Nine years as a courtroom sketch artist had taught me exactly one rule. I draw what's in the room.
Not what the lawyers wish were in the room. Not what the defendant's mother would prefer. Not a slightly thinner version of the district attorney, who once sent me a fruit basket with a card that said "Be kind."
I ate the fruit. I drew his chin as it was.
I was thirty-four and worked freelance for Harmon Eleven News. That meant I sat in courtrooms where cameras weren't allowed and turned them into pictures by six o'clock. Every courtroom in the Harmon County Courthouse has one press chair in the front row, just left of the jury box. Everyone calls it Seat One, and it was mine.
I owned a canvas bag of pastels, a drawing board, and a folding stool I had never once needed. I kept my hair pinned up with a pencil. That way I always had a spare.
There was one thing I never drew, and that was me. People asked about it sometimes, and I always gave the same answer. I'm not in the room. I'm the part of the room that's watching.
The only other sketch artist in the city was Leon Gast. Leon was sixty-three, drew for the Harmon Courier, and had started back when courtrooms had ashtrays. He was a lovely man and a gifted artist. He also drew everyone as if they were about to be put on a coin.
"You made that defendant look like a Roman senator," I told him once, after an embezzlement hearing.
"He has a strong profile," Leon said.
"He has no profile. He has a neck that goes straight up into a hat."
"Kindness is also a line, Wren," Leon said. Then he went back to shading a jaw that did not exist.
The trial everyone in Harmon City wanted to see was Pemberton v. Halloran. It was a civil case. Nobody had been hurt, nothing had been stolen, and the damages sought were one dollar.
It was about a gnome.
Dolores Pemberton was sixty-seven, a retired school librarian. Gil Halloran was seventy, a retired shop teacher. They had been next-door neighbors on Larkspur Lane for thirty-one years, and friends for twenty-eight of them.
Then Gil poured a concrete garden gnome in his garage, painted it, named it Barnaby, and set it at the edge of his lawn.
Barnaby weighed three hundred and forty pounds. According to the surveyor Dolores hired, he sat eleven inches over the property line, in the middle of her tulip bed. According to Gil, the surveyor was "a man with a stick and an agenda."
That might have stayed a small story. Then Gil started dressing Barnaby for the seasons. A scarf in January, a straw hat in July, a pumpkin costume every October. Somebody posted the photos, and by the second year Barnaby had more followers than the mayor.
Harmon Eleven had run fourteen segments on what my producer called the Gnome Wars. My producer was Marcus Fell. He was forty-one and spoke exclusively in headlines.
"Gnome trial. Day one. Packed house," he said when he called that morning. "Faces. Drama. Six o'clock."
"It's a property line dispute, Marcus."
"Neighbors. Betrayal. Tulips," he said. "Six o'clock."
Courtroom 4B was full forty minutes before the doors opened. People had brought folding chairs to the hallway. A man by the elevator was selling buttons that said FREE BARNABY and, for balance, buttons that said BARNABY OUT. He was doing well with both.
Deb Kowalczyk let me in early, the way she always did. Deb was fifty-eight and had been a bailiff in this building for twenty-six years. She did the crossword through everything: arraignments, sentencings, a fire drill in 2019.
She also read the clues out loud, mostly to herself, at moments that felt chosen.
"Big crowd," I said.
"'Three-ring affair,' six letters," Deb said, without looking up. "Circus." She wrote it in.
"Pen, hon," she added, when she saw me looking. "Never pencil. Pencil is for people who plan to be wrong."
Barnaby himself was not in the room. A court order had left him on Larkspur Lane under a tarp, guarded by Gil's cousin. Instead, Priscilla Vandermeer, counsel for the plaintiff, had brought him on easels.
Priscilla was forty-five, wore suits the color of wet cement, and had never made a point without a stand to put it on. She had four easels today. Barnaby looked smug on every one.
At the defense table sat Teddy Okonkwo, twenty-nine, counsel for Gil. It was his first jury trial. I knew this because he told me in the hallway, then told Deb, then told the button man.
He had already dropped his pen three times. Gil sat beside him in a corduroy jacket, patting his arm like someone calming a nervous horse.
Then Deb turned her crossword face down and said, "All rise."
Judge Raymond Achterberg was fifty and had been on the bench for fourteen years. Lawyers called him the Iceberg. It was partly the name. Mostly it was the fact that nobody had ever seen him smile on duty.
He was tall, silver at the temples, and moved like a man who had calculated the shortest route to his chair. His robe was pressed. His glasses were thin and rimless. Lawyers who had raised their voices in his courtroom described the experience the way people describe frostbite.
I had sketched him maybe forty times, and he looked identical in all of them. Leon said Achterberg was the only subject he had never managed to improve.
He sat. He looked at the room, and the room went quiet just from being looked at.
"Pemberton versus Halloran," he said. "We are here about a gnome. I would like the record to reflect that I am aware of that. That is the last time today anyone in this room will laugh."
Nobody laughed. Teddy dropped his pen.
I started on the outline. Bench, flag, the county seal. Glasses, jaw, the flat line of the mouth. Openings are where you get your six o'clock picture, so I worked fast.
Then the judge crossed his legs.
Here is something about Courtroom 4B that almost nobody knew. During a renovation in 2019, a carpenter removed the side panel of the judge's bench to fix a wire. He never put it back.
From the gallery you couldn't tell, and from the jury box you couldn't either. From exactly one chair in the building, you could see a narrow gap between the hem of the judge's robe and his shoe.
That chair was Seat One.
His right sock was bright orange and covered in small cartoon tacos. Each taco had a face. Every face was delighted.
His left sock was navy blue, with little yellow ducks in rain slickers.
I looked at the judge's face. Ice. I looked back down. Tacos and ducks.
I looked at his face again, the way you check a stove you already know is off.
Priscilla was saying something about "the sanctity of a tulip bed." Teddy was sweating through his collar. Deb was writing a word into her crossword. Nobody else in the room could see what I could see.
I had a rule. Nine years, and I had never broken it.
I took out the orange.
The sketch took forty minutes, and it was one of my better ones. Priscilla at her easels, mid-gesture. Dolores in her pearls, staring straight ahead. Gil patting Teddy's arm.
Above them sat the Honorable Raymond Achterberg, rimless and glacial. In the lower right corner, through the gap under the bench, were two socks. One with smiling tacos. One with ducks in raincoats.
I didn't make them bigger than they were. I didn't add an arrow. I drew them the size they were, in the colors they were, exactly where they were.
I sent the scan to Marcus at 4:15. At 4:16 he called.
"Is that," he said.
"Yes."
"Tacos."
"Yes."
"Judge. Socks. Tacos." His voice did something I had never heard before. It went quiet. "Wren. Is this real?"
"I draw what's in the room."
There was a long pause. Behind him I heard someone at the station laugh, then a second person, then what sounded like a palm hitting a desk.
"Six o'clock," Marcus said, and hung up.
The sketch aired at 6:04. By 6:11 my phone had stopped being a phone. It had become a small warm object that buzzed without stopping.
At 6:19 one text came in from a number I didn't know. No greeting. No signature.
Chambers 4. 8:00 a.m. Bring the orange.
Up next: Chambers 4
Continue to Part 2 →