by Fran Baker
The delicate scent of roses wafting from a flower garden in front of a modest but well-maintained home had stiff competition from the pungent aroma of yerba buena—dried mint leaves—coming from someone else’s open kitchen window.
“Do you live around here?” she asked as they turned the corner and approached his office.
He stopped and pointed skyward. “When I bought the building, I gutted it and converted the second floor into a loft.”
“You live over the office?” She looked up and, sure enough, saw wooden blinds at the windows.
As she preceded him into the anteroom, he gave her golden plume of hair, cascading from that plastic clip, a playful tug. “Wanna go up and see my collection of empties?”
She whipped her head around, the laughing reply “Don’t you mean etchings?” burbling to her lips. But the comeback perished in her throat under his penetrating stare.
The secretary had gone to lunch in their absence, so they had the office to themselves. Their eyes connected in the air-conditioned stillness, and they both remembered vividly what good use they would have made of time alone in years gone by.
But that was then and this was now. He had a preliminary hearing this afternoon, and she had to pick their son up from school in a couple of hours.
“It’s getting late,” she noted nervously.
He shot his cuff back and glanced down at his watch, his dark hair gleaming in the sunlight that found its way through the leafy green fronds draping the window. “It’s twelve thirty.”
“When do you have to be in court?”
“The hearing starts in thirty minutes.”
She figured it would take him a good fifteen minutes to get there, given the noon-hour traffic rush and the never-ending street repairs, and another five to find a parking place.
“We can talk on the phone tonight, after Tony goes to bed,” she offered since he was in a hurry.
“We’ll talk after court,” he decreed before disappearing into his office.
It took a second for that to sink in. When the full impact of his statement finally registered, she swore under her breath and bolted after him.
“What do you mean, after court?” she demanded, positioning herself in front of his desk and bracing both fists upon her hips.
“I mean you’re going with me.” He placed the empty beer bottle in his burnished leather briefcase.
“But I—”
“The hearing shouldn’t take more than an hour.”
“An hour!”
He shrugged. “Two at the most.”
“I have to pick up Tony at three.”
“Can’t Rusty do that?”
“He’s riding herd today.”
“What about Martha?”
Jeannie’s mouth turned downward in an attractive sulk. “Tony’s expecting me.”
“Tony’s had you to himself for ten years.” Rafe’s entreating blue eyes only added to his appeal. “All I’m asking you for is one afternoon.”
“Oh, all right.” She feigned an irritated sigh, but actually her heart was pounding with anticipation at the idea of seeing him in action. Besides, she was dying to know what he was going to do with that bottle. “I’ll have to call the ranch, though.”
“You can use my phone.” He picked up his briefcase and headed for the door.
“Shakespeare was right,” Jeannie grumbled good-naturedly as she dialed the Circle C.
“But if we killed off all the lawyers,” Rafe countered in that same vein, “who would run for political office?”
“Precisely my point!”
He laughed and closed the door behind him just as Webb Bishop answered the phone at the ranch on the second ring.
“W—Webb?”
“Hello, Jeannie.”
She shook her head in confusion. “What are you doing out there in the middle of the day?”
“I had a couple of hours to kill between hospital rounds and office calls, so I thought I’d swing by and see how you’re getting along.”
“I’m fine,” she said a bit too quickly. “Just fine.”
“Good …” He cleared his throat. “Good.”
A telling silence hummed on the line.
She rushed to fill it. “I’m in San Antonio right now.”
“So Martha said.”
Jeannie pinched her eyes shut at the note of resignation in his voice. Tears burned behind her lids. But it was over between them. Over before it had really begun. And there was no sense in prolonging the agony for either of them.
“Is Martha there now?” she asked with false animation.
“She’s up to her elbows in bread dough.” Which explained why Webb had answered the phone. “But I’d be glad to give her a message before I go.”
She passed along her instructions, then said in parting, “Thank you for all you’ve done for Big Tom and for Tony and … and for me.”
A gentleman to the bitter end, he made a gracious exit. “Good-bye, Jeannie.”
“Good-bye, Webb,” she whispered before she hung up, wishing with all her heart that she didn’t have to break his. The problem was—
The problem was, he wasn’t Rafe.
Seven
The courtroom was as quiet as a church.
People walked softly and spoke in whispers. Sounds were magnified: the hum of the air conditioner, the ticking of the clock on the wall, the shuffling of papers at the lawyers’ tables, the squeak of the heavy doors.
Even though she was sitting on a wooden bench that looked remarkably like a pew, Jeannie was well aware that she wasn’t in church. Nor did she think that Rafe’s client—his hair as wiry as steel wool and his skin the color of sorghum molasses—bore the slightest resemblance to a choirboy.
A bartender by trade, he had admitted to shooting a customer during an argument. He also claimed he’d done it in self-defense. But since there’d been no one else in the bar at the time of the altercation, it was his word against the victim’s. And who would believe a man with the word killer tattooed on his left arm?
The victim, who had lived to tell the tale, looked like a candidate for Confirmation by comparison. His hair was neatly trimmed and combed, his face clean-shaven and hospital-pale. He wore a dark suit, a tasteful tie, and a sling on his right arm.
