“I’d just snapped the locks when I heard Val yelling.”

“Val being your younger son?” asked Nance.

“Yeah. He’s only sixteen. Hasn’t got his full growth yet or he’d’ve busted them three’s butts.”

Hastily, Nance pushed on. “When you looked over to where he was, what did you see?”

“I saw them knock him over and start climbing up my rainbow on the outside, but the compressor was still going, so it was twisting enough that they couldn’t get a good hold. The plastic’s tough, but I was worried they might stomp a hole. Braz and me—”

“Braz is—?”

She gave an impatient toss of her head at having her narrative interrupted yet again. “Braz is my oldest boy, Val’s the youngest, Binga’s our Bozo, and Herve was the one working that ride, okay? The others had gone to the bunkhouse.”

Nance nodded and let her keep going.

“Braz and me, we ran over. I hollered for Binga to come help, too, but by the time we got there, that one”—she pointed to Vic Lincoln—“had his knife out and before we could get to him, he cut a slit ten feet long and let all the air out. Whole thing collapsed, okay? It was a miracle somebody didn’t break an arm or a leg.”

A Widdington town police officer who’d been there that night with his wife gave corroborating evidence as to the defendants’ presence, general belligerency, intoxication, and possession of knives. He hadn’t witnessed the incident, but since the Lincoln brothers and their friend Partin weren’t actually denying it, that point was moot.

When the prosecution rested, Vic Lincoln took the stand and the oath and asked if he could tell his story in his own words.

“See, Your Honor, we went there to get back the stuff her old man stole from us, but—”

“Stole from you?” I asked.

“Yes, ma’am. See, when you put us in jail last time, we rented us a storage locker for our tools and stuff. But Danny’s sorry girlfriend that was supposed to be keeping up the payments on it? She went off to Myrtle Beach with another guy, and when we got out, the people at the locker place said they’d sold our stuff off for back rent. Her dude’s the one that bought it and we were there to find him. I mean, how can we make a honest living if we don’t have our tools?”

“And when you didn’t find Mr. Ames at the carnival, you decided to take it out in trade?” asked Nance.

“Well, naw, that just sorta happened,” said Lincoln.

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You put your tools in storage, nobody pays the rent on it, the company auctions it off, yet you blame the Ameses for your loss? Seems to me, you should be going after your brother’s old girlfriend.”

Lincoln looked at me as if I were dumber than dirt.

“She ain’t the one got our tools,” he said.

I let him have his full say, then found the men guilty as charged. Because they each had less than five priors, I could only give them forty-five days max for the injury to personal property, same for the simple assault. It was tempting to send them all back to jail for thirty days, but most victims prefer cash restitution over the satisfaction of seeing their assailants do time, so I suspended the active sentence and put them on supervised probation for two years with the usual conditions. This included a fine, restitution for property damage and any medical bills, an injunction to stay away from this carnival, plus an alcohol assessment at the local mental-health clinic.