The Guardians: The explosive new thriller from international bestseller John Grisham by John Grisham Read Free Book Online Page A

jury.”
    “I’ll never forget when they brought that boy in, all cleaned up with a white shirt and tie. At first I didn’t recognize him. It had been months since we were in the same cell. And when he started talking about my confession I wanted to scream at him. It was obvious the cops had fed him details of the crime—cutting off the electricity, using the flashlight—all that stuff. I knew right then that my ass was cooked. I looked at the jurors and you could tell they were eating it up. All of it. Every last lie he told. And you know what, Post? I sat there listening to Huffey and I thought to myself, ‘Man, that guy swore to tell the truth. And the judge is supposed to make sure all witnesses tell the truth. And the prosecutor, he knows his witness is lying. He knows the guy cut a deal with the cops to save his ass. Everybody knew, everybody but those morons on the jury.’ ”
    “I’m ashamed to say it happens all the time, Quincy. Jailhouse snitches testify every day in this country. Other civilized countries prohibit them, but not here.”
    Quincy closes his eyes and shakes his head. He says, “Well, when you see that sack-a-shit tell him I’m still thinking about him.”
    “Thinking about revenge is not helpful here, Quincy. It’s wasted energy.”
    “Maybe so, but I have plenty of time to think about everything. You gonna talk to June?”
    “If she’ll talk.”
    “I bet she won’t.”
    His ex-wife remarried three years after his trial, then divorced, then remarried again. Frankie found her in Tallahassee living as June Walker. Evidently, she eventually found some stability and is the second wife of Otis Walker, an electrician on the campus at Florida State. They live in a middle-class neighborhood that is predominantly black and have one child together. She has five grandchildren from her first marriage, grandchildren that Quincy has never seen even in a photo. Nor has he seen their three children since his trial. For him, they exist only as toddlers, frozen in time.
    “Why shouldn’t she talk to me?” I ask.
    “Because she lied too. Come on, Post, they all lied, right? Even the experts.”
    “I’m not sure the experts thought they were lying. They just didn’t understand the science and they gave bad opinions.”
    “Whatever. You figure that out. I know damned well June lied. She lied about the shotgun and the flashlight, and she lied when she told the jury I was somewhere around town the night of the murder.”
    “And why did she lie, Quincy?”
    He shakes his head as if my question is foolish. He puts the phone down, rubs his eyes, then picks it up again. “We were at war, Post. Should’ve never got married and damned sure needed a divorce. Russo screwed me big-time in the divorce and suddenly I couldn’t pay all that child support and alimony. She was out of work and in a bad way. When I got behind, she sued me again and again. The divorce was bad but not nearly as bad as what came after. We grew to thoroughly hate each other. When they arrested me for murder I owed something like forty thousand bucks in payments. Guess I still do. Hell, sue me again.”
    “So it was revenge?”
    “More like hatred. I ain’t never owned a shotgun, Post. Check the records.”
    “We have. Nothing.”
    “See.”
    “But records mean little, especially in this state. There are a hundred ways to get a gun.”
    “Who you believe, Post, me or that lying woman?”
    “If I didn’t believe you, Quincy, I wouldn’t be here.”
    “I know, I know. I can almost understand the shotgun, but why would she lie about that flashlight? I never saw it before. Hell, they couldn’t even produce it at trial.”
    “Well, if we are assuming that your arrest, prosecution, and conviction were carefully planned to frame an innocent man, then we must assume the police leaned on June to say the flashlight belonged to you. And hatred was her motive.”
    “But how was I supposed to pay all that money from death