“All rise,” the bailiff said in a sonorous tone.
Jeannie stood along with everyone else when the judge made his entrance. A man who looked to be in his mid-sixties, he wore a black robe and a pair of Ben Franklin glasses.
“Please be seated,” he instructed everyone after he’d taken his place on the bench. Behind him an American flag and the flag of the state of Texas drooped on their stanchions. He nodded to the prosecuting attorney, then said, “You may proceed.”
Jeannie had a front-row seat, which allowed her an unobstructed view of everyone and everything. She’d never been in court before, not even on a traffic charge, so she was anxious to learn how the system worked. Now she leaned forward a little, the better to hear.
On the drive to the courthouse Rafe had explained that during the hearing the prosecutor had to present enough evidence to convince the judge that the defendant—Rafe’s client, in this case—should be bound over for trial on felony charges of assault with a deadly weapon. If Rafe could prove otherwise, through a combination of evidence and examination, the charges would be dropped and his client would go free.
The prosecutor called the arresting officer.
A burly man with close-cropped hair and bulldog jowls, the policeman took the stand and began to tell the court how he’d been called to the scene by a passerby and caught Rafe’s client with smoking gun in hand.
As she listened to the prosecutor and the policeman driving nails into the defendant’s coffin, Jeannie kept glancing at Rafe, who was sitting at the counsel table with an impassive expression. From the heavily starched cotton of his shirt collar to the hand-tooled toes of his eelskin boots, he looked like the Madison Avenue prototype of a prosperous
Texas attorney. But there the resemblance ended.
No courtroom pallor lightened his skin and no desk jockey’s paunch ballooned his stomach. His burnt-sienna coloring was due in large measure to his heritage, but his superb physical condition was strictly the result of the five miles he’d told her he jogged every morning.
His black hair was a trifle shorter in front than it had been the day of the funeral, though it was still collar-length at the back. The silver earring, which she had mistakenly assumed he would remove for the hearing, winked at her in the fluorescent lighting whenever he moved his head to make a note to himself during the policeman’s testimony.
“Pass the witness,” the prosecutor said when he was finished presenting this part of his case.
“Thank you.” Rafe stood, tall and somehow invincible, seeming to dominate the courtroom through sheer determination.
As he picked up one of the photographs that the prosecutor had introduced into evidence and carried it toward the witness stand, Jeannie couldn’t help but remember a passionate young man proclaiming that he wanted to become a lawyer because he wanted to make a difference. She had always believed in him. Always supported him. But until today she’d never really understood the terrible injustices that had spurred his lofty ambitions.
Born in the charity ward of a barrio hospital, he’d cut his teeth on grinding poverty and gang warfare. The oldest child of migrant workers, he’d learned to sleep cramped, to wear cast-offs, and to eat whatever was put in front of him and be grateful for it. A streetwise attorney, he knew from his own experiences that Justice occasionally lifted her blindfold to see what color a person was, how he dressed, where he lived, and who his friends were.
Rafe Martinez was a rebel with a cause, she realized. A modern-day gladiator whose arena was a courtroom rather than a coliseum. And in most cases, he was his clients’ last chance for a fair hearing.
“Officer,” he said now, “I’m handing you this photograph of the scene of the shooting again and asking you to tell the court what that object on the floor to the right of the victim is.”
“It’s a beer bottle.”
From the corner of her eye Jeannie saw the victim squirm in his chair and adjust his arm sling, as if he hadn’t counted on having to sit through this line of questioning.
Then Rafe commanded her full attention again, standing relaxed and poised before the witness stand and asking, “What kind of beer bottle?”
“I don’t know.” The policeman squinted at the photograph, then shook his head. “I can’t read the label.”
A smile broke across Rafe’s handsome face, briefly relieving it of its foreboding austerity. Jeannie’s heart fluttered at the sight of his firm lips softening, his white teeth flashing, and the deep lines on either side of his mouth denting in.
“Let me rephrase that,” he said then, the twinkle fleeing from his blue eyes and his expression turning solemn as he got back to the business at hand. “Does anything appear to be wrong with the beer bottle?”
Now the policeman nodded. “The bottom is broken off.”
Utterly fascinated, Jeannie listened as Rafe went on to build his foundation, brick by brick, until he finally got to the point he really wanted the policeman to make.
“So, Officer, are you saying that a broken beer bottle can be used as a weapon to assault a person?”
“Yes, it can.”
“And have you ever seen anyone stabbed or cut with a broken beer bottle?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Have you ever seen anyone killed as a result of an attack with a broken beer bottle?”
“Objection—irrelevant.”
“Overruled.”
Rafe repeated the question.
“Yes, I have,” the policeman answered.
“So, in your opinion can a broken beer bottle be used as a deadly weapon?”
“Objection—calls for a conclusion.”
Rafe didn’t stand still for it this time. He spun toward the judge, his eyes blazing with barely restrained fury. Jeannie expected him to spit nails when he spoke, but he surprised her by arguing both calmly and convincingly that the police officer had already been certified by the prosecutor as an expert in the field of what could and could not be used as a deadly weapon.
