Chapter 6 - The Emergency Hearing
Judge Vance—no relation to my family, though he had known my late father through the local rotary club—was a seventy-year-old jurist with thick white hair and eyebrows that resembled twin thunderclouds. He did not like disorder in his courtroom, and he did not like liars.
When Patricia and I walked in, Marcus was already sitting at the defense table.
He had rushed there straight from my house. He had thrown on a wrinkled navy blazer over an untucked dress shirt, his hair unwashed, dark rings circling his eyes. Beside him sat Richard Croft, an attorney known around town for handling messy DUIs and quickie bankruptcies for strip-mall developers. Croft looked distinctly uncomfortable.
Across the gallery, sitting alone in the back row with dark sunglasses and a beige trench coat, was Diane.
She didn't look at me. She kept her head down, clutching a designer handbag that my hospital overtime had paid for six months ago.
"Counsel," Judge Vance rumbled from the bench, leafing through the red-tabbed petition Patricia had filed ninety minutes earlier. "We are here on an ex parte motion for an emergency temporary restraining order, immediate sole legal and physical custody of minor child Leo Vance, and an order of exclusive occupancy for the marital residence on Elmwood Avenue. Mr. Croft, I assume you have read Mrs. Vance’s affidavit?"
Croft stood up, clearing his throat and pulling at his collar. "Your Honor, we only received the moving papers forty minutes ago. This is an unprecedented ambush. My client, Marcus Vance, is a respected local architect. What we have here is an unfortunate domestic dispute, an argument between spouses that has been blown out of proportion by—"
"Mr. Croft," Judge Vance interrupted, his voice dropping an octave. "Did you look at Exhibit B?"
Croft swallowed hard. "Exhibit B, Your Honor?"
"The digital photographs," the judge said, his thundercloud eyebrows drawing together. "Taken at 3:14 AM. Showing minor child Leo Vance asleep on a cold kitchen tile floor, three feet from an open exterior door, during an active National Weather Service freeze advisory. While the defendant was occupied in another room."
Marcus shot to his feet. "Judge, that’s out of context! The door had a faulty latch! I had put Leo down in his bed at eight o'clock—he must have sleepwalked! He does that sometimes! He wanders!"
"He is four years old, Mr. Vance," Judge Vance said, his gaze pinning Marcus to the floorboards. "Does a four-year-old child climb out of a crib with thirty-inch rails, navigate a dark hallway, walk past the master bedroom, enter the kitchen, pull down a kitchen towel to use as a blanket, and lie down on freezing linoleum—all while you were 'sound asleep' in the guest room?"
"Yes! I mean, no, but it’s possible—"
"And Exhibit C," Judge Vance continued, turning a heavy page. "The digital photo of your tablet sitting on the bedside table. Displaying a text message from your co-habitant, Diane Vance, sent at 11:42 PM, discussing the diversion of marital property and the forged refinancing of the Heron Lake cabin."
Diane made a small, strangled sound in the back row.
Marcus looked like he had been struck with a baseball bat. He whipped his head around toward me, his face turning an ugly shade of mottled purple. "You went through my tablet? That’s illegal! That’s an invasion of privacy! Patricia, tell her—she broke into my private communications!"
"Your tablet was unlocked and glowing on the nightstand while you were passed out next to your sister-in-law, Mr. Vance," Patricia said calmly, not even bothering to stand up. "In plain view of the rightful homeowner whose kitchen floor was currently serving as a freezer for her four-year-old son."
"Your Honor!" Croft pleaded, sweating visibly. "Even if the court is inclined to enter a temporary restraining order, Marcus has an architectural practice run out of the home studio on Elmwood Avenue. Evicting him would destroy his livelihood. We ask that the residence be partitioned temporarily—"
"Denied," Judge Vance slammed his hand down on the mahogany desk. "Mr. Vance, you will vacate the premises on Elmwood Avenue by two o'clock this afternoon. You will be accompanied by a deputy sheriff to collect one suitcase of personal clothing and toiletries. You will not touch a single computer, file, or piece of electronic equipment in that studio until Mrs. Vance’s forensic accountant has completed an inventory."
"Judge, my blueprints are in that office!" Marcus yelled, his panic spilling over into open hysteria. "I have clients! I have contracts!"
"Then you should have thought about those contracts before you decided to turn your marital home into an illicit boarding house and your child into an afterthought," the judge snapped. "Sole physical and legal custody of Leo Vance is granted immediately to the mother, Elena Vance. Mr. Vance, you are prohibited from contacting your wife directly, indirectly, through family members, or via electronic means. You are prohibited from coming within one thousand feet of minor child Leo Vance, his preschool, or Mrs. Vance’s place of employment."
Judge Vance scribbled his signature across the three-part blue order with a heavy brass fountain pen, the nib scratching loudly in the dead-silent courtroom.
"Furthermore," Judge Vance added, looking up and fixing his stare directly on Diane in the back row, "I am referring Exhibit C and the attached property deeds to the County District Attorney’s Economic Crimes Division for an immediate investigation into mortgage fraud and identity theft."
Diane rose from her seat like a ghost, stumbling over her own heels as she practically fled through the double doors into the hallway.
Marcus collapsed back into his chair, his hands over his face, his shoulders shaking.
I sat beside Patricia. For the first time in eight hours, my hands weren't shaking. My chest felt clear, wide open, like an ICU corridor after the alarm bells have finally stopped ringing and the patient is breathing on their own.
May you like
"We aren't done, Elena," Patricia murmured beside me, closing her folder with a sharp, satisfying snap. "That was just the perimeter fence. Now we go dig up the bodies in the backyard."
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