consolidated sentence." She looked up.
"He's going to give them everything.
Every document.
Every transaction.
Every conversation with Teresa."
I sat down on the courthouse steps.
It was a warm afternoon.
A group of pigeons moved across the plaza in a slow, indifferent wave.
"She found him," I said.
"She went looking for someone who knew how to do this."
"Yes."
"She didn't stumble into it.
She planned it."
"Yes."
I had known that since the night before.
But sitting on the courthouse steps in the afternoon sun, saying it out loud to someone who confirmed it without flinching — that was different.
"My father died four years ago," I said.
"She was fine.
She had the house in Brentwood.
She had the pension.
She had everything she needed."
Sandra was quiet.
"She wasn't desperate," I said.
"She was greedy."
"Yes," Sandra said again.
Gently, but without softening it.
My phone buzzed.
Amy.
*Frederick's fever broke.
He's been laughing for twenty minutes.
Come home.*
I looked at the message for a long moment.
Then I stood up, thanked Sandra, and walked to my truck.
On the drive back to Laurel's house, I passed the street that turned toward my neighborhood.
I didn't take it.
I wasn't ready to go back to the house yet.
May you like
Not today.
But I would be.
