“The court finds probable cause for both counts of conspiracy to commit murder,” he said. “My clerk will be calling counsel to coordinate a trial date.”
After court was adjourned and Alex started packing his bags, Nara moved close enough so only he could hear.
“Are we ever going to fight back?” she asked.
Alex didn’t need this. There were lots of people gunning for him already. Why couldn’t his own client’s daughter trust him?
“At trial,” he said. Nara stared at him, and Alex stopped packing. He glanced up at her. “Let me do my job.”
“And let me help,” Nara replied.
Alex fought the urge to lash out at her. She undoubtedly meant well. “Now’s not the time to have this discussion,” he said.***
That night, Alex went for a long walk on the Virginia Beach boardwalk, losing himself in a mass of summer tourists. The adrenaline from the hearing had long ago seeped out of his body, leaving him spent and emotionally raw.
What if Khalid is guilty? Criminal defense lawyers weren’t supposed to ask those questions, but how could he help it? Taj Deegan had two text messages from Khalid’s phone ordering the deaths. There was a one-word confirmation back from the killer. Prior to the killings, Khalid had used his computer to search for the rental property in Sandbridge where Ja’dah’s beheading had occurred.
After the hearing, Khalid had assured Alex that he didn’t know anything about the Google search. Was he lying? Just because Khalid was a committed reformer didn’t mean he was innocent. If everything kept pointing back to Khalid, how could Alex keep defending him?
Somebody had ordered the beheading of Ja’dah Mahdi and this other young woman in California as well as the slow and painful murder of Martin Burns. Whoever it was deserved to die.
How did I get myself into this mess? Alex wondered. Things had seemed so much more black and white when he was reading law under his grandfather’s supervision.
51
Alex had one suit that fit perfectly-a black pin-striped suit that he liked to wear with a red power tie and a light blue shirt. It was his most traditional outfit. Old school. He normally reserved that suit for his rare appearances in federal court.
On Sunday morning, he donned the suit and slipped on a pair of black loafers. He’d once owned a pair of wingtips, but they were so uncomfortable that he’d tossed them two weeks after purchasing them. He preferred the loafer look-casual enough for the beach, dressy enough for a lawyer. His hair was still fairly short from when he had buzzed it a few weeks ago, and he was beginning to like the clean and streamlined look.
He couldn’t find the thin black belt he had worn to court on Friday, but he found a thick one that barely fit through the belt loops and looked a little funny because the buckle was too big. Oh well. He could button his suit coat in church, and no one would notice. As a final concession to the importance of the occasion, Alex had even slipped on a pair of black dress socks. Many Sundays he would go without socks, and the old folks would tease him about it. But today, there was too much on the line. His congregation needed to know he was taking this seriously.
They might vote him out of a job today, but at least he would look good leaving. He checked his reflection in the mirror one last time, stuffed his notes into his thin Bible, and smiled at the thought of the Scripture passage he had chosen for the morning’s sermon.
The most controversial story in the New Testament. At least nobody would accuse him of going down without a fight.***
On Easter Sundays, South Norfolk Community Church attendance might crack a hundred. But most weeks, Alex preached to a smattering of about seventy people in a sanctuary designed to hold three hundred. Most of the people would sit near the back, especially the third row from the back, where the hearing-aid plugs were located. The hard-of-hearing parishioners liked the aids because they could turn them up-or down-depending on the contents of the sermon.
When Alex stood to preach, he looked out over a full crowd of nearly two hundred. Many were either curiosity seekers, members of the press, or members of South Norfolk who hadn’t attended in years but had been dragged to church by friends to help stack the vote. Like most small evangelical churches, the only way that somebody got eliminated from the rolls at South Norfolk was by their own death, and even then the odds were about fifty-fifty.
At the request of the ever-hungry media, Alex had authorized television crews to set up tripods along the back wall-though only after a lengthy conference call with the deacons on Saturday. Harry Dent had been adamantly opposed to the idea but had a hard time countering Alex’s argument that this might be God’s way of broadcasting the worship service to the entire world.
“It just feels like somebody’s asking to come into my house and broadcast a family feud,” Dent argued.
“Then let’s show them a family lovefest instead,” Alex countered.
Dent cast the lone dissenting vote on the camera issue.
Before beginning his message, Alex took a deep breath to calm his nerves. His eyes landed for a split second on Nara Mobassar, seated on the aisle in the second-to-last row. She looked more stunning than ever and gave Alex a subtle nod. What’s she doing here?
“Our text this morning is a passage of Scripture that many people say should not even be in the Bible,” Alex began. In preparing this message, Alex had decided not to ignore the elephant in the room. “Naturally, since this might be my last sermon, I went straight to the most controversial passage I could find. Would everyone turn to the Gospel of John, chapter eight?”
Alex heard the rustle of Bibles among the congregants while the reporters looked clueless. Nara stayed locked on to what he was saying.
“My Bible, like most modern translations, contains a note just above this chapter that states, ‘The earliest manuscripts and many other ancient witnesses do not have John 7:53-8:11.’ I’ll bet many of you didn’t even know that there was this chunk of Scripture, right in the middle of the Gospel of John, that many scholars believe doesn’t even belong in the Bible.”
A few parishioners gave Alex a quizzical look-he was right. Nara’s expression didn’t change. Alex knew that Muslims believed the Bible had been corrupted during its copying and translation. If anything, she was probably thinking, Why should I be surprised?
“While Jesus was teaching at the Temple,” Alex explained, “the religious leaders brought a woman before him who had been caught in adultery. They said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of adultery. The Law of Moses commands us to stone her. Now, what do you say?’
“Most of you probably already know Christ’s response. He wrote in the dirt with his finger a couple of times and told the religious leaders that whoever was without sin should cast the first stone. One by one, the leaders dropped their stones and left. When only Jesus and the woman remained, he looked at her and asked where all her accusers were-‘Hasn’t anyone condemned you?’ And she said, ‘No one, sir.’ Jesus responded to her with these words: ‘Then neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin.’”
Harry Dent was squirming. Bill Fitzsimmons, located one row behind Harry, looked down at his Bible and frowned. He probably thought it wasn’t fair for Alex to use this passage today. It wasn’t hard to figure out who the religious leaders were in the analogy.
“So I want to ask two questions about this passage,” Alex said, stepping out from behind the pulpit. He wanted no barriers between him and his congregation. “What did Jesus write in the dirt? And should this passage even be in the Bible?”
Alex walked down from the platform and into the center aisle. Even with two hundred in attendance, the first few rows were empty.