The court had never been air-conditioned and depended for cooling on a cross breeze through the open windows and the oscillating electric fans affixed high up on the walls. The courthouse lawn was still in early-morning shadow, the sprinklers slapping against the tree trunks, when Marvin Pomroy began his opening statement.
It was eloquent, filled with a subdued outrage at the brutality of the crime, the degradation visited upon the victim before she died, her betrayal by a young man “whom she had trusted, whom she had probably loved, perhaps hoped to marry, until in a drunken rage he ripped the young life out of her body.”
As always, Marvin called upon his greatest talent, namely, his ability to convey to a jury that, regardless of what the evidence did or did not indicate, he himself was absolutely convinced of the defendant’s guilt. Over half the jury was black and Hispanic. It didn’t matter. Marvin became the hard-shell southern Baptist who did not apologize for what he was and instead made you feel you shared the same sense of decency and tragic loss as he. The rectitude in his eye, the bloom on his cheeks, the knot in his words when he mentioned the blows that had rained down on the victim’s face, were such that the listener heard the voice of principle, the preacher in his own church, the moral instruction of his mother and father.
On his left hand, Marvin wore a silver ring with a gold cross embossed on it. During his opening statement, that hand would clench the rim of the jury box several times.
In fact, his opening statement was too convincing. The doubts I had seen in him during our last meeting were gone. Which meant something had happened since that day I had told him I had found two witnesses who would testify Lucas was passed out in his truck when Roseanne was still alive.
I walked toward the jury box.
“The prosecutor has told you about the level of injury and the humiliating death visited upon the victim, Roseanne Hazlitt,” I said. “He will come back to those images again and again. The implication is that someone must be punished for what was done to this young woman. And that’s the problem: the prosecutor is telling you someone must be punished, even if it’s the wrong person.
“Two people have been victimized by this crime. The second victim is Lucas Smothers, a nineteen-year-old boy who never hurt anyone in his life. From the time of his arrest at the crime scene, when he was virtually unconscious, incapable of attacking anyone, the sheriff’s department has not made one attempt to investigate the very real probability someone else was responsible for Roseanne Hazlitt’s death.
“Instead, a boy who has never been arrested except for a traffic violation was put in a lockup unit with two psychopaths, written off as guilty by the prosecutor’s office without even a preliminary investigation, and brought to trial after the prosecutor knew, knew, we had found witnesses who could prove Lucas Smothers could not have committed this crime.
“You’ll hear from these witnesses, just as you’ll hear about sheriff’s deputies who either lost or destroyed crime scene evidence that may have told us who the real assailant was.
“The prosecutor, Mr. Pomroy, once told me our legal system exists to give voice to those who have none. He’s right. But it also exists to protect the innocent and to punish the guilty and to ensure they do not commit their crimes again. In this case, not only has an innocent young man been charged and brought to trial, the real assailant has been allowed to remain free, in our community, free perhaps, in the words of the prosecutor, to rip the life from the body of another woman.”
I talked about reasonable doubt, the lack of motive, the fact that some of Roseanne’s friends who came from wealthy families (and I meant Darl Vanzandt) had never been questioned during the investigation. But at the moment when I mentioned the element of wealth, a strange division took place in the jury box. The eyes of the black and Mexican jurors remained fixed on my face, unperturbed at my words, while the gaze of four white, upper-income jurors shifted into neutral space, click, just that fast.
When we recessed, Marvin Pomroy passed the defense table and said, “You stepped in the bubble gum on that last one, counselor.”
I rubbed my temple and looked at his back.
“What’d he mean?” Lucas asked.
“Don’t tell a Republican the system that protects his money is corrupt.”
MARVIN’S FIRST WITNESS was Roseanne Hazlitt’s aunt. She walked with a cane to the stand, her back bent at the spine. She seemed even more frail than when I had interviewed her at her house. Her hand quivered on the curve of her cane; deep lines fanned out from her mouth like those in a mummy; her eyes jittered with the rheumy death light of the mortally ill.
But her animosity toward Lucas flared in her words, stripped the obstruction from her throat, reached out like knots in a whip.
“Did your niece tell you she thought she might be pregnant?” Marvin asked.
“Objection. Irrelevant,” I said.
“Goes to motive,” Marvin said.
“Overruled,” the judge said.
“Yes, she did,” the aunt said.
“Pregnant by whom?” Marvin asked.
“Your honor, the victim was not pregnant. The prosecution is trying to introduce a nonexistent situation into the trial,” I said.
“Then bring that out in cross-examination. In the meantime, sit down and shut up, Mr. Holland,” the judge said.
“She thought that ’un yonder made her pregnant,” the aunt said.
“You’re indicating Lucas Smothers?” Marvin said.
“I’m pointing at the one right there beat her to death and y’all didn’t have guts enough to prosecute in the first degree,” the aunt said.
“Objection,” I said.
“Sustained. Jury will disregard the witness’s last remark,” the judge said.
But the pointed finger of accusation, the anger that seemed to indicate an unspoken knowledge about Lucas’s guilt would not leave the jury’s memory because of a judge’s admonition. After Marvin sat back down, I rose and approached within five feet of the stand.
