'Objection, calls for speculation,' Marvin said.

'Overruled. Answer the question, Sheriff Roberts,' the judge said.

'How the hell should I know?' he replied.

After a ten-minute recess, I called Mary Beth to the stand. The windows were raised halfway; rain dripped from the trees out on the lawn and a fine mist floated through the window screens. Mary Beth wore little makeup and sat erect in the witness chair, her hands folded.

'You were the second deputy to arrive at the picnic ground?' I asked.

'Yes, that's correct.'

'You saw Hugo Roberts pick up a number of bottles and cans from the area around Lucas Smothers's truck?'

'Yes, sir.'

'How many cans and bottles would you say he recovered?'

'Maybe a couple of dozen,' Mary Beth replied.

'Objection, relevance, your honor. This beer can stuff is a red herring. A thousand fingerprints on other cans or bottles doesn't put anybody else at the crime scene when the assault was committed,' Marvin said.

'I was trying to point out that Hugo Roberts and others either lost or deliberately destroyed exculpatory evidence,' I said.

'Approach,' the judge said. She leaned forward on her forearms, her hand covering the microphone. 'What's going on here, Mr Pomroy?'

'Nothing, your honor. That's the point. Mr Holland is trying to distract and confuse the jury.'

'Destroyed evidence, whether or not of probative value, still indicates conspiracy, your honor,' I said.

'What's your explanation, Mr Pomroy?' she said.

'Incompetence has never precluded membership in the sheriff's department,' he replied.

'That's not adequate, sir. You're too good a prosecutor to let some redneck bozos jerk you around. You'd better get your act together. Don't be mistaken, either. This isn't over. I'll see you later in chambers… Step back,' she said.

Flowers for Stonewall Judy, I thought.

Then Marvin began his cross-examination of Mary Beth.

'Who's your employer, Ms Sweeney?' he asked.

'The Drug Enforcement Administration.'

'The DEA?'

'Yes.'

'Were you employed by the DEA while you were working as a deputy sheriff in this county?'

'Yes.'

'Did you tell anyone that?'

'No.'

'Did you lie about your background when you went to work for the department?'

'Technically, yes.'

'Technically? In other words, you came here as a spy, a federal informer of some kind, and lied about what you were doing. But you're not lying to us now? Is that correct?' Marvin said.

'Your honor,' I said.

'Mr Pomroy,' she said.

'I have nothing else for this witness,' he said.

Temple Carrol handed me a note over the spectator rail. It read, Garland Moon's at your office and won't leave. You want him picked up?

Stonewall Judy granted a twenty-minute recess, and I put a raincoat over my head and walked across the street and up the stairs of my building. Moon sat in the outer office, wearing a gray, wide-necked weight lifter's shirt, with palm trees and Venice Beach, California ironed on the front, and tennis shoes and gray running pants with crimson stripes down the legs. His face knotted with self-satisfied humor when he saw me.

'Got you away from your pup. I 'spect you study a lot more on me than you admit,' he said.

'Go inside my office,' I said.

He picked himself up lazily from the chair, arching a crick out of his neck, flexing his shoulders. When he went through the doorway into the inner office, he casually scratched a match on the wooden jamb and lit a cigarette with it.

'Billy Bob, I hope someone kills that man,' Kate, my secretary, said.

I went into the inner office and closed the door behind me. Moon stood at the window, one finger pulling the blinds into a V, staring down at the wet street, at the people who moved along on it, oblivious to the pair of blue eyes that followed them.

'A rich person made me a deal. Kind of work a man like me can handle,' he said.

'Get to it, Moon.'

'Money ain't no good to me. I want the place should have been mine. At least part of it.'

'You want what?'

'Ten acres, on the back of your property, along the river there. I'll build my own house, one of them log jobs. With a truck patch and some poultry, I'll make out fine.'

'What do I get?'

'I'll fuck whoever you want with a wood rasp. I done things to folks you couldn't even guess at.'

'I think your benefactor will use you for a golf tee, Moon.'

I saw the heat climb from his throat into his face.

'There's a kid hereabouts thinks he's a swinging dick 'cause he can throw a football-' Then Moon caught himself, his mouth drawn back on his teeth.

'You molested a little Negro girl when you were sixteen. That's why my father fired you off the line,' I said.

He walked to my desk and mashed out his cigarette. His arms were still damp from the rain and his muscles knotted and glistened like white rubber.

'The little girl lied. It was her uncle done it,' he said.

'You were at Matagorda Bay when my father was killed in 1965.'

His eyes lighted and crinkled at the corners.

'You're hooked, ain't you?' he said.

'Nope, it's just time for you to find another wallow. Deal with that wet rat that's eating out your insides.'

He sucked his teeth, then scraped a thumbnail inside one nostril, his expression hidden. 'You got a mean streak, boy, but I know how to put the stone bruise down in the bone,' he said.

He strolled through the outer office into the hallway, dragging one finger across the secretary's desk.

I opened the windows, heedless of the rain that blew in on the rug, then told the secretary to call the police if Moon came back again.

When I walked down the stairs into the foyer, he was waiting for me. The rain danced on the street and sidewalk and gusted inside the archway.

'Your mama probably told you your daddy died a brave man,' he said. 'He was rolling around in the dirt, squealing like a charbroiled hog, praying and begging folks to take him to a hospital, his pecker hanging out his pants like a white worm. I went behind the toolshed and laughed till I couldn't hardly breathe.'

I took a yellowed free newspaper from a mailbox that had no cover. I unfolded it and popped the wrinkles out. I walked to within six inches of Moon's face, saw the skin under his recessed eye twitch involuntarily.

'Here, Garland, put this over your head so you don't get wet. That's a real frog-stringer out there,' I said, and crossed the street through the afternoon traffic.

Virgil Morales, the San Antonio Purple Heart, was my next witness. He wore knife-creased white slacks, tasseled loafers, a purple suede belt, and a short-sleeve shirt scrolled with green and purple flowers. His freshly combed hair looked like wet duck feathers on the back of his neck. His walk was loose and relaxed, his eye contact with the jury deferential and respectful; in fact, he had transformed from bad-ass biker into the image of an innocuous, slightly vain, blue-collar kid who simply wanted to cooperate with the legal system. I couldn't have wished for a better witness.

'You're sure the defendant was unconscious while Roseanne Hazlitt was alive?' I said.

'The guy was a bag of concrete. You could look in his eyes and nobody was home. I was worried about him,' Virgil replied.

'Worried?'

'I thought he might be dead.'

Then the judge asked Marvin if he wished to cross-examine, and I knew I had a problem.

'No questions at this time, your honor. But I'd like to reserve the right to recall the witness later,' he said.

It was 4:25 when Jamie Lake took the stand, which meant she would be the last witness of the day, and it was her testimony that would be the most clear and influential in the jury's memory overnight. I couldn't believe her appearance. She had showed up in sandals, hoop earrings, faded jeans that barely clung to her hips, and a tie-dye beach shirt that exposed the dragons tattooed on her shoulders. She had peroxided her hair in streaks and pinned it up on her head like a World War II factory worker. She popped her gum on the way to the stand, her hips undulating, and let her eyes rove across the jury box as though she were looking at chickens perched in a henhouse.