“Do you know who he is?”

“Yes,” I say, and my hands tremble. “And no,” I say. “I don’t know anything about him.”

Mandy pats my unshackled hand. “It’s going to be okay,” she says. Then, “I wish we’d had more time to go over this.”

Kateri turns forward again but keeps talking to me, barely moving her lips. “Is there any chance Bear could have hired someone to kill your mother?” Her voice is hoarse, raspy.

“I don’t know,” I say, and I feel like all my hair is standing on end. “He could hire anyone to do anything. Couldn’t he?”

She closes her eyes and shakes her head. “I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know anything anymore.”

When the judge calls me up, Mandy goes with me, and Kateri stays behind on the chair that is linked to all the other chairs and bolted to the floor. I stand a few feet back from the bench and say my whole name, Shannon Lee Jenkins, and then repeat my date of birth and social security number into the microphone.

There’s a bustling of whispers behind me, and I hear Kateri’s voice, and I wish it were her standing up here with me, but she says, “No, no cameras,” and then I hear Detective Hurt’s voice telling someone to get out.

The judge shuffles a stack of papers, straightening them, and then reads the charge:

“One count second-degree homicide in the killing of Craig John O’Neil. One count,” he continues, “of second-degree homicide in the killing of Pearl June Jenkins. One count, kidnapping and endangering the welfare of a child under the age of eight,” he says.

I shoot a look at Mandy, and she twitches her head, as if to say, hear him out.

The doors swish behind us. The previous arraignments are allowed to leave, and there’s a gust of warm air, and more voices, more of Kateri’s voice, and a kid’s voice even, which makes me think the domestic case dragged the kids in on one parent’s behalf or the other’s.

“Mr. Jenkins,” the judge says. “You have the right to a speedy, public jury trial. You have the right to representation, which I see has been provided for you. Miss Donovan,” he says.

“Good morning, Your Honor,” Mandy says.

The judge must be seventy. He looks like I imagine a professor would. Longish white hair, a white goatee. There’s a looseness in his arms, the way he leans, that I don’t expect but makes him seem more likable.

“Miss Donovan,” he says again, and smiles brightly at her. She’s cute, in her suit, with her gingery hair. “Do you have any question, or doubt in your mind, that your client is fit, mentally or otherwise, to stand trial in the charges placed against him?”

“No, sir, I do not,” she says.

“Is the defendant ready to enter a plea?” the judge asks.

“Yes, Your Honor,” Mandy says.

“Mr. Jenkins,” the judge says, “how would you like to plead to the charges listed against you?” It takes him a minute to look up from the paperwork and at me. When he does, when I have his eye contact, I answer.