Solomon's Porch (18 page)

“Mrs. Morgan,” Gabriel said, “before I begin I want to give you the opportunity to change your testimony. Would you like the chance to tell the court what really happened last Christmas Eve?”

Julie felt Gabriel’s eyes penetrating into her soul. She was used to men staring at her, but this was something else. What was it about this guy? Then it hit her.
He can prove I’m lying. Somehow, someway, oh God, he can prove I’m lying.

Trying her best to demonstrate indifference, even Julie’s considerable skills at deception were being pushed to the limit, she swallowed hard and answered, “I have no idea what you are talking about, sir. I told this court the truth about what happened.”

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Morgan. As the Lord once said to Saul of Tarsus, ‘You must find it hard to kick against the goads.’”

As if on cue, the lights dimmed in the courtroom and the monitor turned itself on. On the screen were Julie and Peter sitting on the lawn at Parkersboro. The camera angle was so close, and the picture so sharp it seemed certain that whoever shot the video must have only been a few feet away. How Peter managed to film them together was beyond her, but based on the first thirty seconds of chit chat from the “tape,” Julie knew it was the real deal. She had to put a stop to this. But how?

The first thing that occurred to her was her lawyers needed to do something, but when she looked over at her counsel table, Mr.’s Palmer and Kemp were mesmerized, totally captivated by what they were seeing. No help there.

Time for plan B. I’ll faint, Julie thought. They can’t ignore me if I fall out of this witness chair and tumble on to the floor.

It was then Julie Morgan realized that Peter had been telling her the truth. God had indeed touched him and was helping him exactly as he claimed. She knew this because inexplicably, Julie could now neither speak nor move, although she remained conscious and alert. Like everyone else in Judge Grove’s courtroom, she was going to watch the “video,” like it or not.

As the playback progressed, there she was, larger than life, first trying to bribe Peter and then threatening him. It was so vivid, so real, she thought, not like a videotape or a film, but rather something more. Julie swore that if her invisible restraints were removed, she could get up and walk right into the image being shown and sit down on the grass. When it was over the lights came back on and the monitor returned to black.

“Mrs. Morgan, I will ask you once more, would you like the chance to change your testimony?” Gabriel’s tone was somber now, and his statement was made in the form of a warning, not a plea.

“Do not answer that question, Mrs. Morgan.” Judge Grove, along with everyone else present, was now free from the shackles of the invisible force. “Mr. Gabriel, you will explain yourself, sir. Just exactly how did you come by this recording? Who made the film? This court wants answers and until it gets them, the machine stays off and the witness will answer no more questions.”

“Harmon Grove, do you believe that God sees and knows all?” Gabriel asked. “That nothing one does escapes the attention of the Almighty?”

Harry was in no mood for any more surprises. He could have sworn that he had somehow been temporarily muted and immobilized during the five minute or so “video” of Mrs. Morgan and Mr. Carson, but how could that be? It was obviously some trick, some mental slight of hand. On an instinctual level Harry knew that what he had just witnessed was very real, but who shows a tape without a tape player? Now this clown wants to know if I believe in an omniscient God? Harry had seen and heard more than enough and he was only slightly more incensed than he was scared to death.

“This hearing is over. I will see counsel in my chambers immediately!” Judge Grove boomed, hoping to sound authoritative despite feeling inside like a bug headed straight for a windshield.

“No, Harmon Grove. This hearing is not over. It’s just begun,” Gabriel said matter-of–factly, as if he were the one running the proceedings, which of course he was.

“Well, you brazen son of a bitch! I’ll be damned if you’ll come into my courtroom and tell me what’s what. I find you in contempt, sir. Bailiff, I want you to … ”

“Enough,” Gabriel said, and as he did, the Judge fell silent. The courtroom wide paralysis returned. Only Gabriel, Peter, Gail, and Kevin were unaffected by it.

“Judge Grove, the time has come for you to be held accountable. How many men have come before you seeking justice only to be given unmerciful abuse? Who are you to judge another anyway, Harmon Duke Grove? Your sins are so numerous and vile, words cannot express the revulsion God has toward them.”

When the lights dimmed this time and the picture returned, the subject matter had nothing at all to do with Peter’s fitness to be a parent, or Julie’s lying. It was the Judge’s life that was now on display.

Harry was forced to watch helplessly as his carefully concealed double life was exposed. On the screen for all to see were images of him having sex with children and doing drugs. Dates and times of each event were noted on the bottom of the display. One by one, encounters rolled by which were both pornographic and disgusting. Later, Kevin said that he had neither seen nor heard any of this, a blessing for which Peter was very grateful.

Then, as the sexual images stopped, there was Walter and Harry, relaxed and sipping bourbon on the back porch of the Morgan estate, cutting the financial deal for Harry’s protection of P.R. Morgan Distillers. This was followed immediately by clips from a victory party celebrating Judge Grove’s dismissal of a wrongful death suit against the company less than a year before.

Then the lights came back on. Although now free to do so, everyone present was too shocked to say or do anything.

In the confusion, just before Judge Grove’s “video” began playing, three men slipped into the courtroom unnoticed and took seats in the back. One was the United States Attorney for the State of Georgia, another was the FBI’s Special Agent in Charge.

The day before each had received a package in the mail. In it was evidence, sworn statements from “Little D,” and Harry’s pimps and drug dealers, and still photos of some of the images Gabriel had shown in court, along with an invitation to be present at Peter’s hearing. While neither of the men knew who A.A. Gabriel was, or why he had sent them this information, it didn’t take them long to figure out that what they had been given was on the level.

