'They talk in the dark when nobody else ain't around… Last night Garland told Jimmy Cole, that's the one with the tattoos all over him, Garland says to him, "Damn if that old woman didn't put me in mind of my mother. She was trussed up like a little bird behind the counter there, peeping up at me, scared to death, I declare
she looked so pitiful she made me hurt. So I walked back to her and said, 'Lady, a good woman like you ain't deserving of the evil a man like me brings into the world,' and I put both my hands on her face and she wet her panties and died right there."
'Mr Holland, they laughed so hard I had to wrap the mattress around my head to keep the sound out… Mr Holland?'
Ten minutes later I tapped on the frosted glass of Marvin Pomroy's office door.
'How bad you want to zip up the package on Garland T. Moon?' I said.
'What have you got?' Marvin said.
'Lucas can put a nail gun in Moon's mouth.'
Marvin made an indifferent face. 'So go on and tell me,' he said.
'What's on the table?'
'It's not a seller's market, Billy Bob. I've got a witness who saw Moon go into the store.'
'Forget your witness. I've got the confession.'
'You want to plea out?'
'Nope.'
'If it's what you say, maybe his bail can get cut in half… Maybe we can go south one bump on the charge.'
'Manslaughter, no rape.'
'Manslaughter, sexual battery.'
'Not good enough.'
Marvin scratched the back of his head.
'If it goes to sentencing, I won't object to an argument for his youth and lack of criminal history,' he said.
He listened quietly while I repeated the story just told me by Lucas Smothers, his red suspenders notched into his shoulders. He removed his steel-rimmed glasses and polished them with a Kleenex.
'She suffocated. She didn't die of fright,' he said.
'He says he put his hands on her face. Same thing. Did she wet her underwear?'
'Yep.'
'You got him, then,' I said.
'Maybe.'
'Nice doing business with you, Marvin.' At the door I turned around. 'You set this up, didn't you?' I said.
'Me? I'm just not that smart, Billy Bob. But I appreciate your thinking so.'
That evening I worked late in my office. It was Easter break, when college kids came home to Deaf Smith and re-created their high school rituals as though indicating to the classes behind them they would never completely relinquish the joys of their youth. My windows were open and I could see the pale luminous face of the clock on the courthouse roof and the oaks ruffling in the wind and the kids dragging Main from the rich neighborhoods out east all the way to the dirt side streets of the Mexican and black district on the far end of town.
The sun was almost down and the square seemed filled with a soft blue glow, the air scented with flowers and the distant smell of watermelons in the fields. Down below, the procession of customized cars and pickups and vans snaked around the square, the lacquered paint jobs like glazed red and orange and purple candy, the deep-throated Hollywood mufflers rumbling off the pavement, the exposed chromed engines rippling with light. A beer can tinkled on a sidewalk; a stoned-out girl stood on the leather backseat of a convertible, undulating in a skin-tight white dress that she had pulled above her nylons.
Lucas's bail hearing was scheduled for nine in the morning. For no reason I could quite explain I picked up the phone and called the jail.