The Walls of Jericho

by Jack Ford

  “Mrs. Jessup?”

  Kendra Leigh turned toward him, her eyes misty.

  “Mrs. Jessup, did you check the recorder? Are the conversations there?”

  She nodded.

  “All of them?” asked Ella. “Talking about killing Elijah Hall and the sheriff poisoning Ricky Earl?”

  Kendra Leigh nodded again.

  “May I have that, please, Mrs. Jessup?” Jackson said, gently taking the device from her hands.

  Jeff gestured for Ella to stay with Kendra Leigh while he grabbed Jackson and guided him over into the corner. Ella pulled a chair next to Kendra Leigh and they began a quiet conversation.

  “So, now what?” Jeff asked.

  “We grab Henning right away. Play the tape for him. Grab him by the balls and squeeze him hard. Get him to confirm what’s on the tape.” He looked at Jeff, anger flaring in his eyes. “And then I go take down the sheriff. Or, I should say, the soon-to-be former sheriff.” He shook his head. “Damn, Jeff. I would’ve bet my life on that man.”

  “Me, too. Good thing we didn’t.”

  “Yeah, right. Anyway, I’m on this. I’ll call the DA and fill him in on the way. Y’all can stay here with her until we bring her in. I’ll send my men in to seal the scene and keep an eye on her. The crime scene folks’ll be here soon. ”

  “Okay. Let me know what happens.”

  Jackson stopped in the doorway and turned back toward Jeff.

  “Looks like we wrapped up two big murders in one night.”

  Jeff nodded. “Looks that way.”

  “So how come I ain’t happy ’bout it?”

  Jeff shrugged and shot a tired, grim look at his friend. “I know what you mean.”

  As Jackson rushed out and his officers entered, staking out positions around the room, Jeff walked over toward Ella and Kendra Leigh, who seemed to have completely deflated as she slumped in her chair. Ella rose and stopped him before he got to the desk.

  “How’s she doing?” he asked.

  “Not too good. I think it’s all starting to sink in.”

  “I know it’s hard on her. But that tape recording—and her testimony—just solved two major murder cases.”

  “Jeff,” Ella said, “she just killed her husband! I know he was a murderer and a wife-beater—but he was still her husband. And . . .”

  “I know, I know,” Jeff interrupted. “We’ll make sure she gets help to deal with it. And I’ll find her a good lawyer. Someone who’s done spouse abuse cases. I think there’s a good chance she can get off on some kind of self-defense . . .”

  “Jeff,” Ella said, grabbing his arm. She looked at him, deep sadness washing over her face. “Jeff, she doesn’t need a lawyer.”

  Jeff stared at her, perplexed.

  “Of course she does.”

  “No. She doesn’t.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “She’s dying, Jeff. Ovarian cancer. Stage four. Spread all through her body.”

  “What?”

  “She got the diagnosis a few months ago, right before the case broke. The doctors said there was nothing they could do. It was too advanced. She didn’t tell Jessup about it. And he never asked. Never even noticed that she was wasting away, dying slowly right before his eyes. What a bastard!”

  “But we have to do something for her,” Jeff said, a note of desperation mixed with sorrow in his voice. “There must be something we can do. After all she’s been through. After all this,” he said, gesturing toward Jessup’s body.

  Ella let out a long, low sigh and shook her head. “The doctors say she’ll be dead in a month.”

  Jeff placed his arm around Ella as they turned toward the desk where a sheriff’s officer stood guard over the fragile, dejected figure. Kendra Leigh sat, arms wrapped tightly across her chest, trembling slightly as she gazed forlornly at the body of Tillman Jessup, a whiskey glass in his lap, a bullet in his head.

  EPILOGUE

  It was Sunday and the Morning Star Baptist Church was ablaze with color and alive with noise. The members of the congregation, dressed in their church-going best—the women wearing vibrant, multi-hued dresses and hats, the men in suits and ties—had spent the last hour lifting up their souls with a succession of traditional hymns and spirituals.

