Hard Twisted (27 page)

Ready, professor!

The man raised a hand and walked the mule forward. The mule leaned and strained, and the ropes rose taut and dripping from the water until one of the ropes detached with a loud report, raveling into the water.

Jesus Christ, Lucile! Can't you tie a goddamn knot?

The farmer waved her off and waded himself into the river, the water shearing over the legs of his overalls. He checked the redhead's knot, then he circled behind the car to where Lottie stood hugging herself.

The farmer bent and tied the rope as Palmer leaned from the window opposite, bantering with the girl. When the farmer
straightened, Lottie touched his arm and gestured with her head, and the old man followed her eyes to where the rifles were leaning upright on the seatback. The man's eyes widened, and Lottie nodded once with great solemnity.

How about it, pops? We about ready?

The man waded back to where the mule stood like a puppet mule unstrung and grazing now on the streambank. He took up the lead and walked the animal forward and the ropes rose as before and the mule strained as before but again the car did not budge. They let the mule rest and then tried again, but with the same result. And then a car horn sounded on the roadway behind them.

The redhead ran waving with her sweater bouncing and her panties sheer and clinging, and the new car skidded to a halt. The driver was a ham-faced drummer in a straw hat who thumbed it back and gaped at the vaguely lurid spectacle of girls and car and old man and mule, all of whom, including the mule, were turned now and looking at him in the new sunlight of Sulphur Bottom.

We got ourselves in a jackpot, the redhead explained. Think you could give us a push?

The driver looked at her, and at the angled car, and he appeared to consider the geometry.

I might scratch your paint job.

Heck, mister, she told him. You wouldn't be the first.

The redhead clapped theatrically as the dripping Chevy lurched forward before the new car, over the culvert and around the narrow bend to where the road again widened. There the new car backed and pulled up alongside, and Palmer thanked the driver
and offered him a dollar for his trouble, but the man declined on the ground that he'd got his dollar's worth already. He advised it would take an hour at least for the starter to dry, and then only if they parked in the sun with the engine cover open. Behind him, the barefoot girls were picking their way up the road, and the farmer and his mule were hurrying in the opposite direction.

The girls were dressing as Palmer laid open the engine cover and frowned at what he saw.

Shit.

It leads a girl to wonder what kind of outfit she's signed on with, the redhead said.

The snakebit kind.

How long you reckon it'll be?

Man said a hour.

I'm hungry, Lottie said.

You're always hungry.

The redhead pointed to a house farther up the road. We could ask these good folks right here for some breakfast.

Go ahead.

I believe I will.

She'd already started up the road when Palmer called her back.

Hold on a minute, and let's get our stories straight. He tilted his hat and scratched. Okay. I'm Dick Smith, and you two are sisters, Lorena and Helen. And both of you keep your yaps shut and let me do the talkin, you hear?

Yes, Daddy, the girl said. She winked at Lottie. If I talk, do I get a spankin?

Mr. and Mrs. O. P. Nations were only too happy to aid a young family in distress. They were all in the kitchen, hosts and guests
alike, with the woman presiding over the stove as the old man said grace and the redhead said, Amen, looking to Palmer and covering her mouth with a hand.

They ate fried eggs and fried potatoes and fried ham, and when the man asked Mr. Smith his business, Palmer told them he was a private detective tracking the outlaw Clint Palmer, and that he wanted to know everything his hosts had heard about the case.

The only reason I hate to trace him down is on account of his poor old daddy, Palmer said sadly, lighting a smoke. I don't think his daddy had anythin to do with the murder, but he might've helped to put him in that cave and put the brush over him.

Could be, Mr. Nations agreed. 'Bout scared the bejesus out of them boys what found him.

Did you all go down to the courthouse and see the skeleton?

We did not, the woman said firmly. It was right unchristian, in my opinion, to do such a thing with that poor man's remains.

That's right, said her husband. And besides, it was always too damn crowded.

