Cimarron Rose (Billy Bob Holland 1)

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.