Against the Wind (60 page)

I’m watching; watching everyone—Judge Martinez, Robertson, Mary Lou, the bikers. They’re all wrapped up in this, all there up on that mountain with Scott Ray.

“Then what?” I say, prodding gently.

“I sat down. My legs collapsed under me.”

“You sat down next to the body.”

“Yeh.”

“Why didn’t you run away?”

“I couldn’t move.”

“So you sat there. For how long?”

He shakes his head.

“An hour?” I ask.

“At least. Probably longer.”

“Then what did you do?”

“I started to freak out again. I was looking at him, and he was turning white, like a dead fish, that ugly kind of dead-fish white, and I started getting angry at him again. Real angry. I didn’t want to kill him. I just wanted to do some business and be on my way. I done some bad things in my life, I don’t deny it, but I never killed anyone. I swear to that. You believe that, don’t you?”

“Yes. I believe that,” I tell him. I wait a moment: “Go on. Then what happened?”

“I took that knife he’d brought and started stabbing him with it. I was crying and cursing him for making me kill him for no reason.”

“You stabbed him after he was dead?”

“He’d been dead from the minute the first shot was fired.”

“More than an hour before.”

“Yes.”

“Did he bleed much from the stab wounds?”

He shakes his head.

“He wasn’t bleeding hardly at all. There wasn’t no blood coming out. It was already starting to settle.”

“Okay. Keep going.”

“I realized I had to hide him off the road better, ’cause he’d get found too fast where he was, and somebody might’ve seen me pick him up, or at the motel, or something, so I dragged him into the brush.”

“And that was it?” I ask. “After that you left?”

He shakes his head again.

“I cut off his cock.”

“Why?”

“Because he made me put it in my mouth! Because he made me do it.” His eyes pop open. He scans the courtroom, trying to look at everyone, to make sure they see him, make sure they understand.

“He made me suck him off!” he cries. “He made me!”

“And that’s why you did it,” I ask rhetorically.

“Partly,” he says.

“Why else?”

“Because he deserved it,” Scott Ray says defiantly. “I knew he’d be found sooner or later. I’d have called the cops myself if he hadn’t been.” He looks at me, defiance in his eyes. “I wanted everyone to know what he was,” he says. “That he was a faggot rip-off artist. I wanted everyone to see it.”

“YOU TELL AN INTERESTING
story, Mr. Ray.” Robertson stands in front of Scott. Considering the torpedoes that have been shot into his case, he seems relatively composed. But he’s a true believer, he’ll believe the bikers did it to his dying day, no matter what anyone says or does.

“It ain’t a story. It’s the truth.”

“So you say.”

“That’s right,” Scott says with some defiance in his voice. “I swore on a Holy Bible to tell the truth and that’s what I’m doing. I don’t swear on Jesus’ name in vain.”

“It is a good story,” Robertson says. “I will admit that.”

“It’s the truth, damnit! I’m telling the truth.”

“I don’t think the truth in this case exists anymore, Mr. Ray,” Robertson says. “Everything’s gotten so crazy now that there is no truth. There’s what you say, what she says, what my people say, what the defendants say. You all have your own truth, and none of it’s the real truth, as far as I can tell.”

“Mine is,” Scott says doggedly.

“Really,” Robertson says, mocking him.

“Yes.” Firm, sure.

Robertson shakes his head ‘no.’ He turns to Martinez.

“Everything this witness has told us could have been learned from newspapers, magazines, and television, your honor. There is nothing new here that could compel the court to believe this man’s story. It is no more credible than the recanting of Rita Gomez.”

“You saying you don’t believe me?” Scott asks incredulously.

“I think you’re as absolute and complete a liar as I’ll ever meet,” Robertson says.

“Why the hell would I be coming up here and saying I did it, saying I’m the one should be in jail, maybe getting the gas chamber or however you kill people, if I didn’t do it?” Scott asks.

“I don’t know. Maybe someone put you up to it. Maybe you’re some kind of religious fanatic who wants to save the world.”

I stand.

“This is ludicrous, your honor,” I say to Martinez. “This man has put his life on the line here. I’m sure you respect and understand that.”

Martinez nods that he does.

“Then where’s the evidence?” Robertson shoots back at me. “In all this time, all these recanting witnesses, you haven’t produced one shred of real evidence to buttress these outrageous, ridiculous claims. You haven’t shown this court one piece of hard physical evidence that would prove this isn’t anything more than an elaborate concoction, a cluster of intricately interwoven lies. Not one real, physical fact.”

I look at him for a moment, as if pondering the truth of what he’s said. Martinez is looking at me, too: One thing, counselor, he’s saying silently, give us one real piece of evidence.

“Where’s your smoking gun?” Robertson asks.

“It was never found,” I say.

“It was never found,” Robertson echoes, bitterly.

I walk around the defense table, up to the witness stand. The French have a saying: ‘Revenge is a dish that is best eaten cold.’ After two terrible years, my clients and I are about to have our well-deserved feast. I will never sucker-punch an opponent in a courtroom as I am about to do to Robertson at this moment.

“Mr. Ray,” I say. “This gun you say you took away from Richard Bartless, that you used to kill him. Whatever happened to it?”

“I hid it,” he answers.

“Do you remember where?”

“Yes.”

HE HAD THROWN THE GUN
into a culvert halfway down the mountain from where the killing took place. It takes the police less than an hour to find it.

“
YOUR HONOR.
We request that the court dismiss all charges against our clients and order their immediate release.”

“Objection,” Robertson responds tonelessly. He is, if nothing else, consistent in his convictions.

Martinez stares him down.

“So ordered.”

He bangs his gavel.

“The defendants are free to go,” he states. “And gentlemen … this court offers you its heartfelt apologies. I’m sure I can say for everyone concerned …” he looks hard at Robertson as he says this … “that I wish none of this had ever happened.”

It’s just us in the courtroom: the bikers, Mary Lou, and me. After the hugging and dancing are over, and the reality of their freedom has sunk in, Lone Wolf sidles up to me.

“Why, man? Why did you keep going? Why didn’t you give up on us, like everyone else?”

It’s a question I’d asked myself, many times over.

“Because one time,” I tell him, “just one time, I wanted to get something right.”

IT’S DARK NOW.
Everyone has scattered. Mary Lou has gone home, waiting for me.

I’m in the mountains above town, near where it all happened. It’s very peaceful up here; there’s no suggestion that the violence and death that birthed these terrible events still linger. And maybe now, finally, it doesn’t. Maybe the rains and the snows and the years of passage and exorcism have washed it all away, so that I can again bring my child here to feel, at least while we’re in the moment, nothing but peace.

T
HIS NOVEL WAS BEGUN
in a UCSB extension class taught by Shelly Lowenkopf. Mr. Lowenkopf’s guidance, support, and ongoing enthusiasm helped me start this book and, more importantly, see it through to its finish.

My brother, David A. Freedman, who is a practicing attorney in New Mexico, has been a helpful source of local information, as well as assisting me with the legal and technical language and passages.

Jerry Adler, Jack Laird, Ronda Gomez-Quinones, Abby Mann, Howard Krakow, and Norman Powell have been especially supportive at different times in my life, when being so was not always easy or popular.

Most importantly, my wife, Rendy, has always been there for me, during the bad times as well as the good.

J. F. Freedman is the
New York Times
bestselling author of
Against the Wind
,
The Disappearance
,
House of Smoke
, and
In My Dark Dreams
, among other titles. He is also an award-winning film and television director, writer, and producer. He lives in California.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1991 by J. F. Freedman

Cover design by Angela Goddard

978-1-4804-2393-0

This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

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