The Best American Mystery Stories 2010

Jay Brandon A Jury of His Peers from Murder Past, Murder Present

They straggled back to San Antonio in ones and twos and small groups as they were released from Perote Prison. Some traveled over land, some by boat across the Gulf of Mexico. But each arrived bedraggled, thinner, and with watchful eyes. Some of the men had families to greet their returns, most had friends, all had practices. But it was hard to resume their lives. Nothing they could lay their hands to seemed as worthwhile as just the fact of being free.

For a while, it wasn’t clear everyone was coming back. The Mexicans might well kill a few of their number as an example or because they didn’t have family to ransom them. While the released men woke every morning overjoyed to find light coming through windows, a part of them remained in prison with their friends.

One of the last of the lawyers to return to San Antonio was William “Bill” Harcourt. He had spent more than a year in prison in Mexico, and his hometown appeared very changed; both larger — as he approached from the south on horseback, the buildings appeared a vast intrusion on the landscape — and smaller; when he got to the heart of the city, the buildings were neither as many nor as impressive as he remembered. He stayed at home for five days and nights, he and his wile reliving their meeting, courtship, and honeymoon, accelerated by past knowledge. For that long, not even the nearest neighbors saw them, and it was as if Mrs. Harcourt had vanished along with her husband, rather than that he had returned.

But pleasant as it was to catch up on events and become reacquainted with his wife, staying in the house was too strong a reminder of confinement, so on the sixth day, Bill strolled downtown to his law office. It was a bright day in February and the walk cheered him. Being surrounded by people and buildings and commerce made him feel safe. But as soon as he stepped into the gloom of the offices, he thought, Why do people choose to imprison themselves like this?

Harcourt was not an imposing man. Of average size when he was taken hostage, he was now slender to the point of emaciation. Well under six feet tall, he still felt the whitewashed ceiling of the offices as a constant presence only inches above his head. His brown hair had grown thicker and longer and he hadn’t yet cut it back, so he had the look of a frontiersman though he wore his best suit, one that had stayed safely in his closet all this time, with gray pants and a black frock coat with tails.

Harcourt broke into his first smile of the day when greeted by the clerk, Henry, a lad of barely twenty, who studied law in the offices while performing the clerk’s duties: copying documents, running to the courthouse to peruse deeds, looking up statutes, emptying spittoons.

“Henry!” Harcourt cried, clapping the young man’s shoulders. “Still clerking here?” It seemed a wonder to him that life had gone on as usual in his absence. Besides, what clerkly duties had he performed with all the lawyers in town vanished?

“Actually, I’m an attorney now, sir. I took my examinations six months ago.”

“Good for you! Well, nature hates a vacuum. I guess the town needed to grow more lawyers while we were gone. Have you been busy?”

Henry looked embarrassed. Harcourt noticed the other people in the room.

At the time of the lawyers’ abrupt departure from town on September 11, 1842, these offices had been shared by five lawyers. The entry room in which Harcourt and Henry now stood had served as a reception area, law library, and common room, with each lawyer having a small private office for receiving clients. Men were emerging from those offices now, two with smiles of greeting, one with a more interesting expression. A year and a half in captivity, learning the personalities and moods of the different guards, watching for signs of a beating or possible chance for ingratiation, had made Bill Harcourt a quick study of countenances, and he saw in these faces more than their owners intended. Even the smiles of his old partners had traces of apprehension. While they were glad to see him, they saw the possibility of imminent conflict. The stranger, who held a quill pen in his right hand, looked openly puzzled and anxious.

The next moment, there was a tumult of welcome, but Harcourt didn’t forget his first impression. What conflict was hidden here?

Greeting him most effusively and openly was Samuel Maverick. Maverick was one of the leading lawyers in town, and though relatively new to Texas, one of the foremost citizens of San Antonio. He had been trying a case in court on September 11 when the invading Mexican forces captured the courthouse and every lawyer in town. Maverick had also been one of the first three prisoners released, but he had still spent six months in Perote Prison, so he and Harcourt were colleagues in more than the practice of law.

