“ Your Honor,” McBain said. “It might be a propitious time for a recess.”
“ No, Your Honor! It’s a propitious time for the prosecutor to coach the witness.”
McBain puffed out his chest. “I resent that, Mr. Lassiter. We don’t insult lawyers like that in Pitkin County.”
“ In Miami,” I told him, “that’d be considered a compliment.”
“ All right, you two, that’s enough.” Judge Witherspoon was pointing at me and glaring at McBain, an evenhanded way of getting order, sort of like throwing a flag for unsportsmanlike conduct on both teams. “I don’t like to interrupt the flow of a lawyer’s cross-examination. Let’s proceed.”
“ Now, Mrs. Cimarron, so that the jury is clear on this issue, you only loaded one clip into the stud gun?”
“ Yes, I just said that.”
“ Did Mr. Cimarron ever reload?”
“ No.”
“ Did I?”
“ No.”
“ Okay, I’m going to start the tape again, and this time, let’s count. Each time we hear a nail shot, I’m going to keep track right here.” I positioned a blackboard in front of the jury, grabbed a piece of chalk, and nodded to Patterson, who hit the play button.
“ Bang,” said the voice of Kit Carson Cimarron. The jury looked puzzled, but I remembered his taunt, pretending to shoot me while pointing at my heart.
Whomp, a pause, and whomp again. I put two vertical lines on the chalkboard, and on the tape, the sound of the corn crashing onto me. A moment passed. Indistinguishable sounds. I heard myself grunt. Cimarron had dragged me out of the corncrib and was sitting on my chest. He jammed the stud gun along my neck, and I felt a chill now, remembering…
Whomp. A nail pinned my sweatshirt to the floor.
“ Maybe the lawyer needs a haircut.” Another shot skimming my head. Another I remembered just below my crotch, and I winced now with the sound of it. Now, I had four vertical lines and a diagonal one crossing them.
Another shot by my kneecap, one by my foot, one alongside each temple, as he outlined me, like the silhouette of a body at a homicide scene. Then one last nail between the fingers of my hand. Five more lines. I stopped the tape.
“ How many shots is that?”
“ I counted ten.”
“ Ah, our numbers coincide. I guess the gun is out of bullets, is it not?”
She knew where I was going. “You must have reloaded.”
“ I must have? A moment ago, you said I didn’t. You told this jury that no one reloaded.”
“ I must have been wrong.”
“ Let’s see what else you were wrong about. Now who was shooting at whom in the little exchange we just heard?”
Again, she sensed where this would lead. “Simmy was shooting, but you must have gotten the gun away and…”
“ And what?”
“ I don’t remember.”
“ Well, maybe this will refresh your recollection.”
I nodded to Patterson who started the tape.
Cimarron called out to Jo Jo to bring the branding iron.
“ Simmy, why not just finish it?” she said, and in the jury box, no one moved.
Cimarron told her he wanted me to suffer, “but I’ve never killed a man, and I won’t start now.”
“ If he lives and starts talking,” she said, “it’ll just complicate things. Keep it clean and simple.”
There was the sound of grunting and great, husky breaths. My hand had found the stud gun, and we were grappling for it. I remembered lying there on my back, his weight pinning me down, my raising the gun.
Click.
Again I stopped the tape.
“ What was that?”
“ You tried to shoot him.”
“ Right. But there were no bullets. So what happened?”
“ As I said before, you must have reloaded, then shot him.”
“ Now, on direct exam, you testified that immediately prior to firing the fatal shot, I was fighting with Mr. Cimarron?”
“ Yes.”
“ We were both on the floor, with Mr. Cimarron pinning me down?”
“ Yes.”
“ So, how did I manage to shoot Mr. Cimarron? Did I ask him to get off me and wait a moment while I walked to the sawhorse, calmly found a new clip, inserted it, found another nail, loaded it, then asked Mr. Cimarron to please put his ear up to the muzzle so I could shoot him at point-blank range?”
“ I don’t know. I was under great stress and frightened. I just know you shot him.”
“ Was I conscious at the time I allegedly shot him?”
“ Of course.”
“ And did Mr. Cimarron strike me after he was hit?”
Her eyes darted from me to the jury. “Of course not. He died instantly.”
“ You heard the testimony of Sheriff’s Deputy Dobson that I was unconscious when he arrived.”
“ Yes.”
“ What rendered me unconscious after I supposedly shot Mr. Cimarron?”
No answer.
“ Isn’t it true, Mrs. Cimarron, that the click we heard on the tape came when your husband and I were struggling for control of the stud gun, and immediately thereafter, he hit me with such force that my head bounced off the barn floor, knocking me unconscious?”
“ No. You shot him before you passed out.”
“ How! With an empty gun?”
“ I don’t know how. I can’t be expected to remember every detail.” She turned to the jury. “You can’t know what it was like, seeing your husband butchered. You can’t get everything straight.”
“ Well, let’s see if we can re-create what it was like.” I walked to the defense table and whispered a request to Patterson. In the back row of the spectators’ gallery, I saw Detective Racklin. Patterson got up and headed into the corridor, returning a moment later with the bailiff and two life-size dummies. I placed one on its back and struggled with the other to get it sitting on the first one’s chest.
“ Now, Mrs. Cimarron, do these dummies accurately represent the situation with your husband pinning me to the floor?”
“ Yes, I suppose.”
I got the stud gun from the evidence table and removed the clip. Then I put in on the floor next to the two dummies.
“ And your testimony is that somehow, from that position, I put a nail through his ear, though you don’t recall my reloading the stud gun?”
“ It happened. You shot him. Only you know how.”
“ Now where were you standing in relation to the two of us?”
She pointed to my left.
“ Please answer audibly,” the judge told her, his voice seeming to startle her.
“ Close, maybe five yards away.”
I stepped back several steps. “Here?”
“ Yes.”
“ And where was the sawhorse with the clips of bullets and the nails?”
She pointed to the end of the clerk’s table. One step from where I stood.
It would work. I knew it now. The timing was perfect.
I picked up a nail and a plastic clip from the evidence table and placed them where she indicated. “Okay, let’s back up the tape a few seconds, start it again and see what happens. And Mrs. Cimarron, if you’ll bear with me, for purpose of this demonstration, please pretend I’m you.” The jurors’ eyes never left me. They expected magic, and I intended to deliver. I nodded to Patterson who hit the rewind button, then the play.
Again Jo Jo told Cimarron to keep it clean and simple. Again the sound of our grappling, then the click and the clunk of my head against the floor. One-thousand-one. I picked up the wooden plank from the evidence table, one-thousand-two, came up from behind the Cimarron dummy and swung at the back of its head.
Thud. The plank hit home and the dummy toppled forward onto the Lassiter dummy. A millisecond later on the tape, one-thousand-three, thud.
Then a grunt that had to be from Cimarron on tape, because the dummy didn’t say a word.
One-thousand-four.
I dropped the plank, took two steps to the clerk’s table, one-thousand-five, picked up the clip and a nail, one-thousand-six, walked back to the dummies, picked up the stud gun, one-thousand-seven , calmly inserted the clip and the nail.