Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk (Henry David Thoreau).

Mercedes Hanson had always believed in swinging for the fence. If she was ever to break out of this local news market, she needed to do something spectacular, and she was always on the look-out for what that might be. Every story was reviewed by her with this consideration in mind. She was competent, hard-driving, and ambitious, which successfully grouped her in with about three million other blonde local news reporters. She had never heard the term News Babe applied to her, but it almost certainly would not have bothered her if she had. She believed in swinging for the fence, and that meant using everything you had. No harm if other people noticed some of what you had.

The court date for the civil trial had been set for the third Tuesday of the month. The months leading up to this point had seen all sorts of motions and countermotions, but this was the first time that everybody was going to be in the courtroom together. Mercedes had succeeded, through flattery, cajoling, and smashmouth negotiations, in securing a very brief interview with Chad Lester at the courthouse just fifteen minutes before he was to appear in the courtroom. She had had the room reserved and secured, she had her people confirm and reconfirm with Lester’s office in the weeks leading up to the interview. At the beginning, it was just going to be a regular interview, but as the date approached, an idea began to form in her mind, and by the week of the court date, she was resolved on what she was going to do. Nothing like a little extra sensationalism in the midst of an already sensational trial. It was a national story already, and so why not? She had been in the corridor outside their reserved room many times, and whenever court was in session, it was always crowded. More than crowded enough.

The court time was at 10:00 am, and Mercedes was there with her crew at 9:30. There were two connected rooms reserved for them. The first room was small, and that was where she intended to put her plan into action. The second room sat empty, and the only significant thing about it was a door that Mercedes had somehow overlooked, a door that emptied out into another corridor. She had set the camera crew up in the corridor outside the first room, so that she could do her preliminary intro, and set the stage for what was to come.
Chad Lester had arrived, right on time, at quarter till. He seemed to her to be a pasty, sickly white. Mercedes greeted him, and opened the door for him. “I have to finish the set-up shot here. We’ll be right in. Second room . . . right, the second room.”

He disappeared into the door, and Mercedes turned to her cameraman. “Get that?” she asked. He nodded. “Great visual,” he said.

Mercedes turned back to the camera, microphone held at the ready. “And so we come to a critical day in a long and distinguished ministerial career. Will this be a day of vindication . . . or of something else?” With that, and with a dramatic flourish, she turned and went inside the door. Her cameraman had been instructed to wait for a few minutes, but he had not known why. News Babe had her quirks. But who didn’t?

When the door closed behind her, Mercedes leaned back against it, and took a few deep breaths. Then, without a qualm or a second thought, she put the microphone down, reached up and tore the front of her blouse, pulled herself askew, and then reached up and disheveled her hair. She picked up the microphone, slowly counted to thirty, and lurched back out the door again. She fell out the door and halfway out of her blouse, plainly looking as though she had just escaped from groping clutches. Her cameraman jumped. “Mercedes!” He started to put the camera down, but she motioned at him fiercely. “The story first,” she blurted, in a hoarse whisper. She stood upright, pulled her blouse together, lifted her microphone, and in a voice that was barely steady, began to report the story.

“Unbelievably,” she said, “this man, Chad Lester, on trial here for sexual misconduct was unable to control himself even . . . even on the threshold of judgment.” She choked up for a moment. “Excuse me,” she said after a moment. She hadn’t done this well since her supreme moment in a high school production of The Glass Menagerie. Tears ran down her cheeks. Her eye makeup was seriously blurred, and she looked out the twin smudges at the camera. Staring at the screen, John Mitchell described her to Cindi as a sensuous and emotionally worked up raccoon.

* * *

Chad Lester walked into the first room, stopped for a moment, and then into the second. He had been afraid of being late, and so he had not stopped at the men’s room on the way in. But that woman was still out in the hallway, blowing introductory smoke for the viewing public. He put his briefcase in the middle of the table so she would know that he would be back in a minute, and stepped out the back door. There was a men’ room just down the hall, or so he thought. It turned out to be one hall after that.

A few moments later, standing at the urinal, he felt someone tap on his shoulder. He looked up to see a bailiff. “Excuse me,” the man said. “Rev. Lester?”

Chad nodded, almost said, “Just call me Chad,” but stopped himself.