“You’ve been back almost a year,” Harcourt said, “so I assume you’ve stolen all the legal business. Just like those cattle you refuse to brand, any client without another lawyer’s name on him must belong to Maverick.”

“I haven’t had to steal them,” Maverick said genially. “They’ve pressed themselves on me like fallen flowers when the tavern is empty.”

“And express themselves just as satisfied with your services, I’m sure,” Harcourt answered. The men laughed.

But raised voices from the last office gradually intruded on their reunion. Both men were even more sensitive to loud voices than Harcourt was to the flicker of an eyelid, because during their months of captivity, shouting had nearly always preceded a beating, or worse. These voices were only directed against each other, but they still drew the men’s attention. Harcourt glanced inquiringly at Maverick, who rolled his eyes.

Harcourt recognized one of the voices, and a small smile shaped his thin lips. In Perote Prison, the lawyers had been chained together two by two. Being joined in that fashion creates either enduring friendship or such sensitivity that the other man’s breathing becomes an irritant. One night, Maverick had gotten into a fist fight with his chain mate. But Bill Harcourt and one of the men now shouting in the adjoining office, John Lawrence, had become last friends — and confidants in more ways than one.

John had shared these offices with Harcourt for more than two years, but they had only been acquaintances. Now, after a year spent chained together, they were strange twins, their minds running along the same tracks. Somewhat. Bill knew the plans John had shared and some secrets he hadn’t meant to share, such as the names he murmured in his sleep at night.

John had been a prematurely middle-aged thirty-year-old man with a small pot belly, a shy wife of five years, a hearty laugh, but thoughtful moods. Like the other captives, though, he was changed now. Bill stepped into John’s office and saw him pushing a younger man away from the desk. The young man appeared a dandy in tight white trousers, a gray vest with a gold watch chain across it, and a blue coat with a flower in its lapel. Where had he gotten a rosebud in February? It was a small mystery Harcourt’s mind brushed aside while taking in the man’s even features, lively blue eyes, and trace of a smile even as he was being pushed backward by a man made lean and pale.

A woman in a small bonnet stood between them: Madelyn, Colin’s wife; thin and delicately featured, with light brown hair. One of her hands reached toward her husband, importuning. The other hand, Bill saw at a quick glance, was on the younger man’s arm, just before she removed it.

“Come, sir!” the young man said. “There’s no thievery here. I made an arrangement, first with your clerk, then with your wife — whom some thought your widow. Without me, your practice would have died completely.”

John recovered himself. Perhaps he saw his old friend out of the corner of his eye, or sensed the others clustering in the doorway. “Thank you,” he said, in the tone of a gentleman thanking a groom for having kept his horse exercised. “But now, as you see, I’ve returned. You can find accommodations elsewhere or go back to Austin.”

“Oh, I like it here,” the young man said. It was strange how his handsome face nonetheless seemed to find a sneer its most natural expression. “Truth to tell, people like me too. Some of your clients will not be so delighted with your return. You don’t own them, you know.”

“And they don’t know you,” John snapped. “When they do—”

The young man raised his voice, his eyes suddenly lit from within. “It’s not only your clients who prefer me. I’m not trying to take over your life, Mr. Lawrence. But I think I can perform it better. I’ve sat in your chair, I’ve read your pleadings. I can do better. And not only there. You know, don’t you? She must have told—”

Bill Harcourt was whipping across the room and over the desk without conscious thought. Harcourt’s forearm was across the young man’s throat and his fist in his stomach. When the man began choking, Harcourt recovered himself. He brushed off the younger man’s jacket and spoke in his best courtroom voice. “Sorry for the strange introduction. I thought I saw a dangerous insect. Perhaps a scorpion. I am William Harcourt. You seem to have met my old friend, John Lawrence, whose office we’re standing in. Hello, Madelyn. You look lovelier than ever.”

To the young man’s credit, he was not slow-witted or lacking grace. He removed his hand from his throat and nodded his head politely. By this time, he was aware of the crowded nature of the offices, and perhaps regretted the indiscretion he had been about to perform. It would not have done him much credit, not here. “My pleasure,” he murmured. “You two must have a great deal to discuss after your adventure together.”

