James PATTERSON - Alex Cross’s Trial

A SILK BANNER with elegant black letters ran the length of the wall.

WELCOME HOME, BEN

This was the banner that had hung in the dining room for the big family celebration the day I returned from my service in Cuba. Half the town turned out to cheer the decorated Spanish-American War veteran who had distinguished himself under the famous Colonel Theodore Roosevelt.

Now the banner was dingy, the silk stained brown with drips from the leaky roof. I was standing not in my father’s house on Holly Street but in the “long house” out back, a former slave quarters.

It was to the long house that I had come after I left Jacob. It hadn’t housed an actual slave since well before I was born. At the moment it seemed to be serving as a storage room for every piece of castoff junk my father didn’t want in the house.

It was also home to the dogs, Duke and Dutchy, the oldest, fattest, laziest bloodhounds in all of Mississippi. They didn’t even bother to bark when I opened the door and stepped inside.

I lit an old kerosene lantern and watched the mice scurry away into corners. As the shadows retreated, I realized that all the junk piled in here was my junk. My father had turned the long house into a repository of everything related to my childhood.

The oak desk from my bedroom was shoved against the wall under the welcome banner. Piled on top of the desk were pasteboard cartons and the little desk chair I had used before I was old enough to use a grown-up one.

I lifted the lid of the topmost carton. A musty smell rose from the books inside. I lifted out a handful: A Boy’s History of the Old South, My First Lessons in Arithmetic, and my favorite book when I was a boy: Brass Knuckles, Or, The Story of a Boy Who Cheated.

Next to the desk stood my first bed, a narrow spool one decorated by my mother with hand-painted stars. It was hard to believe I’d ever fit on that little bed.

In the far corner was another pile of Benjamin Corbett’s effects: football, basketball, catcher’s mitt, slide trombone, the boxer’s speed bag that once hung from a rafter in the attic.

I lifted the corner of a bedsheet draping a large object, and uncovered the most wonderful possession of my entire childhood: a miniature two-seater buggy, made perfectly to scale of white-painted wicker with spoked iron wheels. I remembered the thrill it gave me when our old stable hand Mose would hitch up the old mule, Sarah, to my buggy. He would lift me onto the driver’s seat and lead the mule and me on a walk around the property. I must have been all of six or seven.

Before I knew what was happening, I was crying. I stood in the middle of that dark, musty room and let the tears come. My shoulders shook violently. I sank down to a chair and buried my head in my hands. I was finally home – and it was awful.

A FAMILIAR VOICE brought me out of a deep sleep. These days I came awake instantly, and always with an edge of fear. It was only when I blinked at the two figures smiling down on me that I was able to relax.

“Near ’bout time for breakfast,” said Yvella, my father’s cook. Beside her was Dabney, the houseman. Each held a silver tray.

“Way past time,” said Dabney. “In another hour it’ll be time for dinner.”

Among the items on Dabney’s tray were a silver coffeepot emitting a tendril of steam from its spout and a complete place setting of Mama’s best china.

Yvella’s tray offered just about every breakfast item known to southern mankind: grits, fried eggs, spicy link sausage, homemade patty sausage, griddle cakes with sorghum syrup, a basket of baking-powder biscuits, butter, watermelon pickles, and fig preserves.

“Yvella, you don’t expect me to eat all this?”

“Yes, suh, I sure do,” she said. “You too damn skinny.”

“I have lost some weight here recently,” I said and rolled my eyes.

“Yeah, I heard all about it,” she said.

“How’d y’all know I was here… in the guest quarters? ”

“Duke come and told me,” Dabney said.

I realized that I was standing in front of them shirtless, wearing only my drawers. I looked around for my clothes.

“Don’t you worry about it, Mister Ben,” Yvella said. “I seen plenty worse than that. I took your clothes to the wash.”

Dabney brought over a filigreed iron tea table I remembered from Mama’s flower garden.

“I didn’t tell your daddy you’s here,” he said. “I figure you’d want to tell him yourself. But why don’t you come on and sleep in the house, Mister Ben. That big old house just rattling around with hardly nobody in it, you out here sleepin’ with the dogs.”

“We’ll see,” I said. “Thank you for the invitation.”

Along with the coffee, Dabney had brought me a straight razor, shaving soap, a tortoiseshell comb and brush, and a stack of fresh clothing – my old clothes, laundered and folded. I was probably skinny enough to fit into them now.

“God bless you both,” I said.

“You the one that needs the blessin’, from what I hear,” Yvella said. “You best keep out of trouble.”

“I will try,” I said. “Listen, I have a favor to ask both of y’all.”

“Your father don’t need to know, and we ain’t gonna tell him,” said Dabney.

“The same goes for me,” said Yvella. “And now I got a favor to ask of you.”

“What is it?”

“Would you eat them damn biscuits before they get cold?”

AS SOON AS I POURED the last of the coffee, Duke and Dutchy started barking – insistent, urgent, annoying barks. They ran up and down along the wall underneath the cobwebby window.

I went over and was astonished to see Elizabeth in the bushes and with her none other than L. J. Stringer.

I motioned for them to go around to the front door.

“Damn, Ben,” L.J. said, “if we wanted to come through the front door, we would have done it in the first place.”

I shut the door behind them. “How’d you even know I was here?”

They looked annoyed at my stupidity.

“Don’t you think those Klan boys had somebody follow you home last night after their meeting? The whole town knows, Ben. Everybody knows who you are and where you are. All the time .”

I felt stupid. Of course they had followed me.

L.J. straightened. “Ben, let me put it to you as simply as I know how. Your life is in danger .”

“He’s right. Actually, it’s a miracle you’re still alive,” said Elizabeth. She reached out and touched my shoulder, eyes wide with concern.

L.J. spoke in a no-nonsense voice. “People are really angry, Ben. I mean angry . You forget what a small town this is. Folks know you’re up to something, and whatever it is, you ain’t here to make them look good.”

“I don’t have to defend myself, L.J. There’s murder going on in this town. Hell, I’ve seen six people with my own eyes who’ve been murdered, just in the short time since I got here! They nearly killed me, just for seeing what I saw.”

Elizabeth spoke, her voice as gentle as L.J.’s was harsh.

“Ben, these are, or were, your neighbors,” she said. “These are your friends. Most of them are good, decent people.”

“Elizabeth, I don’t see anything decent about men who murder innocent people. You put neighborliness ahead of simple humanity? Forgive me if I disagree.”

I realized that I probably sounded like a defense attorney pleading a case. Another hopeless one?

L.J. seemed to read my mind. “No point in discussing it any further,” he said. “We came here because we’re afraid for you, Ben. We want to try to help. It’s just a matter of time before they come for you again. And hang you good. I’ll figure out some way to keep you safe.”