San Antonio Rose (10 page)

“So, Officer, are you saying that a broken beer bottle can be used as a weapon to assault a person?”

“Yes, it can.”

“And have you ever seen anyone stabbed or cut with a broken beer bottle?”

“Yes, I have.”

“Have you ever seen anyone killed as a result of an attack with a broken beer bottle?”

“Objection—irrelevant.”

“Overruled.”

Rafe repeated the question.

“Yes, I have,” the policeman answered.

“So, in your opinion can a broken beer bottle be used as a deadly weapon?”

“Objection—calls for a conclusion.”

Rafe didn’t stand still for it this time. He spun toward the judge, his eyes blazing with barely restrained fury. Jeannie expected him to spit nails when he spoke, but he surprised her by arguing both calmly and convincingly that the police officer had already been certified by the prosecutor as an expert in the field of what could and could not be used as a deadly weapon.

“Overruled.” The judge nodded to the policeman. “You may answer.”

“Yes, it can be used as a deadly weapon.”

“Tell me, Officer,” Rafe encouraged, “was the broken beer bottle in this photograph removed from the crime scene by the police investigative unit, and if so, where is it now?”

“We have it in our bag of evidence,” the prosecutor answered in the policeman’s stead.

Rafe took the broken beer bottle from the prosecutor and had it marked as Defendant’s Exhibit 1. The way he handled it, loose and easy, his strong brown fingers coiled around the smooth glass neck so that the jagged bottom faced the floor, told Jeannie more than she’d ever wanted to know about how he’d managed to survive those early years on the streets. It just about killed her to think that at Tony’s age, or younger, he’d literally fought for his life.

“Did your department fingerprint this bottle?” he asked the officer then.

“Yes, we did.”

“And whose fingerprints did you find on it?”

“The victim’s.”

Once again, the man with the sling drew everyone’s attention by shifting in his chair. All eyes turned to him just as his face fractured into something ugly and mean. Then he caught himself, smoothing his expression with the hand of his good arm.

Rafe reacted to his discomfort in dramatic
fashion, raising the bottle for the policeman’s convenience and almost scaring the bejesus out of Jeannie as he asked in booming voice, “And where did you find the victim’s fingerprints on this broken beer bottle?”

“We found a partial thumbprint on the body of the bottle,” the officer said, pointing a cautious finger, “just above the place where it had been broken. And then we found a full series of prints on the neck.”

After satisfying himself and the court that all the fingerprints matched the victim’s, Rafe put the bottle on the evidence table, laying it on its side so that its vicious-looking bottom faced the judge’s bench. Then he returned to the counsel table, opened the briefcase he’d left by his chair, reached in and removed a bottle that Jeannie recognized as the one he’d taken from the restaurant.

“With the court’s indulgence,” he said, holding the unbroken bottle aloft like some medieval standard of battle, “we would like to engage in a little demonstration.”

The judge nodded. “The court has no objection.”

Rafe approached the witness stand, his stride brisk and confident. Jeannie sat up straighter as he got down to the nitty-gritty.

“I don’t want you to take the chance of cutting yourself, Officer,” he said, “so I’m going to hand you an unbroken, empty beer bottle that is identical to the broken beer
bottle that was retrieved at the scene of the shooting and that is now in evidence—”

“Objection!” The prosecutor leapt to his feet, seeming to realize—albeit belatedly—where this was leading. “This isn’t show-and-tell.”

Rafe turned back to the bench, smoldering with absolute authority. “Your Honor, all I want the officer to do is to demonstrate for the court at no risk to himself where exactly the victim’s partial thumbprint was found on the body of the broken beer bottle.”

Jeannie held her breath while the judge considered his request, then let it out in a relieved sigh when he said, “It’s a little irregular, but I’ve already granted permission.”

The prosecutor sat down with a disgusted
thump
.

Her mind abuzz, she watched as Rafe handed the beer bottle to the police officer and asked him to hold it in such a fashion that his thumb would be in the same place as the print that had been lifted off the bottle.

The officer did so, gripping it around the body as if he were going to take a drink from it. Rafe thanked him, took the unbroken bottle back, and returned it to his briefcase.

“Now,” he said, taking the broken bottle off the evidence table and carrying it back to the witness stand, “I’m going to hand you this bottle, and I’m going to ask you to exercise extreme caution as you hold it by the neck, placing your thumb and four fingers in the
same place as the prints that were lifted off it during the course of your investigation.”

The prosecutor, face pink, shot to his feet again. “Objection—probative value.”

Rafe’s eyes turned stony, his voice steely. “Your Honor, the victim in this case has alleged that the defendant, after serving him several beers, refused to serve him anything more. The victim has also alleged that when he argued the matter, the defendant pulled a gun—a legally registered gun, I might add—out from behind the bar and shot him for no good reason.

“It is our contention—a contention we intend to prove during this preliminary hearing—that the defendant refused further service to the victim because the victim was loudly, rudely, obnoxiously, and dangerously drunk. We also intend to prove that when the defendant told the victim he had had enough to drink, the victim smashed the bottle he had just emptied against the edge of the bar and came after the defendant with the intention of going for the jugular.

“Furthermore we intend to prove through examination and through a preponderance of the evidence that the alleged victim in this case is actually a victimizer, that he has a history of violent behavior toward others when he’s drinking, and that the defendant, when faced with that broken beer bottle, had no recourse but to shoot the victim in self-defense.

“In summary, Your Honor, we want to show through this exhibition that this
victim
”—Rafe stressed the word mockingly as he glared at the man wearing the sling with the full candle-power of his moral disapproval—“triggered his own tragedy.”