  Jeff and Ella were seated in the front row, invited guests of Reverend Butler. Surrounded by worshipers old and young, they felt warmly welcomed and at peace. The past few days since the murder case against Tillman Jessup had been dismissed had been a dizzying whirl of developments. Royce Henning had, in fact, been squeezed by Terrell Jackson and, faced with the nightmare of life in prison, had immediately confessed and agreed to testify about the roles played by Jessup and Sheriff Poole in the death of Ricky Earl Graves.

  Dealing with the sheriff was initially a bit more problematic. He indignantly denied any involvement in Ricky Earl’s killing and claimed that Henning was lying just to protect himself. However, the search of Ricky Earl’s cell had turned up a nearly empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s, and forensic tests revealed the residue of a significant amount of digitalis inside the bottle, together with two fingerprints, smudged but readable, that matched those of Sheriff Poole. After a search of the sheriff’s home resulted in the discovery of $250,000 in cash hidden in two shotgun cases—a cache that coincided with Henning’s claim that he had delivered that amount to Poole as a down payment for his betrayal—Poole’s lawyers were now desperately negotiating a plea deal to save him from the potential of a death sentence. The likelihood was that Clayton Poole would spend the rest of his life in prison while Royce Henning, as a result of his cooperation, would do five to ten years on a conspiracy charge.

  The apprehension and arrest of A. J. Hollingsly had proved more difficult. A warrant had been issued for his arrest but, so far, he had managed to elude capture. Although a rumor had him retreating deep into the North Carolina woods, an interstate task force headed up by Terrell Jackson was confident that, eventually, they would track him down.

  As for Tillman Jessup, the once-rising star of Mississippi politics, the public now knew that he was, indeed, a murderer. District Attorney Gibb Haynes had played Kendra Leigh’s recording of Jessup’s confession at a press conference attended by a mass of local and national media. Lead stories and headlines across the nation blared that the four-decade-old murder mystery had finally been solved.

  Meanwhile, Kendra Leigh had been arrested and charged with her husband’s murder, triggering yet another eruption of media coverage. Once the details surrounding the shooting were made public, a flock of top lawyers had volunteered to defend her. Judge Langston, after being advised of her dire prognosis, released her to home confinement as a condition of her bail, with a fervent prayer that when she passed away, it would be peacefully in her own bed.

  As the music and voices in the Morning Star Baptist Church faded, Reverend Butler stepped to the podium, his aged, graying head held high, and his eyes radiant with the joy he felt in his heart.

  Looking down at Jeff and Ella, he smiled as a proud father would when acknowledging that his children had persevered through difficult times and accomplished something of value. Ella reached over and took Jeff’s hand, tucking it between both of her own.

  “Brothers and sisters,” Reverend Butler began, “we gather this morning to celebrate the triumph of justice, a justice long delayed but, finally, not denied.”

  A chorus of “Amen” rippled throughout the church, as the members nodded their heads in approval.

  “Some forty years ago—a few of you were here with me back then,” he said, scanning the sea of uplifted faces, “I stood here in our old church and embraced a brother who had come to shed a light on our lives. A brother who brought us good news about our fight for freedom.” He paused. “A brother who, later that night, sacrificed his own life for that freedom.

  “Today,” he continued, his voice rising, “we a
re here to finally lay the soul of our brother, Elijah Hall, to rest.”

  “Amen!” came the shouts.

  “Dr. King told us many times,” Reverend Butler said, his voice now stronger, louder, and pulsing with rhythm and raw energy, “that the arc of the moral universe is long.” He paused for a dramatic moment. “But it bends always toward justice.”

  “Yes, Lord!” came the cries from the congregation.

  “And that arc has bent and twisted along its path for many years, but it finally found the justice it sought right here this week in Oxford.”

  “Praise the Lord!”

  “The forces of good rose up and circled the ancient citadel of evil and racism, blowing their horns and praying that the Lord would help them prevail.”

  “Yes, Jesus!”

