Lunatic Carnival by D.W. Buffa

Author:D.W. Buffa [Buffa, D.W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Polis Books

Twelve

“The prosecution calls Cynthia Washington,” announced Samantha Longstreet in a quiet, supremely confident voice.

T. J. Allen tensed with something like physical fear. He stared straight ahead, his jaw clenched tight, his shoulders bent forward. He turned to me and started to ask a question, but the question, whatever it was, died on his lips. The look in his large, dark eyes seemed a helpless apology, a failed explanation, for what was about to happen.

Whoever Cynthia Washington was, she was gorgeous, a black woman in her late twenties with skin the color of a tropical beach. She was tall, nearly six feet, with amber-colored eyes and a slim, athletic body. Sitting alone at a sidewalk cafe, everyone who walked by would have slowed down to get a better look. Listening to her in a court of law, you had a rather different impression. Her voice was unfortunate. It was too high, with a tendency to break when she got angry or irritated, which, as it turned out, seemed most of the time. She took the oath, took the witness stand, and looked everywhere except at Allen.

“Are you acquainted with the defendant, Thaddeus John Allen?” asked Longstreet as she began with remote efficiency the methodical interrogation of a witness who has already been taught the questions.

“Yes,” she replied with a brief, decisive nod.

“For about how long?”

Longstreet was standing in front of the jury box, but far enough away that the jury had to look from her to the witness and back again as they followed the exchange.

“Almost six years,” she replied in that odd, scratchy voice of hers.

“You have a child together, do you not?”

“Yes. Alicia, she’s five years old now.”

“You lived with the defendant for nearly three years. When did you stop living with him?”

“Six months ago. That’s when he beat me up, when he broke my arm, when I had to go to the hospital, when I thought he was going to kill me, when I…when I could not take it anymore, the violence, the abuse, the…”

A deathlike silence descended on the courtroom, broken only by a single, muffled cough as someone in the crowd tried to stifle their reaction. But Allen, strangely, began to relax. He became more confident, less apprehensive. The fear in his eye had vanished, all the tension gone. He crossed his long legs, folded his arms over his chest, leaned back in his chair, and fixed the mother of his daughter with a knowing and surprisingly sympathetic smile of gentle cynicism and doubt.

“You’re lying!” he shouted with bizarre, full-throated glee.

“Your Honor!” Longstreet shouted back with a warning glance that froze the grin on Allen’s face.

Judge Silverman was almost as quick to tell him that another outburst like that and he would be following the proceedings from the comfort of a jail cell.

“Sorry,” Allen mumbled, half rising from his chair.

Longstreet played Allen’s outburst as what you would expect from a man who mistreated women.

“Was this the first time he hit you?” she asked in a tone that left no doubt she thought it impossible that it could have been.

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