The prosecutor renewed his objection, adding snidely, “An ‘exhibition’ of this sort could only be called inflammatory.”

“Overruled,” the judge said. “I want to see what the defendant was faced with.”

Rafe turned back toward the witness stand and moved in for the kill. “Officer, would you please show the court where the victim’s fingerprints were found on the neck of this bottle?”

Jeannie shivered, realizing what a sheltered life she’d led when the policeman wrapped his fingers around the neck of the bottle, picked it up, and held the broken end of it out in front of him. And seeing the judge wince and rear back slightly when the policeman swung that jagged maw in his direction, slashing the air between the witness stand and the bench, she also realized that Rafe had made his point about the bottle’s potential as a lethal weapon in the most effective manner possible.

“No further questions,” Rafe said as he relieved the officer of the broken beer bottle, replaced it on the evidence table, and resumed his seat with a triumphant smile.

Eight

“You love it, don’t you?”

“What—winning?”

Jeannie smiled as Rafe sped under the freeway overpass, following Commerce Street as it led into the heart of the West Side. They’d just left the hearing, which had lasted a little over an hour. When all was said and done, the charges had been dropped and his client had walked out of court a free man. Now it was back to his office for him and, as soon as they decided how to get him and Tony together, back to Bolero for her.

The windows were down, and Jeannie’s senses were assaulted by the sights and sounds and smells of Rafe’s home ground. A cluster of people in their gimme caps and work shirts sat fanning themselves on a
wooden bench, waiting patiently for the bus. A guitar player stood in front of a souvenir shop, strumming up tourist business with melodies of Old Mexico and new merchandise. An open church door emitted the faint aroma of funeral incense.

“I’m sure you love winning,” she said as the building where he lived and worked came into view, “but I was talking about the practice of the law.”

He turned into the side lot and nosed the Corvette into his parking space. “Win or lose, I’ve always enjoyed a good fight.”

Jeannie started to laugh, then stopped as a memory crept in, one she had almost forgotten. Rafe, returning to the ranch after running into Bolero to pick up some cattle feed, his face bruised and his knuckles bleeding. She’d known without being told that someone had either called him a terrible name or simply called him on his right to be there, and that he’d struck back. Her heart had ached for him, as if she’d been attacked as well, but he hadn’t wanted her sympathy.

“Well, you were wonderful in that courtroom today,” she said in all sincerity.

He gave a self-effacing shrug and killed the engine. “Just doing my part to keep the system honest.”

“You know what really burns me about the system?”

“What?”

“When a judge releases someone who’s obviously guilty—a confessed criminal, for instance—on a technicality.”

“For your information, judges don’t make the laws. Or the loopholes either. So it’s your state senator and your representative—”

Jeannie laughed and held up her hands in surrender. “I sense a political speech coming.”

Rafe chuckled. “Point taken.”

She tucked her sandaled foot under the opposite thigh and turned in the low-slung seat. Her denim skirt modestly covered her knees, but her thin bra and tank top did nothing to hide the shape of her firm breasts. “Seriously now, what made you think to check and see whether the victim in this case had a record?”

“
Alleged
victim.” He squared around in his seat to face her and crooked an elbow on the wheel, causing his suitcoat to fall open. Red silk suspenders added a touch of pizzazz to his high-powered appearance, and the platinum face of his watch peeked out from beneath his shirt cuff.

Jeannie ceded his point with a nod, remembering now how surprised she’d been when, with the
alleged
victim on the stand and sworn to tell the truth, Rafe had produced a rap sheet as long as her arm detailing other instances of violent behavior on his part.

As it had turned out, he’d even served a jail term for attacking someone else with a broken
beer bottle. That information, coupled with the policeman’s demonstration and the defendant’s testimony, had convinced the judge that it was a cut-and-dried case of self-defense.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” she reminded him.

A slow smile teased the corners of his blue eyes. “Would you believe it was a lucky guess?”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “I’d say it was more like good detective work.”

“Goes with the territory,” he said with a verbal shrug.

“It also goes to show you how deceiving appearances can be,” she declared.

A pair of creases formed between his eyebrows. “Because my client was black?”

Both her back and her voice stiffened. “Give me a break, will you?”

His slumberous eyes locked with hers across the console before lowering to her mouth. “I’d rather give you a kiss.”

Jeannie’s pulse kicked into overdrive at Rafe’s sensually gruff statement and right-of-possession gaze. She studied his face, sculptured in bronze, forced to admit that in spite of everything she wanted his kiss, wanted him.

Still, she shook her head, trying to apply the brakes to her racing heart, hoping to slow the momentum of her rushing blood. Until three days ago their lovemaking had been a memory
gilded by time and distance and a wonderful boy named Tony. Now it felt as if she were careening toward the sheer cliffs of those youthful transgressions again.

“What is it they say?” he asked huskily, reaching over to tug on a wisp of silky blond hair that had escaped its banana clip confines to curl upon her cheek. “To the victor belong the spoils.”

Instinct warned her to back up before he moved to kiss her, but as the door handle poking at her spine pointedly reminded her, there was no place to go.

Except forward …

She felt herself being inexorably drawn to him and dragged air into her lungs to tell him that too much water had passed under the bridge. But when he cupped her face between his lean brown hands and let the warm mist of his breath caress his lips, she found herself drowning in the treacherous sea of today’s desire.

“Jeannie … Jeannie,” he murmured, her name on his lips blotting out the loss of time, the river of tears, the years of torment.

His scent filled her nostrils—musky, mixed with the woody essence of his aftershave and the starchy smell of his shirt. Her eyes drifted closed as his lips glided over hers, rubbing her mouth softly, repeatedly, seductively, until her lips parted of their own volition.