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“Are you sure about that?”
Yes, sir, he said. He was sure. Lewis asked him the question five different ways. Jonah tried to object and was gaveled into silence.
“Didn’t Mr. Stephens hand this document to you when he arrived at your house that night, Mr. Cross?”
Ah, here we go. Jonah jumped up. Objection overruled. He seemed to have reached a silent agreement with Judge Everett Corbett: he would be allowed to keep making objections as long as he understood he would be instantly overruled on every one.
“Mr. Cross, isn’t it true that you saw this document, you read it, and you threw it on the ground?”
“No, sir.”
“Didn’t you tell Mr. Stephens that if he wanted to search your house, he’d have to shoot you first?”
“No, sir. I did not.”
“Are you certain?”
“He didn’t bring no paper. They rode up and started shooting. If Mr. Stephens said he did that, he is a liar. And if you say he did it, sir, you would be a liar too.”
Chapter 108
AFTER ABRAHAM FINISHED testifying and Moody took him home to put him back to bed, Jonah challenged the admissibility of Phineas Eversman’s search warrant.
My father looked mildly amused. “It’s a search warrant, Mr. Curtis. It looks like a thousand others that I’ve seen over the years,” he said.
Since his profane outburst in the direction of the applauding juror, I thought, my father had been unusually patient with Jonah. He must have realized how bad that eruption would look once all these “ two-bit newspaper reporters” put it into print.
Jonah decided to tack in another direction. “Your Honor, I know you are well aware that under the rules of civil procedure, all documents entered as evidence must be shared with all counsel before commencement of trial,” he said. “The first time I saw this was a few minutes ago.”
My father peered down his nose at the spectacle of a Negro lawyer daring to cite civil procedure to him. “Now, Mr. Curtis, you being from up in Jackson and all, and educated up in the North, well, I’m sure you are accustomed to practicing before the big-city courts like they have up there, with your civil procedures and all that,” he said. I had seen him perform this act before: the simple country judge, working his way through the facts of the case with nothing but his good ol’ horse sense. “But down here in Eudora,” he went on, “we do things in a simple and logical fashion. Mr. Lewis hands me a document, I take a look at it. I ask myself if it looks authentic. In this case I thought it did, and I admitted it into evidence. I’m sorry you didn’t get to see it earlier—Mr. Lewis, you should’ve showed it to him—but I’m not going to throw it away or declare a mistrial on account of a thing like that. Mr. Curtis, is that all right with you? Yes? Let’s proceed.”
He was so folksy, so mock-reasonable, that it made my stomach queasy. It was obvious that this judge was not the least bit worried about being overturned on any appeal. That could only be because he knew there would never be an appeal: Sheriff Reese and his deputy were Klansmen, and Phineas Eversman, the only other law enforcement officer in Pike County, had crossed over to their side. The defendants would be acquitted, they would go free, and no one would ever disturb them on these murder charges again.
“Now, I want both sides to listen,” my father said. “I’m going to recess this proceeding until tomorrow morning. Just because every reporter in America is interested in this case, doesn’t mean I don’t have other matters to adjudicate. This afternoon I will devote myself to the trial of a man who’s been charged with public drunkenness and urination. I’m going to have to settle a fence-line dispute between a planter and one of his colored sharecroppers. And I’m going to listen to that old German butcher, Henry Kleinhenz, tell me one more time why Sam Sanders should not be allowed to sell chicken parts at the general store.”
He banged his gavel once.
“Until tomorrow, nine o’clock. Sharp.”
Chapter 109
“ALL RISE! THIS COURT stands adjourned!”
My father swept out of the room. Everyone in the courtroom started talking at once, the newspaper reporters pushing through the crowd, hastening to beat each other to the telegraph stations at the depot.
Through the window I saw that the sunny morning was giving way to dark-bottomed clouds. Everyone had been hoping for rain, if only to cool things off for an hour or two before the sun heated it all up again.
Maxwell Hayes Lewis stepped over to the prosecution table.
“Mr. Curtis, gentlemen—I just want to say, I am mighty sorry for forgetting to show that search warrant to you fellows before we got started this morning.”
I looked him right in the eye. “Ah, Mr. Lewis, that is perfectly understandable. I’m sure you were too busy manufacturing that warrant this morning to bother showing it to us.”
Lewis chuckled. “Ben, I am sorry to see you have become such a cynic.”
“Let me tell you something, Mr. Lewis.” I straightened all the way up so as to look down on him from the maximum height. “You got Phineas to fake a warrant for you, and you found some justice of the peace who was happy to sign it and postdate it, and you got my father to admit it into evidence with a wink and a nod. But Jonah has a whole bunch of witnesses who saw what your clients did that night. They saw the death and destruction. And they will testify.”
The affable smile disappeared from Lewis’s face. He was gathering his wits for a comeback when Conrad Cosgrove burst into the near-empty courtroom, shouting.
