Paris Trout (25 page)

Seagraves walked back to his seat and heard the first
question before he had turned around.

"
Now, Miss Mary, where did the initial shot hit
you?"

"
Right in the middle of the back," she
said.

"Would you please stand for a moment?"

The woman stood up and turned around. She had worn a
long cotton dress with buttons up the back. Without being asked, she
unfastened the top three. Her dress separated, and the skin beneath
was rolling and brown, and just to the right of her spine was a black
spot the size of a half dollar. Two black lines led from it in
opposite directions, as if she had been cracked.

Townes positioned her so the jury could see. Then he
said, "Thank you," and she rebuttoned her dress and sat
back down. She had not hesitated or fumbled over the buttons.

"Where did the next bullet go?" Townes
said.

"In the side," she said. And she reached
behind, without standing, unbuttoning herself again, and then pulled
the dress open until another black mark appeared. It lay on the wave
of flesh beneath her brassiere. "And the next?"

She covered her side and pulled the dress down from
the neck. Showing her right shoulder. The spot there was larger than
the other two, and unlike them, it rose above the skin. The last mark
was beneath her left breast, and she displayed it easily and without
embarrassment. Unlike her sons, she was not afraid.

"
All this time you were being shot," Townes
said, "did any of you folks curse Mr. Trout or Mr. Devonne?"

"No sir," she said.

"
Did you have any kind of weapon, any of you?"

"No sir."

"
How long did it take? I mean, were the shots
fired quick or slow?"

"
As quick as anything is ever done," she
said.

"
And when it was over, what did Mr. Trout and
Mr. Devonne do then?"

"When I looked," she said, "both of
them was just running like rabbits. I told Rosie then to come on, and
me and her made our way out the door. It didn't seem like no reason
to stay in the kitchen where it happened. We had other things to do
then."

He looked at her, not seeming to understand. But
Seagraves did.

"
To prepare ourselves," she said.

Seagraves closed his eyes; Trout looked straight
ahead. Townes waited a moment, making sure everyone understood. "Did
they ever get any of those bullets out of you?" he said finally.

She shook her head. "No sir. I feel them in the
night."

"Thank you,"
Townes said, "that's all I have."

* * *

SEAGRAVES STARED AT THE WOMAN from his seat, she
stared back. "Do you own a pistol, Mrs. McNutt?" he said.

"
No sir."

"
There is no pistol in your house?"

"Yessir, there is one. It belongs to my husband,
Mr. Lyle McNutt."

"
Do you know where your husband keeps it?"

"Yessir, I know everything in my home."

"What caliber pistol is that?"

"
I don't keep track of nothing like that. I just
know it's there."

Seagraves stood up and began to walk toward the jury.
He had found an assault charge which was filed and dropped against
Mary Boxer in Daniel County seven years previous. A white
veterinarian claimed she had tried to hit him with a chair in a
scuffle over the rent.

He had meant to bring that into it here, he knew he
ought to bring it in. Something stopped him, though, he couldn't say
what. Only that things were confused enough.

"
The point I'm coming to, Mrs. McNutt,"
Seagraves said, "our contention here is going to be that you are
accusing Mr. Buster Devonne because you don't want the jury to
believe him later on. I want to give you the chance to speak to that
now."

For a moment she seemed to rock, as if a breeze had
suddenly blown through the room. "Lord," she said, "I
wouldn't say nobody shot me if they didn't."

"
You know a good bit about the courthouse, don't
you?"

"
No sir."

"
You and your family know something about how to
try a case?"

"
Ain't none of us lawyers," she said, and
suddenly everyone in the court except Mary McNutt herself was
laughing.

Seagraves smiled, and the judge wiped tears out of
his eyes. "I didn't mean to accuse you being lawyers,"
Seagraves said. "I meant you folks have been through this
procedure before."

"No sir, I never been in court."

"What about those boys of yours?"

"No sir, they never in nothing like a big court.
Henry Ray been in little troubles, but never in nothing with a gun."

"Our contention, Mrs. McNutt," Seagraves
said, "is going to be that Thomas came up off that chair and
cursed Mr. Trout for everything in the catalog and then came in after
the shooting and removed the gun. Is that the truth?"

She and Paris Trout stared at each other then, until
Seagraves walked between them.

"
No sir," she said. "I told the truth
about it. You can make it look any which way now, but I told how it
happened."

Seagraves said, "That's what we called the jury
for, to decide."

She turned then, looking
directly at them. "They don't decide what happened", she
said. "It's already done. All they decide is if they gone do
something about it."

* * *

HARRY SEAGRAVES ATE A late supper alone with Lucy.
The maid had gone home ill, and the liver Lucy cooked had a metallic
taste. He had no appetite anyway. He played with his food until she
had finished and then stood up, not waiting for dessert, and headed
out the front door. "Harry?" she said.

"
I've got some things to do," he said,
without turning around.

"Are you going to be long?"

"
I'm in a trial," he said.

He drove the car to Sleepy Heights, a gritty housing
development that overlooked the sawmill on the edge of town.
Two-bedroom houses, most of them cheap brick. Brand-new, they were
forty-two hundred dollars each. Police lived there, workers from the
sawmill, teachers.

The development was built on two hills, and Buster
Devonne's place sat in between, at the bottom. Seagraves stopped the
car in the road and turned off the lights. He checked to see the
envelope was still in his coat pocket. He got out. The air was full
of the smell of sawmill chemicals.

