States of Grace by Mandy Miller (top 100 books of all time checklist .TXT) 📕

holy mother of God, she left on a stretcher. It’s not as if she sneaked out to drink beer with her friends in a park like I used to do.”

Miranda sits stock still.

“Mental health care in the jail is bullshit. But ASA what’s-his-face will argue it’s just fine for Zoe. I’ve seen the psych pod” I say, pulling on a blouse that could do with an ironing. “It’s a hell hole where the staff have been known to derive morbid pleasure from strategically pairing cellmates with conflicting psychiatric diagnoses. They once bunked a catatonic schizophrenic in with a bipolar man who talked twenty-four seven. After several days of getting no response from his catatonic cellmate, the bipolar man resorted to beating him to get him to talk, hitting him so hard he broke eight ribs and punctured a lung. Pathologically mute, the catatonic man suffered in silence for hours until a psychiatrist found him in curled in the fetal position on the concrete floor covered in his own feces. Nice, huh?”

A head tilt to the left from the dog.

“What? I’m going soft?”

Head tilt to the right.

“Stop that!”

The judge’s name on the upper right-hand corner of the motion catches my eye. Not Garrison, but a trial judge, the result of random computer selection, a game of judicial bingo. And the winner is? The Honorable Josiah Twietmeyer. Back to square one ingratiating myself and Zoe with a new judge.

When I fling open the door, the humidity slaps me in the face like a wet rag, but the grandeur of the rising red-velvet sun, a fiery bridge between the horizon and the cotton-ball sky, makes the sticky discomfort worthwhile. For a brief second, I stand and marvel at Mother Nature.

“Well, well. Look who’s up bright and early,” Vinnie says from downstairs, broom in hand.

“Don’t say another word. Not one thing about me not being an early bird. And nothing about why I’m wearing this itchy straight-jacket of a suit in the middle of July.” I struggle downstairs, Oscar swinging wide each time I try to speed up, but Miranda hippity-hopping behind me as if it’s the most natural thing in the world to be a canine tripod.

“It might be within the rules and everything to let the other side know about a hearing with only four hours to spare, but I am sure the legislature of the great State of Florida did not mean hearings should be set in the middle of the f’ing night.”

Vinnie holds his hand out.

“No, not this time, old man. I’m not giving you ten damn bucks for saying f’ing, I mean, shit, it’s not even a—”

Vinnie doubles over in laughter.

“Not like he couldn’t have filed the damn thing yesterday. Maybe as a professional courtesy?” I jut my chin out at him. “Am I right? Or am I right?”

“Calm down, will ya? And just what motion are we talking about here, sweetheart?”

“To haul Zoe back to jail. Take away her bail.”

“Isn’t she locked up in the loony bin?”

“That’s the point. She’s supposed to be home, but she’s not. Why? Because she tried to kill herself. Where? At home. Not exactly the best argument for persuading the judge to let her go back home. What I don’t get is how the State knew? The hospital can’t even say she’s there. It’s protected health info. Maybe the cops who took her in…I don’t know.” Out of the corner of my eye I spy Miranda squatting on her back leg, poised to water Vinnie’s tomato plants.

“Hey, hey, no you don’t!” he screams, shooing her away from the plants with his ball cap. “Hey, Gracie, she’s a girl, right?”

“What? Zoe?”

“No, Miranda. Your dog. Ain’t girl dogs supposed to, you know, squat?”

“She may be nuts, but it’s not like she broke the rules to sneak out to a party.”

“Who? Miranda?”

“No, for God’s sake. Zoe.”

He throws his arms up. “Per l’amor di Dio! Start at the beginning of whatever it is that’s got you all pissed off.”

I point at him. “You owe me ten now. So let’s call us even.”

He shakes his head hard. “Not a chance. You’re into me for twenty. I only owe you ten.”

“Okay. Since you asked, the State is trying to revoke Zoe’s bail because she violated the judge’s order.”

Vinnie puffs out his cheeks. “I’m no lawyer, but the kid did try to off herself. Seems like she needs to be in a hospital, not a jail.”

“Maybe, or maybe it’s all an act. Maybe she wants to look crazy.”

“You sayin’ she’s crazy like a fox?”

“It’s a possibility. I mean she wouldn’t be the first murderer I’ve seen put on a show.”

“I remember this wise guy back in New York who went around in his bath robe and slippers to dodge a murder beef.”

“Did it work?”

“Nah, they got him in the end. Just like they always do,” he says, unlocking the office. “One thing I know for sure is that the government don’t give a plugged nickel about following rules, so long as they get what they need to screw with you.”

I look away, ashamed I was once a tool of the system that took away years of his life based on a lie, something I swore I’d never let happen again. And I won. But the way the State is pushing full-speed ahead on this, I’m getting the creeping sense of inevitability I used to get when I had a defendant dead to rights and there wasn’t anything the defense, no matter how good, could do about it.

As quickly as Vinnie’s face hardened a few seconds ago, it brightens. “You’re a smart cookie. You’ll find a way. From what you’re saying about that bozo making a sneak attack, I’d guess you know more than a little about how the game is played. That motion trick. The four-hour-rule thing you said. I’m thinking you’ve done this kinda thing in the past?” He wags a finger at me and steps into the street to hail a passing taxi. “Your chariot awaits.”

Miranda’s stares up