“That’s Randall Prescott,” he told Jake quietly.
Jake glanced at the man, stiffening when he saw Harley Wicks sitting next to Prescott at the prosecutor’s table.
“What is Wicks doing here?” he grumbled to Peter.
“He has a right to be here, but he can’t ask you any questions.”
“I’d like to knock the man across the room. Having him over there feeding questions to Prescott doesn’t help my ability to stay calm.”
“And they know that. That’s why he’s here. You remember that. One blow-up from you, and they’ve won, Jake.”
Jake seethed inside—not just knowing Wicks was here but also realizing Brad Buckley was around somewhere and might even testify in some way. In spite of a crowd stuffed into every corner of the courtroom and hanging over banisters above, everyone quieted when the court bailiff entered the room and with a booming voice ordered that everyone rise and be silent for the entrance of Judge Thomas P. Carter. The judge stepped up to his chair and pounded a gavel, telling everyone to be seated and warning them that he did not intend for this procedure to turn into some kind of circus.
“Anyone who causes a commotion will be immediately removed!” he announced.
Jake studied the tall, austere, and graying man, catching honesty in his blue eyes. One thing he’d learned over the years was how to read a man. The judge glanced at Jake, and both men studied each other a moment.
“Jake Harkner,” the judge spoke up then. “Please rise.”
Jake stood up. Peter also rose, as did Prosecutor Prescott.
“Do you understand why you’re here, Mr. Harkner?”
“I do, Your Honor.”
“And you and your attorney have agreed to allow a hearing before me, rather than a trial by jury, in the matter of a shooting that took place three and a half weeks ago at the Brown Palace in which a man named Mike Holt was shot dead?”
Peter nodded and answered for Jake. “We agree.”
“And you also agree that I reserve the right to either demand a trial by jury or to sentence Jake Harkner myself without a trial if I so choose?”
“We agree,” Peter answered. Jake nodded.
The judge turned to the prosecutor. “Mr. Prescott, do you agree to this?”
“I do, Your Honor, as long as the prosecution is allowed to call a few witnesses and to question Jake Harkner.”
“And, Mr. Harkner, do you understand that I could sentence you to anything from first-degree murder—”
Jake heard Evie gasp. “Daddy!” she whispered.
“—to simple self-defense?” the judge finished.
“As long as Mr. Harkner has a right to appeal your decision to a higher authority, Your Honor,” Peter replied. “However, I believe when we are through that Mr. Harkner will be exonerated of any and all charges.”
“So be it. Everyone may sit down.” The judge pounded his gavel again.
Jake reached behind him and took Evie’s hand, squeezing it reassuringly as the judge turned to the prosecutor.
“Mr. Prescott, you may call your first witness. And please keep in mind, Mr. Prescott and Mr. Brown, that I have requested neither of you bring a parade of witnesses to repeat the same story over and over. This hearing is simply to state the facts and to allow Mr. Harkner a chance to refute any and all accusations in a cross-examination. And I might remind both of you that I reserve the right to question Mr. Harkner myself.”
The prosecutor and Peter nodded.
“I would first like to call two witnesses to the stand to testify to exactly what they saw the night of the shooting,” Prescott told the judge. “They are not character witnesses but are here strictly to explain what happened.”
“Fine. I wasn’t there, so I’d like to hear an eyewitness account,” the judge told him. He looked at Peter. “Do you have any objections, Mr. Brown?”
“Not as long as they simply state facts.”
“Call your witnesses, Mr. Prescott.”
Two different men testified to what they saw—both telling the same story about how fast it all happened. They testified that after Jake blew a hole in Mike Holt’s head, he then rose and told everyone in the room that if they wanted to know what the outlaw Jake Harkner was like, they’d just met him. That he waved his gun at everyone in the room and demanded help for his son and warned that if anyone tried to take him away for what he’d done, he’d kill them.
“It all happened in seconds,” the second witness, Seth Kramer, told the spellbound audience. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Mr. Harkner was like a roaring grizzly bear. It’s hard to explain the way he looked and acted.”
