Smooth Talker (standard:drama, 1462 words)
Author: Otzchiim	Added: Oct 25 2000	Views/Reads: 4322/3038	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
It looked like the bad apple would finally be put away. The judge was going to throw the book at him, but he had a trick that wasn't even in the book.

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The court sat at nine in the morning.  The testimony and the standard
rigamarole should really have taken a little over two hours, but 
Worrall took it into his greasy little head to slow things down a 
little for no visible reason and to give a long meandering summation.  
This meant that we didn't finish until close to lunchtime. 

This was sort of all right with me, since Judge Sharp had put me on
bailiff duty for the morning session.  If I served in the afternoon for 
the conclusion of this case, I wouldn't have to go on patrol that 
evening.  (While I was present at Hill's arrest, Corbett went down as 
the arresting officer on the records.) 

Judge Sharp called Worrall, and the county prosecutor, and me as
bailiff, into his chambers about fifteen minutes before the recess was 
to end.  His stomach had been giving him trouble for the last couple of 
years, and the doctor had told him to stay off coffee -- so he 
compromised.  He kept off it from the time he got up until lunch, and 
from then to the end of the day.  But he said that the pills for his 
stomach were just too foul-tasting not to have with coffee. 

This meant that he had at least three cups around noon every day.  This
time his stomach acted up and he just lay down instead of eating.  So 
it was a good thing that this decision was the last thing that he had 
to do today, and he could just rest. 

The pills were out on his desk when we walked in.  The judge read out
with more relish than he would want some politicians to hear the 
statutes with the legal maximums in this case and what the final total 
would be.  He didn't exactly say what he had decided, but he 
complimented the prosecutor on building a fine case. 

The judge asked us to join him in coffee, and asked me to bring him a
cup.  Worrall volunteered to do that before I could move, but said he 
didn't want any himself.  Every time the judge's cup got low, Worrall 
was scurrying to refill it.  Judge Sharp must have had about five cups 
in that time, which really turned into twenty minutes instead of 
fifteen and got us into the courtroom late.  The prosecutor and I had 
one cup each. 

The judge was going pretty strong on all that caffeine, but he seemed to
run down fast.  He was almost slurring his words by the time he told 
the defendant to approach the bench. 

Then his voice came back strong. 

"The charges of drug possession and use are not sufficiently proven and
are dismissed.  In the light of the past conduct of the defendant and 
of the girl in question, I am taking it upon myself to reduce the 
charge of statutory rape to that of endangering the morals of a minor.  
The defendant is directed to pay the bailiff a fine of fifty dollars." 

There was a stunned silence, interrupted by Hill putting two twenties
and a ten in front of me and the door shutting behind him and Tyrone 
Worrall.  For most of a minute nobody else moved, though there was some 
muttering about Sharp going senile.  I quieted them, though I thought 
it odd that the judge did not say anything to do so himself.  I was 
walking toward him myself when he fell over. 

He had been drugged.  Most of it had been planned out, though they had
been helped some by luck.  Worrall had put a sedative and hypnotic into 
the coffee.  If it was in what the prosecutor and I drank, what we had 
wasn't enough to affect us -- and we had eaten lunch.  When Stephen 
Hill faced the judge, he stood in such a way that we couldn't tell that 
the judge's lips didn't move, and Hill just mimiced the judge's voice.  
   Nobody could see right off what which laws they had just broken, 
except obstructing justice, so a couple of patrolmen were sent out to 
hold Hill and Worrall on that for the few minutes until somebody looked 
in the books and wrote out the arrest warrants for other things. 

We were too late.  Hill's apartment was cleaned out, as were Worral's
home and office.  The bank accounts were closed the day before.  They 
must have driven straight out of town when they left the courthouse, 
and we couldn't do a thing locally.  The word went out to the state and 
the feds right away, but nothing ever came back. 

We got rid of our two local nuisances, but I wish we hadn't just passed
them on to somewhere else.  Probably Mexico, I would guess. 

the end 


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