  “And the Lord heard their prayers,” the minister cried, his voice soaring. “The Lord heard the sound of the trumpets of truth! And the walls of Jericho have fallen once again!”

  The congregation exploded into a raucous, impassioned symphony of “Amen!” and “Praise the Lord Jesus!”

  After letting the wave of sound wash over the room for a full minute, Reverend Butler raised his hands and a reverential silence slowly descended upon the old building.

  “Brothers and sisters,” he solemnly intoned, “the soul of our long-departed friend, of our brother, Elijah Hall, can finally rest in peace. Justice has been done!”

  Reverend Butler turned toward the members of the choir and nodded, smiling broadly, as they launched into a hand-clapping, foot-stomping rendition of “Ain’t That Good News”—a song that had not been heard inside those walls for forty years—their voices raised to God, tears streaming down their cheeks.

  I got a crown in that kingdom—ain’t that good news?

  I got a crown in that kingdom—ain’t that good news?

  I’m gonna lay down this world

  I’m gonna shoulder up my cross

  I’m gonna carry it home to Jesus—

  Ain’t that good news, my Lord, ain’t that good news?

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I have had something of a love affair with Oxford, Mississippi, for more than a decade. As Oxford resident William Faulkner recognized when he noted that his “own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about,” the history, the traditions, and the people of Oxford, all of which I’ve come to appreciate, combine to provide a marvelous tableau from which a wealth of compelling, complex, and engaging stories can emerge.

  The story I have written had its genesis in an actual unsolved civil rights-era murder that I came across as I was doing research for a course I teach at Yale. The 1955 shotgun slaying of Reverend George W. Lee, as he drove home in his car following a voting rights rally in Mississippi, was never solved; indeed, it was barely investigated after his death was initially deemed to have been the result of “a traffic accident.” I was struck by how different that Mississippi—the one that embraced the Sovereignty Commission, Citizens’ Councils, the KKK, and burning crosses—was from the Mississippi that I had come to know. And I wondered how the new Mississippi would confront the specter of the old Mississippi. The result of that curiosity is The Walls of Jericho.

  I have been fortunate to develop a great many wonderful relationships in Oxford and at the University of Mississippi, relationships that have helped shepherd me through the research and writing of this book. Initially, I must thank Langston Rogers, the esteemed long-time Sports Information Director at Ole Miss, for his constant guidance and great friendship over many years. Also, I owe an extraordinary debt of gratitude to the Ole Miss legend, and good friend, Archie Manning, for his insight and introductions to so many of the good citizens of Oxford who graciously took the time to impart their own special knowledge of this lovely town and its history to a writer from New Jersey. Among these new friends are: former Ole Miss Chancellor Robert Khayat; former Law School Dean Sam Davis; noted journalist and author Curtis Wilkie; Campbell McCool; Ken Coghlan, Esq.; and Court Clerk Mary Alice Busby and her staff.

  In addition, I would like to thank my friend, Judge Evan Broadbelt, for his observations and suggestions following an early reading of the manuscript. And my thanks also to my daughter, Dr. Ashley Ford Haggerty, for her assistance navigating through my maze of medical questions.

  My agent and friend, Paul Fedorko, has been a steadying source of direction and inspiration throughout the life of this book. I am also particularly grateful to the entire team at Bascom Hill for their creativity, enthusiasm, and invaluable contributions to the editorial and publishing process.

  I am especially thankful, as always, to my wife, Dorothy Ann, for her ideas, patience, and candor throughout the writing process, and to my children, Ashley and Colin, for their unfailing support and enthusiasm.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jack Ford is an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning television journalist and former prominent trial attorney. Since leaving the courtroom and entering the world of journalism, he has served as an anchor/correspondent for NBC News, ABC News, Court TV, and CBS News, and is recognized as one of the top legal journalists in the country. A graduate of Yale University and the Fordham University School of Law, Ford is a Visiting Lecturer at Yale, NYU, and the University of Virginia. His debut novel, The Osiris Alliance, was published in 2009. He lives in New Jersey.