Alex Cross’s Trial

L.J. smiled. “Yessir, it’s one hell of a crowd.”

“Not just the size of the crowd,” I said. “Take a look at who’s leading it.”

All white?

Not right.

L.J. squinted to see. “Those two old folks at the front?”

Jonah answered for me. “The lady is Ida Wells-Barnett,” he said. “And the gentleman, if I am not mistaken, is Mr. W. E. B. Du Bois. This is history being made, indeed.”

Chapter 97

WHEN I WAS A BOY, my mother would sometimes take me to watch my father conducting a trial.

“It’s a presiding day,” she’d say. “Let’s go see Daddy scaring the pants off of everyone.” And away we’d go to the courthouse.

To my child’s eyes the old Pike County Courthouse looked exactly like a church. The second-floor gallery where the colored people got to sit was like the choir loft. The benches below were the pews. And my father stood at the high altar in the front of the room, delivering thunderous sermons and ru

More than twenty years later, here I was, back in the church of Judge Everett Corbett.

But today, as L.J. and Jonah and I arranged our papers and books on the prosecution table, the old courthouse felt like something else entirely.

Not a church.

It was more like a theater now.

The upstairs colored section had been transformed into balcony seats. The benches on the main level were the orchestra seats, jammed to overflowing with an audience that had stood in line for hours to see the hottest entertainment in town. And that altar? Well, that was now center stage.

That was Everett J. Corbett’s stage. He could be a dynamic, exciting performer, and I felt sure he would not let his audience down today.

Ringing the front steps of the courthouse were Scooter Willems and several dozen men like him, bristling with tripods and huge black accordion cameras. Accompanying the photographers were at least a hundred reporters flashing pencils and notebooks, trading tidbits with each other, rushing this way and that in pursuit of the latest rumors.

Inside, the colored spectators had dutifully filed upstairs to the cheap seats. The benches below were filled to maximum capacity by the white citizens of Eudora. Only the first two rows had been left empty, roped off for the pool of potential jurors.

Dominating the wall above the judge’s bench was an enormous Fattorini & Sons regulator clock nearly as long as a grandfather clock, with a carved dark-wood case, elegant Roman numerals, and a pair of gleaming brass pendulums. Growing up, I always thought of it as the Clock of Justice.

Now every tick brought us closer to nine a.m.

Here came a pair of Chief Eversman’s newly recruited deputies, leading in the defendants. Three White Raiders. No shackles, ropes, or handcuffs. The deputies chatted and laughed with the men as they led them to the defense table.

And then the great Maxwell Hayes Lewis strode from the back of the room to greet the Raiders and shake their hands so that everyone in the courtroom could see how normal, how average and amiable, these men were. After a moment’s discussion the defendants turned to look at our table. They looked back at each other and gri

The bailiff entered with a solemn expression, carrying the heavy cast-iron imprinting seal, which he placed at the right end of my father’s bench. This was the seal he would use to mark evidence as it was admitted.

“All rise,” the bailiff called. “The court is now in session, the Honorable Everett J. Corbett presiding.”

Daddy’s big entrance was always a highlight. Here he came through the door at stage left, his hair gleaming with brilliantine, his silky black robe pressed to perfection by Dabney.

He lifted the heavy mahogany gavel. I was surprised to see him using the gavel I had sent him on his sixtieth birthday, since I had never received a thank-you note.

He brought the gavel down with a thunderous bang.

“There will be order!” he commanded. “There will be silence! There will be justice!”

Chapter 98

NOW TO PICK A JURY.

That summer had been one of the hottest on record. It seemed to me that God had saved up all the excess heat and humidity in the world and brought it down upon Eudora today. It was already so hot in the courtroom that the hand fans were flapping like a flock of restless birds.

Judge Corbett had evidently taken measures to spruce up the courtroom for the national press, who were allowed inside between sessions to gather scraps of news. He had ordered all the spectator benches and tables and chairs sanded and revarnished, and indeed they all gleamed as if brand-new. But the new varnish turned soft and sticky in the heat and gave off fumes that set heads spi

This was going to be a very long day.

I saw at once that Judge Corbett still ran an efficient courtroom. It took only ten minutes for the first three candidates to be interviewed, approved, and seated in the jury box: three middle-aged white men.

Jonah made little fuss over any of them. I assumed he was saving his objections for an occasion when they might prove persuasive.

It didn’t take long.

The clerk read a name from the list: “Patton William Taylor.”

Chapter 99

FROM THE FRONT ROW rose a mousy little man commonly known as Patsy-Boy Taylor. I knew him as a helper of Lyman Tripp, the undertaker in whose wagon I had ridden to the Klan meeting at Scully’s barn.

I scribbled a note and passed it to Jonah.

Taylor served time in La. State Prison for assault of Negro girl. Believe he broke her leg.

Jonah sca

“Good morning, Mr. Taylor,” he said. “Tell me, sir, have you ever been to Louisiana?”

“Once or twice,” said Patsy-Boy.

“How about the town of Angola? Ever been there?”

The man frowned. “I reckon I have.”

“And how long was your most recent stay in Angola, Mr. Taylor?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Perhaps I can help refresh your memory, sir,” Jonah said. “Mr. Taylor, did you recently finish a five-month term in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola?”

“I might’ve,” said Taylor. “I can’t quite remember.”

“Your Honor, if it please the court, could you direct Mr. Taylor to answer my question?”

The ice in my father’s water pitcher had melted away, but there was plenty of it in his voice. “He did answer, Mr. Curtis,” he said. “He said that he couldn’t quite remember.”

“Your Honor, with all due respect, I don’t believe-”

“Your beliefs are of no interest to me, Mr. Curtis,” my father said. He turned to the defense table. “Mr. Lewis, do you have any objection to this gentleman sitting on this jury?”

“None whatsoever, Your Honor.”

“Mr. Taylor will be sworn in to serve,” my father said. The gavel came down.

By reflex L.J. and I came up off our chairs. I can’t say I couldn’t believe what had just happened, probably because I’d watched justice being meted out in Mississippi for too long. But still.

“I most strenuously object, Your Honor,” Jonah said in a loud voice.

A young colored woman in the gallery called out, “That ain’t justice!”

My father pointed his gavel at her. “Contempt of court. Ten days in jail and a dollar fine. Get her out of here!”