The car started on the first try. The old farmer leaned into the windowframe and with the angling of his hands described a shortcut to the county road, and they thanked him for his hospitality and waved to the woman on the porch and were off again with the sun now high above the treetops whose shadows dappled the roadway as it curved through the ordered and malachite fields.

They'd gone but a mile past the sign for Franklin County when they heard the sirens. Faint at first, the sound rose and faded and rose again from deep in the hollows behind them. Palmer cursed and floored it, and the redhead rose to her knees and
climbed over the seatback to watch with Lottie through the little rear window.

I see one!

Make that two!

Hang on!

The car swerved and the girls were thrown as it bounced into an open field. When they regained their knees, they saw three police cars emerging into sunlight with the drag car all but shrouded in the leaders' billowing dust.

There's three now, and they're comin hard!

Hang on!

They burst through a wooden fence, bounding onto a rutted one-lane roadway. They fishtailed and straightened, speeding past trees and open farmland with the engine straining and Palmer cursing and the sirens gaining precious ground behind them.

You want your gun, Dick? You gonna shoot it out?

Shut up!

They passed an oncoming truck that skidded as it swerved, and they sped through a blind curve until the roadway straightened again, narrowing at a bridge.

Palmer braked hard, and the car yawed and nearly rolled. He spun the wheel and punched the accelerator, launching them forward into a tangle of streamside creeper and saplings, but the bank fell away beneath their weight and the car tipped sideways and all within slammed hard against the door glass with Lottie landing sprawled atop the redhead, the blankets and rifles tangled up between them.

Listen to me! Palmer shouted over the siren sound. You two is sisters and you ain't never seen me before till Bowie. After they
turn you loose, you come back and visit me and bring me a hacksaw blade, you hear me? Lottie, you hear me?

The sirens crested and car doors slammed and six men surrounded the listing car, four on the bank and two to their knees in the muddy water and all with rifles pointed.

Police! Come out with your hands in the air!

Palmer scooted upright, showing his hands through the passenger window.

I ain't armed! Don't shoot!

Come on out!

He raised a foot to the steering column, pushing himself upward where he was seized and lifted free and swarmed by three men, who wrestled him face-first in the briar with a knee in his back.

A rifle muzzle showed in the open window, and Lottie heard a voice call for calm before the door above them opened and a lawman reached a hand and she took it and was pulled upward into sunlight, where she saw the three cars with their doors open standing at haphazard angles in the bosque.

They don't know beans! Palmer yelled from where he was being handcuffed. I just picked 'em up this mornin!

The redhead was the last to be rescued. She stood blinking on the streambank with a deputy's hand on each arm, and she looked at Palmer where he lay with his face bloodied, and at Lottie on her knees being handcuffed, and at the rifles and the hard faces of the other deputies.

She broke into a grin. Hot damn! Wait till they hear about this in Bowie!

THE COURT
: In this case the state relies upon circumstantial evidence for a conviction, and you are instructed that in order to warrant a conviction of a crime upon circumstantial evidence, each fact necessary to the conclusion sought to be established must be proved by competent evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. All the necessary facts to the conclusion must be consistent with each other and with the main fact sought to be proved, and the circumstances, taken together, must be of a conclusive nature, leading on the whole to a satisfactory conclusion, and producing in effect a reasonable and moral certainty that a homicide was committed and that the accused and no other person committed the offense charged. But in such cases it is not sufficient that the circumstances coincide with, account for, and therefore render probable the guilt of the accused, and they must exclude to a moral certainty every other reasonable hypothesis except the guilt of the accused, and unless they do so beyond a reasonable doubt, the accused cannot be convicted.

Her cell was on the second floor, with a view onto the parking lot and the courthouse just beyond. The courthouse stood some
five stories tall, like a storybook castle in pink granite and red sandstone with Romanesque arches, while the jailhouse was a squat rectangle of plain brick, and their juxtaposition served as a kind of metaphor, or at least as a declaration of values, by the founding fathers of Hopkins County, Texas.

