Cimarron Rose (Billy Bob Holland 1)

'No, I didn't know her. But I seen her, all right.'

'When?' I asked.

'Night she got killed. She come here in a cab. Some boys was fixing to leave, then they seen her and axed her to go off with them. She had her own mind about it, though.'

'Sir?' I said.

'She hit this one boy right 'cross the face, whap. He stood there, holding his jaw, just like he had a toothache. Then she give him the finger while she was walking back inside. Didn't even bother to turn around when she done it, just held it up in the air for him to see.'

'Who was the boy?' I said.

'Ain't seen him befo'. Ain't sure I'd know him again.' His eyes drifted off my face.

'Yeah, you would,' Temple said.

'Why didn't you tell this to someone?' I said.

'They come to a place like this more than once, it's for a reason. The wrong one, too. What I say ain't gonna change that.'

'What kind of car did this boy have?' Temple said.

'What reason I got to watch his car?'

'Who was he with?' Temple said.

'I ain't seen them befo'.'

'Give me your name,' she said. She wrote it down, then stuck a business card in his hand. 'You just became a witness in a murder trial. Stay in touch. Work on your memory, too. I know you can do it.'

I followed the two-lane county road along the river, past a cornfield that was green and dented with wind under the moon.

'That's kind of a tough statement to make to an old fellow,' I said.

'I don't like people who're cutesy about a raped and murdered girl,' Temple said.

After I had dropped her off, I made a call to the jail and then drove to the house of Marvin Pomroy, the prosecutor. He lived in a white gingerbread house, shaded by live oaks, in the old affluent district of Deaf Smith. His St Augustine grass was wet with soak hoses and iridescent in the glare of the flood lamps that lit and shadowed his property.

His wife answered the door and invited me in, but I thanked her and asked if Marvin could simply step outside a minute. He still had a dinner napkin in his hand when .he came out on the gallery.

'I've got a problem with some missing evidence,' I said.

'See the sheriff.'

'You're an honest man, Marvin. Don't jerk me around.'

'Same response. You shouldn't try to do business on my gallery.'

'Somebody's sandbagging the investigation and setting up my client.'

He reached behind him and closed the front door. His well-shaped head and steel-rimmed glasses and neatly combed short hair were covered with the yellow glow of the bug light overhead.

'You listen, goddamn it, that kid's got dirty written all over him. You get out of my face with this bullshit,' he said.

'I asked the sheriff to move him today. It didn't happen.'

'That's not my problem. You know what is? A guy who could have been dredged up out of the Abyss, Garland T. Moon. He murdered a whole family in California, he tied them up in a basement and killed them one by one with a knife, but his attorney has already gotten most of the evidence suppressed because the cops seized it with a bad warrant. If I don't make the case on that old woman he killed here, he'll be back on the street, in our midst, ready to do it again… Listen, I could get Lucas on capital murder. But I choose not to do so. Do you hear what I'm saying, Billy Bob?'

'No.'