Black Water (18 page)

“Mm-hmm,” Dimwiddie replied again, and then actin’ like he was thinkin’, he asked, “Did you happen to find anything queer or out o’ place?”

“Yessir,” Rowe said after a long, unscripted sigh, “a t’bacca pouch, rollin’ papers, spent matches, ‘n a pocket watch was settin’ on th’floor in front o’ th’couch.”

“A pocket watch you say. Have you since determined who that watch belonged to?”

“Yessir, it was Hub’s. He admitted it.”

“I see, well, that seems to simplify things doesn’t it? Was there anything else besides the pouch, the papers, and the pocket watch?”

“Yessir. Rubbed-out ceeg’rette butts.”

“Cigarette butts,” Dimwiddie repeated off-handedly. “Hmmm.” Then, puttin’ on like he’d miraculously put two and two together…. “Butts? Plural?”

“Yessir. Four of ’em.”

“Sheriff, what would four rubbed-out cigarette butts tell you?”

“That he’d had time t’roll ‘n smoke four ceeg’rettes waitin’ for th’Komeses t’….”

“Objection,” Luther chirped, jumpin’ up, “Your Honor, unless cigarette butts’ve learned how to talk, he doesn’t know that.”

The crowd laughed and the judge gave ’em the evil eye. “Objection sustained,” he declared, but the damage’d already been done. Everbody pictured a relaxed Hub Lusaw, his back to the couch, puffin’ out a chain o’ smoke rings, flickin’ ashes, and pickin’ his nose, waitin’, red-eyed and plottin’.

Luther sat down and Dimwiddie asked the sheriff, “What was the condition o’ the house?”

The sheriff glanced over at Hub. Two o’ the badly mutilated bodies in the shack—their heads and faces completely destroyed—had been done to by him. It was still a heinous sight. For the rest o’ his life, he’d be reminded of three mutilated bodies, pulverized brains, eyes hangin’ outside sockets, missin’ parts, and the smell of iron-rich blood mixed with piss and shit. “It was a mess. They’s blood evawhere.”

“Had they been shot with a gun?”

“No, sir,” the sheriff answered, robotically.

“Stabbed with a knife?”

“Ret’d had a knife used on ‘er, but I don’t know that you’cd actually say she’d been stabbed. I’d call it more cut than stabbed. They’s,” he tried to think of a better word, but none came, “parts. Removed. Missing.”

The sheriff’s last statement was ad lib, not somethin’ they’d rehearsed. Dimwiddie wanted to get away from it quickly and the best way to do it was to borrow Toad’s out—ignore it.

“Well, if they hadn’t been shot or stabbed, how’d they meet their end?”

Luther rolled his eyes and stood up. “Your Honor? Would you please instruct the prosecuting attorney to save his playacting for the stage and get on with it? If he doesn’t know how they died, he’s the only one within two hundred miles.”

The courtroom busted up, and Parks looked at Dimwiddie over his glasses. “You are slatherin’ it a mite.” He pounded his gavel. “Let’s keep it down, folks.”

“Sorry, Your Honor,” Dimwiddie apologized and turned his attention back to the sheriff. “For the record, would you please tell the court how they died?”

“Beat t’death. All of ’em.”

“At that time, did you know who the perpetrator was?”

“Only idee I had was what LeRoy’d said. He thought it was Hub agoin’ at it with ’em. He said he couldn’t hear good ‘nough at what was said, the exact words, but he heard ’em yellin’ ‘n he said one of ’em sounded like Hub.”

“And what happened when you went t’question Mr. Lusaw?” Dimwiddie asked while he passed the defense table and looked at Hub.

“I couldn’t. He’d lit out.”

“Lit out, huh? Then, how did you ultimately apprehend him?”

Rowe was reminded of Hub’s tellin’ him he never woulda caught him if he hadn’t surrendered. “He turned hisself in.”

“When he was confronted with the deed, did he deny doin’ it?”

“No, sir. He volunteered sole respons’bil’ty.”

Dimwiddie stepped to, and picked up a paper off the corner of the prosecution table and waggled it in the air for the jury and spectators to see. “Yes, he did. In fact…Hub Lusaw signed a confession…a full confession…for the cold-blooded murder of George and Matthew Komes.” He slapped the paperwork back on the table. “Was this the first time Hub Lusaw’d been at odds with the law?”

“Nope.”

Parks popped up like a Jack in the Box. “Come again?”

Assuming Parks hadn’t heard him, the sheriff sat up straighter and spoke louder. “I said, ‘No, sir.’”

“That’s not what I heard. You said ‘nope.’”

“Same thing ain’t it?”

“Not in this court. Try again.”

“No, sir,“ Rowe said. “Sorry, Your Honor,” then to Dimwiddie, “No, sir.”

