BBH01 - Cimarron Rose Read Online Free PDF Page B

believe you didn't know Roseanne Hazlitt
outside of Shorty's.'
    'I didn't know her real good, that's all.'
    'You're lying.'
    'I drove her home a couple of times after Shorty's closed. We
didn't go out reg'lar or nothing.'
    'No, all you did was get in her pants.'
    He swallowed dryly. There were discolorations in his cheeks,
like small pieces of melting ice.
    'You want to spend the rest of your life in Huntsville? You
keep lying to me, and Marvin Pomroy is going to grind you into
sausage… What are you hiding, Lucas?'
    He stared fixedly at his hands, but his eyes seemed to be
looking over a cliff into a canyon that had no bottom.
    'She said she might be pregnant.'
    'She wanted you to marry her?' I asked.
    'No, sir. She said she was gonna fix some guy good. She said,
"I'm gonna show him up for what he is. People around here gonna be real
surprised. I bet I can get my story on TV and make this whole town look
like two cents."'
    'Why didn't you tell me this?'
    'Cause maybe that baby's mine. Maybe y'all would think I had
reason to kill her 'cause I didn't want it.' He breathed through his
nose and dug at a callus with his thumbnail, a hard light in his eyes.
    'I've seen the autopsy, Lucas. She wasn't pregnant.'
    'Then why—'
    'She was probably late.'
    He dropped his hands in his lap, his face empty, like someone
whose head is filled with white noise.
    'I got to get away from them two back at the cells,' he said.
    'Don't pay attention to them.'
    '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