Alex Cross’s Trial

Loophole Lewis. That’s how he was known wherever lawyers got together and gossiped about others of their species. Lewis’s philosophy was simple: “If you can’t find a loophole for your client, go out and invent one.”

Jonah carefully closed his well-thumbed copy of the Revised Civil Code of the State of Mississippi. “You know, I have always wanted to meet Counselor Lewis,” he said.

Jonah must have made a special connection with the good Lord, because we were still sipping coffee ten minutes later when L.J.’s butler announced that a Mr. Maxwell Lewis was there to see us.

“I thought it would be the mannerly thing to do, to come by and introduce myself to you distinguished gentlemen of the prosecution,” Lewis said, coming in.

He was plainspoken and plain-looking. My mother would have said he was “plain as an old corn stick.” Then she would have added, “But that’s just on the outside, so you’d better watch yourself.”

We all told Mr. Lewis we were pleased to meet him. He said he was pleased to meet us as well. No, thank you, he said, no tea or coffee for him. Bourbon? Certainly not at this early hour, he said, although he asked if he might revisit the question somewhat later in the day.

This display of southern charm was not the reason for his visit, I was sure. Fairly soon he sidled up to the real reason.

“I must say, Mr. Corbett, I was a mite surprised when I saw that the trial judge will be none other than your distinguished father,” he said.

“As was I,” I said. Clearly he wanted me to say more, so I stayed silent.

“It’s an unusual choice, and highly irregular,” he continued on. “My first instinct was to try to get a new judge from the powers that be in Jackson, but then I got to thinking about it. This is an open-and-shut case. Why bother causing a fuss? I’m sure Judge Corbett will preside with absolute fairness.”

“If there’s one thing he’s known for,” I said, “it’s his fairness. And already we find ourselves in agreement, Mr. Lewis. We also believe that this is an open-and-shut case. I’m just afraid the door will be shutting on you.”

Lewis chuckled at my sally. “Ah! We shall see about that,” he said. “I’ve been checking on your record in murder trials up in Washington, D.C. And yours too, Mr. Curtis. We shall certainly see.”

Chapter 95

OVER THE NEXT DAYS we transformed the sitting room off my sleeping quarters into the White Raiders War Room, as L.J. soon nicknamed our paper-strewn maelstrom of an office.

Conrad, the Cosgrove brother who had survived the assault at Abraham’s house, went up to McComb every morning to collect every newspaper and pamphlet having to do with the upcoming trial. We hauled an old chalkboard up from L.J.’s basement and made two lists of possibilities: “Impossible” and “Possible.”

Among the latter were some terrifying questions:

What if Maxwell Hayes Lewis leads with a request for dismissal?

Bang, the gavel falls! The case is over!

What if Abraham is too ill to testify? What if he dies before or during the trial?

Bang! The case is over!

What if Lewis tampers with the jury? It wouldn’t be too difficult in this town.

What if…?

We made our lists, erased them, improved and reworked them, and studied them as if they were the received word of God.

After spending a few days working beside him, I decided that Jonah Curtis was not only a smart man but a wise one. Jonah clearly had intelligence to spare, tempered with humor and a bit of easygoing cynicism-the result, I supposed, of growing up always seeing the other side of the coin toss we call Justice. He was the son of a sharecropper who spent most of his life as a slave, on a cotton plantation near Clarksdale, in the Mississippi Delta. When Jonah got his law degree and passed the bar examination, his father gave him a gift, the gold pocket watch for which he’d been saving since before Jonah was born.

It was a beautiful timepiece, but the chain, clumsily hammered together from old scraps of iron, didn’t match its quality. Jonah told me that his father had made it himself, from a piece of the very chain that had shackled him to the auction block the last time he was offered for sale.

Sometimes Jonah got a little ahead of himself with his legal theories, at least as far as L.J. was concerned.

“A verdict depends on the culture of any given town,” Jonah said. “A man held for killing a Negro in New York City will have a very different trial-and a very different outcome-than a man held for the same crime in Atlanta. Bring him to Eudora, and again the crime and the resulting trial would be different. We might say this White Raiders case is sui generis.”

L.J. sighed heavily. “Talk English, for God’s sake,” he said. “Down here, we say ‘soo-ey’ when we’re calling hogs.”

L.J. already considered me the worst know-it-all in the room, so I left this for Jonah to explain.