“Did he look like a madman? A murderer?” Prescott asked.
The witness glanced at Jake. “I wouldn’t say that. He looked more like…like… Well, I said he was like a grizzly, so I guess you’d compare it to how a mother grizzly rips into anyone she thinks is threatening her cubs—something like that.”
Peter glanced at Jake and smiled softly. He quickly wrote a note.
That will help you.
Peter rose then. “Mr. Kramer, are you saying the whole incident looked more like a crime of passion?”
“Well, I guess so. I mean, the man just saw his son murdered—or at least he surely thought the boy was dead, and what Mike Holt did was deliberate murder. I have a son, and I’m not so sure I wouldn’t have done the same thing Mr. Harkner did if the situation presented itself.”
“Thank you, Mr. Kramer.”
Prescott stepped closer to the witness. “And if you did find yourself in the same situation, Mr. Kramer, and you were able to wrestle the culprit to the floor like Mr. Harkner did, would you have blown his head off? Or would you have held him there and waited for the authorities?”
The room hung quiet. The witness, a small, balding man who seemed honest, glanced at Jake again. “I don’t know for sure. I like to think I’d wait for the authorities, but I’m not Jake Harkner.”
“You mean you’re not a murderer!” Prescott urged.
“Your Honor, I object to that statement,” Peter interrupted. “Mr. Prescott is leading the witness.”
“I agree,” the judge answered. He looked at Kramer. “Explain what you meant by saying you’re not Jake Harkner.”
“Well—” Kramer swallowed. “I didn’t mean that he was a murderer. I just meant that he’s lived a hard life and then was a U.S. Marshal in a really dangerous place where he faced some of the worst outlaws and such. It…it would probably be easier for a man like him to kill someone than for a man like me. And it was his son lying there. I think maybe he just reacted more like a lawman than an outlaw. He did have the look of an outlaw about him, but he was in kind of a rage over his son. He even—” Kramer hesitated.
“Even what, Mr. Kramer?” Peter asked.
“Well, I don’t want to embarrass a man like Mr. Harkner, seeing the reputation he has, but…well…his voice broke up really bad when he was giving those orders to help his son. It was like he…like he was trying not to cry. I don’t see that as something a murdering outlaw would do.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Prescott muttered.
Peter grinned. “Thank you, Mr. Kramer. You’ve been very helpful.”
The judge told Kramer to step down, and Peter turned to Jake, still smiling. He gave him a nod.
“I believe you have some character witnesses, Mr. Prescott,” the judge told him. “Just be sure what they have to say has true bearing on what happened.”
“It does, Your Honor.” He turned to face the audience. “The prosecution calls Mr. Henry Porter.”
Whispers moved through the crowd, and Jake just closed his eyes and shook his head as the owner of the clothing store where he’d bought his suit took the stand. Prescott established that Henry Porter was the owner of Porter Men’s Wear on Sixteenth Street in De
nver and that the night before the Cattlemen’s Ball at the Brown Palace, he sold a suit to Jake Harkner. “And please tell us, Mr. Porter, what happened while Mr. Harkner was in your store.”
Porter held his chin high as though greatly pleased to gossip about Jake. “Well, he was in the dressing room, not even fully clothed, when Miss Gretta MacBain walked into my store—which that harlot is prone to do, flaunting herself in front of my male customers in an effort to advertise her house of ill repute.”
“And what did Miss MacBain do?”
“She walked right into the dressing room, and Mr. Harkner made not one objection! In fact, I heard laughter!”
A few gasps spread through the room, mostly women, while a couple of men chuckled. Jake reached under the table to take hold of Randy’s hand, squeezing it tightly.
“Your Honor, what on earth can Miss MacBain paying Jake Harkner a visit in a clothing store have to do with the shooting in question?” Peter interrupted.
The judge looked at Prescott. “You want to answer that?”
“I am establishing Mr. Harkner’s well-known penchant for running with lawless, sinful people of ill repute, Your Honor.”
