"You've been sitting here three hours, in this condition? Are you In pain!
"A little sore. I can stand it."
"Well, I can't." Kendall scraped back her chair noisily, crossed the room, angrily opened the door, and addressed the squad room at large. "My client needs medical attention.
Who's going to drive us to the hospital?"
Kendall rode in the backseat of the patrol car with Mrs. Lynam, who remained silent during the brief trip. At the hospital, she was subjected to a pelvic examination. A rape kit was prepared, including photographs of Mrs. Lynam's body.
Kendall was promised that she would be sent a copy of the evidence report as soon as the police department received its copy.
Although the bruises on Mrs. Lynam's face were unsightly, the doctor assured her that they were "superficial" and would fade in due time. The scratches on her shoulders, breasts, and thighs were treated with antiseptic. Upon their return to the courthouse, Kendall insisted that her client be given a shower and breakfast before she was formally questioned.
"Call me when you're ready to question her," she told the officer assigned to the case. "I'll be waiting in my office."
Before leaving, she pressed Mrs. Lynam's hand reassuringly.
Two hours later, they were back in the interrogation room.
Lottie Lynam's hair was still damp. Her face looked freshly scrubbed and innocent, Kendall noticed. Without makeup, she looked much younger and more vulnerable. She was dressed in a drab gray jail-issue jumpsuit and cheap faux leather slippers.
"There were three bullet holes in Char, uh, the victim,"
the police detective told Kendall. "We've already got pictures of the crime scene. Th ey're not pretty."
"May I see them please?"
He passed her a manila folder. As he'd warned her, the color prints were vividly god.
"One bullet entered through his neck. One was fired into his forehead, 'bout here." He marked the spot on his own skull. "The other went clean through his cheek, and came out his temple on the opposite side. The gun was fired at close range. 'Bout three-thirty this morning. He died instantly in his own bed."
His eyes slid toward Lottie, who sat with her hands clasped primly in her-lap. Her expression gave away nothing. Subconsciously Kendall noted how helpful her stoicism would be in the courtroom.
She thanked the policeman for the information. "Has the coroner filed the autopsy report?"
"He'll get to it this morning. He said we might have the report by the end of the day."
"I'd like a copy as soon as it's available, please."
"Sure. But it's going to back up everything I told you."
Kendall didn't respond to that. Instead she asked a simple question: "Why is my client being held on a suspicion of murder?"
The assisting officer, who thus far had been leaning against the wall with his ankles crossed, picking his teeth with a wooden toothpick, guffawed. He pointed toward the pistol lying on the table. It had been bagged and tagged. "That's the murder weapon right there. It was lying on the floor beside the bed where Charlie got his head browed off. We've already matched her prints to it, and there were powder burns on her hands. Can't get much more conclusive than that."
"Can't you?" Kendall asked with condescension.
The other officer picked up the story. "When we got to their house, Lottie was sitting at the kitchen table sipping a straight whiskey, cool as a cucumber."
"I imagine Mrs. Lynam was in shock and deserved a drink for having been raped."
"Raped! Charlie was her husband. They were married for years," the assisting officer argued. "We got us a clear-cut case of murder here. It's plain to see what happened."
"Oh?" Kendall's inflection invited him to speculate.
"Charlie came home drunk. That didn't set too well with Lottie. She probably nagged him about it, and he knocked her around a bit. I'm not saying that was right," he added quickly. "Anyhow, Lottie was riled, so when he fell asleep, she shot and killed him."
"Have you got statements from the witnesses?" Kendall asked.
"Witnesses?"
"Anyone who was there and saw what happened," she explained innocently.
"Can a neighbor substantiate that such an argument took place? Can anyone testify that Mrs. Lynam was angry with her husband and shot him with a pistol, which, incidentally, she could have handled at any time before last night?"
The two officers exchanged glances. "There aren't any neighbors," one grudgingly admitted. "Their place is out yonder in the country."
"I see. So nobody overheard this quarrel that you've alleged took place. Nobody witnessed a murder."
The officer threw his toothpick to the floor and shoved away from the wall. "Nobody witnessed any rape either."
Kendall thanked them and asked to see her client alone.
Once the policemen left the room, Lottie spoke for the first time. "It's pretty much like they said."
Kendall had feared as much, but she didn't let her discouragement show.
"Based on the physical evidence they already have, it's almost certain you'll be indicted for murder. Regard less of that tap dance I did for the policemen, we know you pulled the trigger on the gun that killed your husband. You're not innocent that's the fact. Guilt, however, is a determination. So my job is to explore and expose the circumstances of your life with Charles that will mitigate your guile.
"Before I enter that courtroom to represent you, I'll have to know more than I'll probably need to know about you and your marriage. The courtroom is no place to spring a surprise on your own counsel. So I apologize in advance for prying into matters that deserve privacy. That's an unpleasant but necessary aspect of my job."
Lottie clearly didn't want the intrusion, but she gave Ken dall a nod, indicating that she should proceed.
Kendall began by getting biographical information. She learned that Lottie had been born in Prosper, the youngest of five children. Her parents were deceased; siblings were scattered. She graduated from high school, attended one year of junior college, then took a secretarial job in an insurance office.
Charlie Lynam was a traveling salesman who sold office supplies. "He called on the insurance office," she said to Ken dall.
"He started flirting and asking me out. At first I said no, but finally I gave in and we dated whenever he was in town. One thing led to another."
They had been married for seven years. They had no children. "I can't have kids. I had appendicitis when I was a teenager. The resultant infection left me sterile."
Lottie Lynam hadn't led a very fulfilling life. The longer she talked, the more sympathy she evoked from Kendall, who had to remind herself to maintain a professional detachment.