Harcourt, who had mastered his anger completely, smiled. “Oh, John and I have had many months to discuss every topic.”

The young man — Harcourt was beginning to think it a good idea to learn his name — gave him a frank look before regaining his smile. Then he turned it on John, who stood shuddering with fists clenched. He didn’t have his friend Harcourt’s composure. Like many mild men, he was not used to his own anger and couldn’t master it quickly.

“You and I still have much to discuss,” the young man said as he left the office, greeting the other lawyers affably on his way out. He didn’t glance back at Madelyn, whose hand had removed itself from his arm in an instant when Bill had appeared.

“William,” she said graciously, extending her hand to him.

So the three of them stood and chatted, as if nothing had just happened. Bill chatted amiably with Madelyn, but noticed that her other hand never extended to her husband’s arm. John and Bill had been released from confinement at the same time, but obviously, John had needed less time to reacquaint himself with his wife and had been out in the world sooner.

Speaking of the last few days, Harcourt said to his former chain mate, “I felt like an amputee, with only my own two legs to account for. I had forgotten how to walk alone.” John laughed, and laughter came from the doorway too. The three lawyers there knew exactly what he meant.

After a minute John took up his office, and his wife left alone.

Henry, the former clerk, had taken over William Harcourt’s old office. Harcourt glanced into it, but showed no inclination to enter. “No, don’t bother, Henry. You keep the desk. Let’s wait to see whether I need it or another.”

The other attorneys went off to the courthouse, but Harcourt demurred. In their absences, he owned the offices. He wandered into John’s, or the office that had been John Lawrence’s, wondering how it was changed. On the desk, he found a ledger book. John had always been very careful in his accounts. Harcourt leafed through it, noting columns of income and brief notations of services performed. Then the writing changed, though still recording similar transactions. Obviously, the young Austin lawyer had taken over John’s account book, along with other parts of his life. Harcourt leafed through the book to the blank pages at the end, then sat musing.

As he had said, nature hates a vacuum and rushes to fill it. But nature has even stricter rules against two bodies occupying the same space.

The Texas Republic was short-lived (1836–1845), but no one living in it knew it would be. For all they knew, they had founded an enduring nation. Mexico, on the other hand, never acknowledged the sovereignty of the new country, still considering it a rebel province of its own. Its army continued to make raids into Texas, designed to humiliate more than to conquer. The Mexican President, Santa Ana, hated Texas, and no part of it more than San Antonio, the scene of his triumph at the Alamo, but which had shrugged off that tragedy to become the largest, most thriving city in Texas. The Alamo was in fact already a tourist destination, the shrine of Texas liberty. Two Mexican raids into San Antonio had wreaked havoc, and the second had accomplished its strange goal. Mexican soldiers had captured the courthouse and every lawyer in town, marching them deep into Mexico and captivity in the castle of Perote.

In Mexico, the imprisoned lawyers had often speculated on the nature of life in their absence. “I think people will be more civil to each other,” one man had ventured. “They’ll have to be, won’t they, without courts to resolve their disputes?”

Samuel Maverick had shaken his shaggy head. “They’ll kill each other,” he’d intoned in his slow, gloomy voice, so suited to a courtroom. “The town will devolve back to the frontier. The law is what protects us from chaos, and none of us is very far removed from chaos.”

In the darkness of the dungeon, Harcourt’s voice had come slyly, like one of the vermin that crept through their sleeping straw. “I’m glad you didn’t tell me until now that we were upholding civilization, like Atlas. I couldn’t have borne up under the strain.”

John Lawrence’s laugh had been the first, followed by general hilarity, which they cut off quickly at the sound of an outer door. The Mexicans hated nothing so much as laughter from their captives.

Back in town now, on his second day home, Bill Harcourt wondered which of their speculations had been true. He dropped in on his friend the general store keeper, a onetime ranch hand who was smarter than his lot in life and had seen the need for mercantilism. His store prospered in dry goods, hardware, and feed. Prospered enough that he could sit on the porch and tell an old friend what life had been like in his absence.

