Dignity

The Judge's eyes darted back and forth between the two, and before anyone could say anything else he picked up the case file from his desk. "Okay," he said, "I guess we ought to talk about this thing."

He looked down to read from the volume of the criminal code, called the "Two-C" for the chapter of state law that it fell under, lying on his desk. "'A person who purposely aids another to commit suicide is guilty of a crime of the second degree . . .' Bob, I have never seen something like this charged. What happened here?"

Beckwith straightened up in his chair and cleared his throat. "This woman's son had cancer. In his brain, I think." He looked over at Weigand who nodded. "It apparently got pretty bad, and he decided he wanted to kill himself. He was too weak to do it alone, so she helped. Fed him enough sleeping pills so that he passed out and died."

"And that's illegal?" the Judge asked.

In response, Beckwith gestured with an open hand towards the criminal code.

"I guess it is," the Judge said. He looked down at the book again. "And this other guy?"

"That's Jerome Walsh. Reverend Jerome Walsh I guess. He's a minister who was advising them on how to commit suicide. We think he brought them the drugs."

"I take it that's illegal too?" The Judge said. Beckwith gestured at the code once more.

"Right," said the Judge. "And just how is it that we know about this anyway? I mean did the kid kill himself in public or something?"

Beckwith shook his head. "No, they were at home. The kid died in his bed. The way we found out about it is one for the record books. Apparently, at around two o'clock this morning, the police got a call of a domestic disturbance at nine eighteen Ryders Lane in East Brunswick. But somebody got mixed up in sending it out on the radio, and the cops in the car got it as nine eighty Ryders Lane, which is where Mrs. Goodman lives. So they got to the house and saw lights on, and figured that they were at the right place, because who has lights on at that hour, and they went and knocked on the door. Mrs. Goodman answered, and seeing two cops standing there, she apparently stepped back and said 'Oh my God.'" Beckwith put his hands up to his mouth to demonstrate.

"So the younger of the two cops, who'd only been on the force for a few months and was apparently pretty keyed up at going into someone's house, he steps right in after her and sees the kid lying there on the couch looking pretty still. Now keep in mind, he's still thinking that this was a domestic disturbance call, so he runs over to check if the kid's all right. When he sees that he's dead, he thinks the mother killed him. He starts to get all agitated, which shakes Mrs. Goodman up even more and she passes out. Fortunately, his partner, who's a little older, managed to calm things down, and after she came to he talked to her about what happened and she told him the whole story."

"You have got to be kidding me," said the Judge, to which all three lawyers responded by shaking their heads. Chris didn't know what to say, and concentrated on keeping his mouth shut.

The Judge whistled. "Well it's one for the books all right. I've had cases where the cops misread a warrant and end up searching the wrong house, but I never had one where they stumbled on a crime in progress. If that's the word to use here." He shook his head again. "Okay, so the cops found this case by accident. I take it that the minister -- what's his name again?"

"Walsh," said Neil Kearnes. "Jerome Walsh."

"Walsh. Okay, so I take it that he was in the house when the cops got there, and that's why we arraigned him too?" the Judge asked. Neil Kearnes nodded.

"What a mess. My head's starting to spin already. Now lets get to the next thing I don't understand. Jim, with all due respect, what are you doing here? This is not exactly your sort of case."

"Claire Goodman is my secretary. She called me at five o'clock this morning from the police station. I guess I'm the only lawyer she could think of."

"Lucky her," the Judge said.

Weigand shrugged. "Anyway, she was scared to death, as you can imagine, so I told her I'd come right down and do what I could to get it taken care of right away. The powers that be," he gave a slightly impatient gesture with his head towards Beckwith, "Did not see fit to just drop this thing, but they were at least kind enough to schedule a quick arraignment so I could get Claire out of here and take her home. Now I'd like to try and get this thing moving so we can wrap it up quickly."