Read Online The Hanging Judge by Michael Ponsor - Free Book Online

ma’am.” It was the heavyset cop, Alex, again. But the woman was still there, too, one hand on Sandra’s shoulder, tight, the other on the small of her back.
    “Sergeant Cramer and I are going to help you up now. We’re going to sit you on the bed, okay? Easy does it. Upsy-daisy.”
    “Díaz, give him his … Wait a minute.” There was another explosive sneeze. “Give him his rights in Spanish.” Someone was blowing his nose.
    “I don’t think he speaks Spanish, Lieutenant,” a voice replied from the closet area. “Hey, buddy, habla español ?”
    “No,” Moon said in his new, flat voice.
    Sandra was lifted off the floor up into a world that had changed completely. She felt like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, except that this time the tornado had worked in reverse, taking her happy, brightly colored world and plunging it into grim black and white. She gasped as they dropped her down farther than she expected. The mattress was gone, and she was placed on the hard box spring. Sitting so low, with her hands cuffed tightly behind her back, she felt tiny. What she saw—with her darting eyes, not daring to turn her head—sickened her.
    Their small bedroom, their daisy field, was crowded with enormous, jostling, dirty-footed people. The sheets and blankets had been pushed off onto the floor. Two men had the mattress on its end and were running their hands carefully along its underside. A third officer had pulled out the top drawer of their oak bureau, a wedding gift from her parents, and was dumping its contents onto the floor. The bottom two drawers were already leaning against the wall on a pile of underwear. A uniformed Latino cop—Díaz apparently—was at the closet, throwing shirts and pants over his shoulder carelessly. A black officer and a big white guy in uniform were standing next to Moon, who was completely naked with his hands cuffed behind his back. They were helping him step into a pair of jeans. Most horrifying of all, a stream of blood ran down the side of Moon’s face and onto his shoulder.
    “Moon, you’re hurt!”
    “It’s okay.”
    The white cop in the doorway pointed. “Hey, if you don’t want to talk, shut up!”
    All their belongings, their clothing, their sheets and blankets, even their precious framed wedding pictures, already knocked off the bureau and broken, were being stepped on as people passed in and out of the room.
    “Hola!” Díaz cried jubilantly. He was pulling a shoebox out of Moon’s closet, holding the top in one hand. Several officers looked over at him.
    “Looks like maybe five, six ounces of pot, bagged for sale, and a shitload of cash here, Lieutenant.” He peered into the box and looked up with a happy grin, like a boy with a trick-or-treat bag.
    “Don’t touch anything, for Christ’s sake. Put it back and get the video cam.”
    “What do they pay you for an ounce of weed these days, Clarence?” the black cop on the other side of the bed asked.
    “That’s not ours,” Sandra exclaimed. “Moon, what is that?”
    “Whoa,” said the southern voice in the doorway. It was a man in plainclothes with a raid jacket, looking over the lieutenant’s shoulder at Sandra with a pleased, lazy smile. “I believe we just heard an excited utterance, admissible in a court of law.”
    “Baby, hush now,” Moon said sharply, and his face made Sandra’s stomach plunge. She saw him look quickly over at her and then down at the floor, as if he were ashamed. This was the worst shock yet. Who had she married?
    “Somebody might just want to scribble Miz Hudson’s remark down somewhere.”
    Grace did begin to bleat faintly now. The sound expanded in Sandra’s mind and pushed its way through everything, one clear, irresistible call in this mass of confusion.
    “Get her out of here,” the lieutenant said, waving his hand at Sandra. “Let her get the kid. She’s okay. What?” He twisted around to speak to someone in the living room, then turned again to look at Sandra