“Oh, there was a mite more killing than usual, that’s true, but hardly any that didn’t need it. And we still had police, of course. There was no breakdown in law — no more than ordinary. A few folks had to sit in jail longer than they would have, I suppose, but no one had much sympathy for them. Two or three had their hangings delayed for want of a trial, but they seemed satisfied to wait.”

“But the ordinary civil disputes,” Bill questioned, “what did people do when they could no longer cry, ‘I’ll see you in court’?”

The shopkeeper shrugged. “They fought, of course. Sometimes right here on this street. Unless the dispute was between women, then they went at each other in slyer and more crippling ways. But mostly, men settled their differences the time-honored way.”

“Trial by combat,” Bill mused. He could see it taking place as if in front of him. “Older than law. And a good fist fight is much quicker and more satisfying than a trial, for both the participants and the spectators.”

“Yup,” the shopkeeper said complacently.

For the rest of the day and the next, Bill stayed away from his old friend John, and from the courthouse. In the last year and a half, his comradely desire to spend time with his colleagues had been more than satisfied. Instead, he walked around the town, refamiliarizing himself with the houses and buildings and trying to ignore the insubstantial quality they seemed to have now. He resumed acquaintances with his children and had long, quiet talks with his wife. In his absence, his wife had acquired more cattle and hired a man to plant more acres. She had done more than get by, enough so that he could wander about like a kept man for another week or more, and Bill didn’t mind a bit. His wife’s resourcefulness meant he didn’t have to return immediately to the practice of law, and he felt no desire to do so. The old forms seemed strange to him, empty rituals. He picked up a deed in his old office and found its language ridiculous.

William Harcourt might never have tried a case again if not for the murder.

In the days of the Texas Republic, adventurers and settlers created a nation from their imaginations and faulty memories. Squatting in buildings that had housed the governments under Spain and then Mexico, they made institutions out of a traveler’s fever dream of history. Their court system borrowed from England and stole from Spain, with bits of French thrown in for flavor. The beauty of this system was that a hometown lawyer could always claim he was working in one tradition or another, while the arcana of the law discouraged new competition.

But with all the hometown lawyers gone for so many months, inevitably a few others had moved in, down from Austin or over from Nacogdoches. Common sense would say that these were not the brightest lights of their local bars. No one would leave a thriving practice to move into a town whose own lawyers might return any day. On the other hand, San Antonio was a booming town and needed legal transactions. A few out-of-town lawyers took the gamble, including the young dandy whom Bill had attacked in John’s office. The young fellow turned out to have a name, Luke Enright. They would put it on a cheap tombstone if his body turned up.

Two days after his fight with John Lawrence, Enright’s horse came in riderless, blood on its saddle. People knew the horse, and they knew Enright’s last dispute.

The lawyers were all in the courthouse, an ostentatiously named one-story building on Main Street. Most lawyers spent most days in the courthouse, trying a case or observing a trial or researching land or water titles. Or gossiping, as they were doing at four o’clock of the afternoon when the chief of police came in. He might have been seeking a warrant, but finding the object of his search in the courtroom, he proposed to take him into custody that minute. “John Lawrence, you’re under arrest for the murder of Luke Enright.”

“Who?” asked one of the lawyers.

“The little bastard who took over my practice,” John said. A good attorney would have shut his mouth before he could finish the thought aloud, but he had no attorney.

“He took over more than that,” the chief said portentously. “While you were gone, he and your — well, he was a lodger in your house.”

“My wife needed an income,” John said, sounding sullen and unconvincing to everyone.

There were several rejoinders to that, referring to Mrs. Lawrence’s needs, but no one spoke them aloud.

“And your wife is gone too,” the chief announced as if it proved his point. “Did you kill them both at once?”

“No,” another man said quickly. “I saw Mrs. Lawrence riding out myself, with luggage in her carriage.”

“Which direction?”

“North. The Austin road.”

“Horrified by what you’d done,” the chief of police said to John, moving toward him.

