“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.
“Mr. Stringer! Mr. Corbett! Come on out here, you got to see this!”
I followed the others down the center aisle to the doorway. Outside, the trees in the square were swaying in the breeze from the oncoming storm. A soft patter of rain had just started to fall.
Right in front of the door, in the center of the lawn fronting the courthouse, was a sight I had never witnessed before.
A huge cross was planted there.
And it was burning.