In Self-Defense Page 11

  Sharon did just about all of her legal research at SMU, and told herself that she came to the college for convenience’ sake even though, deep down, she knew better. The county law library downtown was more accessible from the freeway, had gratis underground parking, and contained all the reference material a Texas lawyer would ever need. The truth was that Sharon saw the rich kids’ college as an unfulfilled fantasy. While growing up in Dallas, she’d dreamed of going to school out here—and of rush weeks, homecoming dances, Tri-Delts, Phi Beta Kappa, Signa-Fy Nothing—even though in her little-girl heart she’d known that her folks could never afford the tuition. She’d been right, of course. Sharon had spent her college career at U. of Texas-Dallas while holding down a job in Foley’s women’s wear department, then had gone on to New York to exist on bologna and cheese while attending acting school. Finally there’d been law school in Austin and toting food and drinks back and forth in restaurants with island bars and ferns in hanging baskets, and using most of her tip money to pay for Melanie’s babysitting. So now that she was a real honest-to-goodness lawyer, if she liked to fantasize a bit while rubbing elbows with the rich folks’ children, what was the harm? So, when she wasn’t kidding herself, she knew that doing research at SMU had everything to do with a little pretending on her part. That and one other motive.

  She reached the eastern side of Hillcrest Avenue and proceeded to stand for a moment in front of the library, craning her neck to gaze up at the mammoth building, teeling like Thumbelina before the giant’s castle. Then she squared her shoulders, hitched up her purse and briefcase, and strode purposefully through the entrance.

  Sharon’s second reason for doing her research at the college leaped at her in the form of an admiring look from a male student after she’d climbed the steps to the second floor of the library. The student sat behind the information desk, was a good-looking kid with fluffy brown hair, and wore a blue knit Tommy Hilfiger shirt. As Sharon came through the turnstile entry, the boy lifted his eyebrows, and as she bent to sign the visitors’ register she couldn’t resist a smile in his direction. She knew that she looked good, and that she could easily pass for one of the students, and if coming to the campus for research boosted her female ego … well, Sharon didn’t see any harm in that, either. As she laid the pen down beside the register and stepped toward the library shelves, the kid popped up like a jack-in-the-box. “Something …” he said, then cleared his throat. “Something I can help you find?”

  “I don’t believe so,” Sharon said. “I know pretty much where everything is, but if I need help I’ll let you know.” She grinned at the boy and continued on her way.

  She paused in the aisle for a moment and let her gaze roam up and down a full half block of eight-foot shelves packed with red, green, gray, and black bound volumes of Vernon’s Annotated Texas Codes, Civil and Criminal Procedures, Federal Seconds, and American Law Reviews. The northern half of the research room contained codes and research books from the forty-nine states other than Texas. Sharon ignored the out-of-state section and carried her purse and briefcase to a group of study tables. The library was silently crowded; students sat with bowed heads and scowls of concentration as they took notes from open law books. Sharon spotted an empty seat between a red-haired girl in jeans and a slim black youngster wearing thick horn-rimmed glasses, and deposited her belongings on the table between the two. She headed straight for the Texas shelves, then stopped to glance toward the southern end of the building, where the Xerox was. Dime a copy. She retreated, dug in her purse, and found the electronic five-dollar slot card she’d bought on her last research trip. She had enough credit left for thirty-two copies. Might be enough and might not. If she had to, she’d buy another card. She went to the shelves.

  In a couple of minutes Sharon returned to the table with four books stacked and balanced on her upturned forearms—the Code of Criminal Procedure in two volumes, the portion of the Criminal Code containing the murder statutes, and the slick paperback giving the 1992 revisions to the code—and dropped her load heavily beside her briefcase. The pile of books toppled and slid; one of the volumes bumped gently against the black student’s arm. He showed Sharon an irritated glance. She retrieved the book with a smile of embarrassment. As Sharon pulled out her chair to sit, her briefcase toppled sideways to land atop the thick Federal Second volume which the red-haired girl had open before her. The girl favored Sharon with an agitated smirk. Sharon apologetically shrugged her shoulders, retrieved the briefcase as she had the law book, and squeezed in between the two students to sit. I can’t help it, kids, if there was another vacant space, I’d take it.

