Free Hush My Mouth by Cathy Pickens Page A

didn’t even look up when I knocked on his open door. “What’s up?” He continued scribbling his signature on a stack of letters.
    “I hate to show my ignorance to anybody but you. How long’s it take to get a bond hearing?”
    “For?” He kept scrawling, his dishwater-blond head bowed over his task.
    “Violation of a restraining order.”
    He looked up at that. “You’re here to get a wife beater out of jail?” His tone was part surprise, part derision.
    “No.” Mine was all derision.
    He cocked an eyebrow and held his pen, waiting for the story.
    “He was ordered to stop calling his wife.”
    “Any violence?”
    “Not that I know of. I haven’t seen the paperwork.” I didn’t want to confess the extent of my inexperience, even to an old friend like Rudy. I had, after all, only heard one side of the story—and limited vision is always fraught with peril.
    “The magistrate who sets bond is out today. One of the judges is handling the bond hearings, but he’s moved them to this morning before the lunch recess. Just call the clerk.”
    “Okay.” The clerk should have the paperwork filed in the case up to this point. I also needed to get my client to sign a contract of representation. More paperwork. My least favorite thing. “Thanks.”
    I turned to leave him to his signing, but then stuck my head back in the door. “You gonna be here awhile?”
    “Yeah,” he said. “Having a little trouble getting through with all this. Interruptions, you know.” He didn’t look up.
    I patted the door frame. “See you later.” I wanted to see if he had any more information about Neanna Lyles, but I first needed to get a bond set for Mr. Mart.
    The young deputy outside the interview room assured me that he could leave Mr. Mart in the interrogation room for a while longer.
    At the courthouse two blocks away, Alma, the court clerk, said the judge had set the hearing right before he took his lunch break.
    “Always a sandwich in his office,” she said, smiling over the purple glasses perched on her nose.
    “Thanks.” I gave her my cell phone number, in case things moved more quickly than she anticipated. “I do you have the copy of the petitioner’s file in the Mart divorce case? Mr. Mart has recently retained me.”
    I needed to explain my fee arrangement and get Mart’s signature on a fee agreement. At least I’d finally gotten smart and stuck several in my briefcase so I didn’t have to run down the block and across Main Street to my office. I put the photocopied sheets Alma had given me into my slender case and walked the two blocks back to the Law Enforcement Center. Might as well take care of some other business while we were waiting on the judge.
    Mr. Mart sat twiddling his thumbs in the bare room. He nodded numbly as I explained our business details, and he carefully penned his signature.
    “Would you like something to read?”
    He shook his head. “No, not really.”
    I’d rather be hung by my heels than left without book or paper and pen, but I slipped out and left him to study the stained Formica tabletop.
    Rudy was nodding into the phone, so I stopped in the doorway.He waved me in and kept nodding and muttering, “Mm-hm, mm-hm,” then, “Okay. Thanks.”
    Fascinating conversation. No wonder he hadn’t minded me listening in.
    “Yes’m, what can I do for you?”
    I didn’t tell him not to start with the “ma’am” stuff. He’d never let up if he thought it bugged me.
    “Any news about Neanna Lyles?”
    I plopped down in the chair across the desk from him. His office could barely hold its furniture: a large desk, two thinly padded chairs for visitors, a bookcase, and a credenza behind his desk. The only window faced out into the hallway.
    “Has the ME finished?” I asked.
    “Autopsy’s done. Report isn’t. Should get the tox report today. If we need more, a full run might take weeks. Good news, her sister didn’t have to view the body. The coroner accepted her ID of the