James PATTERSON - Alex Cross’s Trial

“Thank you, L.J., Elizabeth. I really do appreciate your concern. More than you can possibly know.”

“Until then, Ben, listen to me. Do not trust anyone. And that means anyone .”

I knew that “anyone” included Jacob Gill, and even my father. It probably meant Dabney and Yvella too. But did it also mean the very people giving me this cautionary advice? Could I trust L.J. and Elizabeth?

“We’d best be on our way,” L.J. said. “Isn’t there a back door out of here?”

I pointed to it.

“Don’t forget what I said, Ben. Keep your head down.”

L.J. opened the little door that let onto the alley. He glanced around, then turned back. “Nobody around. Let’s go, Elizabeth.”

She turned to me with a smile that spoke of her concern.

“Ben, please let us help. We’re your friends. Maybe your only friends.”

ALMOST MIDNIGHT. Another knock came on the rear door of the long house.

I shot the bolt and the door swung open.

Moody Cross was standing there in a white jumper. And not a little terrified. She pushed past me and slammed the door shut.

“Papaw sent me.”

“I guess my secret hiding place is the worst-kept secret in Mississippi,” I said.

She was out of breath. “We need help. A lady from the Slide Inn sent her colored girl out to warn us. Said they’s a group of men coming out to kill me and Papaw and Ricky.”

“Who’s Ricky?”

“My cousin, you met him at the funeral. He got run out of Chatawa, where he lived all his life. He been staying with us since you left – you know, like for protection.”

Now I remembered him, a boy about the same age as Hiram, with a family resemblance to Hiram and Moody.

“What happened in Chatawa?” I asked.

“Two white men said they saw Ricky staring at a white woman. Said he was thinkin’ evil thoughts. I guess some white folks can even see inside of a black boy’s brain. There’s this group of ’em – the White Raiders, is what they call ’em up there. They s’posed to be the ones coming to get us.”

This seemed like more than coincidence. The horror raining down upon Abraham’s family simply would not stop, would it?

“There’s something else.”

What else could there possibly be?

“Papaw is sick,” she said. “He can’t get out of his bed, got the fever and the shakes, and Aunt Henry’s been there nursing him.”

Moody started to cry, and I remembered something Mama always used to say: When the time comes you want to start crying, that’s the time to start moving.

It was time for me to go get L.J. and Elizabeth.

L. J. STRINGER’S six-seater spring wagon flew down the road, stirring the motionless air of a sticky-hot Mississippi night.

“You’re going straight to hell, Ben Corbett, and you’re taking me with you!” L.J. raised his crop to urge on his team.

As soon as I had gotten Moody to stop crying, we’d sneaked over to the Stringer place and surprised the whole household with our late-night knock on the kitchen door. I’d asked L.J. to help me protect Abraham, Moody, and Ricky. He’d listened and he hadn’t hesitated. “I said I’d help you, Ben, and I will.”

Yes, he’d heard of the White Raiders. Yes, he knew them to be a gang of killers. Finally he sighed heavily and sent his man Luther out to hitch up his team.

And now here we were, bumping and rolling our way out to Abraham’s house in the Quarters. Crammed together on the back bench were Moody, Luther Cosgrove, and his brother Conrad.

Luther and Conrad were L.J.’s assistants – “my man Friday and his brother Saturday,” he joked – on call twenty-four hours a day to do whatever the boss wanted done. They drove Allegra Stringer on her errands. They ran packages to McComb and Jackson and Shreveport. If L.J. needed anybody “brought into line,” as he put it, it was the Cosgroves who did the bringing.

“What we’re doing here is extremely foolish,” said L.J. “You know that?”

“I know that,” I said. “But if we don’t help these people, nobody will. And they’re all going to die.”

L.J. shrugged and said, “Well, we can’t have that. This has to stop somewhere. Might as well be right here and right now.”

POOR ABRAHAM WAS in the parlor of his house, sleeping fitfully when we arrived. Half a dozen men came from the Quarters, as volunteers, even though they had only a couple of rifles. “Guarding Father Abraham,” that’s what they called it. Abraham was that beloved here.

As it turned out, the White Raiders didn’t come that first night, but we continued guarding Father Abraham. As the sun went down the second evening, L.J. and I took our places on the porch. We’d been friends for a long time, but he’d gotten better and better with the years, the exact opposite of Jacob.

I arranged the other men as carefully as a Civil War general planning his lines of defense. I put two of the new men on the roof, despite Moody’s protest that the sheets of tin were so old and rusty that they would almost certainly fall through.

Then L.J. dispatched five of the men in an enfilade line among the old willow trees at the edge of the woods.

“Stay awake. Stay alert,” he told everyone. “Don’t leave your post for any damn reason. If you need to pee, just do it in place.”

As the second night watch began, our fears were as high as on the first.

Around eleven L.J. and I decided a finger of sour-mash whiskey was what our coffee needed to take the edge off. After midnight Moody came out with a fresh pot. She told me Abraham was awake.

Through the window I saw him propped up on his pillow. Between his hands he held a bowl of steaming liquid, which he raised to his lips.

“How’s he doing?”

“He’s got a little more energy tonight. But I ain’t getting my hopes up. Aunt Henry says he’s on his way.”

I nodded and walked inside.

“How are you feeling, friend?” I asked.

He smiled. “How are you, is the question,” he said. “I ain’t doing nothing but laying on this bed, trying not to die. You the one doing somethin’.”

“I’ll keep doing my job, as long as you do yours,” I said.

I was surprised how sharp he seemed, and I seized the opportunity.

“Still no word from the White House, Abraham,” I told him. “Makes me angry.”

“The Lord and the president, they both work in mysterious ways,” he said.

“How did you ever come to know him, Abraham?” I asked. “The president, that is.”

“Mr. Roosevelt’s mama was a southern lady, you know. Miss Mittie. [6] Martha Bulloch Roosevelt (July 8, 1835 – February 14, 1884) was the wife of Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., mother of US President Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. A true southern belle, she was affectionately known as Mittie, and is thought to have been one of the inspirations for Scarlett O’Hara. From over where I’m from, in Roswell, Georgia. And see, my sister Annie went to work for Miss Mittie, eventually went with her up to New York. She was still up there, nursing Mittie, the day she died. Died the same day as Mr. Roosevelt’s first wife, Alice. [7] Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt (July 29, 1861 – February 14, 1884) was the first wife of Theodore Roosevelt (married on October 27, 1880). She died young of an undiagnosed case of kidney failure (in those days called Bright's disease) two days after their daughter Alice Lee Roosevelt was born. Her pregnancy had masked the illness. Theodore’s mother Mittie died of typhoid fever on the same day, at 3:00 am, some eleven hours earlier, in the same house. Did you know his mama died the same day as his wife? I was there that day, helping Annie. That was a terrible day. I guess he never forgot it.”