Sycamore Row - John Grisham

44
Jake and Harry Rex fled town. With Jake driving, they raced deep into the countryside,
putting distance between themselves and the nightmare in the courtroom. They wouldn’t
risk bumping into Lettie or Portia, or the other lawyers, or anyone, for that matter, who
had just witnessed the bloodletting.
Harry Rex was the eternal contrarian. When a day in trial went smoothly, he could
always be counted on to see nothing but negatives. A bad day, and he could be
unbelievably optimistic about tomorrow. As Jake drove and seethed, he kept waiting for
his foxhole buddy to pass along an observation that might lift his spirits, if only for a
moment. What he got was: “You’d better come off your high horse and settle this son of
a bitch.”
A mile passed before Jake responded. “What makes you think Wade Lanier would talk
settlement now? He just won the case. That jury wouldn’t give Lettie Lang fifty bucks
for a sack of groceries. You saw their faces.”
“You know the bad part, Jake?”
“It’s all bad. It’s worse than bad.”
“The bad part is that it makes you question everything about Lettie. I’ve never
thought for a minute that she manipulated Seth Hubbard into redoing his will. She’s not
that slick and he wasn’t that stupid. But now, all of a sudden, when you realize she’s
done it before, you say, ‘Okay, could this be a pattern.’ ‘Could this old gal know more
about will and estate law than we give her credit for?’ I don’t know, it just rattles you.”
“And why would she cover it up? Hell, I’ll bet she’s never told Portia, never told
anyone about getting caught at the Pickerings’. I guess I should’ve been smart enough to
ask her six months ago—say, Lettie, have you talked anyone else into changing their
wills and adding a nice provision for you?”
“Why didn’t you think of that?”
“Stupid I guess. I feel pretty stupid right now.”
Another mile passed, then another. Jake said, “You’re right. It makes you question
everything. And if we feel this way, think about the jurors.”
“The jurors are gone, Jake, and you’ll never get ’em back. You’ve called your best
witnesses, put on a near-perfect case, saved your star to go last, and she did a fine job,
and then, in a matter of minutes, the case was totally destroyed by a surprise witness.
You can forget this jury.”
Another mile passed. Jake said, “A surprise witness. Surely that’s grounds for a
reversal.”