James PATTERSON - Alex Cross’s Trial

I couldn’t think of a way to combat all the lies, the false testimony, the faked documents, the bigoted jurors – and, of course, the overwhelming and nearly laughable prejudice of the presiding judge.

Jonah Curtis, on the other hand, seemed to be clinging to his little tiny ray of hope. He kept urging me to have the courage to stand by him; he intended to fight Loophole Lewis to the bitter end.

So it was that Jonah went after every scrap of evidence with passion, intelligence, and no little amount of cunning. He did constant battle with my increasingly impatient father. On the third day of the trial, everyone was astonished when Judge Corbett actually upheld one of Jonah’s objections. “Don’t let that give you any ideas,” my father growled.

The next day Jonah put an emotional Conrad Cosgrove on the stand.

“That’s right, Mr. Curtis,” Conrad said, “they was at least eight of ’em coming from all directions. They never said a word, they just started shootin’ everything and everybody in sight.”

And later: “Yes, sir, Mr. Curtis, I seen my brother Luther take that man’s boot to his head at least six, seven times. Hard enough and long enough to kill him. I was standing closer to him than I am right now to you.”

But then Maxwell Hayes Lewis always got his chance at rebuttal.

“Now, Mr. Cosgrove, my dear Mr. Cosgrove, would you say that your opinion of what happened that night is influenced at all by your sorrow at the death of your brother?”

Conrad pondered the question, then shook his head. “No, sir. I do feel sad that Luther is dead, but that doesn’t have a thing to do with my opinion about what happened that night.”

It was a small trap, but Conrad had walked right into it.

Loophole Lewis pounced. “So the testimony you gave to Mr. Curtis just now was your opinion , not fact?”

“Well, sir,” Conrad said slowly, “it is my opinion, like you said, but it’s based on what I saw. And that’s just a fact.”

“But you’re not absolutely certain of those facts, are you? How could you be?”

Jonah climbed to his feet again. “Your Honor, Mr. Lewis is purposely trying to confuse this witness.”

Judge Corbett looked over his spectacles. “If the witness is so easily confused,” he said, “then perhaps you made a mistake calling Mr. Cosgrove to testify in the first place.”

And so it went. In that steamy courtroom, ripe with the smell of sweat and Rose of Sharon eau de toilette, the good people of the Eudora Quarters took the stand and swore to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. And they did. And then Maxwell Lewis ripped them apart.

One by one, Loophole Lewis plowed his way through our witness list. Whether defiant or docile when they took the stand, every one of those witnesses eventually stepped down looking foolish, stupid, or wrong.

It happened every single time.

At last Jonah stood up.

“If it please the court, the people call Miss Moody Cross to the stand.”

MY GOD. She was dressed like a grown-up.

I had never seen her wearing anything but one of the three identical white jumpers she rotated through the laundry basket so that she always appeared to be wearing the same spotlessly clean dress. Today she looked like a grown woman: a formal blue skirt, a neat white blouse. On her feet were lace-up boots polished to a high shine. She wore white gloves and a straw hat.

Last night we had gone over and over the questions we would ask. “Just tell the truth,” Jonah kept saying, “and everything will be fine.”

“What are you talking about?” she scoffed. “In that courtroom the truth ain’t worth a bucket of piss.”

“Charming,” I said. “Try not to say that.”

Jonah said, “The truth is the only weapon we have, Moody. So we have to use it.”

“Maybe so,” she said.

I should have listened more carefully to that phrase of hers.

Under Jonah’s patient questioning, Moody told the same story her grandfather had told. The same story Cosgrove told. The same story every one of the witnesses from the Quarters had told.

By the time Jonah turned to Maxwell Lewis and said, “Your witness,” the gentlemen of the jury looked about ready for some dinner and a nice nap.

Lewis said, “Miss Cross, are you a permanent resident of the house where your grandfather lives, over there in the Quarters?”

“Yes, sir, that’s right. I live with him and take care of him.”

All morning I had been noticing that Moody sounded more mature. She had managed to hide the edge of anger that so often came into her voice. She was speaking carefully, politely.

“I wouldn’t really call it a house, though,” she added. “It’s more like a shack. But we do all right.”

“Now, would you say your first notice of the alleged intruders on that night was when they rode up, supposedly shooting their weapons and yelling?”

“Oh, no, sir,” she said in a very clear voice. “I would say my first notice was when Mr. North there, and Mr. Stephens, knocked on the door and showed me their search warrant.”

SWEET JESUS IN heaven! Jonah and I had never discussed this with her. We had certainly never planned for her to say such a thing. But say it she had:

“… and showed me their search warrant.”

With those words Moody changed the whole atmosphere of the courtroom and the direction of this entire murder trial.

Jonah looked at me wide-eyed. Together we stared at Moody on the witness stand.

I thought I detected a hint of amusement behind her serious expression. She watched Loophole Lewis swivel all the way around to shoot a goggle-eyed look at my father. She heard the defendants whispering frantically among themselves. She was aware that her words had set off a buzz of confusion in the gallery. Even the jurors had snapped to wakefulness.

And Moody was enjoying every minute of it. Maybe she knew our cause was lost, and she was out to confound everybody. To confuse us. To throw the whole trial up in the air and see where the pieces came down.

This was every lawyer’s nightmare: the rogue witness, off on her own.

My father banged his gavel several times. “Order!” The buzz subsided. “Mr. Lewis?”

Lewis turned back to the witness stand. “Now, Miss Cross,” he said, “every previous witness, including your grandfather, claimed that they never were presented with a search warrant that night.”

“I know that, sir,” she said. “Papaw’s getting pretty old now; he doesn’t always notice everything. And when those men came with the warrant, there wasn’t anybody out in front of the house except me. I was the only one.”

I’m sure that almost everyone else thought Maxwell Lewis looked as confident as ever, but I saw signs that he was flustered. He was forgetting to slouch casually against the railing of the jury box. He was standing at attention and speaking a little too quickly. His countrified Clarence Darrow lilt had all but vanished. Moody had rattled him.

“This is, to say the least, a most unusual bit of testimony, Miss Cross.”

“Why is that, sir? You – all said they came there with a search warrant. You said they showed it to us. All I’m saying is… well, that’s exactly what happened.”

She was lying. I knew it for sure. I was with Abraham in the parlor that night, and I knew nobody came to the door with any warrant. All had been quiet, there was a clatter of horses, then the Raiders started shooting at anything that moved.

Maxwell Lewis put on an uncomfortable smile. “All right, they showed you the warrant,” he said. “And then what happened next?”

Suddenly I knew where Moody was going with this, why she was lying. What she was hoping to demonstrate with her lie.