  Sometime during the night, in between the time when Stan Green had left in a huff—Christ, Sharon thought, at least the bastard had removed his condom before he put his pants on—and the time when she’d hauled the blankets onto the porch for a good old-fashioned flogging, she had had an idea. Inspiration came to her often in bed, a sudden flash of light cutting through semiconscious sleeplessness which made her sit bolt upright on the mattress. She’d been tossing and turning as she pictured Midge Rathermore, the poor fat teenager with pimples on her face and the psyche of a four-year-old, and the teenager’s shocking statement during the interview had come back to haunt Sharon. He liked fucking her. Midge’s little sister. Midge’s father. Likely Midge had made it all up, but what if she hadn’t? Bam, bolt of lightning, Sharon sitting up in the darkness, her eyes wide.

  Like a lot of her ideas, this one might explode in her face under the brutal scrutiny of the law. But in view of what Sharon knew about the case so far, her sudden inspiration could lead to Midge’s only possible defense. Nothing ventured, or whatever, Sharon thought.

  She dug her Walkman from her purse, set the dial on 96.3, and clamped the foam-padded earphones on. With Ronnie Millsap’s banging out “There Ain’t No Gettin’ Over Me” in her ears, she opened the murder statutes, jammed her tongue firmly into one corner of her mouth, and went to work. Her foot rocked in time with the music. On her right, the black law student shifted restlessly in his chair. As far as Sharon was concerned, the kid might as well have been a million miles away.

  By four o’clock, Sharon had outlasted a libraryful of studiers except for one plump thirtyish woman who sat two tables away. Sharon had made five or six trips to the stacks for more research material, an equal number of forty-yard walks to the Xerox, and three record-time dashes across the street to move the Volvo, once arriving in the nick of time just as a cop was writing her a parking ticket. Her friendly, gee-I’m-sorry attitude had avoided the citation. Other than the book and copy forays and the ticket-saving incident, she hadn’t moved from her chair. The four books with which she’d begun had multiplied into twelve, and her uneven jumble of bound volumes spilled over to cover the now empty spaces on both sides of her. A half-inch stack of photocopies sat flush against the front edge of the table; she’d used up all the credits on her card plus a portion of a second card in making the copies from the books. The radio’s earphones were canted on her head, the right earpiece lower than the left, and one strand of hair drooped limply onto her forehead. She was beat, but pretty sure she had what she’d come for.

  Midge’s indictment wouldn’t come down for a week, the time required for the clerk to type up the family court master’s recommendation and the judge to rubber-stamp his approval, transforming Midge from a troubled adolescent into a scheming adult with a wave of the magic pen. So, allowing for weekends, they were talking a May 12 or 13 indictment. The law required sixty days’ intervention between indictment and trial, to give the defense time to prepare. In most cases a series of delaying motions would string the time out a year or more before the trial actually happened. The delays wouldn’t come to pass in Midge’s case; with the newspaper and TV folks waiting with bated breath—not to mention the movie people who’d been talking to Breyer and Kathleen in the courthouse hallway, the movie guys more than likely having already made a cash offer to Breyer
for exclusive rights to his story—the state would push to go ahead. In whatever form Dame Justice might exist these days, Sharon thought, the old gal would never stand in the way of a movie deal.

  During summertime trials Sharon always sent Melanie to Sky Ranch, and in the back of her mind she was already making camp plans for the second and third weeks in July. Melanie loved the East Texas camp, just sixty miles from Dallas, and if the Rathermore trial went on longer than expected, the prospect of an extra session of horseback riding, cabin water fights, and campfire sing-songs would make the eleven-year-old jump up and down with joy.

