'I've got two witnesses who saw Lucas passed out at the murder scene when Ro
seanne Hazlitt was still alive,' I said.
'Winos?'
'A Mexican biker from San Antone who just passed a polygraph, and a gal who puts me in mind of a chainsaw going across a knee joint. By the way, I wonder what percentage of our jury is going to be Hispanic?'
Marvin leaned back in his swivel chair and pulled at his red suspenders with his thumbs.
'You feeling pretty good about yourself, huh?' he said.
'It's reasonable doubt. A kid who's so drunk three people can't wake him up doesn't suddenly revive himself and rape and beat someone to death.'
'Who says?' But he was looking into space now, and the conviction had dissipated in his voice.
'Why not cut your losses?' I asked.
'Because "the people" are the advocate of the victim, Billy Bob, in this case a dead girl who doesn't have a voice. I represent them and her. I don't cut my losses.'
'Lucas Smothers is a victim, too.'
'No he's your son. And that's been the problem since the get-go. He lied through his teeth about how well he knew her. What makes you think he's telling the truth now? Go look again at the morgue pictures. You think she did that to herself?' Then his face colored and he rubbed a finger in the middle of his forehead.
'You're going to lose,' I said.
'So? For me it's a way of life. Say, what kind of rap sheet does your Mexican biker have? Or does he just use his hog to go to and from Mass?'
Pete and two of his friends had come over to ride Beau that evening. I saw the three of them, mounted in a row on his back, turn Beau up the embankment on the rim of the tank, then disappear through the pasture where it sloped down toward the river. A half hour later I heard Beau's hooves by the windmill, then on the wood floor of the barn. I walked out into the yard.
'Y'all didn't want to stay out longer?' I asked.
'There's a man fishing by that sunk car. He's standing in the water in a suit,' Pete said.
A boy and girl Pete's age sat behind him on Beau's spine. They both kept looking back over their shoulders, through the open doors behind them.
'What color hair does he have, bud?' I asked.
Pete pulled his leg over Beau's withers and dropped to the ground and walked toward me, his expression hidden from the others. He kept walking until we were on the grass in the yard, out of earshot of his friends.
'It's red. We was letting Beau drink. Juanita was up on the bank, pulling flowers. This man standing in the water says, "That your girlfriend?" I say, "I ain't got no girlfriend."
'He says, "She's a right trim little thing. You don't get it first, somebody else will."
'I said I didn't know what he meant and I didn't want to, either. I told him I was going back to my house. He says, "Old enough to bleed, old enough to butcher."
'It was the look on his face. He kept watching Juanita. I ain't never seen a grown person look at a kid like that.'
I put my hand on the back of Pete's head.
'Y'all go inside and fix yourself some peach ice cream,' I said.
I drove the Avalon down the dirt track, past the tank, and through the field to the bluffs over the river, the grass thropping under the bumper. Five feet out from the bank, submerged to his hips, in his blue serge suit with no shirt under his coat, was Garland T. Moon. He flung his bait with a cheap rod out into the current.
I got out of the Avalon and looked down at him from the bluff. Against the late sun his skin looked bathed in iodine.
'This waterway is public property. State of Texas law,' he said. A brown, triangular scab had formed on his bottom lip where I had hit him.
'I'm going to have you picked up anyway.'