Kathy caught herself trying to picture it.

“Maybe he’s crazy.”

“It’s possible,” Marialena said. “What we know for sure, he’s pretty horny for a guy his age, almost sixty.”

There he was now, and to look at him he appeared harmless. About five-seven with a solemn, bony face, dark hair combed flat to his head. Maybe too dark, Kathy thought. He dyed it. A little guy in judicial robes that looked too big for him. Round-shouldered in a way that made him seem purposeful crossing to the bench. His bailiff, Robbie, a sheriff’s deputy in a uniform sport coat, told everyone to rise. Kathy glanced around. There weren’t more than a dozen spectators, friends or relatives of offenders sitting in the front row, the ones in state blue.

Everyone remained standing as Judge Bob Gibbs looked over his court, his gaze moving from the public defender, a young guy Kathy didn’t know, to a county deputy removing Dale Crowe’s handcuffs. Now he was looking this way, where Kathy stood at the prosecution table with Marialena Reyes.

He said, “Buenos días, ladies. I see we have the Latinas versus the Anglos today. Good luck, boys. You’re gonna need it.”

The young public defender smiled. Dale Crowe, standing next to him now, didn’t smile. The judge turned as his court clerk, Mary Ellen, handed him a case folder. He glanced at it and then looked toward the court reporter relaxed behind his steno machine. “You want this one in English, don’t you, Marty?”

Marty said, “Yes sir,” without moving, as deadpan about it as the judge.

Looking this way again, Gibbs said, “Ladies, is that okay with you? We take it slow and talk Southern? Else I don’t think it would be fair to the defense.”

Marialena Reyes smiled and said, for the people of the state of Florida, “I would prefer it, Your Honor.”

“Ms. Bacar, is it okay with you?”

The little bigot with his solemn face and dyed hair stared at her, waiting.