A crowd had gathered at the news of their arrest, and by nightfall the parking lot had filled with cars and with men afoot and on horseback, milling and drinking, and with entire families picnicking on blankets with baskets packed for the occasion. Fires had been set in trash cans, and she heard guitar music and breaking glass and Palmer's name shouted along with drunken epithets long into the night.

When the deputy sheriff came for her three days later, he placed her in handcuffs and led her down the hallway by the arm. Faces darkened the judas windows of the other holding cells. Typewriters quieted, and office doors inched open that the jail personnel might get a look at the skinny girl in the baggy, gray shift and the backless canvas shoes that made a slap-slap-slapping sound on the cold linoleum.

Sheriff W. C. Reneau had jet-black hair and a stiff and military mien. He gestured to the chair opposite the desk at which he sat, and the deputy steered Lottie there and looked to the sheriff, who nodded once. The deputy bent to unlock her handcuffs.

The room had no windows. There was a wooden coatrack and a wooden trash can on pedestal feet and three wooden chairs along the wall, two of which were empty. Occupying the third chair was an earnest young man in a suit and tie with a briefcase in his lap and a writing tablet atop the briefcase and a pencil poised above the tablet. He nodded at Lottie and smiled.

The sheriff studied the girl. He leaned to his jacket where it hung beside him and removed a pack of Pall Malls. He shook the pack and offered her a cigarette.

Suit yourself, he said, removing the cigarette with his lips and lighting it off the front side of the desk. Get me an ashtray, he told the deputy, who straightened and stepped into the hallway.

A manila folder was on the desk, and the sheriff opened it and flipped a page and closed it again and pushed it aside with his finger.

October tenth, 1920?

Yes, sir.

That makes her fourteen, he told the other man, who made a note on the tablet.

Oh, this is Mr. Fannin. He's the county prosecutor.

Hello, the young man said.

Hello.

The deputy returned with a ceramic ashtray that he set on the desk. Check on that other thing, the sheriff told him, and the deputy looked at the girl and left the room again.

The sheriff tapped his ash. He ran a hand over his face.

I ain't gonna lie to you, miss. There's folks around here say you was in on it from the get-go. There's some say you must've been the brains of the outfit, cuz that Palmer boy ain't got no brains of his own to speak of. The sheriff opened the folder again. I read your grand jury statement, and I got to tell you, it raises more questions for me than it answers. But we'll come to that in a minute. Bill?

The man in the suit cleared his throat.

Miss Garrett, have you got any money to hire a lawyer?

No, sir.

If you did have the money, would you want to hire a lawyer?

No, sir. I don't need no lawyer.

The men exchanged a look.

This Uncle Mack of yours, is he your closest kin?

Yes, sir. I mean, he is now.

Mack Garrett?

Yes, sir.

And he lives in Oklahoma?

Yes, sir. Or he used to.

The young man made another note on the tablet.

Sir?

The sheriff glanced up from the ashtray. Yeah?

You said you got questions. I'd be glad to answer 'em, cuz I'd as soon get this over and done with quick as I can.

The men shared another glance.

All right, the sheriff said. He flipped a page. Let's see then. You told the grand jury that Palmer first took advantage of you when you were driving together to New Mexico, is that right?

Yes, sir.

Against your will, you said.

Yes, sir.

You said that happened in a rooming house, and then it happened again a few nights later in some camp with Mexicans. Is that your story?

Yes, sir, that's what happened.

The sheriff looked up from the page. And yet you never once tried to run away or ask for help the whole time you were in New Mexico or Colorado or Utah, is that right?

She looked at the floor.

Yeah, you think about that.

Well, sir—

Look at me.

Well, sir, I don't rightly know how to say it. Clint was on the run, and he got beat up real bad. And he said my daddy would get in trouble if I run away, or if I went to the law for help.

Oh, God. Here it comes.

Hot tears streaked her face. It ain't like I had no place else to go. And I knowed I'd already missed my time of the month.