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beyond toleration, then this case surely requires that declaration.
    “I’m afraid that I’m going to have to side with Summerset on this one,” he says. Koll makes a face. “Nathan, the defendants are entitled to be judged on what they argued, not what they didn’t. I will say, though, that Sapperstein’s claim about the statute of limitations has quite a bit of traction with me. Ms. DeBoyer knew she might have been raped but said nothing. How can we say the crime was concealed?”
    “Because that was the trial judge’s conclusion,” answers Summer at once. “He saw the young woman testify. He felt that, given her age and inexperience, those boys kept her from knowing enough to report the crime. We have to defer to him.”
    In George’s mind Sapperstein has made his most telling argument on this point, contending that the trial judge’s reliance on Mindy’s age means he was essentially applying an exception to the statute of limitations for crimes committed against minors. In such a case, the victim has a year from her eighteenth birthday to report the offense. But Mindy was three months past nineteen when the tape came to light.
    Much as Koll turned to him a moment before, George now looks at Nathan.
    “I’m afraid that I’m going to have to side with Summerset on this one,” Koll answers, echoing George’s precise words. Tit for tat. So much for the majesty of the law.
    George ponders where they are. Three judges and three different opinions in a case that is already highly controversial. As the senior, George is supposed to fashion a compromise that will not lead the court into ridicule. A reversal, with no agreement why, will only fan the flames in Glen Brae. More important, their job is to declare the law, not hold up their palms and say to the world ‘Who knows?’ Accordingly, he decides to write the opinion himself. Years ago, before Rusty Sabich became Chief Judge, when the appellate court was a retirement camp for able party loyalists, opinions were assigned in advance by rotation, and dissents were all but forbidden. In practice, appeals were argued to a court of one, with the lawyers standing at the podium engaged in a legal shell game, attempting to guess which of the three judges was actually deciding the case.
    “I’ll take this one,” he says, and with that stands, calling the conference to a close.
    Nettled as always when he does not get his way, Koll directs a heavy look at George.
    “And are we affirming or reversing?”
    “Well, Nathan, you’ll have to read my draft. I’ll circulate it within the week.” Koll will write his own opinion anyway, a concurrence or a dissent, depending on which way George goes. “This case is-” says Judge Mason and stops cold. He still has no idea how he is going to vote, which argument he’ll champion and which he’ll reject. Decisiveness is a job requirement and one at which he normally excels. His continuing discomfort with People v. Warnovits remains troubling but suddenly not as much as what he was on the verge of blurting out. He has no clue even what the words could mean, but he was ready to tell his two colleagues, ‘This case is me.’

5
THE GARAGE
     
    In the late 1980s, the Third District Appellate Court was relocated by the County Board. Litigation had become a growth business in Kindle County, much like everywhere else in America, and the need for more civil courtrooms in the Superior Court building, known as the Temple, had forced the appellate judges to take up residence a mile away in the Central Branch Courthouse, where criminal cases were tried. Bolstered by Reagan-era law enforcement money, the County constructed a large criminal court annex. The appellate judges were allotted most of the grand spaces in the old building, which had been erected with the rich architectural detail characteristic of public projects during the Depression, when skilled tradesmen worked cheap. Nonetheless, many of the jurists were unhappy to move