James PATTERSON - Alex Cross’s Trial

His mouth twisted up into a smile. “What you gonna do, Corbett, have me arrested again?”

From out of nowhere he brought up a small pistol.

My finger tightened on the trigger. “Drop it or I’ll blow your head off,” I said. “Do not doubt me for a second! I want to shoot you!”

He let the pistol drop to the floor. All at once hands seized him and dragged him over backwards–

Here they were, the people of the Quarters, bearing guns and knives, pitchforks and sharpened sticks, clublike lengths of straight iron. A dozen men swarmed in from the porch, seizing the Raiders and dragging them outside.

Gunfire echoed, and I heard more horses – a second wave of Raiders. But here came our reinforcements too, pouring out of nearly every door in the Quarters, bearing weapons or no weapons at all, swarming down the street and around Abraham’s house. They dragged Raiders down off their horses and set upon them with clubs, rocks, and farm implements.

Every blow they struck was violent payback for a lynching, a hanging, a beating, a murder. I heard the thud of club against flesh, the crack of rock striking bone. Terrible cries erupted as the colored men overwhelmed the Raiders, avenging the lynchings of their brothers, the oppression and torture and murder of fathers and friends.

I saw Doc Conover swinging a long rifle like a club at a woman who was down on her knees, covering her head with both arms. Then I saw a man knock Conover senseless with a fireplace poker to his skull.

Lyman Tripp, the undertaker, was on the ground, surrounded by men kicking him in the ribs. I remembered how happy he had been to hang a Jew, so I didn’t feel sorry for him. Not for any of them.

But then, over the racket of punches and shouts, I heard more horses approaching. There were many horses, bearing reinforcements for the other side.

“CORBETT!” A MAN SHOUTED at the top of his lungs.

I stepped out onto the porch to see none other than Phineas Eversman on a fine black mare, wearing his black cowboy hat with the badge pinned to the brim. “You are under arrest,” he said, “and that nigger girlfriend of yours.”

The fight was swirling all around us, defenders chasing and shouting, new waves of attackers coming in from the woods. It seemed unbelievable that Eversman would be trying to make an arrest in such a setting.

I trained my shotgun on his chest. “Get your ass down off that horse, Phineas.”

“You put your gun down, Ben,” said a voice behind me.

I turned to find a revived Doc Conover with a nasty twelve-gauge shotgun leveled at me.

“Hey, Ben,” Doc said. “I meant to bring your oil of winter-green, but I forgot.” He chuckled.

A shot rang out and the gun flew from his hands. Conover screamed and grabbed his elbow. Ricky ran up and scrambled after his gun.

I glanced around to see who had fired the shot. Good God! – It was ancient Aunt Henry in the doorway of Abraham’s shack, blowing smoke from the long barrel of a Colt revolver. She nodded at me and went back inside.

I heard a loud crack and turned to find Eversman down off his horse with a big bullwhip in his hand, a whip straight out of Uncle Tom’s Cabin . It had a black leather-wrapped stick for a handle and three little stinger-tips at the end of the whipcord. Eversman cracked it again, with a report louder than a pistol shot.

His arm swept around, and the whip shot out and wrapped around my ankles with a sting as fierce as yellowjackets. It snatched me off my feet, and I landed hard on my back in the dirt. I felt blood running down where the whip was cutting into flesh and then Eversman was on me, hitting with both fists at once. But I was stronger, and angrier too. I managed to roll over and fling him on his back. Seizing the slack end of the whip, I wrapped it around his neck so tight that with one hard tug I could break his windpipe. He gurgled and coughed like the two men I had seen lynched – like the sound I must have made when they lynched me.

Eversman’s eyes bugged out horribly. The leather cord bit into his neck, making a deep red indentation.

And then…

I let go of him. He would kill me if he could, but I couldn’t kill him.

He fell into the mud. Somehow I had opened a big cut on his cheek just above his mouth. Blood oozed out. I began unwinding the whipcord from my ankles.

I stood over him, breathing hard. “You’ve cut your face, Phineas. Ask Doc if he’s got any wintergreen for that.”

IN THE BACKYARD I FOUND the old checker players from Hemple’s store tying up Byram Chaney, the retired teacher in whose wagon I’d been taken to the Klan rally. That rally and the lynching that followed seemed to have taken place a hundred years ago.

I heard an odd glunk ing sound behind me and turned to see two men with kerosene cans working their way along the side of Abraham’s house, splashing fuel on the foundation.

The one nearest me was the renowned legislator Senator Richard Nottingham, Elizabeth’s husband. The military jacket he wore for this night’s action was too small for him; the fabric gaped open around the buttons.

“Bring a match to that fuel,” I called out, “and I’ll shoot you dead. Be my pleasure.”

The other man was bent over, facing away from me. He whirled and pulled a handgun. To my horror, it was Jacob Gill.

“Drop your gun, Ben,” he said. “I would shoot you dead too.”

Around us swirled a madness of yelling, fighting, and dust, screaming, cursing, and gunfire. Yet at that moment it felt as if Jacob and I were facing off all alone in the middle of a giant, empty room.

“Why, Ben?” he croaked. “Why’d you have to come back and ruin our nice little town?”

JACOB JUST KEPT walking toward me.

Finally, my face hovered inches from his, so close I could smell whiskey and bacon grease on his breath. His face was covered with stubble, the skin on his nose peppered with gin blossoms.

I lashed out and grabbed his gun hand and twisted it hard until the weapon dropped. Jacob had always been smaller, but he could whip me at least half the time when we were boys. He was wiry and strong, and not afraid to fight dirty. I remembered the venom he could turn on our enemies when we got together in a schoolyard scrap.

“Goddamn you, Ben!” he yelled. Then I saw he had a knife. I took his arm and held it with all my strength. It felt as if we stayed that way for hours, grappling, neither of us gaining an advantage, the razor edge suspended between us. My arms ached.

I looked Jacob in the eye. “Jacob!” I yelled at him. “It’s me, goddamn it! It’s Ben!”

But his eyes were bulging with rage, one hand now gripping my throat, the other inching closer with the blade. If he killed me here, amid all this noise and insanity, no one would ever know it was Jacob who’d done the deed. I would just be Ben Corbett, another victim in another senseless attack in a small town.

And then I knew that was not how it was going to happen. I was not going to die here, at the hand of Jacob Gill. That knowledge gave me strength, just enough to jerk his arm sideways and break his hold on the knife.

I kicked Jacob hard and wrenched the knife away. I got on him, kneeling on his chest with the blade an inch from his neck. I could have slit his throat right then, but instead I poked the knife into his Adam’s apple, hard enough to draw blood. Jacob’s eyes widened. God, I knew those eyes.

“You gonna kill me, Ben?” he said.

I flung the knife away and heard it crash into the bushes beside the smokehouse. Then I got up. There were no words for this. So I turned and walked away from the man who had once been my best friend in the world.