Alex Cross’s Trial

Eli Weinberg heard my voice. He twisted around in the hands of his captors to see who might have spoken in his defense. “Murderers! Yes, that man’s right! You are all murderers!”

Jacob said, “You’re missing the point, Ben. The Klan is here to fight against all injustice. We’re not here just to educate niggers. We’re here to educate anyone who needs educating.”

I narrowed my eyes and shook my head. “You’re crazy, Jacob. You and your friends are just a bunch of crazy killers.”

Eli Weinberg shouted out, “Listen to him! He’s right! You’re all crazy killers!”

Those were the last words he spoke.

Someone jerked hard on the rope, and Eli Weinberg’s body flew into the air. His cheeks inflated. His eyes bugged in their sockets. His face turned an awful dark crimson, then slowly faded to gray. Vomit spilled from his mouth. His body jerked and trembled horribly.

Within seconds he was dead.

A few seconds after that, the brilliant flash of Scooter Willems’s camera illuminated the dark night.

Chapter 80

THE HANGMAN’S BOWIE KNIFE made quick work of the rope. They let Eli Weinberg’s body fall to the ground with a thud. I had seen ailing farm animals put down with more respect.

“You reckon we oughta bury him?” a man said.

“Leave him where he lies,” said Chaney. “He said he had a son in Baton Rouge. We’ll get word to our brothers down there. The son can come fetch him.”

“Jews are supposed to be buried before sundown on the day they die,” I said.

“It figures you would know all about Jews,” said Doc Conover.

Chaney climbed aboard the wagon and took the reins. As we jolted out of the clearing, Jacob reached down to untie my ankles. “Turn around and let me do your hands,” he said.

I will confess it-I felt a wash of relief. They didn’t intend to kill me tonight.

Without any warning a stiff breeze swept over us, along with a spatter of oversized raindrops. The breeze died for a moment, then the rain was on us, lashing us with windy sheets of water.

I noticed that Doc’s wet white robe had become translucent, so I could read his name stitched on the pharmacist’s jacket he wore underneath.

“What you think, Ben?” Jacob asked as the wagon wheels slogged through the mud. “Is the Klan making a little more sense to you now?”

If Jacob hadn’t been a friend my whole life, I would have punched him right then. “Listen to yourself, Jacob. You just killed a man. Do you hear me? You killed him.”

I thought he was going to snap back at me, but the fire suddenly died in his eyes. He shook his head, in sorrow or disgust. He stared down at his callused hands.

“You… will… never… understand,” he said. “I’m a fool to even try. You’re not like us anymore. You don’t understand how things have changed.”

“Let me tell you what else I don’t understand,” I said. “How you-the one I always thought was my friend-how could you do this to me, Jacob? Jacob, I was your friend.”

“I did it to help you,” he said. “To keep you alive.” His voice was weak, pathetic.

The rain was beginning to slacken. The wagon slowed to a stop outside Scully’s barn, where the evening’s festivities had begun.

“Come on, Ben,” Jacob said in a low voice. “Let’s go home.”

“I don’t think so.” I turned away and set off walking in the direction of Eudora.

“Where the hell you going?” he called after me.

I didn’t answer or even look back.

Chapter 81

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.