BBH01 - Cimarron Rose (32 page)

'Yeah, after dark, when they don't have no business
being there.'

I picked up a vinyl bag from the exhibit table and
removed five Lone Star beer cans and two dirt-impacted wine bottles
from it.

'Are these the cans and bottles you recovered at the
crime scene, sir?' I asked.

'Yeah, that looks like them.'

'They are or they aren't?'

'Yeah, that's them.'

I introduced the cans and bottles into evidence,
then walked back toward the stand.

'These were all you found?' I asked.

'That's what the report says. Five cans and two
bottles.' He laughed to himself, as though he were tolerating the
ritual of a fool.

'Since those bottles were probably there for years,
I won't ask you about them. Whose fingerprints were on the beer cans?'

'Lucas Smothers's and the victim's.'

'Nobody else's?'

'No, sir.'

'Do teenage kids drink and smoke dope out there with
some regularity?' I asked.

'I guess some do.'

'But you found no cans or bottles that would
indicate anybody else had used that picnic ground recently besides
Lucas Smothers and Roseanne Hazlitt?'

'I cain't find what ain't there. Street people pick
up gunny sacks of that stuff. Maybe I should have stuck some used
rubbers in there.'

Spectators and some of the jury laughed before the
judge tapped her gavel. 'Lose the attitude in a hurry, sheriff,' she
said.

'Sheriff, why do you think the prosecution didn't
introduce the evidence you put in that vinyl bag?' I said.

'Objection, calls for speculation,' Marvin said.

'Overruled. Answer the question, Sheriff Roberts,'
the judge said.

'How the hell should I know?' he replied.

After a ten-minute recess, I called Mary Beth to the
stand. The windows were raised halfway; rain dripped from the trees out
on the lawn and a fine mist floated through the window screens. Mary
Beth wore little makeup and sat erect in the witness chair, her hands
folded.

'You were the second deputy to arrive at the picnic
ground?' I asked.

'Yes, that's correct.'

'You saw Hugo Roberts pick up a number of bottles
and cans from the area around Lucas Smothers's truck?'

'Yes, sir.'

'How many cans and bottles would you say he
recovered?'

'Maybe a couple of dozen,' Mary Beth replied.

'Objection, relevance, your honor. This beer can
stuff is a red herring. A thousand fingerprints on other cans or
bottles doesn't put anybody else at the crime scene when the assault
was committed,' Marvin said.

'I was trying to point out that Hugo Roberts and
others either lost or deliberately destroyed exculpatory evidence,' I
said.

'Approach,' the judge said. She leaned forward on
her forearms, her hand covering the microphone. 'What's going on here,
Mr Pomroy?'

'Nothing, your honor. That's the point. Mr Holland
is trying to distract and confuse the jury.'

'Destroyed evidence, whether or not of probative
value, still indicates conspiracy, your honor,' I said.

'What's your explanation, Mr Pomroy?' she said.

'Incompetence has never precluded membership in the
sheriff's department,' he replied.

'That's not adequate, sir. You're too good a
prosecutor to let some redneck bozos jerk you around. You'd better get
your act together. Don't be mistaken, either. This isn't over. I'll see
you later in chambers… Step back,' she said.

Flowers for Stonewall Judy, I thought.

Then Marvin began his cross-examination of Mary Beth.

'Who's your employer, Ms Sweeney?' he asked.

'The Drug Enforcement Administration.'

'The DEA?'

'Yes.'

'Were you employed by the DEA while you were working
as a deputy sheriff in this county?'

'Yes.'

'Did you tell anyone that?'

'No.'

'Did you lie about your background when you went to
work for the department?'

'Technically, yes.'

'Technically? In other words, you came here as a
spy, a federal informer of some kind, and lied about what you were
doing. But you're not lying to us now? Is that correct?' Marvin said.

'Your honor,' I said.

'Mr Pomroy,' she said.

'I have nothing else for this witness,' he said.

Temple Carrol handed me a note over
the spectator
rail. It read,
Garland Moon's at your office and won't
leave. You want him picked up?