“Overruled.” The judge nodded to the policeman. “You may answer.”
“Yes, it can be used as a deadly weapon.”
“Tell me, Officer,” Rafe encouraged, “was the broken beer bottle in this photograph removed from the crime scene by the police investigative unit, and if so, where is it now?”
“We have it in our bag of evidence,” the prosecutor answered in the policeman’s stead.
Rafe took the broken beer bottle from the prosecutor and had it marked as Defendant’s Exhibit 1. The way he handled it, loose and easy, his strong brown fingers coiled around the smooth glass neck so that the jagged bottom faced the floor, told Jeannie more than she’d ever wanted to know about how he’d managed to survive those early years on the streets. It just about killed her to think that at Tony’s age, or younger, he’d literally fought for his life.
“Did your department fingerprint this bottle?” he asked the officer then.
“Yes, we did.”
“And whose fingerprints did you find on it?”
“The victim’s.”
Once again, the man with the sling drew everyone’s attention by shifting in his chair. All eyes turned to him just as his face fractured into something ugly and mean. Then he caught himself, smoothing his expression with the hand of his good arm.
Rafe reacted to his discomfort in dramatic fashion, raising the bottle for the policeman’s convenience and almost scaring the bejesus out of Jeannie as he asked in booming voice, “And where did you find the victim’s fingerprints on this broken beer bottle?”
“We found a partial thumbprint on the body of the bottle,” the officer said, pointing a cautious finger, “just above the place where it had been broken. And then we found a full series of prints on the neck.”
After satisfying himself and the court that all the fingerprints matched the victim’s, Rafe put the bottle on the evidence table, laying it on its side so that its vicious-looking bottom faced the judge’s bench. Then he returned to the counsel table, opened the briefcase he’d left by his chair, reached in and removed a bottle that Jeannie recognized as the one he’d taken from the restaurant.
“With the court’s indulgence,” he said, holding the unbroken bottle aloft like some medieval standard of battle, “we would like to engage in a little demonstration.”
The judge nodded. “The court has no objection.”
Rafe approached the witness stand, his stride brisk and confident. Jeannie sat up straighter as he got down to the nitty-gritty.
“I don’t want you to take the chance of cutting yourself, Officer,” he said, “so I’m going to hand you an unbroken, empty beer bottle that is identical to the broken beer bottle that was retrieved at the scene of the shooting and that is now in evidence—”
“Objection!” The prosecutor leapt to his feet, seeming to realize—albeit belatedly—where this was leading. “This isn’t show-and-tell.”
Rafe turned back to the bench, smoldering with absolute authority. “Your Honor, all I want the officer to do is to demonstrate for the court at no risk to himself where exactly the victim’s partial thumbprint was found on the body of the broken beer bottle.”
Jeannie held her breath while the judge considered his request, then let it out in a relieved sigh when he said, “It’s a little irregular, but I’ve already granted permission.”
The prosecutor sat down with a disgusted thump.
Her mind abuzz, she watched as Rafe handed the beer bottle to the police officer and asked him to hold it in such a fashion that his thumb would be in the same place as the print that had been lifted off the bottle.
The officer did so, gripping it around the body as if he were going to take a drink from it. Rafe th
anked him, took the unbroken bottle back, and returned it to his briefcase.
“Now,” he said, taking the broken bottle off the evidence table and carrying it back to the witness stand, “I’m going to hand you this bottle, and I’m going to ask you to exercise extreme caution as you hold it by the neck, placing your thumb and four fingers in the same place as the prints that were lifted off it during the course of your investigation.”
The prosecutor, face pink, shot to his feet again. “Objection—probative value.”
Rafe’s eyes turned stony, his voice steely. “Your Honor, the victim in this case has alleged that the defendant, after serving him several beers, refused to serve him anything more. The victim has also alleged that when he argued the matter, the defendant pulled a gun—a legally registered gun, I might add—out from behind the bar and shot him for no good reason.
“It is our contention—a contention we intend to prove during this preliminary hearing—that the defendant refused further service to the victim because the victim was loudly, rudely, obnoxiously, and dangerously drunk. We also intend to prove that when the defendant told the victim he had had enough to drink, the victim smashed the bottle he had just emptied against the edge of the bar and came after the defendant with the intention of going for the jugular.
“Furthermore we intend to prove through examination and through a preponderance of the evidence that the alleged victim in this case is actually a victimizer, that he has a history of violent behavior toward others when he’s drinking, and that the defendant, when faced with that broken beer bottle, had no recourse but to shoot the victim in self-defense.
“In summary, Your Honor, we want to show through this exhibition that this victim”—Rafe stressed the word mockingly as he glared at the man wearing the sling with the full candle-power of his moral disapproval—“triggered his own tragedy.”
The prosecutor renewed his objection, adding snidely, “An ‘exhibition’ of this sort could only be called inflammatory.”
“Overruled,” the judge said. “I want to see what the defendant was faced with.”
