Free Florida Is Murder (Due Justice and Surface Tension Mystery Double Feature) (Florida Mystery Double Feature) by Diane Capri, Christine Kling Page B

reports, the reasons the police had for the conclusion that the victim had been killed before he was dumped in the Bay. The only new information came at the very end of the segment.
    “This spot,” Bennett said, “just in the middle of the Skyway Bridge, is where the body was found. But there’s no evidence to suggest the victim was dumped from the bridge. In fact, it’s almost certain that anyone stopping along the bridge, even in the early morning hours, would have been observed by passing motorists.
    “Police Chief Ben Hathaway told NewsChannel 8 he believes the body was dumped way back here at the Port of Tampa, and unusual currents related to last week’s storm washed the body toward the bridge. This is Frank Bennett, reporting live from the Sunshine Skyway.”
    Neither Frank, nor any of the other channels carried any information regarding the identity of the man. In fact, by eerie coincidence, none of the journalists even speculated on whom the man might be.
    George and I went to bed and had a very uneasy night. Every time I woke up, he was already awake. When the clock finally read 5:00 a.m., there was no way I could continue pretending to sleep, so I got up. George was, finally, snoring. I got Harry and Bess, our two Labradors, and went down to the beach for our morning run. For once, I was in the office well before the CJ or anyone else.
    I was just thinking it might be nice to take a nap, when I realized it was past time to take the bench. Although judges kept me waiting often enough when I was in practice, I try not to keep a room full of lawyers, at a gazillion dollars an hour, waiting in my courtroom. It’s just my little way of reducing the cost of litigation.
    I slipped my arms into my robe, zipped it up, took a deep breath for patience and stamina, and walked straight through the back door onto the bench.
    As I feared, the court reporter was seated, the bailiff at the door and the room full of charcoal pinstripes and red ties. Everyone jumped up at my abrupt and unannounced entrance: well-dressed jack-in-the boxes. I motioned them to be seated.
    I looked around for any women lawyers who might be in the room and, predictably, saw none. Few women lawyers have federal court cases. Federal courts handle larger, more sophisticated disputes and crimes. Unfortunately, in Tampa as everywhere, relatively few women have a practice including the magnitude of claims typically brought in federal court. Whenever a woman appears in my courtroom, I always call her case first, just so I can give her the preferential treatment I never received as a lawyer. If they catch me at it, I’ll find some believable way to deny it.
    Calling the court to order is an old-fashioned custom required by the United States Code. But since I was already seated, I just nodded to the clerk to skip it and call the first case; first come, first serve, just like McDonald’s.
         On Fridays, I hear motions from ten until one. It’s perceived to be a waste of judicial time and not worth the energy by most of my colleagues. I’m the only judge in the Middle District who schedules oral argument regularly. On any given Friday, I may hear up to twenty different motions. My colleagues are right about one thing:  it takes a lot of time and energy to prepare for these oral arguments and they usually don’t change my mind. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is wrong about something else--the quality of argument is generally much higher than judges like to admit.
    I saw Christian Grover sitting in the back of the courtroom carrying on not-so-quiet conversation with other lawyers waiting their turn. His motion was number four on my docket, but since I detest his style and because I didn’t want to give him an audience for the morning, I put his matter at the end. I could tell he was wildly annoyed and he began to speak louder and louder, just to challenge my authority. I made him wait until 12:45, when I finally allowed my clerk to call