DeWitt’s gaze rested on Hattie. She didn’t look his way.
Like Billy, like Bo, she was staring straight ahead—in expectation or nervousness.
Is the whole town watching me watch my lover? he wondered. And later on the telephone, or over dinner, what will they make of that?
DeWitt looked to the right. In the double line of folding chairs that served as jury box, Pastor Jimmy plumped like a disgruntled pigeon. Tyler was leaning back, his fingers laced across his belly. Foster was there, too.
There were dangerous places in the center, like doors that shouldn’t be opened. DeWitt looked left.
Down the row, Seresen was sitting with two other Torku, and fidgeting in the chair next to the alien was Denny. The child caught his father’s eye and waved. At the very end of the row Janet turned to stare.
“All rise!” Granger bellowed.
With a rustle of clothing and clanks from the folding chairs, the crowd came to their feet.
Directly in front of DeWitt, Bo stood, hands in his pockets, awaiting sacrifice. He would go where DeWitt had sent him—into the dark basement of the town’s resentment. No one else would have had the courage to tread there; no one else would have gone with such a dutiful stride.
Curtis walked in, surveyed the standing spectators, and glanced over his shoulder as if expecting to see the President of the United States at his heels. Mounting the podium, the mayor sat down. A look of awe crossed his face when everyone took their seats.
In his arms were Perry Mason paperbacks, porcupined with yellow markers. He arranged the books on the desk.
“Your Honor?” Granger stage-whispered.
Curtis looked up, startled. “So, is the prosecution ready?”
“Ready, Your Honor!” Hattie shot back in a crisp voice that made the jury jump.
“Defense?”
Bo uncrossed his long legs and stood. “Your Honor? Defense requests . . . “ His voice trailed to a nervous stop. “A change of venue.”
Gasps peppered the room.
Curtis rubbed his cheeks. “Far out.”
“If it please the court,” Bo went on, “my client can’t get a fair trial here. After the alleged attack on Chief Dawson. . .” The officer swung his hand to point out DeWitt. “In which my client was simply defending himself.”
Hattie lurched to DeWitt’s rescue. “Objection!”
With a negligent wave, Curtis motioned her down.
Bo stammered, as though his train of thought had been derailed. “Anyway, it was p-prejudicial.”
Curtis’s round face grew pensive. “Approach the bench?”
It was a moment before the two lawyers rose, as if they thought Curtis had been asking their opinion.
“Better get you up here, too, Seresen,” Curtis added.
The alien pulled himself out of the folding chair, and in whispers the principals began a heated discussion at the bench. Curtis leaned over the table, buttocks in the air. Granger inched his way in from the side and was listening. The jury strained forward, frustration in their faces.
The huddle broke up. The two lawyers went back to their respective tables, and Seresen waddled to his chair.
“Motion denied,” Curtis said, banging a red-handled Sears hammer on the tabletop.
“Then if it please the court,” Bo said, “I move to delay the trial for a competency hearing.”
“We been through that, Bo,” said Curtis, who sounded not pleased at all. “We don’t have no psychiatrist. Billy done killed everyone who knew him well enough to testify to competency . . .”
DeWitt winced.
Bo threw a Manila folder onto the table with a sharp, angry slap. “Objection, Your Honor. Move to strike. When the judge himself—”
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry.” Curtis’s face turned red. “Forget I said that. Let’s have opening arguments.”
Hattie stood. In her dark suit and white blouse, she looked like a gangly adolescent playing grownup. Her very awkwardness brought a lump to DeWitt’s throat. It reminded him of the first time he saw Tammy on a bicycle.
And yet she embarrassed him. The same tired suit she wore to each city council meeting; the same wine stain on the blouse she’d never had the time or patience to remove. A run laddered one leg of her hose. Why couldn’t she dress herself better? Even now the town’s eyes must be swinging from attractive wife to plain lover, wondering what charm had made DeWitt stray.