The judge frowned, and Jake rubbed at his mouth in an effort not to laugh.
“I still fail to see a connection,” the judge told Prescott.
“Judge, men who run with the worst of them might think nothing of murdering someone. It’s all part of their lifestyle.”
The judge shook his head. “Step down, Mr. Porter.”
“But…that man spent time alone in my back room with Denver’s most famous harlot!” Porter argued.
“Step down!” the judge said louder.
A shaking Henry Porter left the stand, and Judge Carter frowned at Prescott. “I want an explanation.”
Prescott sighed, his face flushed. He was a thin, balding man with not an ounce of fat on him, which made his face muscles visibly flex in his frustration. “Your Honor, Jake Harkner has run with the worst of them. Practically the first thing he did after coming to Denver was meet up with none other than Gretta MacBain, and the next thing you know he blows a man’s brains out in front of a crowd of innocent people. I am just showing his basic makeup, an ex-outlaw who once rode with the worst of humankind and had a bounty on his head.”
Peter rose. “Your Honor, this is enough! Mr. Harkner’s past is his past, something he paid for years ago. He’s broken no laws since then.”
“I agree,” the judge told Peter. “Do you want to cross-examine Mr. Porter?”
Jake wrote something on notepaper and shoved it in front of Peter. Peter turned to him with a frown. “You sure?”
Jake motioned for him to lean closer. “How well do I know women like Gretta?” he spoke quietly in Peter’s ear.
Peter sighed. “I won’t argue that one.”
“Call her as a character witness. Ask her why she was in that dressing room.”
Peter hesitated, and Jake just grinned. “Ask her.”
Peter straightened and faced the judge. “No, Your Honor, I have no questions for Mr. Porter. I think we’ve established that he’s a useless witness.”
A few people snickered, and the prosecutor glared at Peter.
“I would, however, like to call Gretta MacBain to the stand,” Peter added.
That brought a mumbling throughout the crowd, and the judge pounded his gavel to quiet them. A few women gasped with indignation when they realized Gretta was indeed in the room, sitting in the balcony. Some of the women got up and left, as though Gretta would somehow taint them. Gretta marched down the steps to the main room and up to the witness stand, swearing to tell the truth. She looked at Jake and smiled. Peter remained seated as he questioned her.
“Miss MacBain, I think most people in this room know who you are and what you do, so I’m not going to ask you to repeat either one.”
Gretta scanned the crowd. “A lot of men in this room are very familiar with who I am and what I do,” she answered, grinning at a round of nervous laughter. A few women glanced at their husbands questioningly. Even Peter grinned. Again, the judge had to pound his gavel.
“Miss MacBain, tell us in your own words about meeting Jake Harkner in that clothing store.”
“Sure.” Gretta crossed her legs. “I looked him up. Jake didn’t seek me out. He was very gracious, and he didn’t chase me out of that dressing room because he is well acquainted with women like me, but not for the reasons the dirty-minded men in this room are thinking. Anyone who’s read the book about Jake knows he grew up with women like me. They often took him in as a boy and protected him from a brute of a father who beat him regularly, so he sees women like me as friends and even as good people.”
“And why did you go looking for Jake?” Peter asked.
“Because I knew he was in town to sell cattle, and not long before that, I’d had a customer named Mike Holt, who—” Gretta hesitated and lost her smile, glancing at Evie. “He bragged about the fact that he was going to go after Jake’s son, Lloyd—claimed Lloyd had shot his brother in the back. He also bragged about…things he’d done to Jake’s daughter in Oklahoma. Vile things no woman should have to suffer, not even women like me. I thought Jake should know Holt was out there somewhere looking for his son, so I followed him into that clothing store to warn him. That’s all there was to it.”
“And how long were you alone in that back room with Jake?”
Gretta grinned. “Not long enough. I mean, look at the man! If I could talk a handsome, well-built specimen of man like Jake Harkner into my bed, I sure as hell would take a lot longer than five minutes with him in a back room.”
