Chapter 5 - The Forensic ReconciliationBy the third week of October, the autumn had finally cleared the heat from the wiregrass country.
The leaves on the live oaks in the courthouse square in Waycross were turning a deep, leathery bronze that rattled in the high wind off the Okefenokee swamp. Inside the chambers of Superior Court Judge Margaret Holloway, the only sound was the rhythmic, dry hiss of an ancient radiator that smelled of silver paint and boiler steam.
Judge Holloway sat behind her mahogany desk, wearing her black silk robe with the zipper pulled halfway down, her wire-rimmed glasses resting on the tip of her sharp, hawk-like nose.
Across from her sat four people:
Diane Vance, wearing a plain gray prison-issue smock over her street trousers, her hands resting in her lap without handcuffs, though her wrists showed the red, irritated marks of the transport restraints; her defense attorney, Arthur Vance (no relation to us, the public defender who had drawn the short straw from the county wheel); Assistant District Attorney Marcus Holloway; and me.
My father sat on the bench in the outer hallway, holding my service cap on his knees like an old dog waiting for a door to open.
"Mrs. Vance," Judge Holloway said, her voice dropping into that deep, flat, South Georgia drawl that had sent three generations of cattle rustlers and county commissioners to the state penitentiary. "I have reviewed the preliminary settlement agreement submitted by the state and your counsel."
Diane did not look up.
Her silver dome of hair had collapsed; it hung in thin, greasy strands around her ears, pinned back with two plastic bobby pins she had bought from the commissary cart in the county jail. Her face had lost that high, terrifying certainty; it was small, withered, the skin around her mouth creased into hundreds of tiny, vertical lines like the skin of a dried apple.
"Under the proposed diversion," the judge continued, looking over her spectacles at the papers, "you will enter a plea of nolo contendere to two counts of making a false report of a crime under Section 16-10-26, and one count of identity fraud under Section 16-9-121."
The public defender leaned forward. "Your Honor, the defendant has no prior criminal history—"
"The defendant has four years of continuous criminal behavior that she conducted through the United States Postal Service, Mr. Vance," Judge Holloway interrupted, her voice cutting through the lawyer's plea like an axe through a fat pine log. "The only reason she is not going to the women's facility at Hardwick for sixty months is because her daughter—the officer sitting three feet to her left—has requested that the court stay the custodial execution."
Diane’s head jerked up.
Her bloodshot, yellowed eyes locked onto my face for the first time since she had pointed her finger from the porch on Sycamore Lane.
"You?" she whispered. Her voice was cracked, raw, the sound of a voice that had spent three weeks shouting at the jail matrons through a steel food slot. "You asked for a stay?"
I did not look at her. I kept my eyes fixed on the state seal carved into the mahogany paneling behind the bench.
"I didn't ask for a stay for you, Diane," I said, my voice carrying that cold, dispassionate clarity that had kept my convoy alive through the western desert. "I asked for a stay for my father. Because if you go to Hardwick, the county places a lien on 412 Sycamore Lane to pay for the cost of your incarceration under the State Inmate Reimbursement Act. And David Vance has spent forty-two years paying off the thirty-year mortgage on that dirt. I will not have him sleeping in a rented trailer in his seventy-first year so you can have an audience for your martyrdom in the prison yard."
Judge Holloway nodded once—a sharp, decisive jerk of her chin that set the black silk of her lapels rustling.
"The terms of the diversion," the judge said, reading from the blue-backed instrument, "are as follows:
First: The immediate and complete surrender of all custodial authority over the Thomas Vance Estate, with full restitution of the twenty-four thousand dollars, plus statutory interest at seven percent, to be paid through the immediate forfeiture of the defendant's separate investment accounts in Coffee County.
Second: Five hundred hours of community service, to be performed under the supervision of the county road department, clearing trash along State Route 82.
Third: A permanent, irrevocable order of non-communication regarding Emily Vance, enforceable under the provisions of the Interstate Stalking Act.
And fourth: The defendant will execute a quitclaim deed transferring all her right, title, and interest in the real property located at 412 Sycamore Lane to David Vance, as his sole and separate estate forever."
Diane gasped.
It was not a cry of sorrow; it was the shrill, indignant shriek of an owner whose title to the horses has been revoked by the magistrate.
"The house?" she cried, her hands clawing at the edge of the judge's mahogany desk. "My grandfather's house? You are giving my house to David? He’s... he’s an uneducated mill hand! He doesn't know how to maintain an historic property! The garden club—"
"The garden club," Judge Holloway said, her voice dropping into a register of terrifying, judicial iron, "met on Tuesday evening, Diane. They voted unanimously to strike your name from their charter roll. And Mrs. Gable was elected president by acclamation."
The judge picked up her heavy wooden gavel from the brass stand.
"Sign the papers, Mrs. Vance. Or I will have the deputy call the transport van for Hardwick before the courthouse clock strikes twelve."
Diane looked at the public defender. The lawyer didn't look at her; he was already unscrewing the cap of a blue ballpoint pen and laying the four-page deed across the leather blotter.
She took the pen.
Her hand shook so violently that the point tore a tiny, three-cornered flap in the margin of page four before she could set the ink.
The signature was not the high, elegant Palmer script that had graced forty years of Baptist auxiliary programs. It was a jagged, spidery crawl, the letters breaking and staggering across the line like the tracks of an injured crow across wet sand.
When she finished, she dropped the pen. It rolled off the desk and fell onto the worn Persian carpet with a soft, dull thud.
"Get her out of my sight, Arthur," Judge Holloway said to the deputy who stood by the door. "Take her through the basement stairs. The television trucks are still at the front curb, and I have a probate hearing at one."
The deputy took Diane by the elbow—firmly, with the professional leverage of a man who spent forty hours a week moving reluctant livestock through holding pens—and steered her through the small side door that led to the clerk's lockup.
She did not look back at me.
She did not look at the desk.
May you like
She kept her eyes fixed on the linoleum floorboards, her gray institutional smock rustling like dry corn husks as the heavy oak door clicked shut behind her.
I stood up, buttoned the bottom button of my Army tunic, and walked out into the high, vaulted corridor of the courthouse.