In a monotone that barely carried to the front row, Hattie read, “We’re going to prove that Billy killed Loretta in a fit of anger. That’s second-degree murder. But that by the time he went back to the car and beat his own kids to death with a rock, that was premeditated.” Abruptly she offered a wavering, sick smile to the jury, said, “Thank you,” and sat down.
“Is that it?” Curtis asked.
She nodded. Bo stood, pulling at the hem of his vest. “First-degree murder,” he said in a tone even softer than Hattie’s. “That means with malice aforethought. What we’re going to prove . . .” He paused, swallowing hard, throttled by stage fright.
The jury peered at him, confused. Quickly, DeWitt looked I down at his lap.
“We’re going to prove,” Bo said in a hoarse but stronger voice, “that Billy, after striking out at his wife in anger, then going around the edge of the house to his kids, was so furious, he stepped into the realm of temporary insanity.” A fluttering sound: the paper Bo was reading from was trembling. “That’s all,“ Bo said.
“All right,” Curtis said doubtfully. “First witness.”
Hattie stood. “I call Purdy Emmanuel Phifer to the stand.”
A single spectator’s giggle proved contagious and an epidemic of hilarity spread. DeWitt turned and saw Purdy making his way down the aisle. He had on a police uniform and looked ridiculous in it.
“You were there when the boys’ bodies were found?” Hattie asked when Purdy took his seat.
Purdy was round-eyed. “Yeah. Bo and me—”
“Answer the question yes or no!”
Fishing in his pocket, DeWitt found his notebook and a pencil. “Don’t badger your own witnesses,” he wrote and passed the note to her son. The boy read it without interest and set it on the table.
“Yes, “ Purdy said.
“And tell us what you found.”
Purdy seemed desperately trying to choose between negative and positive. “Bodies?”
“The bodies of . . .”
“Loretta’s kids?”
Hattie spun away. Placing her hands behind her back, she said, “All right. Tell the court in your own words about the scene.”
Purdy turned to the jury. “They was lying in a shallow grave. We found a tire iron back in some bushes where it’d been throwed . . .”
This part of the questioning went so smoothly that DeWitt guessed Purdy had been coached. His pity for Hattie began to fade.
“This tire iron?” Hattie grabbed a red-tagged tire tool from the floor near her table, walked forward, and shoved it into Purdy’s face.
Purdy examined it. “Yeah.”
Hattie dropped the tire iron on Curtis’s table, where it clanged satisfyingly. “I enter in evidence State’s Exhibit A.” Returning to her table, she got a thick square of plaster and set that on the desk as well. “And State’s Exhibit B. So,” she turned to Purdy, “what did you find on the tire iron?”
“Dried paint.”
“And in the paint you found?”
A self-satisfied smirk worked its way across Purdy’s face. “Fingerprints.”
“Whose?”
Purdy’s chubby arm pointed across the room to Billy. “The defendant’s.”
“Objection,” Bo said with what sounded like boredom. “Witness is not an expert.”
Hattie swiveled to Bo so fast, she nearly tripped. “He taught him, Yo
ur Honor. That man is an expert and he taught him how to lift those prints.”
Bo sat quietly in the firing line of her accusing finger.
“Did you teach him how?” Curtis asked Bo.
“Yes.”
“Then you certified him. Overruled.” Hattie sat. “No further questions.”
Purdy was halfway to his feet when Curtis asked, “Cross?”
A hound fearing punishment for an indiscretion, Purdy cringed back into his seat.
“No questions,” Bo said.
Purdy slunk away.
DeWitt noticed the hurt, questioning look that the photographer cast at Bo; and that Bo, writing something on a blank page, did not meet Purdy’s eyes. Peering over Bo’s shoulder, DeWitt saw that he was doodling: a frowny face, then a smiley face. The pyramid of heads was grotesque, a cartoon version of the Cambodian killing fields.
A bang from the hammer as Curtis broke for lunch. Janet was making her way down the row. DeWitt started to turn to her, but collided bellies with Seresen.
