Read Online Only the Truth by Pat Brown - Free Book Online Page B

enjoy
entertaining the people in the room.
    "Did you ever rent a room to Mr. Doe?"
    "Well, I don't know if he was the same man you are referring to but by
all the descriptions he is. I don't recall what he wrote down in the book and I
don't keep no records past the end of the month. If
the police ain't come calling by then, I figger the person ain't done
anything all that bad."
    Mr. Dawson smiled toward the witness stand.
    "And this man that looked like Mr. Doe? How long did he stay ?"
    Mr. Clemens squinched up his left eye and looked
up to some far away place off to his side.
    "Well, I am thinking he stayed about four or five days. He wasn't just
there for sex. He gave me money for the week and I didn't see much of him until
I saw him with the girl. Her." Mr. Clemens pointed over at Charlene.
    "And what was he doing with the defendant?"
    "He wasn't doing anything with her. She was slapping him all over his
head and he was just ducking there against the wall trying to protect hisself . Then she run off and I
never saw her at my motel again. He left before the rent for the week ran
out."
    "Thank you, Mr. Clemens." He nodded toward Mr. Green. "Your witness, Counselor."
    Mr. Green got up and stared at Mr. Clemens until he started squirming in the
chair. I thought he was going to make Mr. Clemens say he didn't know if he had
really seen Mr. Doe at his motel with Charlene. But, he surprised me.
    "Mr. Clemens, Mr. Doe came to your hotel in the day or at night?"
    "Daytime, sir. I remember because he came up
in the middle of the afternoon. Most of my clients don't show up until they
done enough drinking and found their pigeon for the night." Clemens
grinned again.
    Mr. Green smiled graciously back at him.
    "So you were clearheaded yourself when Mr. Doe showed up?"
    Mr. Clemens looked flustered and a little angry.
    "I don't drink when I work, Mr. Green."
    "I am not accusing you of drinking on the job, Mr. Clemens. I am just
clarifying to the jury that you were completely sober and the observations you
made that day would not be clouded by any kind of alcoholic beverages."
    Mr. Clemens sat up in his chair.
    "Yes, sir, Mr. Green, the jury can depend on what I saw that day as
being exactly what I saw that day."
    "He checked in during the afternoon?"
    "Yes, sir. Middle of the
afternoon. I thought he might have come off the 2 pm Greyhound bus
seeing as he had no car and he looked too old to be walking any distance."
    "So he didn't have a car with a lot of stuff packed in it like he was
moving from here to there."
    "No, sir, no car. Just hisself and his bag.
    "One bag?"
    "Yes, sir. A duffel ."
    "So he came off a bus…."
    "Objection."
    "Sustained."
    Mr. Green nodded. "I will rephrase that. Mr. Doe arrived at your motel
at around 3 pm in the afternoon with one duffel bag in his possession."
    "Yes, sir, that would be correct."
    "And he paid you a week's rent?"
    "Yeah, well, sort of. He wasn't all too pleasant about the rate I told
him. He complained I was overcharging him and didn't I think Vets deserved a
break and how he was an old man and he could drop dead tonight if I didn't give
him a place to stay for the money he had."
    "So did you give him a break?"
    "Yes, sir. I felt kind of sorry for him. He
looked damned pitiful. He needed a haircut, and a shower, and his clothes
looked like they were glued on him. I asked him how much money he had and he
pulled out a wad of bills from his pocket and we counted them together."
    "How much did he have?"
    "He had seventy-five dollars all together, so I told him he could stay
for the week for fifty. I wasn't filling up the rooms anyway."
    "So, he moved in for the week?"
    Mr. Clemens nodded. "Yeah, I walked him over to his room and he was a
lot more pleasant once he knew he had a place to stay. He even chatted me up while he dumped his bag all over the floor of
the motel room."
    "All his worldly possessions?"
    "If you could call them that," he laughed.
    "Objection!"
    "What's your objection,