“You’re a public official, dammit, and this is a court o’ law,” Parks chirped, hotly. “You don’t use that kind o’ language in here. I’d better not hear ‘yep’ either.” He pointed the gavel handle to Dimwiddie. “Go ahead.”

“Thank you, Your Honor. He’d been in trouble before. How many times d’you think?”

“I don’t know exactly, a lot.”

“Well, three? Half a dozen? A dozen?” Dimwiddie drilled.

“More like a dozen.”

“How many times would you say were for fightin?” Dimwiddie asked, swiveling toward the gallery.

“All of ’em.”

“All of ’em? My goodness. So…what?…he gets too much to drink….”

“No, I don’t know that he drinks much. He’s just got a temper. It cuts loose ‘n he don’t know how t’cap it off.”

“Thank you, Sheriff,” Dimwiddie said and turned to Parks. “Prosecution rests.” He sauntered back to his table and plopped into his chair.

“Mr. Knox,” Parks said, “your witness.”

Luther stood without leavin’ his table. It was meant to imply that anything the sheriff had to say wasn’t worth comin’ all the way around the table for. “Thank you, Your Honor.” He had a paper in his hand that he rolled and unrolled into a tube while he talked. The sheriff watched it like it was a snake. “Sheriff, I only have a couple of questions.” He pointed the tube at him. “You don’t like Hub, do you?”

“Not much,” the sheriff admitted, and shifted nervously in the seat. “He’s mean ‘n….”

Luther waggled the tube back and forth to cut him off. “Thank you,” he said. “Just answer the question.” He crossed his arms over his chest, but the tube was still evident. He was glad to see it was makin’ the sheriff nervous. “Weren’t you close to the deceased, the brothers?”

“I knew ’em. I don’t know as I’d say close.”

“No? That’s odd. I heard different. I heard you were very close. In fact, I heard you were one o’ the few that got along with ’em. Went hunting together and such. They ever spend time in one o’ your cells?”

“Once ‘r twice, maybe.”

“It was more than once or twice,” Luther said, and the sheriff watched while Luther unrolled the tube. He took his time to look the paper over, then raised his eyebrows a couple o’ times as if somethin’ special’d caught his eye. “Quite a few more than once or twice. Isn’t it also a fact, that in your younger, more mischievous years, you and the Komes brothers all slept off a few bottles? In the same cell? At the same time?” Rowe looked trapped. Luther rolled the paper back up. “That was a question, Sheriff.” Rowe glared at him. “Requiring an answer. Don’t make me swear up your predecessor. He’s old and lives outside of town, but I will if I have to.”

“We were just kids blowin’ off a little steam,” the sheriff finally said, “’’n we didn’t beat nobody t’death.”

“Right. But then no one had raped…tortured…or murdered your sister. Ethel. Had they?”

The sheriff looked like he’d been kicked in the gut. Luther had just earned his fifty bucks and then some. It was a brilliant move and so simple. Every man in the room who had a sister, pictured her butchered, gutted like a fish, layin’ on that couch, and vicariously pictured themselves, as Hub had done, exacting bloody revenge.

“That’ll be all,” Luther said and sat down.

Parks nodded to Rowe. “You can step down now.”

The sheriff rose and on his way back to the spectator gallery, Luther helt out the rolled paper to him and winked. The wink caught Rowe so off guard that he took the paper without thinkin’. He pushed through the squeaky little spring-loaded gate in the ornate railing separating the gallery from the business end o’ the court and continued down the aisle.

He pushed through the back door in dire need of a water closet and a stiff drink. Hurryin’ across the floor, he unrolled the paper. He stopped dead and looked back at the closed doors as if he could see through ’em and to the back of Luther Knox’s head. His jaw muscles rolled up to his temple. There was only one word on the paper, written in a nice hand.

Thanks.

Back in the courtroom, Parks jabbed the gavel handle to the prosecution table. “Mr. Dimwiddie? Your next witness.”

“Your Honor,” Dimwiddie said, standing, “I’d like to call LeRoy Ledbetter.”

LeRoy jumped up like he had a spring in his ass. His shirt was soaked in sweat and his hair plastered to his head. It seemed to take an eternity to excuse and apologize hisself past the gauntlet of his fellow gawkers’ knees. He finally got to the aisle, walked down that massive gap separating the spectator gallery, feelin’ ever eye on the back of his head. He pushed through the squeaky little gate and approached the witness stand, hopin’ to God he didn’t trip. He finally got to the bailiff waitin’ with a big black bible in his hand.

“Putcher left hand on th’book ‘n raise yer right.”

LeRoy did so, and the bailiff buzzed through a blistering rendition of “Do you swear t’tell th’truth, th’whole truth, ’n nothin’ but th’truth, s’hep ya God?”

“Yep,” LeRoy stammered.

