THE DEFENSE RESTS by Stephen D. Rogers

The Defense Rests


My son's a good boy. If you have video showing what looks like the clerk giving my son money, why it's probably money the clerk owed my son, who would always do the Christian thing and loan his last dollar to someone in need.

Maybe he was planning to whittle after he left the store. Maybe the clerk hired my son to whittle something, and the clerk gave my son money out of the register and then realized his actions had been captured on camera. That's why he's telling lies about my son. If you ask me, that clerk is simply trying to cover up his own crime. Probably a foreigner.

The quality of the video you showed me is so bad I didn't even recognize the man you claim is my flesh-and-blood, never mind determine the racial makeup of some stranger who's trying to frame my son.

Yes, framed. I know what I'm talking about. My boy's been framed in the past. This is nothing new. There's a truckload of jealousy in the world, a truckload of hard feelings. People see my boy - a good boy, an innocent boy - and they take advantage.

I don't see what's so funny. You don't have any children, do you? You don't know what it's like to sacrifice everything for a child. Everything. And then the pain of watching that child be mistreated.

My son knows his way around a knife. He got that from me. If my boy had wanted to hurt that clerk, you wouldn't be paying no mind to that clerk's lies. You'd be fishing parts of that clerk out of the lake behind my house.

I'm just trying to make a point. I raised my son by myself, and I've learned to talk so people listen. People like a touch of the dramatic. There's a reason all those sinners die in the Bible.

The boy's father disappeared one night and good riddance.

If you knew the man, you'd ask if we were married in the eyes of Satan. He was an evil man. Two-tongued. Sick and depraved. The ultimate judge of right and wrong as far as he was concerned. Course he couldn't block a knife thrust to save his own life.


BIO:
Stephen D. Rogers is the author of SHOT TO DEATH (Mainly Murder Press) and more than 600 shorter pieces. His website, www.StephenDRogers.com, includes a list of new and upcoming titles as well as other timely information.