“Lucky I saw you walk by andn come in here.” the bailiff said. “I was told to get word to you and your attorneys that there has been a problem with the ventilation in Courtroom A, where we were scheduled. We had to move to the other side of the courthouse, down to the old courtroom. It’ll take a few minutes to get there. I’d be happy to show you the way.”

“Thanks. Thank you,” Chad said. He was relieved that he had an excuse for skipping out on the interview with Mercedes. They went out into the corridor, and Chad quickly popped back into the interview room to grab his briefcase—no sign of Mercedes yet—and popped out again. He and the bailiff headed down the corridor, and then turned left, a route that would take them right past where Mercedes was standing, blowsy and disheveled, and astonishing the greater metropolitan area with her story. And her remarkable story was going to go national, but not in the way she had hoped.

“When did this happen?” someone in the crowd cried out.

“Just seconds ago,” she barely managed to reply. “Just now.”

With that reply there was a commotion in the hallway to her right, as the crowd stepped aside to let Chad and the bailiff walk by. Mercedes’ cameraman, in fascinated horror, panned over to where Lester was walking, and then back to his former boss, standing, completely flustered, in front of the doorway.

A voice from the back of the crowd called out to the bailiff, “How long you been with Lester?” The question was from a shrewd observer of the human condition. The bailiff’s brow furrowed. “Five minutes. Why?” He would not get an answer to that question until that evening when he saw himself on the news. Mercedes licked her lips, thinking furiously. “Don’t,” said her cameraman. “I’m turning this thing off now.”

* * *

In some ways, even though the board of Camel Creek had finally dismissed him the previous week, this day at the courthouse was going to be all Chad’s. His life was in shambles, and he would have a lot of debris to sort through later on, but not very much of that debris was going to be falling out of the sky on this day.

Chad walked into the courtroom with a couple minutes to spare. His attorneys had gotten the word about the switch and were there ahead of him. Chad walked into the courtroom, and made his way up to the front table, where his legal team was waiting for him. On the other side, Robert P. Warner II was seated, head down, staring at the table. He was depressed. He didn’t have a good feeling about any of this. Mystic Union had spent a couple hours that morning talking him into a suitable frame of mind, and even then it was touch and go. She was seated in the front row, right behind Robert P., sitting at the ready in case she had to encourage him with an emotional rubber hose again. Their cause was in a parlous state.

Robert P. Warner II took three deep breaths, and then sat up straight. You have to do what you have to do. He then looked over in Chad’s direction for the first time, blanched, turned white, then ashen, and then he blanched again. He tugged furiously on his attorney’s arm. “Who’s that?” he hissed.

“What do you mean, ‘who’s that?’ That’s Lester,” the attorney said. If Robert P. had been following his own case in the newspapers, he would have seen Lester plenty of times. But he had been consumed with sleeping and blogging and watching serious French jiggle art and had no time for the case. The case wearied his soul. Mystic Union had followed everything scrupulously, but of course in her case it did not matter that she knew what Lester actually looked like. It made, as the fellow once said, no never mind.

Robert P. Warner II swiveled in his seat and looked at Mystic Union in desperation. She had been expecting this look of desperation, but didn’t know that this time there was actually an objective basis for it. Nevertheless, she was prepared with soothing encouragements. But Robert was not suffering here from his general malaise, but rather with the sure and certain knowledge that the man they were suing for molesting him years before—not that Robert had minded it, actually—was not the man who had actually done it. His eyes were wide open, filled with panic, as well as filled with a sure and certain knowledge of impending doom. There was no way they were going to win this case before, and now there was no way they were going to win this case either. Same as before, only worse. But when he turned to whisper the problem to Mystic Union, his eyes happened to fall on a familiar face, in the back row of the courtroom. There was no way that Michael Martin could avoid coming to support Chad, but he had taken care to slip into the way back. But Warner’s eye fell on him there, and he suddenly realized what must have happened. Maybe Camel Creek had more than one pastor! And there he was, sitting way the heck at the wrong end of the courtroom.