“Come with me,” the alien said and started off across the makeshift courtroom.
DeWitt gladly followed. On the way, Curtis grabbed him. “How am I doing?”
“Fine, Curtis. Just fine.” DeWitt watched, alarmed, as the alien made for the green steel door.
“I read them books, you know? With those criminal cases and all. Them Perry Mason judges got it all down.”
“Uh-huh.”
Seresen paused and turned, surprised not to see DeWitt behind him.
“So you think I done okay?”
“Yeah.” DeWitt caught the alien’s eye.
Curtis leaned up to whisper, “Staying off the dope for a while, Wittie. Trying to, anyway. If I need some help . . .”
Absently DeWitt said, “Sure. Anytime.” He hurried toward the Kol.
“You must have lunch.” Seresen ushered him through the door. The room in which DeWitt found himself must have been the Torku dining hall. A long black table, fuchsia chairs huddled to it like pigs at a trough. Behind the table a windowed wall which broke the laws of physics and engineering: from a perch high on Griffin Hill, it looked down a cedar brake and into town. With a quiet clunk the door closed behind him.
“Sit down,” the alien said.
DeWitt pulled out a low, wide-seated chair. In the windows a white bird darted from a dark-green cedar and soared toward Main. The pigeon, a spark in the glowering sky, banked over the beige modular walls of the center. DeWitt raised his head, as though he might catch sight of it through the ceiling.
Another Torku emerged from a door, an aluminum plate in his hands. The worker set a Banquet fried-chicken dinner in front of DeWitt, a plastic knife and fork beside it.
“Aren’t you hungry?” DeWitt asked Seresen when the worker left.
“I will talk. You will eat lunch.”
Obediently DeWitt picked up his fork.
“So you are the happy policeman?” the Kol asked, his brown skin turning an obviously delighted pearl.
DeWitt nearly gagged on his potatoes. The cook hadn’t microwaved the dinner long enough, and the gravy was cold. “Yeah. Listen. I’m sorry about making you—”
“The trial is interesting.”
DeWitt dropped his fork.
“Too orderly for my tastes, but then you cannot help yourselves, I suppose. Still, there is this: When he is arrested, you all say the Billy is guilty; just before the trial, you speak in terms of alleged. And now, even though you keep to your silly rules, everyone pretends not to know anything. Have you taught your people this trial?”
With his fork DeWitt poked skeptically at the chicken breast. “Not really. It—”
“I have very great hopes for you.”
“Seresen, listen. . .” DeWitt wondered how the alien would react when the jury found Billy guilty. When the town executed him.
“Eat. I will come to get you when they are ready.” The alien got to his feet.
“Seresen—”
“Later.” The Kol walked away.
DeWitt didn’t finish his lunch.
Chapter Forty
DeWitt was gazing out the window when Seresen returned and led him to the human side of the center. Curtis walked into the courtroom and gaveled for quiet. The trial started again.
Hattie entered the burned purse and clothes into evidence, then called Doc to the stand to testify that the indentations in the boys’ skulls matched the shape of the rock found in the grave.
When Hattie held up poster-sized photographs, the ones that Purdy had taken, a hush fell over the room.
“Objection,” Bo said. “Inflammatory.”
But the photos weren’t inflammatory at all. They were, despite the subject matter, beautiful. The three black-and-white stills of the boys had been taken during the exhumation. The photographer’s eye had caught the spill of light on a maimed hand, the drift of leaf mold on bare ribs. The lack of color made the scene timeless, as if it had filtered through a membrane between universes. The photos had less to do with death than with composition, perspective, and light. There was no color to expose the tawdriness of rain-battered, loamy clothes, the gaudiness of bloated blue flesh. There was no stench, no orange accusation of that raincoat.
The jury sat on the edges of their seats. Only Hubert Foster’s eyes wandered. Expression sad, he studied his hands.
Are they clean? DeWitt wondered. When Foster looked down, did he see DeWitt’s misery on his fingers?