Stonewall Judy granted a twenty-minute recess, and I
put a raincoat over my head and walked across the street and up the
stairs of my building. Moon sat in the outer office, wearing a gray,
wide-necked weight lifter's shirt, with palm trees and Venice Beach,
California ironed on the front, and tennis shoes and gray running pants
with crimson stripes down the legs. His face knotted with
self-satisfied humor when he saw me.

'Got you away from your pup. I 'spect you study a
lot more on me than you admit,' he said.

'Go inside my office,' I said.

He picked himself up lazily from the chair, arching
a crick out of his neck, flexing his shoulders. When he went through
the doorway into the inner office, he casually scratched a match on the
wooden jamb and lit a cigarette with it.

'Billy Bob, I hope someone kills that man,' Kate, my
secretary, said.

I went into the inner office and closed the door
behind me. Moon stood at the window, one finger pulling the blinds into
a V, staring down at the wet street, at the people who moved along on
it, oblivious to the pair of blue eyes that followed them.

'A rich person made me a deal. Kind of work a man
like me can handle,' he said.

'Get to it, Moon.'

'Money ain't no good to me. I want the place should
have been mine. At least part of it.'

'You want what?'

'Ten acres, on the back of your property, along the
river there. I'll build my own house, one of them log jobs. With a
truck patch and some poultry, I'll make out fine.'

'What do I get?'

'I'll fuck whoever you want with a wood rasp. I done
things to folks you couldn't even guess at.'

'I think your benefactor will use you for a golf
tee, Moon.'

I saw the heat climb from his throat into his face.

'There's a kid hereabouts thinks he's a swinging
dick 'cause he can throw a football—' Then Moon caught
himself, his
mouth drawn back on his teeth.

'You molested a little Negro girl when you were
sixteen. That's why my father fired you off the line,' I said.

He walked to my desk and mashed out his cigarette.
His arms were still damp from the rain and his muscles knotted and
glistened like white rubber.

'The little girl lied. It was her uncle done it,' he
said.

'You were at Matagorda Bay when my father was killed
in 1965.'

His eyes lighted and crinkled at the corners.

'You're hooked, ain't you?' he said.

'Nope, it's just time for you to find another
wallow. Deal with that wet rat that's eating out your insides.'

He sucked his teeth, then scraped a thumbnail inside
one nostril, his expression hidden. 'You got a mean streak, boy, but I
know how to put the stone bruise down in the bone,' he said.

He strolled through the outer office into the
hallway, dragging one finger across the secretary's desk.

I opened the windows, heedless of the rain that blew
in on the rug, then told the secretary to call the police if Moon came
back again.

When I walked down the stairs into the foyer, he was
waiting for me. The rain danced on the street and sidewalk and gusted
inside the archway.

'Your mama probably told you your daddy died a brave
man,' he said. 'He was rolling around in the dirt, squealing like a
charbroiled hog, praying and begging folks to take him to a hospital,
his pecker hanging out his pants like a white worm. I went behind the
toolshed and laughed till I couldn't hardly breathe.'

I took a yellowed free newspaper from a mailbox that
had no cover. I unfolded it and popped the wrinkles out. I walked to
within six inches of Moon's face, saw the skin under his recessed eye
twitch involuntarily.

'Here, Garland, put this over your head so you don't
get wet. That's a real frog-stringer out there,' I said, and crossed
the street through the afternoon traffic.

Virgil Morales, the San Antonio Purple
Heart, was my
next witness. He wore knife-creased white slacks, tasseled loafers, a
purple suede belt, and a short-sleeve shirt scrolled with green and
purple flowers. His freshly combed hair looked like wet duck feathers
on the back of his neck. His walk was loose and relaxed, his eye
contact with the jury deferential and respectful; in fact, he had
transformed from bad-ass biker into the image of an innocuous, slightly
vain, blue-collar kid who simply wanted to cooperate with the legal
system. I couldn't have wished for a better witness.

'You're sure the defendant was unconscious while
Roseanne Hazlitt was alive?' I said.

'The guy was a bag of concrete. You could look in
his eyes and nobody was home. I was worried about him,' Virgil replied.