  Sharon was convinced that her research was legally right on target, but the distance between being right and winning the case was approximately a million miles. A lot depended on which judge had Midge’s case assigned to his or her court. Most judges were hardheads when it came to new wrinkles in the law—especially new wrinkles presented by the defense; all prosecution motions received the court’s undivided attention—and Sharon could name only three or four judges in Dallas County who had the legal smarts to listen to her argument. Having Milt Breyer represent the state would have been a definite plus; Milt was as dull-witted as most of the judges. But tack-sharp Kathleen Fraterno would catch Sharon’s drift in a minute, and would fight the motion tooth and nail. Nonetheless, Sharon’s bolt-of-lightning inspiration was all Midge Rathermore had at the moment. Come to think about it, convincing Russell Black to let Sharon go ahead and use the argument might be as much of a hang-up as winning the point in court.

  She mulled these things over as she made four trips to the stacks in returning the books she’d used, then gathered up her purse and now bulging briefcase and left the library. The good-looking kid still sat behind the information desk, and as Sharon went through the turnstile he cleared his throat. She didn’t pause, kept resolutely on her way with her sneakers whispering on carpet, but did turn her head far enough to one side so that the boy would catch her responsive smile.

  After she’d dumped her belongings into the Volvo’s backseat, she paused with the car door open and looked around. Late Saturday afternoon traffic was sparse. Only a couple of vehicles, a panel truck, and a yellow DART city bus were visible the length of Hillcrest Avenue. The temperature was in the low eighties; sunlight warmed her cheeks, bare calves, and lower thighs. A gentle breeze touched her hair. It was a beautiful day, so what the hell was wrong with her?

  Sharon couldn’t quite put her finger on the prickly sensation that now paraded from the nape of her neck down her spine. It was … fear? Worry? She didn’t know. She thought of Melanie and felt a quick surge of panic.

  It’s nothing but the blues setting back in, she thought, Rob on the television last night and the pitso confrontation with Stan Green. That’s all it could be. Those things, coupled with Howard Saw’s murder just a block from her office, had combined to give her the creeps. She climbed in behind the wheel, started the engine and, humming along with the country music on the radio, headed for home.

  9

  As Sharon Hays did research at the university library, Wilfred Donello selected a punk. A really promising punk at that. The object of Donello’s attention was a swishy kid of around nineteen, last in a line of new prisoners checking in on the fifth floor of Lew Sterrett Justice Center, an uptown name for the Dallas County main jail. The boy’s rear end was like a woman’s ass, big and firm, thrusting against the fabric of his tan county-issue jumpsuit like twin bear cubs wrestling under a blanket. This punk even walked like a woman, bim-bam, upholstered butt moving from side to side as a single deputy sheriff escorted the newcomers—two blacks, a pimply white boy, and a couple of Hispanic dudes in addition to the effeminate youngster on whom Donello had his eye—down the corridor toward the twelve-man open bay cell at the northeast end.

  Donello slumped against the wall and crossed muscular tattooed forearms on top of his mop handle as the group marched past him. The mop head was immersed in a bucket of gray soapy water. Donello had been pressing the wringer handle to squeeze water from the mop when the new bunch of pisswillies had rounded the corner. Pisswilly was a jailhouse term meaning any male under twenty-six—unless they were big enough and mean enough to rid themselves of the moniker—and any homosexual of any age. The northeast corner cell on the fifth floor of the jail was designated housing for prisoners under twenty-six who’d never been down to the Texas Department of Corrections. Pisswillies all, Donello thought.

  As the boy wriggled by him, Donello pulled on his damaged earlobe, pursed thick lips, and blew two smacky kisses. The earlobe had a triangular chunk missing and was for the most part made up of gristly scar tissue. The boy turned his head to look Donello over with full-browed woman’s eyes, no fear in their gaze, and continued to watch the older prisoner as the guard unlocked the cell to let the newcomers inside. The boy curved woman’s lips into a smile as he entered the cell. The guard closed the door with a metallic bang, cutting the boy off from Donello’s view. Christ, that butt, Donello thought. As the burly deputy retreated down the corridor, keys jingling by his hip, Donello bent over the mop bucket to hide his erection.