Instead of telling his attorney about it, Robert P. Warner II stood slowly to his feet. Mystic Union was gesturing furiously at him, but he ignored her. Throwing his head back, he pointed to Chad, and wailed. The courtroom fell silent and listened to Warner, keening and howling and muttering furiously at the ceiling. At first the noise was unintelligible, but after a time, people began to realize that he was saying, over and over again, “That’s not him! That’s not the one!” This went on for a couple minutes. The judge didn’t gavel him to shut up because nothing was in session yet. Everybody just stared, fascinated. And then, as if in response to someone throwing a big breaker somewhere, Robert P. Warner II slumped, shumped, and fell to the floor. He there assumed the demeanor and outlook of a bean bag chair, and ceased cooperating with anyone.

After ten minutes of pandemonium all around him, furious whispering between attorneys, two conferences with the judge, and ineffectual attempts by Mystic Union to get him to sit up, Robert P. quit saying, “That’s not him! That’s not the one!” and started saying, “Drop it, drop it!” Finally, one of his attorneys stood up, shrugged, and walked over to Chad’s table and said, “We are going to withdraw our suit.” He then walked over to the judge, and told him the same thing. The judge told the bailiffs to get a medical spatula crew, scrape Mr. Warner off the floor of his courtroom, and take him somewhere else.

Chad stood up, ran his hands through his hair, and whistled.

* * *

Bradford heard about the Warner meltdown from a detective friend who had been there. He could barely understand the story because his friend was wheezing so much, but when he did get it, he muttered golly under his breath, and said, “Excuse me.” He took off at a run, back to the other side of the courthouse. Radavic was not to be denied, and had thought that it was his bounden duty to file a criminal indictment that very same day. He was furious about all the column inches that had been going to the civil trial in the weeks leading up to it—although he didn’t exactly express it to himself that way of course—and he determined to do the right thing and bring an indictment. It would be a principled stand, and that is all he could or would say about it.

He had a stack of manila folders under his arm, and he was wending his way to Courtroom B. He was about to go in when Bradford came tearing around the corner, slammed into a wall, and then dashed the remaining twenty yards. Bradford slid to a stop alongside the prosecutor, gasped, “Thank God,” and then put his hands on his knees to catch his breath.

“Bradford . . .” Radavic said.

“Yes, sir,” Bradford said, and stood upright. “Thank God you haven’t filed anything yet.”

“Bradford, I am not going to listen to any more of this crap. Rourke’s memo bordered on professional impertinence but I let it go. Sometimes you simply have to do the right thing.”

“But sir, there is something else that has happened, something you have to take into account. I ran . . .”

“That’s enough, Bradford. Not another word.”

“Yes, sir.” Bradford watched in fascination as Radavic pulled open the thick wooden courtroom door, and walked in, the embodiment of civic duty. After the glory subsided somewhat, three reporters followed him in. “It was like watching a helicopter trying to land sideways,” he told Rourke later. “I didn’t go in to watch. That would have been creepy.”

* * *

Rourke had been present at the Warner saga, but only because he was looking for Charles Peaborne, and he thought for sure that he would be there. At least that is where Peaborne had said he would be on one of his latest “rip the cover off” blog posts. Savonarola.com had really taken off—there had been fifty-seven hits there just yesterday. One of them had been Rourke, seeing if Peaborne was planning on attending the opening ceremonies for the downfall of his nemesis Lester. He was, and so Rourke was there waiting for him afterwards.

Rourke was doing that because he had some questions he needed to ask Charles Peaborne. The investigator in Memphis who had arrested Miguel Smith, and done the initial interrogation, had called Rourke to let him know that Smith had fingered Peaborne as the one who had been cutting all the checks to Lester’s ex-mistresses. This had been done because Smith had vowed to himself, years before, that if anything bad ever happened to him, taking him out of his cushy position at Camel Creek, one of the first things he would do would be to confess to his involvement in covering up for Lester, and to do so in a way that would implicate Peaborne, right up to the top of his pencil neck. He could not abide that man. There had been a six-month controversy over which toner cartridges to buy for the church. It had been the easiest thing in the world to arrange the checks in such a way that Peaborne would not know what he was signing. And he did not know anything about all this, although Rourke was about to bring him abreast.

Rourke walked up to him in the foyer outside the courtroom, and tapped him on the shoulder. “Excuse me, Mr. Peaborne? Detective Rourke.” Rourke extended his hand and shook the hand of a somewhat startled man. “Do you have a moment for me to ask you a few questions?”