Mr. Lucas let him tell it, “in your own words,” and they sounded to me like the words of some Indian around Tonopah. But they made it plain enough: “Was walkinny road, pass Hollis Hill, walkinny road home. Den I yeared talkinny air. Uppinny air talk, talkinny woman crying. Stopinny yeared a shot. Shottinny boppinny screech. Uppinny air, yeared woman screech.”
“Go on, what next?”
“I run I did.”
“But tell the jury why.”
“Cause yockommy hant, loping.”
“Object!”
Mr. Brice was red as he jumped up and cut it off. He said he was amazed the prosecution would offer such shady evidence. He said every member of the jury knew the legend of this hant at Hollis Hill, and knew also the presumption of wrongdoing the hant’s presence would set up. He said this was Upper Marlboro, Md., not Salem, Mass., in the seventeenth century, “when superstition was law.” The judge said: “I’m inclined to agree,” and told the jury to disregard stuff about hants. When Mr. Lucas said: “Your witness,” Mr. Brice acted as though such a witness wasn’t even worth cross-examining, and asked no questions at all. He had hurt us, though, that boy. He had put her up on the tank, where she hadn’t mentioned being, in any statement to the cops.
And finally there were the shells, the one in the living-room, ejected when Val shot at her, the other outside, both with my fingerprints on, which was natural enough, as I’d loaded the clip in the spring. But no prints were on the gun, to show who had done the shooting, as it was caked with mud when found. That night, when Mr. Brice came to the hospital, he admitted he was sunk, “as low as I ever get.”
I said: “Wouldn’t the truth help, Mr. Brice?”
“Well, what is the truth?”
I told it for maybe an hour, as well as you can tell anything to a man who flinches in pain and all but cuts his throat at everything you say. It went on like that till I got to Sickles, when all of a sudden he grabbed me. He said: “What was that? What was it? Wait a minute, Webster, start over again!”
I did, putting in Lippert’s part in it, the stuff Val had told me, there in the living-room, and then the rest of it, what he had said on the ladder. When I finished, he kept staring, and I said: “Listen, Mr. Brice, it was a big case they had here, several years ago.”
At that he burst out laughing, and said: “Webster, it’s terrific. Why — it even convinces me. Until now I had thought — well who wouldn’t? — that you and she did it, as Lucas says.”
“But you took our case?”
“You’re entitled to counsel.”
He explained, for quite some time, that no matter who did it, we had to be represented, and that if every lawyer in the county declined, the court would still appoint one for us. But still the smile was there, until I said: “Well, what’s so funny? First you groan and then you laugh — I’d like to know the joke.”
“I don’t think I’m telling you. I think I’ll leave it there, something you don’t know, that could make trouble for Lucas if he accidentally stumbles into it. All right, then, Webster? You’re willing to spill it all?”
“I’ll do what has to be done.”
“I want nothing held back. I don’t have to put you on, but if I do, the only witness that’ll help is an absolutely reckless witness. One that’s not only willing to talk but anxious to talk — that kicks all immunities aside and cuts it loose.”
“I got nothing to hold back.”
“The holdup?”
“I hate it but I’ll tell it.”
“You’re on, first thing in the morning.”
Chapter XVIII
So I tore in, but found out right away how important counsel is, as he asks the questions. The holdup was in, but in front was restitution. The gun was in, but in front was the deal that had been made, so it had been given to Val. The love I bore her was in, but Mr. Brice called it “devotion,” which made it seem slightly different. All of it was in, but from our angle, and in a way to prove we meant to break it clean. On Sickles we took off all wraps, and I really let go, especially Lippert’s part in it, which Brice figured he probably hadn’t told Lucas, thinking it died with Val. It hit the court like a bombshell, and I knew I had landed solid, because the gasps that came from the courtroom were like the roar of a crowd at a hook. When I came to my flying tackle, I all but used blueprints, showing where I was, where Val was, and where she was. Mr. Brice went into the moaning, which I described, and the scream she was supposed to have given, which I said I didn’t hear. A mumble went around, so the judge tapped on his desk, and I knew the people were putting it together my way, reasoning that naturally I wouldn’t hear her, as I was already knocked out.
While I was talking, she had listened and not listened, staring off part of the time, as though rehearsing what she would say, and in her lap part of the time, at an envelope she had there. Lucas watched her, more than he seemed to watch me, and made some notes on a card. When he started to cross-examine, he did it very friendly, first straightening up my blankets, asking how I felt, and making a little crack about my recovery of memory. I bore in mind to be reckless, and handed it back as he gave it, as though the memory was a bit of a joke. He kept it up, being so funny I had to laugh myself, and of course I’d try to top him. Then he began to bore in, until Brice got up and objected. There seemed to be some kind of rule that if I hadn’t been asked about it on direct examination, I couldn’t be grilled for it on the cross. Brice said it was “irrelevant, a waste of time,” but Lucas said he had asked the police about it, in presenting the state’s case, and could go into it therefore, here now questioning me. And then: “As to irrelevance, it has a solemn bearing on this case that this defendant, as a means of obstructing justice, has already invented one complicated, ingenious, and incredible story, which he regards so lightly as to joke about it, and may have invented another — once he heard about Sickles.”
The judge held it was proper, and we went over and over and over it, my memory there at the hospital; and repeatedly, when I was to “tell in my own words” the way things happened, I could tell nothing at all. When at last I burst out: “Listen, Mr. Lucas, suppose you try facing a murder rap, and see what you make up” — that did it. He insisted I had made it up, every word about Arizona, and I said: “Just to protect myself — until I knew where I was.” He made me repeat it, and I realized how it sounded. Then, at last, he moved on to Sickles, and I said: “It was a big case they had — several years ago.” That got a laugh, even from the judge, and I realized it was the booby trap. Because of course, if I’d been making anything up, presumably I’d have got the thing straight. But Lucas just laughed too, and said: “Several score years ago, Webster. Sickles lost a leg at Gettysburg. You need a clerk to look up your cases.” That got an even bigger laugh, and on it, quite suddenly, he sat down, without going into the main event on the ladder at all.
It helped a little, maybe, that Brice called Daniel and pinned the gun switch on him, but not much. I had led with my chin and landed.
I had taken all day and part of the next morning, so it was the afternoon of the third day of the trial when she took the stand, white, grim, and tense. After the usual preliminaries, Brice gave her a general question: “Now please tell the jury, Mrs. Valenty, in your own words, what led up, the main events, in any way relevant, to the death of your husband.” She answered, very slow: “In my own words, Mr. Brice, let me say at the start that none of it had any relation to what I told the police officers. I said what they’ve said I said. I made things up — not to shield myself, as it never entered my mind that I would be accused. To hush up for my husband what he tried to do to me, so it never, never would come out. I remind you, Mr. Brice, that after I got down from the tank, after screaming no doubt, since a point has been made of that — both the men were alive, groaning there on the ground. And if I did what I did with the gun, I’m not ashamed, I’m proud of it. And if Duke Webster made things up, he had reason, after the way one police officer practically sold him to slavery. And if Mr. Lucas is making things up, misrepresenting Duke as he is — no doubt he has reason too, after the part he played in my husband’s designs on my life.”