  Tonight Donello would have that boy. Getting inside the cell to visit the punk would be no problem at all, not for Donello, a trusty with pretty much the run of things. Opposed to the general understanding of the squarejohns on the street, who’d never spent a day in lockup and didn’t know batshit from beef stew, county jail trusties weren’t particularly trustworthy. The guards appointed the trusties, and—with the exception of the DA’s pet snitches, who stayed in an isolated section of the jail, and whose trusty status depended on the importance of the people on whom they’d dropped a dime—generally picked the meanest cons with the longest sentences, people like Donello who were awaiting transfer to TDC. It was then up to the trusties to keep the other prisoners in line, one result being that the guards could spend their workday in the control centers located on each floor, watching television or shooting the bull, and the other result being that the trusties had the run of the jail. The general jail population feared the trusties much more than they feared the guards, and the trusties saw to it that the respect was deserved.

  This was Donello’s fourth trip to Dallas County lockup, and he was soon to make his fourth trip to the penitentiary. His sentencing wasn’t for three more weeks, a month to the day after his conviction. The kiddie-porn beef wasn’t his worst offense—though some considered child pornography worse than murder; Donello had done previous time for armed robbery, murder, and sodomy on an eight-year-old boy—but it was likely to net him his longest sentence. The bitch of a prosecutor—Sharon Hays was her name, a tall, pretty thing whom Donello never would have figured to be so freaking mean—had put the Paragraph on him. The Paragraph, a legal requirement for charging one under the Texas Habitual Felon statutes, was a specific addendum to Donello’s indictment. As a habitual, Donello was looking at a twenty-five-year minimum sentence.

  Donello had it through the jailhouse grapevine—which was a lot more reliable than half-cocked newspaper stories—that the prosecutor had quit her job after the trial because one of the other DA’s, a big-shot superchief name of Breyer, had been trying to get in her britches. If the story was true, Donello didn’t blame the guy. The way she’d been shaking her ass around the courtroom, any man worth donkey piss would be trying to put his hand in her drawers. Just let old Wilfred Donello on the street for a couple of days, and he’d give her something to whine about for putting the Paragraph on him.

  About the only thing Donello had to be thankful for was that his conviction wasn’t aggravated. An aggravated charge had to do with use of a deadly weapon, and required that the con do at least a quarter of his time before he was eligible for parole. As it was, even if the judge sentenced him to life, Donello could be back on the streets in seven years or less. Even so, the time he faced on the kiddie-porn beef was more than he’d done for the armed robbery, the murder, and the sodomy conviction combined
.

  He could forget about getting his case overturned on appeal, that much Donello understood quite well. His appeal chances had gone out the window when someone had murdered his lawyer. The only regrets that Donello had over Howard Saw’s death were that, one, Donello had already paid Saw for the appeal, and, two, that Donello hadn’t killed Saw himself. Christ, Donello thought, fifty grand to a lawyer who couldn’t even win the case over a broad prosecutor. Which attorney the court appointed to stand up with Donello at sentencing didn’t matter; all an attorney did at sentencing was stand around and look stupid, and then tell the poor client how sorry he was that the judge had handed down fifty years or some such, and Donello assumed that a court-appointed lawyer could handle those chores every bit as well as Howard Saw.

  Donello sensed movement behind him, then the same guard who had escorted the punk to his cell walked up beside Donello and looked down at the mop. Donello hopped to, bending quickly to squeeze filthy water into the pail, slinging the sodden head onto the floor, and scrubbing like a maniac. About the only way to lose one’s trusty status was for the guard to catch one goofing off, and a jail-wise con like Wilfred Donello understood the rules. The thick-chested uniformed deputy watched with hands on hips. Donello mopped like crazy.