“Ms. Hazlitt, I interviewed you right after your niece’s death, correct?” I said.
“You come out to the house, if that’s what you mean.”
“I asked you about someone she had slapped at Shorty’s the night she was attacked, correct?”
“I told you she never hurt nobody in her life, too.”
“You surely did. Then you told me something like, ‘It was them hurt her.’ Isn’t that correct?”
“I don’t recall that.”
“Then I asked you who ‘them’ was, who were those other people who had harmed her in the past. Isn’t that correct?”
“Objection, counsel’s testifying, Your Honor. The witness already stated she didn’t remember,” Marvin said.
“Where are you going with this, Mr. Holland?” the judge said.
“The witness obviously has hostile feelings toward the defendant. However, in a previous conversation she indicated her niece had been injured in some fashion by people other than Lucas Smothers.”
“There’s no evidence of this conversation. Mr. Holland is putting words in the witness’s mouth and then questioning her about them. It’s bizarre,” Marvin said.
“I’ll give you a short piece of rope, Mr. Holland,” the judge said.
“Ms. Hazlitt, did you tell me people other than Lucas Smothers had harmed your niece?”
“Objection, your honor. He’s doing it again,” Marvin said.
“Sustained. Last warning, counselor,” the judge said.
“I apologize, your honor. I’ll rephrase the question. Ms. Hazlitt, did you indicate someone other than Lucas had harmed Roseanne in the past?” I said.
“I don’t recall that,” the aunt replied.
“You didn’t refer to her male friends as people who had ‘gotten the scent of it,’ or as ‘dogs sniffing around a brooder house�
��?”
Marvin was on his feet again, but the judge spoke before he could.
“That’s it. Both of you approach the bench,” she said. She leaned forward and covered the microphone with her palm. “You two guys are starting to piss me off, particularly you, Mr. Holland. This isn’t the trial of the century. You got problems with each other, settle them outside. And you, Mr. Holland, either you join the Screen Actors Guild or put an end to these diddle-doo theatrics. Are we clear on this?”
AT LUNCHTIME LUCAS, Temple, and I walked across the square to the Mexican grocery store and ordered takeout from the small café in back, then carried it back to my office. Vernon Smothers caught up with us on the sidewalk. He had put on a tie and coat and white shirt, and his face was sweating in the sun.
“What’s going on? When you gonna put on them damn deputies destroyed evidence?” he said.
“I’ll talk with you about it later, Vernon,” I said.
“That’s my son. I’m supposed to figure out his trial by watching the evening news?”
I glanced at Temple. She touched Lucas on the arm and walked with him into the foyer and up the stairs of my building.
“I can’t call the deputy I need. Why? I don’t even know where she is. Why? She shot two guys out at the skeet club. You want me to go on?” I said.
I expected his face to tighten with anger, as it always did when Vernon heard something he didn’t like. But he surprised me. He closed his eyes and rubbed his fingers hard in the middle of his brow.
“I screwed up again, didn’t I? I should have listened to you and left things alone. I just ain’t good at hearing what people tell me sometimes,” he said.
“You were doing what you thought was right. It’s not your fault, Vernon.”
He looked back at me uncertainly, as though I had spoken to him in a foreign tongue.
UPSTAIRS, I STOOD at the window and looked at the courthouse square, the dust on the trees and the heat waves bouncing off the sidewalks. Lucas was eating at the side of my desk in his shirtsleeves, his cuffs rolled back over his forearms.
“Ms. Hazlitt’s testimony presents a little problem for us,” I said to him.
“You mean when she said Roseanne thought it was me made her pregnant?”
“Yeah, that’s part of it.”
“But the autopsy showed she wasn’t pregnant,” he said.
“The jury just heard a story about a homicide victim who was sexually involved with only one individual—you. Five members of that jury are over sixty years old. Older people tend to listen to other older people. Are you with me?”
He set down the taco he was eating. The glare through the slats in the blinds made his eyes water. “I ain’t sure. I mean, if she wasn’t pregnant—”
“It is also easier for the jury to identify with the victim when they believe the victim to be an innocent person, totally undeserving of such a brutal end,” I said. “Then the jury gets mad and wants to bash the betrayer, the sexual exploiter, the predator in our midst. Marvin Pomroy is going to talk about Roseanne’s innocence and your guilt, her vulnerability . . . her trusting attitude . . . and your depravity.”
Lucas nodded his head as though he understood. But his eyes were as clear as glass, and he had no comprehension of what a good prosecutor like Marvin Pomroy could do to him.
“We need to show the jury the videotape of Roseanne smoking a joint and taking off her clothes. They’ll also see the kind of kids she hung around with,” I said.
He pushed his plate away with the heel of his hand, his eyes blinking.
“The tape simply shows the world she lived in, Lucas,” Temple said. “Dope and booze and getting it on with lots of guys. We’re not knocking her. That’s just the way it was.”
“She might have done all them things you say, but that don’t mean she wasn’t a good girl,” he said.
