A couple of Fairfax’s finest deputies have me firmly by the arms, hands cuffed behind my back. They’re leading me from the police station to the police van that will transport me to the county courthouse. All part of the elaborate arraignment dance choreographed by my attorney, after hurried negotiations with the state prosecutor. With me in the lead role, however reluctantly.

“You’ll be fine!” Maria shouts beside me. My little cheerleader, all five feet of her almost disappearing beneath the surging crowd. “Everything will be okay!”

Maybe, maybe not. If all goes well, I will be booked, arraigned and released on bond. Out by noon, possibly. Fingers crossed. The prosecutor will not oppose bail, but as Maria reminds me, final determination will be up to the court. There’s always the chance that an unsympathetic judge, or one who plays to the media, will deny bail and order me held over for trial. I’ve been informed that we will be appearing before Judge Irene “Good Night” Mendez, rated as moderate-to-conservative, so it could go either way.

The nickname comes from the song, apparently, and has nothing to do with putting the lights out on felons. Or so Maria wants me to believe. As if concerned about how I’ll react. Wanting to avoid a client meltdown, especially in public.

How do I react? With numbness, shock, disbelief. Several days of being told an arrest is probably imminent failed to prepare me for the reality. For the humiliation of a felony-arrest booking, the full-bore assault by the media, the knee-knocking realization that mere innocence does not guarantee exoneration.

Shane is nowhere to be seen. Camera shy. Last thing I’d said to him, before leaving for the station was “Find my son.”

He’d promised to do his best. I believe him, but will his best be good enough? I can’t bear the thought of being locked up while Tommy is still out there, at the mercy of the man in the mask. But it’s out of my hands. All I can do, all that lies within my limited power, is to trust my attorney.

Just before we arrive at the police van, a grinning, anorexic blonde with an outstretched microphone manages to worm her way to the front.

“Mrs. Bickford, were you having an affair with the victim?” she demands breathlessly.

Victim? For a moment I don’t know who she’s referring to. Probably because I feel like the victim here. But of course she means Fred Corso. Savalo has warned me not to answer any question. To keep, as she says, my lips firmly zipped. But I can’t let that one stand. What would Fred’s poor wife think if I refused to answer?

“No, of course not,” I say. “He was a good friend.”

“A good friend? Then why did you kill him?”

The cops pull me away before I can formulate an answer, and no doubt my startled expression—and my silence—will be featured on the local broadcasts.

Guilt all over me. I never harmed Fred Corso, but I feel guilty anyhow, and it shows.

Another few yards of struggle and I’m being pushed into the van, one of the officers keeping my head down, and then we’re under way. Padded microphones bumping against the windows like malignant palm fronds, a fading roar of questions from my newfound friends.

Maria hands me a hankie, makes soothing noises. Can’t remember when I started crying. Was I crying when they shoved the mic in my face? Is that what they’ll see on the news tonight, killer mom in tears?

Jared Nichols, the handsome young prosecutor, looks like he just stepped out of the pages of GQ. Gorgeous suit, perfect hair and a smile that has to be artificially improved, because human beings don’t come with teeth that white. A smile directed at my attorney, not at me.

“Maria,” he says, offering his hand. “You’ll be happy to know that Judge Mendez has barred the media from the arraignment. I see you made it through the gauntlet.”

“Not quite,” she says. “Broke my heel.”

“Your heel?” He seems genuinely concerned.

“My shoe, Jared. My best Blahniks.”

He turns a searching gaze at me, as if memorizing the face of an enemy combatant. “Bill it to your client,” he tells Maria. “She can afford it.”

“Jared,” Maria responds sharply. “Be nice.”

Because she doesn’t dare appear before the court in bare feet, Maria grips the table so as not to wobble disrespectfully on her broken shoe when the judge enters.

“All rise,” declaims a stentorian voice.

We’re already standing. The judge enters, regal in her black robe, and I’m stunned by her youth. I’d been expecting someone with gray in her hair, peering over bifocals. Instead “Good Night” Mendez can’t be a day older than me. Is that possible? Do people my age get to be judges? And what does it mean for my chances? I’d been hoping for grandmotherly concern and now find myself fearful that a contemporary may assume what the media assumes, that I was having a fling with the local police chief and killed him in the heat of passion, or to further my own agenda somehow.

Mendez glances at something on her desk, presumably the arraignment papers. “State of Connecticut versus Katherine Ann Bickford,” reads the judge. “Mr. Nichols, you may begin,” she adds, squinting slightly, as if prepared to be dazzled by his radiant smile.

The prosecutor reads from a paper held in his rock-steady hands. “The state charges Katherine Ann Bickford with the murder of Frederick Napoleon Corso, in the town of Fairfax, on or about June 21, in violation of General Statutes 53a–54a, that she did cause the death of Mr. Corso and did subsequently seek to hide her crime by secreting his body in her home…”

He drones on, but I’m having trouble following the legal jargon, or coping with the surprise of Fred’s rather grand middle name. Napoleon? What was his mother thinking? I’m trying to see Fred as a little boy on the playground, defending the name, or hiding it. But then children wouldn’t necessarily know who Napoleon was, would they? So maybe it was okay, no harm no foul, as Tommy likes to say.

Maria, aware of my faltering concentration, gently nudges me to sit up straight as Judge Mendez grills the prosecutor about the evidence supporting his charge.

“I assume the state has sufficient evidence to justify an arraignment for felony murder?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Do you intend to keep it a secret, Mr. Nichols?”

“No, Your Honor. Sorry. The victim’s body was found in Mrs. Bickford’s home freezer. There was a document on the body that the prosecution will show implicates Mrs. Bickford in the disappearance of her adopted son.”

“How very convenient,” says the judge. “Anything else?”

“Yes, Your Honor. A gun was found hidden in the same freezer, inside a bag of frozen peas. Ballistics has confirmed that this was the weapon used to kill Mr. Corso.”

“In a bag of frozen peas?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“I suppose the defendant’s fingerprints were all over the gun?”

“Ah, no, Your Honor. The gun was wiped clean. But the prosecution would expect that, Your Honor.”

“Expect what, Mr. Nichols? Would you care to be more specific?”

“That the perpetrator would remove fingerprint evidence.”

“I see. You would expect the killer to remove fingerprints but not to remove the body or the weapon from her own basement? I’m not sure I follow the logic.”

“Murder isn’t always logical, Your Honor. And the victim weighed over two hundred pounds. The defendant would have had trouble moving the body on her own.”

“But no trouble loading the body into the freezer?”

“We, ah, believe the defendant capable of, ah, leveraging the deceased into the freezer.”

“Leverage?” says the judge. “As in ‘give me a lever and I shall move the earth’?”

“Yes, Your Honor. But in this case the body of the victim, not the entire earth.”

“Well, that’s a relief, Mr. Nichols. Is there more?”

“Not at this time, Your Honor.”

“Ms. Savalo?”