Free High in Trial by Donna Ball

spent a few minutes chatting with Aggie, and just as we were heading back to the
     hotel, Cisco saw Brinkley and his mom—whose name I finally discovered was Sarah—coming
     across the field. Of course there was no way I could take Cisco inside then, so we
     spent another ten or fifteen minutes letting the three goldens sniff and play-bow
     and romp with each other as much as their leashes would allow. We made arrangements
     to meet for dinner in half an hour and started back toward our rooms. The other two
     women went west and I went east, so I was probably the only one who noticed Marcie
     and her boyfriend walking the dogs across the field a few hundred feet away. I waved
     to her, and I know she saw me, but her boyfriend caught her arm quickly and they deliberately
     turned and went the other way. Odd, but I supposed they wanted privacy. Besides, just
     then I got another text from Miles and was reminded that I had enough to deal with
     in my own personal life without borrowing other peoples’ problems.
     
    ~*~

 
     
     
    EIGHT
    Eighteen hours, forty minutes before the shooting
     
     
    T wice a week, Buck and Wyn met for dinner at a steak house on the highway midway between
     their two homes. The food was good, and it was usually so late by the time they got
     there that the family hour was over and the place was relatively quiet. The restaurant
     was open until midnight, so they could relax in a booth over dessert and coffee for
     an hour or two and unwind from the day.
    Tonight, however, Buck was having a difficult time leaving the day behind. And Wyn,
     who’d always had one of the keenest detective minds he’d ever known, was just as intrigued
     as he was over the Berman case. She studied the file over a cup of soft serve vanilla
     ice cream, her hair falling forward to shadow her face as she absently licked the
     ice cream off the spoon.
    “Bad dude,” she observed, turning a page. “Three assaults, walked on every one. Forgery,
     fraud, possession… I can’t believe he never did time before this.”
    “That’s because he never came up before Judge Stockton before,” Buck said. The red
     vinyl seat creaked as he leaned back against it, stretching out his legs, sipping
     his coffee. “Nothing pissed off the judge more than a criminal who got off on a technicality.
     The thing is, he didn’t blame the criminal—he blamed the law. And if you were the
     arresting officer who screwed up and didn’t get the right warrant or forgot to read
     a Spanish-speaking person his rights in Spanish, he not only made you wish you’d never
     walked into his courtroom, he’d make you wish you’d never been born before you walked
     out. He used to say we were the torchbearers, and he would always hold us to a higher
     standard, because if you couldn’t count on the guys who fought on the side of right,
     then what were any of us here for?”
    Wyn glanced up, smiling. “He sounds like a real old-fashioned hanging judge. Were
     you ever in his courtroom?”
    Buck shook his head. “He retired before I joined the force. But he’s the reason I
     went into law enforcement, and that’s no lie. As a kid I spent just about as much
     time over at the Stockton place as I did at my own, and I guess he taught me pretty
     much everything I know about the justice system… and more than that, about morality
     and standing up for what was right. He was one of those legends, the kind you read
     about in books, like Daniel Webster or Justice Holmes… At least he seemed that way
     to me.” He shrugged a little self-consciously. “A hanging judge? Not really. But he
     was a stickler for what was right.”
    Wyn nodded thoughtfully, scraping up the last spoonful of ice cream from her cup.
     “So why do you suppose he let this guy plead to second?”
    “You got me.”
    Wyn finished her ice cream and turned the last page in the file. “Well, I don’t see
     anything that would trigger an alarm bell here. Did you talk to his