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DuBose shook her head. “I think this more likely bears the fingerprints of Howard Pickett. Now, I would hope he had nothing to do with someone trying to kill me, but I’ve been surprised before on that score.”
Jack dumped the paper in a trash can. “Let’s prepare to be surprised then.”
They returned to the office, where Jack looked up Craig Baker’s number in Norfolk and placed a call to him. Baker was not in, so Jack left a message for the man to call him back and said it was urgent.
Later, after Jack walked Queenie, they both sat in Jack’s office working. Around eleven DuBose put down her pen and said, “Talk to me about jury pools here.”
Jack leaned back in his chair. “The last jury pool I selected from started with the usual twenty people, almost all of whom were white. I can tell you that that is roughly in line with all my other jury pools. My last ten jury trials were held before all-white juries, ninety-nine percent of them men.”
“Are there not that many Blacks in Freeman County?”
“Oh, no, it’s about forty percent Black. And here in Carter City, it’s closer to eighty percent.”
“Let me guess. People who look like me are either not picked to serve on juries or are somehow excluded from the pools to begin with?”
“Pretty much.”
A bolt of lightning flashed outside. The following explosion of thunder was so loud it made them both jump. And then the skies opened and the rain fell so hard they could hear it viciously punishing the metal roof. Jack rushed over and opened the window, and the cool breeze immediately enveloped him. “Desiree, get over here and feel this breeze,” he called out. “It is a-mazing.”
DuBose smiled. “You sound like a little boy who’s been given a new toy.”
“Temperature must’ve dropped twenty-five degrees or more, thank you Lord.”
She walked over and leaned out the window, right as a sudden burst of windswept rain splashed down on her, thoroughly soaking her blouse.
She ducked back inside and turned to him, laughing.
“I haven’t run in the rain since I was a little girl. And when the police opened the hydrants in the summer in Chicago.”
Jack smiled as he witnessed this unguarded side of DuBose. He had been dazzled, and intimidated, by her intellect and accomplishments. But now as he looked at her he thought, and not for the first time, that in addition to being a superb lawyer, she was also a lovely young woman.
She stared back at him, and seemed to be reading his mind. Her smile vanished and was replaced with pursed lips. “Well, that was stupid,” she said, folding her arms over her soaked blouse.
“What was?” Jack said, confused.
“Ruining my silk blouse.” She hurried over to the table and slipped on her jacket.
As a drenched Jack stood there watching her she said, “I’m going to bed. You too. Busy day tomorrow.”
She hurried up the stairs, leaving him alone. Jack leaned back out the window, sucking in one lungful of cool air after the other. His head hung down with the weight of all the thoughts inside it.
* * *
DuBose dried off with a towel in the bathroom and put on her nightgown. She padded back into the bedroom, sat down on the bed, and glanced over her shoulder at the door to the downstairs. DuBose knew exactly what Jack had been thinking. He had given her that look, a critical tell that a woman could interpret as easily as a bird dog did the smell of quarry.
He cannot believe that I would become personally involved with a lawyer I’m working with, and a white one at that.
She sat up straighter. Hold on, Desiree, don’t think like that. You don’t have to date the man, but not because he’s white. That’s how the other side wants the world to be. That’s what you’ve been fighting against all this time.
And you should be flattered that the “famous” Jack Lee finds you desirable.
She glanced in the small mirror hanging on the wall and DuBose’s self-satisfied smile faded. She took the picture from her wallet and looked at the man there.
You know it has to be this way, in your heart. If only to show you still have one instead of a million pieces of shattered glass inside your chest.
CHAPTER 48
THIS TIME JACK WAS FULLY dressed and had the breakfast made and the coffee hot when DuBose came down the stairs.