“That’s true. But somebody else killed her, Lucas. Maybe his face is on that tape,” I said.
His right hand was clenched on the back of his left wrist. His throat was splotched with color.
“I ain’t going along with this,” he said.
“Excuse me?” I said.
“I was sleeping with Roseanne and told you I didn’t hardly know her. That makes me a liar and a coward. I ain’t gonna get myself off by seeing her tore down in front of all them people.”
“You really want to go to prison? Is that what you’re telling me?” I said.
“Maybe I deserve to be there.”
“What?” I said.
“You say Darl doped me. Maybe I was just drunk. I’ll never know the truth about what I done that night.”
He was bent over in the chair, his head hung forward. The glare through the blinds made strips of light on his back.
“Lucas, we need to clear something up here. There’s only one person in this room running your defense,” Temple said.
But I motioned at her with two fingers. She looked at me with a puzzled expression, then chewed on the corner of her lip and stared silently out the window.
THAT EVENING I took off my shirt and hung it on a fence rail and raked out the chicken run and horse lot and dumped a load of manure and decayed straw in the compost pile, then filled a bucket with water from the windmill pipe and began digging a line of postholes so I could reset the rail fence and enlarge the lot for Beau. It was a lovely evening. The sun had dipped below the hills, its last rays breaking into pink wagon spokes against the sky. The wind was blowing in the trees and I could smell wildflowers in the fields and bream spawning under the lily pads out in the tank. I almost didn’t hear Brian Wilcox’s car crunching up my drive.
He got out of the car and walked through both sets of barn doors into the lot. Behind him, I could see the Mexican drug agent, Felix Ringo, sitting in the passenger seat of the car, the window down to catch the breeze, his tropical hat on the back of his head.
Wilcox’s mouth was painted with an ironic smile.
“You hang a revolver on a fence post while you work?” he said.
“Some guys blindsided me out here one night. I hate repeat situations,” I said.
“You know what quid pro quo is, right, one thing for another? . . . I’m doing you a big one, Holland, but I want something in return.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“That’s kind of what I expected from you, but here it is, anyway. Mary Beth is coming back to give you the testimony you need, but you’d better not drag your shit into our investigation again.”
“Meaning?”
“Our sun-darkened friend out there in the car is a valuable man. He doesn’t get compromised.”
I pulled the handles of the posthole digger out of the hole and knocked the dirt free from the blades, then tipped more water from the bucket into the hole.
“Nothing to say?” Wilcox asked.
“Yeah, that guy was at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning. Their graduates have a funny way of showing up in death squads and torture chambers.”
“So maybe I don’t like putting my fingers in bean dip. But the object is to make the case, right? All you’ve got to worry about is leaving us out of your trial.”
Behind him, I saw Felix Ringo get out of the car and walk toward us.
“When’s Mary Beth coming?” I asked.
“I thought I’d get your attention this time . . . Tonight, probably.”
“I don’t think you arranged this at all. I think she’s coming on her own.”
He pinched a breath mint out of a roll and slipped it in his mouth.
“You’re quite a guy,” he said.
Temple Carrol’s car came up the drive and pulled around Wilcox’s, disappeared beyond the side of the barn, then stopped by the windmill.
Felix Ringo walked up to Wilcox, ignoring me. He smoked a cigarette in a gold holder without
removing it from his lips. “You finished talking here? I got to shower and meet a lady for dinner,” he said.
I heard Beau’s hooves thudding behind me. I turned and saw him spooking back against the fence rails, walleyed, his head tossing.
I stared at Felix Ringo. “He knows you,” I said.
Ringo curved his fingertips into his sternum.
“Your horse knows me?” he said, his mustache winking.
“Beau never forgets children or a bad person. You’ve been here before, haven’t you?” I said.
“I been here before? The horse knows I’m a bad guy or something, ’cause he’s got this kind of computer memory?” Ringo’s fingers gestured impotently in the air.
“You were one of the guys who attacked me. I thought the guy had a gold tooth. But it was your gold cigarette holder I saw.”
Ringo removed his tropical hat, with the green plastic window in the brim, and wiped out the inside with a handkerchief.
“I’ll be in the car,” he said to Wilcox. “This guy here, he’s got a disease in his thinking, like clap or something. I don’t want to be hearing it no more.”
He walked back through the open barn doors, the wind billowing his loosely buttoned shirt. The butt of a black automatic was pushed down in the back of his trousers.
“You got the wrong man. Felix works for us,” Wilcox said.
“That’s the problem,” I said.
I thudded the blades of the posthole digger into the hole and expanded the handles and turned them in a circle, the grain of the wood twisting against my calluses. I could feel the sweat in my eyebrows, my heart beating in my chest.
Brian Wilcox continued to stare at me, his mouth still painted with that ironic smile.
“So maybe this is the last time I see you,” Wilcox said.
He’s going to do it, I thought.
I lifted the posthole digger free and rinsed the blades in the bucket of water. The wind popped in my ears, as though it were filled with distant pistol reports. I opened and closed my mouth and pressed with one thumb under my right ear.
Cimarron Rose Page 24