Vernon Smothers parked his pickup by the curb and cut across the lawn toward me. He wore a pair of dark blue overalls that were wet at the knees.
'Where were you, Vernon?' I asked.
'Putting in pepper plants. I didn't watch the time. That little snip of a bondsman didn't call me back, either. What happened in there?'
'I went his bond.'
'I ain't asked for that.'
'It's no big thing.'
His eyes looked out at the glare of sunlight on the walk, the traffic in the square, the old men who sat on benches by the Spanish-American War artillery piece. The olive skin of his narrow face twitched as though someone were touching it with the tip of a feather.
'Them that's got money use it to put their shame on others. That's the way it's always worked around here. I won't abide it, though,' he said.
'Vernon, don't hurt your boy again.'
'Seems like the calf's mine only when it's time for you to lecture, Billy Bob.'
I walked away from him, through the doors of the courthouse and down a hallway whose woodwork seemed infused with the dull amber glow of its own past. Marvin Pomroy came out of his office and almost collided into me. His face was bloodless, as though it had been slapped.
'What's wrong?' I said.
'We messed up. Moon and Jimmy Cole did time together at Sugarland,' he answered.
'You're not communicating, Marvin.'
'The witness… The customer who saw Moon go into the store where he killed the old woman… Somebody sliced her back screen and stabbed her to death with a screwdriver this morning… Harley's truck was found in a pond a half mile away.'
I saw Lucas Smothers walk down the circular stairs in the center of the courthouse, a possessions bag in his hand.
'We've got no physica
l evidence to put Moon in that store,' Marvin said.
I stared into his face and the knowledge there that I didn't want to accept.
'That crazy sonofabitch is going to get out, Billy Bob.'
'Lucas's deposition—' I began.
'It won't hold up by itself.'
'Does Moon know that Lucas…' I could feel the pinpoints of sweat breaking on my forehead.
'You already know the answer to that… I'm sorry. We thought we had this guy halfway to the boneyard,' Marvin said.
Lucas walked toward us, his face uncertain in front of Marvin.
'How y'all doin'? Is my dad outside?' he said.
I sat alone in my office with the blinds down and tried to think. I kept seeing the grin on the face of Garland T. Moon, the latex skin, the liquid blue eye; I could almost smell the breath that was like fermented prunes. I pulled open the blinds and let the sunlight flood into the room.
The secretary buzzed me on the intercom.
'Mr Vanzandt and his son are here to see you, Billy Bob,' she said.
Jack Vanzandt, the college baseball star who'd fought in Vietnam and had come home decorated and had made a fortune in the Mexican oil business, then had lost it and made another fortune in computers. He'd called yesterday, or was it the day before? Yes, about his son, the one who had been expelled from Texas A&M.