The room erupted into laughter, and a few more women walked out. Jake glanced sidelong at Randy and noticed she was smiling. She squeezed his hand. The judge pounded his gavel again. “This is not a circus!” he again reminded the crowd.
Peter quickly tried to smooth things over. “Your Honor, I only wanted to establish the fact that Miss MacBain wasn’t in that room long enough for anything of an illicit nature to take place.”
“Well, I have a feeling Mr. Jake Harkner is a man who takes his time with a woman,” Gretta repeated, “but I can name a few men in this crowd who would only need a couple of minutes.”
Even more laughter filled the room. Evie covered her face, and Lloyd just shook his head and grinned.
“Lord help us,” Brian muttered.
Katie couldn’t help smiling.
Again came the pounding gavel. Jake leaned over and said something more to Peter.
“I think we get the picture, Miss MacBain,” Peter spoke up when things quieted. “You only sought out Mr. Harkner to warn him about Mike Holt, a man who had bragged about violating a decent, Christian, young wife and mother, and bragged about intending to murder Lloyd Harkner, which establishes the fact that Mike Holt was a reprehensible rapist and murderer and a man the world is better off without! And I believe you mentioned another name to Jake that day.”
“That’s right. Mike Holt had a friend with him named Brad Buckley. When I told Jake, he said as how this Buckley fellow was as bad as Mike Holt and that he, too, might be out to get him and Lloyd.”
“Just a minute!” Prescott rose. “This is completely out of order! Mr. Brad Buckley happens to be one of my character witnesses! Jake Harkner must have gotten wind of it and thinks he can malign my own witness before I get a chance to call him!”
“Cattlemen call it cutting a man off at the pass,” Jake said wryly.
A few people laughed, and the judge again had to pound his gavel to quiet the crowd. He sighed, telling Gretta to step down. Gretta rose, then hesitated. She looked straight at the judge. “Judge Carter, I want to add that when I told Jake about Mike Holt, the first words out of his mouth were to ask me if that man had hurt me—me, the kind of woman most people don’t care about! He was worried about how H
olt had treated me. That’s the kind of man Jake is. He actually cared I might have been hurt. And I’m telling you right now that nobody knows men better than I do, and that man over there is a good and honest and caring man. He might be a bit brash and waste no words when it comes to his opinions, but he’s a good father and a good husband, and apparently a good grandfather. Just look at that beautiful family sitting behind him. Does that look like a family that belongs to a cold-blooded killer?”
“He is a cold-blooded killer!” Prescott protested. “He proved it at that ball when he held Mike Holt to the floor and put a gun against his forehead and pulled the trigger! Then he stood up and told the crowd that if they wanted to know Jake Harkner the outlaw, they’d just met him! The man killed his own father, for God’s sake!”
The crowd broke into bedlam, and Jake squeezed Randy’s hand so hard it hurt. She could feel him wanting to charge right into the prosecutor. Peter reached over and pressed on Jake’s forearm. “He’s doing this on purpose,” he reminded Jake. “You’ll get your turn, I promise.”
Randy fought tears, and Jeff scribbled wildly in his notebook.
Harley Wicks just sat quietly grinning.
“Did your father beat you near to death almost every day of your life as a young boy?” Gretta yelled at Prescott.
The judge pounded his gavel fiercely for a good thirty seconds until the crowd finally quieted again. “One more outburst like this one, and I will clear this room!” he announced. He turned to Gretta. “Miss MacBain, you will please step down.” He turned his attention to Prescott. “And you, Mr. Prescott, will refrain from referring to things that happened thirty to fifty years ago and refrain from spouting your own opinions about Jake Harkner! You are the prosecutor, not a witness! Am I understood?”
His face much redder now, Prescott nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“I don’t give one whit about Jake Harkner’s past. I only care about the here and now. What happened at that shooting and why it happened! Now—do you have any other witnesses? If you do, they had better have more to offer than gossip and personal opinions and jokes.”
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