Alex Cross’s Trial

“No need for that. I’ll just take the good old two-oh-five.” I snapped the catches on my valise. “I might stop over in Memphis tonight and hear a bit of that music I told you about.”

“Sure you don’t want to stay here a day or two more?” L.J. asked. “Rest up?”

I shook my head. “It’s time to go. I’ve said my good-byes, and I suspect I’ve worn out my welcome in Eudora. In fact, I’m sure of it. My own father said as much.”

Chapter 138

THREE DAYS LATER I stepped off the train in Washington. My soles squeaked on the station’s marble floors when I walked across them, and I once again admired the acres of gold leaf and ranks of granite arches like victory gates. A man entering Washington through this portal was glorified and enlightened by the passage.

But one man, Ben Corbett, coming home after all these months, felt as lowly and insignificant as a cockroach scurrying along an outhouse floor.

My mind was a jumble, a clutter of worries. I couldn’t stop thinking about everything that had passed, and all the terrible things that might yet happen.

Meg had never answered my letters. I thought it likely that I would return to an empty house, shuttered and forlorn, my wife and children having gone off to live with her father in Rhode Island.

I could imagine the walls empty of pictures, white sheets covering the furniture, our modest lawn overgrown with foot-high grass and weeds.

These were my dark thoughts as I made my way through happy families on holiday, returning businessmen, flocks of government workers, Negro porters in red coats, and bellboys in blue caps.

“Mr. Corbett, sir,” a voice rang out down the platform. “Mr. Corbett! Mr. Corbett!”

I stopped, searching the oncoming faces for the source of the greeting-if indeed it was a greeting.

“Mr. Corbett. Right here. I’m so glad I found you.”

He was a young man, short and slight, with wire-rimmed glasses and an intensely nervous stare. I had seen him somewhere before.

“Mr. Corbett, I’m Jackson Hensen. The White House?”

“Ah, Mr. Hensen,” I said. “What a surprise to see you here.”

He smiled hesitantly, as if not quite sure whether I’d made a joke. “Will you come with me, sir?”

“I’m sorry?” I looked down at his hand cupped on my elbow.

“The president would like to see you immediately.”

“Oh. Yes. Of course,” I said. “And I would like to see him. But first I thought I would see my family.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Corbett. The president is at the White House right now. He’s waiting for you.”

So I followed Hensen outside to a splendid carriage drawn by the handsomest quartet of chestnuts I’d ever seen. All the way to the White House I kept thinking, Dear God, please see to it that Teddy Roosevelt isn’t the only person in Washington who wants to see me.

Chapter 139

THEODORE ROOSEVELT JUMPED UP from his desk and came charging at me with such high spirits I was afraid he might bowl us both over.

“Welcome home, Captain!” he roared. When he pumped my hand I recalled that Roosevelt didn’t consider a handshake successful unless it resulted in physical pain.

“And all congratulations to you, sir, on a difficult job extremely well done,” he exclaimed. “The White Raiders Trial was a smashing success.”

“But Mr. President, we lost the case.”

“Of course you did,” he said. “I knew you would-technically-lose the case. But you won a tremendous victory all the same.”

“I don’t think I understand.”

He sank onto the sofa to the left of his desk and patted the seat cushion next to his, as if I were a faithful dog being summoned. I sat. The president continued.

“I don’t know how much of our press you’ve seen while you’ve been away, Ben, but you’ve become something of a hero up here. The more progressive citizens see you as a kind of abolitionist, a figure of progress in the march of civilization toward full equality. And the coloreds in the South see you as some kind of protector, a hero. It’s damn good!”

“Mr. President, I was just in the South,” I said. “Believe me, I’m nobody’s hero there.”

“I’m meeting the newspaper boys in a few minutes,” he said. “You’ll be with me. I’ll announce that I masterminded your adventure in the South. I’ll disclose to them how I supported your efforts against the White Raiders. I’ll pick up votes in New England, and I’ll have the colored vote from now until the end of time.”

“But you sent me to Eudora to investigate lynchings.”

“Indeed I did. And if you’d reported back to me that lynching was a way of life among the leaders of the white South, I would have had to do something about it. Something that would enrage some white people, no matter how much it endeared me to the Negroes.”

“That’s why you didn’t answer my telegrams?”

“It wasn’t convenient for me to hear from you yet,” he said. “But then we had the most magnificent stroke of luck when the Raiders Trial came along!”

He was bubbling, but I couldn’t keep silent any longer.