A Time for Mercy (Jake Brigance #3) - John Grisham Page 0,83

the lawyers who came and went and hated the place.

The exterior was perplexing, but the interior was downright dysfunctional. Nothing worked. The heating system barely knocked off the chill in the winter, and in the summer the AC units gobbled electricity but produced precious little cool air. Entire systems—plumbing, electricity, security—collapsed with regularity.

In spite of the complaining, the taxpayers had refused to pay for renovations. The most obvious remedy would have been to simply strike a match, but arson was still a crime.

There were a few diehards who claimed to appreciate the quirkiness and character of the building, one of whom was the Honorable Omar Noose, senior judge of the Twenty-second circuit. For years he had owned the second floor where he ruled like a king in his large, antiquated courtroom, and practically lived in his chambers behind it. Down the hall he maintained a smaller courtroom for quieter matters. His secretary, court reporter, and clerk had offices near his.

Most locals believed that if not for Omar Noose and his considerable influence, the building would have been razed years earlier.

As he approached the age of seventy, he preferred to travel less to his other four counties, though he didn’t actually drive at all. Either his clerk or his court reporter handled the driving, to Clanton, Smithfield, Gretna, or Temple way over in Milburn County, almost two hours away. He was developing the bothersome habit of asking lawyers from those towns to come see him if they had business on off-days. By law he had no choice but to hold terms of court in all five counties, but he was proving adept at finding ways to stay at home.

On Monday, Jake got the phone call asking him to see Noose at 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday, “in chambers.” All five courthouses had offices for the judges, but when Noose said “in chambers” he meant get your ass over here to lovely Chester, Mississippi. Jake explained to the judge’s secretary that he had appointments Tuesday afternoon, which he did, but she informed him that His Honor would expect Jake to cancel those.

And so he drove through the quiet streets of Chester early Tuesday afternoon and was once again thankful he didn’t live there. Whereas Clanton had been laid out neatly by a general after the Civil War, and its streets formed a precise grid, for the most part, and the lovely courthouse sat majestically in the center of the square, Chester had somehow sprung to life in stages over the decades with little thought of symmetry or design. There was no square, no proper Main Street. Its business district was a collection of roads that met at odd angles and would have caused traffic nightmares had there been any traffic.

The oddest part of the town was that the courthouse was not to be found within its limits. It sat alone, solitary and seemingly ready to crumble, on a state highway two miles east of town. Three miles further east was the village of Sweetwater, the longtime rival of Chester. After the war, there had been precious little in the county to fight over, but the two towns managed to fester hostilities for decades, and in 1885 they could not agree on which one would be declared the county seat. There was actually some gunfire and a casualty or two, but the governor, who’d never been to Van Buren County and had no plans to visit, chose Chester. To appease the hotheads in Sweetwater, the courthouse was built beside a bayou almost halfway between the two towns. At the turn of the century, a diphtheria epidemic wiped out most of Sweetwater and now there was nothing left but a couple of dying churches.

Outside of Chester, Jake saw the courthouse sitting forlornly with cars parked around it. He could almost swear that one wing appeared to be leaning away from the central structure. He parked, went inside, and climbed the stairs to the second floor where he found the main courtroom dark and empty. He walked through it, past the ancient dusty pews for spectators, through the bar, and then stopped to take in the faded oils of dead politicians and judges, all old white men. Everything had a layer of dust, and the wastebaskets had not been emptied.

He opened a door at the back and said hello to the secretary. She managed a smile and nodded toward a door off to the side. Keep walking, he’s waiting. Inside, “in chambers,” Judge Noose