Parks exploded. “Whad you say?”

Some fellas, no matter what they do, it’s the wrong thing.

“Yeah, I mean yes, Yes, sir, yeah, No, I mean, Yes, Yes, sir, I do. Swear. I swear. Yes, sir!”

“Statechur name for th’court,” the bailiff said.

“LeRoy.”

Parks rolled his eyes. The court busted up. Parks banged the gavel and after they’d calmed, the bailiff said, “Yer whole name?”

“LeRoy Thadeus Ledbetter,” he said. Ripples of laughter trickled up the benches.
Thadeus
wasn’t really all that funny, but it was hard not to kick a man who was already on the ground, beggin’ for it.

The bailiff nodded to the witness box. “Take th’seat.”

LeRoy slid in. Parks looked like he’d enjoy bitin’ a big chunk out of his ass.

“Mr. Ledbetter,” Dimwiddie said, approaching the box, “you’ve known the Komeses and Lusaw’s most o’ your life, isn’t that right?”

“Yep,” then before Parks could roast him again, he said, “Yes, I mean Yes. Yes, sir, I have. Most o’ m’life. All m’life. Yes, sir, I sure have.”

“You know ’em well then?”

“Much as anybody, I reckon,” LeRoy replied, then he looked at Parks hoping reckon wasn’t another “Yep” or “Nope.” Parks glared at him but didn’t yell or point the dreaded gavel handle.

“Would you consider yourself a friend of Hub’s?” Dimwiddie asked. “From what the sheriff said, you know him well enough to recognize his voice.”

“Sure, we’re friends,” he answered, none too sure if he was supposed to be a friend of a mass murderer.

“Good friends?”

“I don’t know ‘bout good, but we’re friends.”

“Were you a friend o’ the late Ret Lusaw?”

“Sure, everbody liked Ret.” He was startin’ to feel better now. Things seemed to be goin’ pretty good.

“You think everybody liked Hub as much as they liked her?”

“Your Honor?” Luther said, standing, “Is anybody driving this bus?”

Parks looked at Dimwiddie. “Where’re you goin’, Sam?”

“Your Honor, allowed to continue, my purpose will become evident.”

Good enough for him, Parks pointed the gavel handle to Luther. “Siddown.”

Luther sat. Dimwiddie looked at him, shook his head, and chuckled. “Anybody drivin’ this bus. Ha! That’s rich. You’re a funny fella.” Then he turned his attention back to LeRoy. “Well?”

“Well, what?” LeRoy asked, blankly.

“Did you…or did you not…like Hub as much as you liked Ret?”

“I liked ‘em…dif’ernt,” he said, and the spectators broke up. Parks pounded the gavel and rolled the evil eye over the crowd.

Dimwiddie laid his arm on the witness box and leaned in. “Which one…were you…dif’ernt…closer to…do you think?”

LeRoy shot another nervous look at Hub. “Maybe Ret. Only maybe, though.”

Dimwiddie caught the look. “Would that be because she’s closer to your age, you think?”

As best he could, LeRoy weighed every question, wonderin’ which ones would trap him into trouble. This one sounded safe so he gave a very decisive, “Maybe.”

“Could it’a been because she was smart?”

LeRoy pinched his eyebrows together in deep thought. “I don’t reckon she’s any smarter’n most.”

“Well, then, maybe because she was a girl? Because she was pretty? She was a pretty girl. Did she like to have fun?”

“Sure, who don’t like t’have fun?” he replied, thinkin’ that sounded logical.

“You ever have fun with her?” LeRoy’s face went slack. “Out behind the barn so t’speak?”

LeRoy was struck dumb. The son of a bitch slipped one in on him. He couldn’t answer any way that wouldn’t get him in dutch.

Dimwiddie stared at him, waitin’ for an answer.

Parks stared at him, waitin’ for an answer.

He looked at the spectators, all starin’, waitin’ for the Ravin’ Idyit to make a fool of hisself again.

“Ever play doctor and nurse?”

Luther stood and demanded, “Your Honor!”

“Overruled!” Parks snapped. “Siddown!”

Luther sat, knowing this was more than a little out of order.

“You’re under oath, LeRoy,” Dimwiddie pushed, “answer the question. Did you ever diddle with Ret Lusaw?”

Luther jumped out of his seat. “Your Honor! Diddle? I have to object. And then, what does this have to do with anything?”

Parks was very interested, and from much more than a judicial view. He aimed the gavel handle at him. “Over…ruled! Sit…down!”

Luther sat, reluctantly. This obviously wasn’t a New Orleans court!

Dimwiddie pushed on. “Answer the question, LeRoy. Did you ever have fun with Ret Lusaw?”

LeRoy squeaked out an unbelievable, “I don’t remember.”

Parks threw his hands in the air. “Oh, for Christ’s sake!”