wait until she could.
She sidestepped a woman pushing a baby stroller on the sidewalk and jogged up the steps to the courthouse. There were thirty-two of them, in sets of eight. When she’d first started out, running up the steps had left her breathless. Six years later, she barely noticed them.
Inside, she joined the line at security and slid her bare arms into her navy blue blazer. Once through, she jogged up two more full flights of gleaming marble stairs to the third floor.
She slipped into Judge Waters’s courtroom with two minutes to spare and was standing at the defendant’s table with her files stacked in front of her before the judge entered, wearing his typically dour expression.
He looked over his half glasses. “Oh, goody.” His voice was humorless as he took his seat behind the bench. “All of my favorite people are here. Actually on time for once.” He poured himself a glass of water and shook out several antacid tablets from the economy-sized bottle sitting beside the water. “All right. As y’all ought to know by now, we’ll break at noon and not a minute before. So don’t bother asking. If you’re not lucky enough to be out of the court’s hair by noon, we’ll resume at half past one and not one minute after.”
He eyed the line of defendants waiting to be arraigned. They sat shoulder to shoulder, crammed into the hardwood bench adjacent to the defendant’s table where Greer stood. After this group, there was another waiting, just as large.
Judge Waters shoved the tablets into his mouth. “Let’s get started,” he said around his crunching.
All in all, it was a pretty normal morning.
* * *
Normal ended at exactly twelve fifty-five.
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