Bo objected; Curtis overruled. With a sigh, a small shake of his head, Foster returned his attention to the trial.
Hattie propped the stills on the desk. “Prosecution rests.”
Everyone, the jury, the spectators, the Torku, was staring at Billy. Everyone but his counsel. Bo was tidying up his papers, putting the collection of cartoon heads into his briefcase.
Curtis, too, had been watching Billy. Now he jerked himself out of his reverie and tapped the hammer against the table once. “It’s four-thirty. Let’s adjourn and convene tomorrow at nine sharp.”
Bo turned to DeWitt, opened his mouth as if to speak, but then his eyes drifted left. Instantly, Bo became occupied with his briefcase.
“Wittie?” Janet said at DeWitt’s shoulder.
As he turned, Denny grasped his fingers. “Hi, Daddy. We came to visit you, but you were asleep. Did you see my dead soldier?”
“What?”
“The dead soldier I made for you in Sunday School, Daddy. I’m gonna make a lot more. Soldiers with guns like I see in the movies. And tanks and things. We can play war.”
They had played war. Now Janet and Foster lay wounded; DeWitt shot through the heart. He looked for Hattie and saw her by the table. She was putting her notes away, her eyes downcast.
“Daddy. “ A tug on his hand. DeWitt’s gaze returned to his son, where he knew it belonged. “We’re going home now, okay?”
And DeWitt said, “Okay.”
Outside the center, blue-gray clouds advanced across the horizon. The icy breeze of a norther hit DeWitt’s back. He was tired; his incision ached. He followed Janet as if all decisions had been taken from his hands.
The Suburban was a steel-walled, sheltered prison. On the way home, the children chattered. He didn’t speak. At the house, Janet heated a twelve-count package of tamales in the microwave.
When they were all seated at the table, she passed the serving dish. He picked up a tamale, then put it down.
“Aren’t you hungry?” she asked.
He couldn’t look at her. His reply was sour. “Doc told me no spicy foods.”
The two girls exchanged worried glances. Janet prodded a chicken tamale with her fork as though it were a creature she wanted to awaken.
Denny was bouncing in his chair. “Daddy’s a hero,” he announced to the silence around the
table.
“I know,” Janet said.
DeWitt left his lunch uneaten and went to take a shower. While he was shampooing his hair, Janet entered the bathroom and stood in the gap of the curtain. She had put on her robe. Her cornsilk hair was down.
“I missed you,” she said. “In the hospital when you wouldn’t see me, I wondered whether freedom was worth that.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But he did. What he had thought a happy marriage she had seen as an armistice between her as the occupied territory and him as the invading force. He put his head under the shower and picked up the soap. Water beat him with tiny, angry fists.
Without warning Janet slipped the bathrobe from her shoulders and stepped naked into the shower. He saw the splay of her toes on the porcelain, then looked up at her bare breasts.
Time compressed—past the affairs, past the marriage. He remembered sweaty college fumblings in his old Pontiac, and how her breasts had dropped into his hands like ripe fruit from the discipline of her bra.
Gently she took the soap away. “Here. Let me do that.”
DeWitt leaned his forehead against the cool tile. Her hand slipped down his back. “It’s over. I told him I never wanted to see him again.”
She left room for his reply; he didn’t use it. She kissed his shoulder, pressed her face against his back. His penis stirred to life.
“Why Hattie? I thought you wanted someone who would agree with you. All those years I thought . . .” In the rush of water he felt the quieter, slower wet of her tears.
Because Hattie was simple. She wanted a policeman, DeWitt thought. And you wanted more.
Janet slid her hand between his legs and fondled him. “Tell me I’m better. Please tell me I’m better than she is.”
“Harder,” he told her instead.
Soon he turned, pressed her against the wall of the shower, and they made slippery, dangerous love. Just before he came, he was more excited than he had ever been with Hattie, nearly as excited as those frustrating evenings in the Pontiac.
Happy Policeman Page 17