John shook his head. “Just going to visit her sister for a while.”

“You can explain to a jury,” the chief said, reaching for John.

As he did so, the courtroom door opened, and everyone looked toward it. There was a certain apprehension in some of those gazes. One of the last times some of them had seen that door open, Mexican troops had come through it. But this late afternoon, the lowering sun only cast the shadow of one man. William Harcourt had returned to the courthouse.

He seemed to be well informed of what was happening. “What do you propose to do with the prisoner, Chief?” he asked briskly.

“Put him in jail, wait for — well, the circuit judge, I suppose.”

“What about bail? He’s entitled to indictment by a grand jury, as well. But we have neither magistrate to set bond nor district judge to call a grand jury.”

The only district judge in the region had been captured along with the rest of the lawyers. One of the first three released, he had immediately returned to his home state of Mississippi, declaring it was unsafe to practice law in Texas. No one had yet been appointed or elected to take his place.

Judge was a position of distinction and honor, but it did not pay very well in the days of the Republic and offered no retirement pension. Lawyers took turns at the position, serving for a term or perhaps two out of a sense of duty, but always returning to more lucrative private practice. There were two men in the room who could claim the lifelong title of “Judge,” but no current holder of the office.

“He’ll just have to wait,” the police chief declared. Everyone in the room murmured at that. The lawyers didn’t like to think of their colleague sitting in jail with no legal recourse.

“I believe the Constitution entitles him to speedy trial if he demands it,” another lawyer observed. Harcourt was glad he no longer had to do all the proposing. “That’s right,” another one said, “and a grand jury to determine whether there’s cause to hold him.”

“Well, we just don’t have those things,” the police chief said, beginning to sound sulky. He was usually comfortable in his authority, but being the only nonlawyer in a room full of attorneys made a man want to stand with his back to a wall.

“We can have,” Harcourt said quietly.

The room went quiet. The nearly two dozen lawyers in the room looked around at each other. Most of them had served on a jury at one time or another, being readily available when a call for jurors went out. They were in a courtroom where hundreds of trials had been conducted. If any other group had thought of conducting an inquiry, they would have been a kangaroo court or a lynch mob, but this group could make it official.

“I don’t want to sit in jail,” John said. He hadn’t moved from his chair.

“Would you rather be hanged tomorrow?” Sam Maverick said, stalking to the center of the room. “That’s what we’re talking about. There wouldn’t be any appeal. This is real, John.”

“Yes,” the prisoner said. “I’d prefer that, if a jury of my peers thinks it just.”

He sounded resigned and yet eager. Men looked at each other, wondering if they were ready to assume this responsibility. It was a moment before they realized that Bill Harcourt was speaking.

“Sam Maverick is one of the largest landholders in this county,” he drawled as if telling a story. Bill stood by the jury box, leaning against its rail. “And we know he has large herds of cattle, some of them taken in fees. But he refuses to brand them. They roam free, so he can claim any unbranded cow is his.”

“I’ve never—” Maverick began, but Bill waved him silent.

“Well, we are all mavericks now. Unbranded rogues, who answer to no one. That was the lesson of Perote. The lesson the Mexican general intended to teach us when he kidnapped us from this room. Our institutions are hollow, except as we give them form. There are only rules because we submit ourselves to the rule of law. Otherwise, this is a frontier. This building is a sham, unless we fill it with justice.”

The men began to assemble themselves, some moving toward the jury box. Quickly, a lawyer named Early Jones was suggested and chosen as judge. Without much formality, the district clerk swore him in, with an oath to uphold the laws of the Republic of Texas.

“We need a prosecutor and the accused needs a defender,” the new judge said.

Several lawyers moved toward John. Only Bill stepped toward the clerk. “I’ll prosecute.”

The silence was puzzled. Bill and John were known to be friends. And they all knew Bill as a tenacious and thorough trial lawyer who had sent more than one man to prison while serving as a special prosecutor. Several lawyers, including John himself, looking up in surprise, wondered if Bill bore some secret grudge against the man with whom he’d been chained for more than a year.