The driveway sloped downhill, and ridges of baked
clay left by car tires broke under Seagraves's feet and made him
unsteady as he walked toward the porch. It was screened in and ran
the length of the front of the house. Seagraves knocked and then
realized Buster Devonne was sitting six feet away, watching him.

Buster Devonne stood up slowly and unhooked the
screen door. Behind him, inside the house, there were lights on.
Somebody was playing a piano. Buster Devonne didn't wait for
Seagraves to come in but turned his back as soon as the door was
unlocked and sat back down and lit a cigarette. "Help yourself?
he said, and nodded to the other chairs.

"
I didn't come to sit with you," Seagraves
said.

"
This ain't personal against Paris," he
said. "I got to protect my own interests. You explained that to
Paris the way I intended it .... "

"
I brought you the money," Seagraves said.
"I don't run your errands."

Buster Devonne was bare-chested, thick in the neck
and shoulders, turning fat. The porch smelled of tobacco and sweat.

"
Help yourself." he said again.

Seagraves stayed where he was. The heel of his shoe
held the door open, perhaps an inch. He took the envelope out of his
coat pocket, feeling the weight. "This is from Paris Trout,"
he said. "It isn't connected to me."

"Whatever you say."

Buster Devonne accepted the envelope without looking
inside, folded it in half and pushed it into his pants pocket. "Mr.
Trout don't have nothing to worry about," he said. "All
those people looking for is a way to let him go."

Seagraves did not answer.

"I know people, and I lived in this county all
my life," he said.

Seagraves walked back to
his car, feeling the man on the `porch watching. He got in slowly,
feeling as if he'd left something behind. He stared at the porch a
moment, and then, before he started the car, he saw the point of
Buster Devonne's cigarette glow red and then disappear. In the moment
of illumination, though, he saw him. Buster Devonne was counting his
money.

* * *

HE DROVE THROUGH SLEEPY Heights and came out on the
highway. He turned left, in the direction of town, and a few minutes
later he passed his own house and then the college and then the
courthouse. He turned right at the river, and the sound of his tires
changed as he dropped off the pavement onto the dirt road that led
into Indian Heights.

He stopped up the road from the house where it had
happened and turned off his lights, thinking of what he had just
done.

He watched the windows for most of an hour, trying
somehow to weigh the place now without the girl, until a shadow moved
and the lights inside went off.

He had no idea why he was
there.

* * *

SEAGRAVES ARRIVED AT COURT at five minutes to eight,
red-eyed and spent. He had fallen into bed exhausted and then been
unable to sleep until after five. Trout was already there, staring in
a murderous way across the aisle at Ward Townes. Townes ignored him,
and with the jury out of the room, Seagraves ignored him too.

The first witness was Agent E. Smythe of the Georgia
Bureau of Investigation, who referred repeatedly to a small leather
notebook he took from his coat pocket.

Agent Smythe had visited Rosie Sayers at Thomas
Comell Clinic the day after she was shot and written down what she
told him. Seagraves objected before he could read it. "No
grounds have been laid for this," he said. "A dying
declaration is not admissible without proof that the declarer knew
they were dying. There was no doctor present, no medical basis for
this at all."

Ward Townes did not wait for the judge to rule. "Did
Rosie Sayers know she was dying?" he said.

"
She said as much."

"
I'll allow it," the judge said.

"
Thank you," Townes said, and then to the
agent. "What exactly did Rosie Sayers say that indicated to you
that she realized her condition was mortal?"

The agent went back to his notebook. "She
complained of her stomach," he said. "She believed she was
too young to die, that God had made a mistake."

Seagraves stood up again. "That is the statement
of a delusional child, Your Honor. I ask that it not be allowed to
prejudice this case any further than it already has."

"
I think we'll listen to this," Judge
Taylor said.

"
Did she tell you what happened to her?"
Townes asked the agent.

"Yessir. She said Mr. Paris Trout had arrived on
the porch with brass knucks and grabbed Thomas Boxer." The agent
looked at his notebook again and began to read.

"'I told Thomas the man had knucks, and he said,
'Goddammit, what is it to you?" He chased me in the house and
hit me on the head with his knucks. Mary come in and pulled him
loose. He shot me in the arm, he shot at Mary too. I went on inside
the house and sat on the trunk. He came to the door and shot me in
the shoulder and stomach.' "

The agent looked up.

"
Did you ask if she had a gun herself?"
Townes said.

"Yessir. She said she didn't. She said she
didn't even have a stick."

"Was there anything else?"

The agent shook his head. "She couldn't talk
much, except to swear under oath it was true."

Townes went back to his table and pulled a folder out
of his briefcase. An edge of one of the photographs lay beyond the
lower edge of the folder, and Seagraves knew what it was.

"
Objection."

The judge looked up, surprised. "To what, Mr.
Seagraves?"

"The photographs Mr. Townes is about to offer as
evidence are gruesome beyond the matter in front of this court. They
show the marks of the surgery."

"Are those pictures, Mr. Townes?" the judge
said.

"Yes, Your Honor." He closed the folder of
pictures and delivered them to the judge. Seagraves was surprised
that he had not taken the pictures out and given the jury at least a
glimpse as he carried them up. The judge fit his glasses across his
nose and looked them over.

"
Is this the girl?" he said.

"Yessir," Townes said.

"
Is she deceased here?"

"
Yessir."

The judge frowned. Seagraves moved next to Townes and
folded his arms. "As Your Honor can see," he said, "the
wounds are enhanced by the surgical procedures necessary to remove
the bullets. The woman in those pictures has not only been shot, she
has been mutilated."