Alex Cross's Trial (Alex Cross 15)

Fifty yards from the house, in front of the fig tree where I had parked the bicycle, stood three large white men. I couldn’t make out details of their faces in that shadowy street, but I knew where I’d seen them: these were the same men who’d been standing with Scooter that afternoon at the Mt. Zion church when he took his photographs.

One of them spoke. “You looking for some trouble, Corbett?”

I didn’t answer.

Looking back on it, I guess one man must have been smoking a pipe. I saw him move and smack something hard against the trunk of the fig. Sparks flew in a shower to the ground.

“We asked you a question,” said the man in the middle. “Serious question.”

“Abraham! Moody!” I yelled.

I don’t know if they heard me. If they did, I don’t know whether they came out of the house. In less time than it took for me to get my arms up, the three men were on me.

Kicked in the head. In the face. I tasted blood. I fell face-down on the ground, hard. A knee went into my stomach, fists whaling at me all over. Someone stomping on the side of my rib cage. I could not get my breath. Something tore into my neck. It felt like fire.

“Looks like you found it—trouble!” a man grunted, and drew back to get a better angle for kicking me. He delivered a stunning blow to my knee. I heard a cracking crunch and felt a wild sear of pain and thought he had shattered my right kneecap.

That was the last thing I remembered for a while.

Chapter 67

THE NEXT THING I was aware of—voices.

“You gotta use a higher branch. He’s tall.”

Something was in my eyes. Blood. I was blind from all the blood.

“Use that next branch, that one yonder,” said a second man. “That’s what we used when we hung that big nigger from Tylertown.”

“He wasn’t tall as this one. I can’t hardly see up this high.”

“Hell he wadn’t. I had to skinny up the tree to put the rope way over.”

Every inch of my body was experiencing a different kind of pain: sharp pain, dull pain, pain that throbbed with a massive pounding, pain that burned with a white-hot roar.

I thought, It’s amazing how much pain you can feel and still not be dead.

“This nigger-lover is tall,” the second man said, “but that ’un from Tylertown, he had to be six-foot-six if he was a inch.”

I groaned. I think they were lifting me—hands under my armpits, digging into my flesh, cutting into me, dragging me off to one side.

A thud—something hurting my back. Then I felt the damp ground under me.

A crack—something landed hard on my left knee. I guessed that knee was shattered too.

“This rope is all greasy. I can’t get aholt of it.”

“That’s nigger grease.”

I felt the coarse hemp rope coming down over my face, dragging over my nose, tightening against my neck.

And I thought: Oh, God! They’re hanging me!

Then I flew up into the air, like an angel—an angel whose head was exploding with terrible pain.

I could not see anything. I thought my eardrums had burst from the pressure in my skull.

But they hadn’t tied the noose right. Maybe the one who thought I was too tall was inexperienced. The rope was cutting under my jaw, but it had not gone tight. I got my hand up, somehow worked my fingers between the rope and my neck. I dangled and kicked as if I could kick my way out of the noose. They are hanging you, boy, was the chant that went through my head, over and over, like a song, an executioner’s song.