“Unless there are any objections?” Bill asked, looking around.

No one said a thing. A few shook their heads.

“You need to take the oath,” the clerk said.

Bill hesitated. “To do what?”

“Uphold the laws—” someone began, but another who had served one term as district attorney interrupted.

“The prosecutor is sworn to do justice.”

“I’ll take that oath,” Bill said, and did so.

Samuel Maverick looked at the new prosecutor, then went to stand beside the accused. “I’ll defend. If John will have me.”

The defendant shook his hand, sealing the agreement.

A dozen men were sworn in as jurors. Others took seats inside l lie bar. They were all part of this. Without a consensus of opinion, there could be no resolution. Judge Jones assumed the bench and a more formal air. “Call your first witness.”

Bill said, “Chief, come forward and give your evidence.”

The chief of police walked slowly and suspiciously into their midst. No one cared about his suspicions. They knew this proceeding to be as legal as they could make it, whether they waited for a duly appointed judge or not. They would take their responsibilities seriously. No one seemed to feel this more strongly than Bill Harcourt, who looked sternly at the witness, ignoring the defendant’s troubled stare.

“Well, there’s the horse,” the chief of police began slowly. “It’s Enright’s horse, all right. No one saw him ride out. The horse returned with blood on his saddle. Mr. Lawrence has no alibi for the whole morning. He’s known not to be living with his wife since shortly after his return. Mrs. Lawrence is gone too, as if she knows—”

“Object to speculation,” Maverick said quickly.

“There are Comanches still about, aren’t there, Chief? Why would you not think young Mr. Enright merely the victim of an Indian attack?”

“No red man would let a horse go,” the chief said positively. Men nodded at that. “Besides, there are also the quarrels. Besides the one some of you gentlemen saw, Mr. Lawrence and Enright exchanged words and almost came to blows two other times, one of them just yesterday afternoon. Now, Enright may have taken clients from several of you in your absence, but only Mr. Lawrence suffered so personal a loss.”

They all turned to look at John, including the new judge. The accused tried to look composed.

“And this afternoon, John Lawrence returned to his office, cleared young Mr. Enright’s things out, and resumed his practice as if he knew the matter was settled.”

The accusation had been pretty speculative until then, but the chief’s last words made good sense to everyone. “Your witness,” Harcourt said.

Maverick had few questions, only establishing that the chief of police had no more evidence of Enright’s demise or current whereabouts. “Do you think that’s enough to condemn a man?” he asked, which was really aimed at his opponent.

“I haven’t rested my case,” Bill Harcourt said. “I suggest we adjourn this proceeding to John Lawrence’s office.”

The suggestion was unorthodox, but so was this entire proceeding. The law offices were just across the street. Within ten minutes, the offices were crowded. The jurors stood together against one wall of John’s own office. “I’ll call Henry Reynolds,” Bill said, and the young clerk, now lawyer, came forward shyly.

Harcourt quickly established that the presumed deceased had used this office in John Lawrence’s absence and had continued to do so even after his return. Disputes between the two men over possession of the office had grown more heated.

“And did you ever overhear any exchanges between Mrs. Lawrence and either of the two men? Come, Henry, you’re sworn to give testimony.”

A very mature look shot out of Henry’s boyish face, turning his eyes much older for a moment. Only Bill caught the expression. “No, sir,” Henry said staunchly. “They kept personal matters private.”

“Not enough so,” Bill remarked. He picked up a book from the desk, the same one he had handled two days earlier. “Do you recognize this?”

Henry nodded. “Mr. Lawrence’s ledger book.”

Bill held it up to an open page. “Like this office, not entirely his own anymore. Note the change in handwriting in the later pages. Please note also,” he said to the jury, “that the income figures show a prospering practice. More so than when John kept it. I’ll offer Republic’s Exhibit One.”

The book was admitted, and Maverick leafed through it, conferring quietly with his client.

Bill opened a drawer of the desk. His hand rummaged among the contents, and he drew out a pocket watch. “Do you recognize this?”

