Virgil Morales, the San Antonio Purple Heart who liked to call other people 'spermbrain', sat in my office with his girlfriend from Austin, looking at his watch and waiting for me to get off the phone. The girlfriend was named Jamie Lake and she had winged dragons tattooed on both her sun-browned shoulders. She also smelled as if she had been smoking reefer inside a closed auto-mobile.

Temple Carrol leaned against a table behind them, her arms folded, looking at Jamie Lake as though Jamie had swum through a hole in the dimension.

I finished talking to my friend whom I had paid to run polygraphs on both of them.

'He says all indications are you're telling the truth,' I said to Virgil.

'So that's supposed to make me feel good?' he replied.

'The tests aren't always conclusive. Yours is,' I said.

'Glad to hear it. When you want us back?'

'We empanel the jury in ten days.'

'I been this route before. No disrespect, but I don't want to come up here every morning at seven-thirty and sit on a bench in a hallway and play with my Johnson till somebody remembers I'm a friend of the court,' he said.

'How about I send somebody for you? Will that be okay?' I asked.

He stretched out one leg and rubbed the inside of his thigh. 'Yeah, that's probably the best way to do it. Call first, though, okay?'

Jamie Lake chewed gum with her mouth open. Her hair was long and dark blonde and her face narrow, with a pinched light in it. 'Why do I get the feeling I'm anybody's fuck here?' she asked.

'My friend, the man who ran the polygraph on you, says he couldn't make a determination. It happens sometimes,' I said.

'Yeah? Well, I don't believe you. I think your friend was trying to see down my tank top,' she said.

'Maybe he was.'

'So get fucko back on the phone. I told him the truth. I didn't come all this way for y'all's bullshit.'

In the background, Temple cocked her head and looked at me.

'My friend thinks you might have had contact with a few pharmaceuticals before the test,' I said.

'You had us both UA-ed. You tell that asshole I have an IQ of one-sixty and I remember everything I see, like in a camera. Also tell him I think he's probably a needle dick.'

'I'll try to pass it on,' I replied.

'Do we get some expense money for gas and meals?' Virgil said.

'You bet. The secretary's got it. Y'all have been real helpful,' I said. I didn't look at Jamie Lake.

'Kiss my ass,' she said.

Just then, my secretary buzzed me on the intercom.

'Billy Bob, it's Lucas Smothers,' she said, and before I could respond, Lucas opened the inner office door and walked inside.

'I'm sorry. I didn't know you was in here with anybody,' he said.

'It's all right,' I said.

Jamie Lake's eyes seemed to peel Lucas's clothes off his skin. Then she turned her glare on me.

'Ask him what other time he had that shirt on,' she said.

'Excuse me?' I said.

'The night we saw him in the picnic ground. That's all he had on. His pants were around his knees and he was passed out, and he had that blue-white check shirt on, with the little gold horns on the shoulders. He was passed out, with his underwear down on his moon, and she was puking in the bushes,' she said.

Lucas's face turned dark red.

'Yeah, she's right. But I don't understand what's going on,' he said.

Temple walked from behind Jamie's chair and put one hand on Jamie's shoulder, her fingers stroking the tattoo of a winged dragon.

'Let's talk about long-sleeve blouses, kiddo. What do you wear, like a medium or a ten?' she said.

After Jamie and Virgil had gone, Lucas sat down in front of my desk.

'It's my dad. He don't usually drink. But last night he sat out on the windmill tank and drunk durn near a pint of whiskey,' he said.

'This has been hard on him,' I said.

'That ain't it.' He turned around and looked at Temple.

'Go ahead. It won't leave this office,' I said.

'He wouldn't come in. He slept out there on the ground. This morning he showered and ate some aspirins and I fixed him some breakfast, and he sat there eating it like it was cardboard.'

I waited. Lucas pulled at his shirtsleeve and snuffed down in his nose, as though the room were too cold.

'He was talking about getting even with Vanzandt. I go, "You mean Darl, 'cause of what he done at the country club?"

'He says, "Darl does them things 'cause his father lets him. His father gets away with it 'cause he's rich. That's the way this county works."

'I said, "It's Darl. There's something wrong with him. It ain't his daddy's fault."

'He goes, "You're a good boy, son. You make me proud. Jack Vanzandt's fixing to have his day."

'My father ain't ever talked like that before, Mr Holland.

His pistol, the one he brung home from the army, I looked and it ain't in his drawer.'

'I don't think your dad would kill anyone, Lucas.'

He looked around behind him again.

'You want me to leave?' Temple said.

I raised my hand. 'Go ahead, Lucas,' I said.

'He done it in the war. A lieutenant kept getting people killed. My dad threw a grenade in his tent.'

'Where is your dad now?'

'Getting a haircut down the street.'

I winked at him.

But my confidence was cosmetic. Neither I nor anyone I knew in Deaf Smith had any influence over Vernon Smothers. He believed intransigence was a virtue, a laconic and mean-spirited demeanor was strength, reason was the tool the rich used to keep the poor satisfied with their lot, and education amounted to reading books full of lies written by history's victors.

I was almost relieved when I asked in the barbershop and was told Vernon had already gone. Then the barber added, 'Right next door in the beer joint. Tell him to stay there, too, will you?'

The inside of the tavern was dark and cool, filled with the sounds of midday pool shooters, and at the end of the long wood bar Vernon Smothers sat hunched over a plate, peeling a hardboiled egg, a cup of coffee by his wrist.

I had rather seen him drunk. Under the brim of a white straw hat, his face had the deceptive serenity of a man who was probably threading his way in and out of a nervous breakdown, his eyes predisposed and resolute with private conclusions that no one would alter.

I waved the bartender away and remained standing.

'We found a couple of witnesses, Vernon. I think Lucas is going to walk.'

'You want an egg?'

'Jack Vanzandt doesn't have any power in that courtroom.'

'The hell he don't.'

'You won't trust me?'

'I trusted the people sent me to Vietnam. I come home on a troop ship under the Golden Gate. People up on the bridge dropped Baggies full of shit on us.'

'To tell you the truth, Vernon, I don't think you'd have had it any other way,' I said, and walked back down the polished length of the bar into the sunlight.

It was a cheap remark to make, one that I would regret.

I crossed the street to the courthouse and opened Marvin Pomroy's office door. He was talking to his secretary.

'Got time for some early disclosure?' I asked.

'No more deals. You've got all the slack you're getting,' he said.

'I'm filing a motion to dismiss.'

'I've got to hear this. I haven't had a laugh all day,' he replied.

I followed him into the inner office.

'I've got two witnesses who saw Lucas passed out at the murder scene when Roseanne 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?'