She wanted very badly to help this woman, who had been forced to take desperate measures to save herself from a chronically abusive husband.
Kendall opened a file folder. "I did some research while you were showering and having breakfast. In the past three years you've called the police to the house seven times." She looked up. "Right?"
"If you say so. I lost count."
"On two of those occasions you were hospitalized. Once with several broken ribs. The other time with a burn on your back. What kind of burn, Mrs. Lynam?"
"He branded me with my curling iron," she said with remarkable composure. "I guess I was lucky. He tried to . . . get it inside me. He said he wanted to make me his once and for all."
Again Kendall had to concentrate on the facts and not let her pity show. "Was he jealous?"
"Crazy jealous. Of everybody in pants. I couldn't go any where, do anything, that he didn't accuse me of trying to attract other men. He wanted me to look nice, but then when I fixed up, he'd get mad if any other man so much as glanced at me. Then he'd get drunk, and beat me up."
"Did he ever threaten your life?"
"Too many times to count."
"I'd like you to think of specific times, preferably when someone might have overheard him threaten to kill you. Did you ever discuss his abusive behavior with anyone? A minister?
A marriage counselor, perhaps?" Lottie shook her head. "It would be helpful if someone could corroborate how fearful you were that during one of his tantrums he might actually kill you. Wasn't there anyone you discussed this with?"
She hesitated. "No."
"Okay. What happened last night, Mrs. Lynam?"
"Charlie had been out on the road for several days. He came home tired and cranky' and started drinking. Before long he was drunk.
"He pitched a billy fit and made a terrible mess of the dinner I'd cooked. He threw food against the wall. Broke dishes."
"Did the police see this?"
"No. I cleaned it up.
That's too bad. The evidence of a temper tantrum would have come in handy if she could have proved that Charlie was the one who had thrown the tantrum.
"Go on," Kendall prompted.
"He stormed out of the house and was gone for hours. About midnight, he came back, drunker and meaner than when he left. I refused to have sex with him, so he did this to me,"
she said, indicating her battered face. "I thought it was legally rape when a woman said no."
"It is. You made it quite clear to him that you didn't choose to have sex last night, is that correct?"
She nodded. "But he forced me. He pinned me down on the bed and held his arm across my throat. He ripped off my panties and had me. It hurt. He hurt me on purpose."
"They cleaned your fingernails at the hospital. Will they find tissue beneath them, evidence that you struggled?"
"They should. I fought him like a hellcat. When he was finished, he crouched over me. He called me awful names, then threatened to kill me."
"What were his exact words?"
"He got his pistol from the bedside drawer, poked the barrel between my teeth, and said he ought to blow my goddamn head off. He might have killed me right then, except he passed out.
"For a long time I just lay there, too tired and sore and scared to move. I knew that for the hours he was asleep I'd be safe. But what about when he woke up? That's when I decided to kill him first, before he could kill me."
Looking Kendall squarely in the eye, she confessed, "I picked up the pistol and shot him in the head three times, just like they said. I'm not sorry I did it, either. Sooner or later he would have killed me. My life isn't anything to brag about, but I didn't want to die."
Back in her office, Kendall watched raindrops striking the window like metal pellets. "Uncanny," she murmured.
That morning when she arrived at the courthouse, Bama had predicted rain. "Before dark," the panhandler had said, nodding sagely.
Kendall had looked doubtfully at the clear sky overhead.
"I don't see any clouds, Bama. Are you sure?"
"Storm before sunset. Mark my words."
He had been right. Thunder was echoing off the distant mountains, shrouded now in low clouds and fog. Shrugging off a vague sense of foreboding, Kendall responded to telephone messages and opened her mail.
In the mail delivered that morning was another letter from the Crooks, denouncing her and issuing veiled and grossly misspelled threats. It was the fifth such piece of correspondence she had received since Billy Joe's accident, but it wasn't the worst. A few days after his arm was severed, she had received a package containing a dead rat.
Word of it had spread like wildfire through the courthouse.
Eventually it reached the newspaper office two blocks away.
Soon, Matt was in her office, demanding to know if what he had heard was true.
When she showed him the stinking evidence, he had been ready to organize a team of vigilantes to go after the twins
and anyone else by the name of Crook. Gibb, who had also heard the news, backed Matt's plan.
Kendall had prevailed upon them to do nothing. "They're upset over Billy Joe. To some extent, I sympathize with them."
"Sympathize! You did all you could for that snot-nosed little thief," Matt shouted.
"This scare tactic is way out of line, even for scum like the Crooks," Gibb said. "They're hoodlums and should be taken care of once and for all."
"They're backward people," she conceded, trying to calm them.
Matt said, "I warned that white trash that if they harmed you'
"And they haven't. If we retaliate, we're sinking to their level. Please, Matt, Gibb. Don't do anything rash. It could ultimately prove more harmful to me than anything the Crooks might do. I must respond in a professional manner, which I believe is to ignore it."
She had managed to contain them and to win a promise that there wouldn't be any reprisals. Considering the extent of their anger, she had wisely kept silent about the other messages from the Crooks. She had told Matt that her wind shield had been broken when a truck on the highway threw up a rock. The truth was that she had discovered it broken when she reached her car one evening after work. The rock that had broken it had a threatening, badly worded note attached.
Because they might later be used as evidence, she didn't destroy the notes sent to her office, but kept them locked in a file cabinet. She added this latest letter to the folder and returned her attention to Lottie Lynam. No doubt this case would dominate her schedule for the next several months.
As expected, she heard from Solicitor Daboey Gorn later that afternoon. He began the conversation with an expansive prediction: "Well, looks like we're going to have some excitement around here."
"Oh, really?" Kendall asked innocently. "Are we getting the proposed new elevator? That thing we've got is so rickety, I always take the stairs."