Several men did, from their expressions. “It looks like Mr. Enright’s, sir. He told me once he’d inherited it from his grandfather. It was one of his most prized possessions.”

Bill dropped it on the desk. “Yet here it sits. Does a man leave town and leave behind his most favored possession, as well as a thriving practice? The Republic rests. Gentlemen,” he said to the jury, “even if this case remains open, I doubt there will be any more evidence one way or the other unless Enright’s body turns up, and even that wouldn’t tell us much. This matter can be settled tonight.”

Samuel Maverick said, “The defense calls Martin Stenberg.” After it was established that he was the man who had said earlier he’d seen Mrs. Lawrence riding out of town in her carriage, Maverick asked, “Which direction was she going, Martin?”

“I think I said. North, toward Austin.”

“And she was traveling alone, with luggage?”

“Yes, sir.”

“No more questions.”

Bill just shrugged.

“The defense will call John Lawrence.”

Defendants were not normally allowed to testify in their own defense, since it was presumed their testimony would be untrustworthy. Bill pointed this out.

“I’m calling him for a limited purpose, not to deny his guilt,” Maverick said, and Bill let the legal point go.

“John,” Maverick said sternly. “Where was your wife going?”

“We’d separated,” John Lawrence said quietly. “You all seem to know that. She was going to slay with her sister.”

“And where does her sister live?”

“Philadelphia.”

“When she’s gone to visit her sister in the past, how did she go?” “To Galveston,” the accused said quietly. “To take a ship.”

Men, including jurors, nodded. The answer made sense. And Galveston was not north of them. It was south and east. “The defense rests,” Maverick said abruptly.

Bill Harcourt made a brief summation. “Luke Enright may not have been well liked by the men in this room, but he deserves justice. He had increasingly violent quarrels with the defendant, then his horse turns up showing blood. Outside the courthouse, no more evidence than that would be needed. The young man had everything he wanted here. Why would he leave so abruptly? No, men, the chief of police is right. I ask for your guilty verdict.” Samuel Maverick had been looking over the two exhibits. When his turn came, he stood with both in his hands. Walking toward the jury box, he leafed through the ledger book. After the last page Harcourt had displayed, there were two dozen blank pages. But at the back, the new handwriting began again, with different names and figures. “Mr. Enright was apparently keeping track of more than his profits. These pages seem to be in a cipher. What did he want to hide? Which raises the question, what do we know about him? What did he leave behind, in Austin or elsewhere? When a man changes cities of residence, it’s usually to escape something. I suggest, gentlemen, when a man writes different figures in a different place in the book, he’s recording something other than what’s recorded in the front. Could it be debts? Look at these numbers. They far outweigh the meager earnings in front. Could it be that the people to whom Enright owed these debts had caught up to him, or were about to do so? There’s a reason for a man to light out in a hurry.

“And this was a lawyer. An angry young man who bore a grudge. There’s no use to run if you’re still pursued. Much better to make your creditors think you’re dead. And if young Enright was going to fake his death, what better sweetness than to have his revenge at the same time? Initiate another quarrel with the man he hated, then flee.”

Maverick surveyed the jurors, hardheaded lawyers who looked skeptical. And flee without his horse? they were clearly thinking.

“And leave with his lover. Yes. I hate to suggest scandal, but look at the facts. Mrs. Lawrence rode north. Not the direction she would normally take, but the direction from which young Enright came. They met, he cut himself and dripped blood on the saddle, and they rode away, Enright laughing to himself.”

These jurors were lawyers, and not used to sitting silent in a courtroom. One said, “That’s a fanciful picture, Maverick,” and his neighbor added, “What about the watch he left behind? His most treasured possession. He wouldn’t have run off without it.”

The watch in question dangled from Maverick’s hand. “This watch? The one he inherited from his grandfather? Look at the inside of the case, gentlemen. This watch has a manufacturer’s date of 1838. It’s very young for a treasured family heirloom.”

He handed it across, and the jurors inspected it eagerly. Some looked at the defendant with new expressions, while others narrowed their eyes.

