Alex Cross's Trial Read Free

life.

    “You know the reason. I don’t even have to say it. But I’m going to say it anyway.

    “ Gracie Johnson is colored . That’s why she’s here. That’s the only reason she’s here. She was the only colored employee in attendance at the Davenport house that day.

    “So there it is. She’s a Negro. You gentlemen are white. Everyone expects that a white jury will always convict a black defendant. But I know that not to be true. I think—matter of fact, I truly believe—that you have more honor than that. You have the integrity to see through what the prosecutor is trying to do here, which is to railroad an innocent woman whose only crime was telling you honestly that her boss was a mean old woman.

    “Do you see what we’ve found? We’ve turned up the most important fact of all. And that fact, the fact that Gracie’s skin is black, should have no influence whatsoever on what you decide.

    “That’s what the law says, in every state in this Union. If there is a reasonable doubt in your mind as to whether or not Gracie Johnson is a murderer, you … must … vote … to … acquit .”

    I started to go back to my chair, but then I turned and walked right up to Carter Ames’s table.

    “May I, Carter?”

    I picked up his Bible, flipping through the pages until I appeared to find the verse I was seeking in the book of Proverbs. No one needed to know I was quoting from memory:

    “When justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous.”

    I closed the Good Book.

    Chapter 5

    CARTER AMES PUSHED his silver flask of bourbon toward my face. “Have a swig, Ben. You deserve it, son. Well done.”

    What a sight for the funny pages we must have made—Ames barely five feet tall, me at six-four—standing side by side in the marble hallway outside the courtroom.

    “No, thanks, Carter. I’d rather be sober when the verdict comes in.”

    “I wouldn’t, if I was you.” His voice was a curdled mixture of phlegm and whiskey. As he lifted the flask to his mouth, I was surprised to see half-moons of sweat under his arms. In the courtroom he’d looked cool as a block of pond ice.

    “Your summation was damn good,” he observed. “I think you had ’em going for a while there. But then you went and threw in that colored stuff. Why’d you have to remind them? You think they didn’t notice she’s black as the ace of spades?”

    “I thought I saw one or two who weren’t buying your motive,” I said. “Only takes one to hang ’em up.”

    “And twelve to hang her, don’t I know it.”

    He took another swig from his flask and eased himself down to a bench. “Sit down, Ben. I want to talk to you, not your rear end.”

    I sat.

    “Son, you’re a fine young lawyer, Harvard trained and all, gonna make a finer lawyer one of these days,” he said. “But you still need to learn that Washington is a southern town. We’re every bit as southern as wherever you’re from down in Podunk, Mississippi.”

    I grimaced and shook my head. “I just do what I think is right, Carter.”

    “I know you do. And that’s what makes everybody think you’re nothing but a goddamned bleeding-heart fool and nigger-lover.”

    Before I could defend—well, just about everything I believe in—a police officer poked his head out of the courtroom. “Jury’s coming back.”

    Chapter 6

    THE CUMBERSOME IRON SHACKLES around Gracie Johnson’s ankles clanked noisily as I helped her to her feet at the defense table.

    “Thank you, Mr. Corbett,” she whispered.

    Judge Warren gazed down on her as if he were God. “Mr. Foreman, has the jury reached a verdict in this case?” he asked.

    “Yes, we have, Your Honor.”

    Like every lawyer since the Romans invented the Code of Justinian, I had tried to learn something from the jurors’ faces as they filed into the courtroom—the haberdasher, the retired schoolteacher, the pale young man who was engaged to Congressman Chapman’s daughter and had cracked a tentative smile during my summation.

    Several of them were looking directly at Gracie, which was