'Worried?'

'I thought he might be dead.'

Then the judge asked Marvin if he wished to
cross-examine, and I knew I had a problem.

'No questions at this time, your honor. But I'd like
to reserve the right to recall the witness later,' he said.

It was 4:25 when Jamie Lake took the stand, which
meant she would be the last witness of the day, and it was her
testimony that would be the most clear and influential in the jury's
memory overnight. I couldn't believe her appearance. She had showed up
in sandals, hoop earrings, faded jeans that barely clung to her hips,
and a tie-dye beach shirt that exposed the dragons tattooed on her
shoulders. She had peroxided her hair in streaks and pinned it up on
her head like a World War II factory worker. She popped her gum on the
way to the stand, her hips undulating, and let her eyes rove across the
jury box as though she were looking at chickens perched in a henhouse.

This time Marvin didn't pass on cross-examination.

'Did you think the defendant was dead?' he asked.

'No,' she answered.

'Why not?'

'Because he was breathing. Dead people don't
breathe.'

'Thank you for telling us that. Did anybody pay you
to come here today?' he asked.

'No,' she replied.

'Did anybody pay your friend Virgil Morales to come
here today?'

She chewed her gum and turned her right hand in the
air, looking at the rings on her fingers.

'Did you understand the question?' Marvin said.

'Yeah, I'm thinking. How come you question me and
not him? Like, I'm dumb and he's smart, or I'm smart and Virgil's a
beaner can't understand big words?' she replied.

'Have you been using any narcotics today, Ms Lake?'

'Yeah, I just scored some crystal from the bailiff.
Where'd they get you?'

Then Marvin introduced into evidence the subpoenaed
bank records of both Jamie Lake's and Virgil Morales's checking
accounts.

'You and Virgil both made deposits of five thousand
dollars on the same day three weeks ago, Ms Lake. How'd y'all come by
this good fortune?' Marvin said.

'I didn't make a deposit. It just showed up on my
statement,' she said.

'It has nothing to do with your testimony today?
Just coincidence?'

'I was UA-ed and I took a polygraph.'

'What you took is money.'

'What's-his-face over there, Lucas, looked like a
corpse that fell out of an icebox. You don't like what I tell you, go
play with your suspenders. Excuse me, I take that back. Go fuck
yourself, you little twit.'

Set up and sandbagged, and I had walked right into
it.

An hour later I drove Mary Beth to our
small
airport. The windows of my car were beaded with water, and lightning
forked without sound into the hills.

'Don't feel bad,' she said.

'It was a slick ruse. Those two kids were telling
the truth, but somebody gave them money and turned them into witnesses
for the prosecution.'

'Felix Ringo and Jack Vanzandt sent them to you?'

'Let's talk about something else.'

'Sorry.'

There was nothing for it. Everything I said to her
was wrong. We stood under a dripping shed and watched a two-engine
plane taxi toward us, its propellers blowing water off the airstrip. I
felt a sense of ending that I couldn't give words to.

'I didn't do you much good, did I?' she said.

'Sure you did.'

'I have to think over some things. I'll be better
about calling this time,' she said.

Then a strange thing happened, as though I were an
adolescent boy caught up in his sexual fantasies. I hugged her lightly
around the shoulders, my cheek barely touching hers, but in my mind's
eye I saw her undressed, smelled the heat in her skin, the perfume that
rose from her breasts, felt her bare stomach press against my loins. It
wasn't lust. It was an unrequited desire, like a flame sealed inside my
skin, one that would not be relieved and that told me I was completely
alone. For just a moment I understood why people drank and did violent
things.

'So long,' she said.

'Good-bye, Mary Beth.'

'Watch your butt.'

'You bet.'

I watched her plane take off in the rain, its wings
lifting steadily toward a patch of blue in the west. I got in my car
and drove back to town. The hills were sodden and green under clouds
that churned like curds from burning oil tanks.

L.Q. Navarro was waiting for me when I
got home. He
leaned his hands on the windowsill in the library and looked out at a
cold band of light on the western horizon.

'It's been a mighty wet spring
,'
he said.