Bill Harcourt declined rebuttal argument. The verdict was swift. The jurors didn’t even leave their box, only huddled together, then one stood to say, “Your Honor, we find the defendant not guilty.”

The chief of police sputtered, but the new judge assured him that the verdict was as legal as a poll tax. The room surged around John with congratulations. It was important that nearly every lawyer in town had participated. They would spread the word. There might be speculation that the attorneys had protected one of their own, but not the kind of presumed guilt that would have dogged John Lawrence without this proceeding.

Besides, in the Republic of Texas there were rumors much more damaging to reputation than that one had killed a man. That suspicion added a touch of stature.

The men gradually cleared out of the offices. John declined offers of celebration until, with glances, the men understood that Bill Harcourt was lingering too. The men had a friendship to repair.

When the men were alone, John still sitting on his rickety wooden chair, Bill leaning back against the desk, Bill said simply, “Forgive me?”

John laughed. “I thought no one might volunteer to prosecute me, then there’d have been no trial and no exoneration. I owe you more—”

“Well, you know my passion for justice,” Bill said archly.

“I do, actually.”

Bill gave his friend a sidelong glance. “Stealing a man’s livelihood, and his wife, and not being content with that, wanting to take his reputation as well, I call that worse than rustling. And” — his voice rose a little — “to do it while we were rotting in that hole. If you had killed him I’d call it just.”

“When we were marched out of the courthouse on September 11...”John began.

It was a date that would speak an entire narrative for the rest of their lives.

“—we were told we’d be released at the border. Then wondered whether we’d be murdered. Just coming back here seemed a dream of paradise. But I didn’t have waiting for me what many of you had.”

The childless marriage between John and his wife was, at least to the public eye, a cool one. And the names he had murmured in his sleep in Perote Prison had not been women’s names. Bill wondered if young Henry knew the truth. If he did, he would keep it to himself. To Bill, a man’s personal life and preferences were his own business, but here on the western frontier, a suggestion of unmanliness could ruin a man.

“After our year on the brink of death,” he said, “other things seemed like small considerations.”

John fingered the only exhibits from the hasty trial. “You introduced the only evidence in the trial,” he said slowly. “This ledger. The first pages are in my writing, true, but then there are some pages torn out.”

“Are there? Perhaps Enright wanted to put some space between your accounts and his.”

John went on, in his quiet, lawyerly way. “The entries in the back are in the same handwriting, true, but no one has compared that writing to some of the pleadings Enright filed. The way you handled things, there wasn’t time for that kind of investigation.” Harcourt didn’t answer. “And as for that watch, who knows whether that’s the same one Enright carried or where it came from?”

“You’re right. Perhaps Enright planted it there to implicate you, because he couldn’t bear to leave behind the real one.”

John gave him a look rather than an answer. “My point is that there wasn’t time tonight to — to place this evidence here. It must have been done before I was accused. Even before I...”

Bill didn’t want to hear a confession. “Maybe I was protecting myself,” he said. “He trifled with more than one practice, and maybe with more than one wife. Or maybe I just took the opportunity while the rest of you went about your legal business to give the young man a stern lecture and run him out of here. Then made sure there’d be no accusations over his absence that could be sustained.”

These would have been interesting speculations, between two other men. But these two knew the truth. John finally stood and walked close to his friend. “I know how fierce a litigator you are. It must have hurt you,” he said, “to lose this trial.”

“Lose?” Bill looked genuinely surprised. “You forget. The oath I look was to see justice done. I consider this trial one of my most significant victories.” They went out together, into a new town.

William Harcourt — Bill — was induced to serve one term as judge, which he performed to universal respect, but declined reappointment. The end of his tenure coincided with the end of the Texas Republic. In the Mexican War that followed, he and his wife did well in cotton for uniforms. He was a colonel in the War Between the States, which touched Texas but lightly. He lived through turmoil and transformation and rebirth, and closed out his life toward the end of the century he had made his own, to great local renown, never having resumed the practice of law.

Nor did he and his old friend John Lawrence ever tell anyone each other’s secrets.