BBH01 - Cimarron Rose (30 page)

I watched him pour the vanilla extract into the cake
bowl, his long fingers pinched lightly on the sides of the shot glass.

'Why you looking at me like that?' he asked.

'The first time I interviewed you at the jail, you
told me you and Roseanne were "knocking back shots",' I said.

'Yeah, Beam, with a draft beer on the side.'

'But you were working with the band that night. You
had on that blue-check shirt with the gold trumpets sewn on the
shoulders, the shirt you bought to play in the band.'

'Yeah, like that Jamie Lake gal said.'

'Why'd you start doing boilermakers while you were
working?'

'We were on the break. I just had two. My stomach
must have been empty or something. I remember Roseanne was mad 'cause
of something Bunny said. She wanted to get a six-pack and go down the
road and drink it. I wouldn't have done it, but I was jackhammered by
then.'

'Did she drink as much as you did?'

'Yeah, I guess.'

'But you passed out and she didn't.'

'I just ain't following you, Mr Holland.'

'Where was Darl Vanzandt when you decided to smash
down a couple of boilermakers?'

'He was at the bar. Darl never gets far from the
juice man when he's inside Shorty's… What's wrong?'

'I never saw it. I kept thinking about the autopsy
report on Roseanne. I was thinking about the wrong person.'

'What per—'

'A hooker from San Antone told me Darl probably
doped Roseanne with roofies. But he didn't. He doped you.'

Lucas set the shot glass down on the drainboard and
looked at it numbly.

'They laced me with downers twice? I reckon that
makes me pretty dumb, don't it?' he said.

'I'll pick you up in the morning,' I said.

'Mr Holland, Darl didn't have no reason to kill
Roseanne.'

'He doesn't need one. He enjoys it.'

My motion to dismiss was denied by
Judge Judy
Bonham, known as Stonewall Judy for her malleability and sense of
humor. She was perhaps forty years old, had a complexion that seemed
never to have been exposed to sunshine, and black hair that looked
waved permanently in place. Four times a week she lifted freeweights at
the health club in a pair of sweatpants and a heavy, long-sleeve
jersey. When she did stomach stretches on the bench, her hips and
buttocks flattened and seized against her sweats like metal plate.

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 sometime,' 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.