Ed McBain_Matthew Hope 12 by Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear Page B

all along,” Amberjack said, and returned the smile. “Don’t get too busy you miss any hurricane coming. There’s
     a good radio on the boat, you keep it tuned to either channel one or channel three. You hear anything sounds like weather,
     you head right back in, hear?”
    “I told you, I’ll be careful.”
    “Never mind careful. You turn around and haul ass the minute you hear any kind of Coast Guard warnin.”
    “I will.”
    “I like that little boat,” Amberjack explained.
    In Florida, a so-called first appearance hearing is normally held before a County Court judge on the morning following an
     arrest. Quite some time ago, the state’s Supreme Court had ruled that even a person accused of a capital crime was entitled
     to bail. Moreover, the ruling held that unless proof of the crime were “evident” or presumption of the crime “great,” bail
     could not be denied. It was my job to ask for bail and to argue that it should be granted. It was the state attorney’s job
     to argue that the evidence he possessed was so legally overwhelming that a verdict of guilty was inevitable and thus bail
     should be denied. The judge’s job was to decide one way or the other. The decision was exclusively his to make. Or, in this
     instance, hers.
    The presiding judge this morning was a woman named Heather Grant, some forty years old and alarmingly attractive in black,
     probably because black was a good color for a redhead. Male attorneys tend to prefer homely female judges to pretty ones.
     I don’t know why that should be; no one in the legal profession debates whether a
male
judge has good legs or not. Heather had good legs and good breasts and flaming-red hair and beautiful brown eyes and she
     was a good dancer besides, as I’d discovered at many of Calusa’s charity balls. But she was one of the toughest judges on
     the County bench, especially where it concerned female defendants, go figure.
    Lainie Commins appeared before the Court in her unfashionable jailhouse threads, wearing lipstick, eyeliner, and blush, which
     her keepers had allowed for this hearing that would merely determine her immediate freedom. Tomorrow morning at nine, a grand
     jury would decide whether to indict or to dismiss. It was my personal opinion that the state attorney—in this case, an assistant
     named Peter Folger—would get the indictment he was seeking. But that was no reason to keep Lainie in jail for the next six
     or seven months or however long it took for her case to come to trial on an exceptionally crowded calendar.
    I told Heather that based on my investigation to date—which was bullshit, since all I’d done so far was talk to my client—I
     did not know of any eyewitnesses to the actual shooting, did not know of any conclusive forensic evidence, and believed that
     the prosecutions case was wholly circumstantial and that there was no evidence so great or proof so evident as to prevent
     the automatic granting of bail as provided by the statutes. Moreover, Ms. Commins had no previous record of violence, and
     no possible motive for the crime—she had, in fact, been seeking to resolve her differences with Mr. Toland in a court of law.
     In short, Lainie Commins posed no threat to society and was a responsible citizen with roots in the community, who would meet
     all scheduled court appearances. I then recited the “Let Freedom Ring” speech and asked that she be released on her own recognizance.
    I was pretty good, if I say so myself.
    Folger went the “Monstrous Beast” route, telling Heather that the victim had been shot twice in the face, that this angelic-looking
     woman sitting here was in fact a cold-blooded killer nursing a deep-seated anger against the victim, that exposure as an impostor
     and a thief was sufficient motive for the crime, that the danger of her fleeing the jurisdiction was very real in light of
     the airtight case the people had, and that releasing her on bail would also pose a danger to