Page 103 of The Devil's Advocate

‘That’s not true,’ she said, and was about to say more but thought better of it.

Tilting her head to the side, Sandy pressed her lips together tightly. Korn guessed she was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

‘I can’t wait that long to expose Flynn. Here’s your way out of this – you will voteguiltyat the end of the trial. Don’t think you can hide your vote ; I can have the jury polled after the verdict. Your vote is recorded. Once I have my conviction in the Dubois case, I will have Flynn arrested. You will give a deposition that he bribed you with this money,’ said Korn, pointing at the gym bag.

‘Fifty thousand dollars. More than enough to buy your vote. You are a witness co-operating with the district attorney’s office and in return you will face no criminal charges. You get to walk away, Sandy. If you refuse, I will have you arrested right now. You’ll serve fifteen, maybe twenty years. I won’t give you long to make your decision because there is only one choice. My offer walks out the door with me in five seconds. Then the officers will come up and place you under arrest. Make the right choice.’

He began counting, silently. Sandy let out a nervous breath, ran her hands through her hair once, then used them to cover her face.

‘That’s three,’ said Korn.

Sandy hugged her arms, nodded and said, ‘You’re going to arrest me for something I didn’t do. I talked to Flynn. I sold him my car about a week ago. He wanted to know why I didn’t tell the judge I’d met him before. That’s all.’

‘Twenty years, Sandy. Think about it. This is your last chance. You agree to give that deposition. State for the record Flynn bribed you or your life is over.’

Sandy hung her head, nodded, said, ‘I don’t want to go to jail, I’ll do it.’

Korn’s lips parted in what passed for a smile.

‘Clever girl. Don’t let me down. Now, Deputy Leonard is going to come in here and take a photo of this money. Just to prove you’ve got it. Call it insurance. And don’t think about telling Flynn. If I can’t put him away, I’ll have to settle for you.’

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

THE PASTOR

‘Is everyone there already?’ asked Gruber.

‘Everyone, except for Francis,’ said the Pastor.

‘This heat is killing me,’ said Gruber as he wiped at his brow with a handkerchief before stepping carefully over a fallen tree trunk. A small torch in Gruber’s other hand didn’t give him much light. He was trying to follow Denvir’s trail through the woods. The big man was up ahead, leading the way. The Pastor was last in line, behind Gruber.

‘Why are we meeting all the way out here?’ asked Gruber.

‘Because tomorrow is the seventh day. The reckoning is almost upon us. All the preparations are made, and I don’t want to take any chances of being seen together. No one comes out here at this time of night. No hunters, no fishermen. We need to go over everything. Make sure we’re ready,’ said the Pastor.

There was a clearing up ahead, and as they came through the trees the terrain began to climb, leading up to what appeared to be a steep bank.

‘The Luxahatchee used to run right through this part of the forest,’ said the Pastor.

Gruber said nothing. He was not interested in the land. Something that the Pastor never understood. Gruber was a man of science. He liked numbers, chemicals, reactions, which were predictable based on evidence. His personal reading had led him to apply that scientific mind to some of the fouler social theories. Eugenics. Population control. And inevitably into what Gruber called ‘radical race theory’, but of course there was nothing radical about it. Not to the Pastor. To him, it was clear and had been for two thousand years. The white race was clearly superior, and the dominant race. It should not be diluted with the blood of others. The Bible said as much. To the Pastor, the day the United States abolished slavery was a mistake. The Bible didn’t outlaw slavery – didn’t say it was a sin. It was the natural way of things.

‘Look there,’ said the Pastor, shining his torch on a patch of the bank.

A small cluster of flowers grew in the thick grass, trying desperately to reach higher than the blades of green that surrounded them.

‘White camelias,’ said the Pastor. ‘You see how the grass tries to choke them? We can’t allow that to happen to us, gentlemen. We have to be strong, and reach for the sunlight.’

‘Is it much further? I don’t see the others anywhere,’ said Gruber.

‘They’re on the other side,’ said Denvir, standing at the top of the bank, shining his torch over the top, to the channel below.

‘We’ll all be together very soon,’ said the Pastor.

There were seven in the White Camelia, including the Pastor.

Brian Denvir, a bigot and fanatic who believed there were aliens in Roswell ; a massive government conspiracy by the Democrats where the deep state operated a pedophile ring out of the back of a pizza parlor ; and that the Nazis had at least gotten some things right – they’d just gone about it the wrong way. After Brian came Gruber and then three others. Richard Barnes was a wealthy peanut farmer who loved his guns, the Confederate flag, and had never employed an African American in all his years. Next were the brothers. One a doctor, the other a lawyer. The Reed brothers had been raised in Mobile and never wanted for anything. Hard work had taken their father through the ranks of the Mobile Police Department to a senior position, all despite his open and apparent racism. The brothers were cut from the same cloth. Wealthy and influential, they had funded the cause in secret.

The Pastor looked on as Gruber reached the top of the bank and gazed over the ridge.