'You hoped the evidence would come in? You hoped it would just fly right in? How long has this young man been in custody?'

'Gh…' Vaine's eye flicks back to the sheriff. He just stands by the door, arms folded, real quiet.

'Good Lord!' Judge Gurie snatches a paper from her desktop. 'You're seeking indictment?' She removes her glasses, fixing a stare at Vaine. 'And fingerprints is all you have?'

'Let me explain, ma'am, that…'

'Deputy, I doubt you'll cook up a grand jury on one set of prints. Won't even defrost 'em.'

'It's more than one set, your honor.'

'Doesn't matter how many you have, they're all from the same exhibit, the sports bag. I mean – please. Maybe if it was a gun…'

'Ma'am, some new information came into the public domain last night, which I thought…'

'The court isn't interested in what you thought, Vaine. When you take the pointed end of a stick and wake this whole tangled process up with it, we want to hear what you damn well know.'

'Well, the boy also lied, and he ran away from his interview… gh…'

Judge Gurie clasps her hands like a first-grade teacher. 'Vaine Millicent Gurie – I remind you the child is not on trial here. Given the particulars before me, I'm inclined to release your suspect and have a damn long talk with the sheriff about the quality of procedure reaching this bench.'

Her gaze penetrates Vaine's every hole, however many that is. At the back of the room, the sheriff's lips tighten. He puts on his hat and creaks back out through the door. I don't know about where you live, but around here we teach life's hard lessons with our lips.

Abdini stands. 'Objection!'

'Pipe down, Mr Abdini, we have other attorneys on call,' says the judge.

Gurie lifts her eyebrow. 'Your honor, this new information, you know…'

'No, I do not know. What I know ain't a whole lot so far.'

The typist and Gurie exchange a glance. They sigh. The ole court officer immediately turns to frown my way. 'She ain't seen it yet,' the guard behind me says under his breath. Everybody tightens their lips.

'What is going on here?' asks the judge. 'Has this court slipped into a parallel universe? Have I been left behind?'

'Ma'am, some new facts came to light – we're following them up right now.'

'Then I'm going to release your suspect until you can show me some particulars. I also expect you to apologize for all this trouble.'

A high-voltage tremor cracks through me, of hope, excitement, and ass-naked fear. You think I'm going to stick around for the so-called justice system to get its shit together? Am I fuck. Buses leave Martirio every two hours for Austin or San Antonio. The automatic teller machine with fifty-two dollars in it, from Nana's lawnmowing fund, is a block from the Greyhound station. Which is five blocks from here.

The typist sighs, and tightens her lips some more. Then she leans up to the bench and cups a hand to the judge's ear. Judge Gurie listens, frowning. She puts on her glasses and looks at me. Then at the typist.

'When's the next report? Lunch time?'

The typist nods; one righteous eye darts to Vaine. The judge reaches for her hammer. 'Court is adjourned until two o'clock.'

'Bam.'

'All-a rise,' says the guard.

Men hardened by the friction of learning, steel men of savvy quietly applied, crusty ole boys of rough-hewn glory, probably smoke a lonely cigarette in their cells during lunch breaks from court. They probably don't have to talk to their moms.

'Well Vernon, what I mean is, do you have your own room, or did they put you with other – you know, other men…?'

Barry stands leering by the phone, eyes puckered into goats' cunts. It seems Eileena's eyebrows perch high this lunchtime too, as far as her wooden hair allows. I don't know about where you live, but around here we take the moral high ground with our eyebrows.

'Well you know,' says Mom, 'you hear about the nice boys, the clean boys, always getting – you know, you hear about bigger men, hardened criminals, always getting the nice boys and…'

After God-knows-how-many years of life in this free country she doesn't have the tools to just say, 'Have you been taken up the ass yet by some lifer?' That's how pathetic things are. Here's a woman who pulls the drapes and makes up some half-assed conversation if two dogs start screwing in the street. Yet, for all I know she probably takes a fucken fire-hydrant up the ass every night, just for kicks. Boy, I tell you.

Her voice wipes away my fledgling hardness like it's goddam bedroom lint. What kind of fucken life is this? Light through the window calls me, sings of melted ice-cream on the sidewalk outside, the ghost of little tears nearby. Summer dresses full of fresh air, Mexico down the way. But not for me. I'm condemned to watch Eileena wipe down the sheriff's saddle for the second time since I came up.

I find myself wondering if the sheriff's saddle usually gets so much attention, and if it does, why it ain't worn away to nothing. Then I see the room has a TV. Eileena's eye snaps to it.

It's the lunchtime news. You hear the fanfare of trumpets and drums, then the face of an asshole appears in the far distance, staring through the back window of a departing Smith County Sheriff's truck.

' Vernon, I have some bones to pick with you,' says Mom.

'I have to go now.'

'Well Vernon…'

'Click.'

My eyes latch onto the screen. A breeze rustles cellophane on the Lechugas' teddy farm, then snags a wire of Lally's hair and floats it off his head. The pumpjack squeaks rhythmically under his voice. 'This proud community takes a decisive step from the shadow of Tuesday's devastation, with the arrest of a new player in the deadly web of cause and effect that has brought the once-peaceful town to its knees.'

'Ain't see me on my fuckin knees,' says Barry, straddling a chair.

'To his neighbors, Vernon Gregory Little seemed a normal, if somewhat awkward teenager, a boy who wouldn't attract attention walking any downtown street. That is – until today.'

Lush pictures fill the screen, of crime-scene tape dancing under a blackened sky, body-bags punctuating drag-marks of blood, moist ladies howling pizza-cheese bungees of spit. Then a school photo of me, grinning.

'I definitely saw changes in the boy,' says George Porkorney. You can see her cigarettes hidden behind the fruit-salad plant on the breakfast bar at home. 'His shoes got more aggressive, he insisted on one of those skinhead haircuts…'

'I know,' says Betty in back.

Cut to Leona Dunt. Her handbag needs to be a yard taller for how big the word Gucci is written on it. 'Wow, but he seemed like such a regular kid.'

Black, disordered xylophone music joins the soundtrack as the camera bumps up the hallway to my room. Lally stops by my bed to face the camera. ' Vernon Little was described to me as something of a loner; a boy with few close friends, given more to playing on his computer – and reading.' The camera takes a vicious dive into the laundry pile by the bed. Out comes the lingerie catalog. 'But we find no Steinbeck, no Hemingway in Vernon Little's private library – in fact, his literary tastes run only to this…' Pages flap across the screen, sassy torsos cut me that once tugged chains of shameful sap through my veins. Then we hit page 67. Flapping stops. 'An innocent prop,' asks Lally, 'or a chilling link to the confused sexuality implied by Tuesday's crimes?' Twisted violins join the xylophone. The shot pans over my computer screen to the file marked 'Homework'. 'Click.' Cue the amputee sex pictures I saved for ole Silas Benn.

'Well golly,' says Mom. 'I had no idea.'

Lally sits beside her on my bed, cranking his brow into a sympathetic A-frame. 'As Vernon 's mother, would it now be fair to number you among the victims of this tragedy?'