After a minute or so of sitting in his chair red faced and dazed, the only command Harry’s brain could come up with was “flee.”
Forget where you are, forget you are a judge, stand up and run for your life.

The last in a long line of the “Honorable Groves” took a deep breath and decided to follow this primitive flight instinct, albeit in as orderly a manner as was possible. He looked up and saw that everyone else was as stupefied as he was, no one knew what to do. This, he thought, might buy me some time to make a discrete exit.

But right then Harry caught sight of the Feds sitting in the back row, both of whom he recognized. As Harry watched, the FBI Special Agent in Charge spoke into his cell phone, whispered something to the prosecutor, stood and reached for his handcuffs.

My God, Harry realized. He’s coming for me. I’m being arrested.

It was too late for arguments, too late for explanations, or legal maneuvers. No amount of money, social status, or family pedigree was going to save poor Harry Grove now and he knew it. There was only one way out.

Harry kept a pistol hidden in the top drawer of his bench desk, carefully concealed inside a hollowed-out legal text. While he did not ever envision having to use it as a means of escape from his own courtroom, when Harry opened the book he was very thankful that it was still there, a dull black six shooter loaded and at the ready.

As the Special Agent in Charge approached the bench, Harry was set to pull out his pistol and get the drop on him. But before he could, five more of the FBI brethren entered the courtroom, weapons drawn.

With a fatalistic sense of calm, Harry immediately realized that he couldn’t shoot all of them. His escape plan had been nullified, he was trapped.

The demons that had haunted Harry for so long, and had tempted him into living a godless life of depravity and conceit, were now ready to finish their work. The trauma of having his sins revealed caused Harry’s mind to become like a dry sponge, and on to it the servants of hell splashed images of brutal prison rapes and beatings, isolation, humiliation, and despair; that even someone as lost as H.D. Grove could repent and be made clean again was a truth the demons buried under layers of shock and terror.

In one smooth motion, Georgia Superior Court Judge Grove pulled out his pistol, cocked it, placed the barrel in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. A few seconds later Harry awoke to his eternal reward amidst the dull grey ruins and the agony of the black mist.

Since just before the Judge’s portion of the “tape” started “playing,” Kevin had been sitting on his father’s lap, arms wrapped around his neck in the hope that he might never have to let go. Julie, so close to the action in the witness chair that her dress was splattered with bits of Harry’s blood and brain, now leaped out of her seat and into Peter and Kevin’s embrace. Overwhelmed, all Julie was able to say was “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“Julie Morgan,” Gabriel said, as he bent down to wipe away the tears that were streaming down her cheeks, “Peter will tell you who I am. Woman, God has given you another chance and spared your life today. Do not be deceived, God is not mocked. Obey His commandments and live, Julie Morgan. Repent and be a mother to your son.”

Then for only a split second everything stopped, time stood still. It was just long enough for Gabriel to raise his hands upward and vanish into a sparkling shower of thousands of points of brilliant white light.

“Tell me you saw that too, Peter.” Julie said, needing to be reassured that her senses were still functioning properly.

“Wow, Dad, that man just disappeared! How’d he do that?” Thankfully, Kevin seemed untraumatized by everything he had seen, no doubt by the grace of God alone.

“If you guys liked the show today, come on out to Parkersboro. We see this kind of thing all the time,” Gail answered. She was standing right behind Peter, a position she assumed after the Feds rushed into the courtroom. Had Harry done anything else with his gun besides put it in his mouth, in the blink of an eye, Peter would have been tackled and covered by one very protective prison warden.

It took a couple of hours for the small army of FBI agents and Atlanta police to secure and process the crime scene that was Georgia Superior Court, Atlanta Division, Courtroom B. The former fiefdom of Judge Harmon Duke Grove was suddenly thrust into the national spotlight as the main stage of a bizarre sex and suicide scandal. All of the major news organizations sent someone to cover the story. One reporter, though, had a huge head start on the competition.

Alex Anderson was the third man who slipped into the courtroom before the lights dimmed. He’d received the same package as the Feds did in the mail the day before. However, Alex’s knowledge and interest went far beyond today’s events alone.

Several times during the past year, Alex Anderson, a world renowned freelance investigative journalist, had been approached by a man who identified himself only as Gabriel, who told him that he had been “selected by God to witness to the world that His messenger has arrived.” Being a devout atheist and a skeptic of all things, especially claims of faith in an invisible God, Alex Anderson at first scoffed at the whole idea, dismissing it as the ravings of a lunatic, or perhaps even a practical joke. That is until Gabriel got his attention through more than one supernatural act, the last one of which was being transported to a Federal prison to witness, as he floated unseen thirty feet above the action, Peter Carson raise a man from the dead.

Gabriel’s instructions to Alex were clear; he was to say nothing about his knowledge and the revelation to anyone until he was told to do so. This was less than no problem for Alex. He could wait. He was not at all looking forward to becoming an outcast among the men who had praised him so much for so long.

While he certainly needed no more convincing that Gabriel was real (and, therefore, so must be God), Alex was not grounded in the Word. In his case, the proof came before the faith, but unlike Peter, Alex was not motivated to learn more about His ways and laws, to become part of His Holy priesthood.

If there was ever a man saved by fear alone, it was Alex. He viewed himself not as a saint, but rather as “God’s reporter,” an intimate yet still objective observer of the most significant human event in the last two thousand years.

Through his extensive broadcast television news experience with the networks, and later as an independent writer and producer of award winning documentaries and investigative reports, Alex Anderson was known worldwide as the face and voice of truth and quality journalism. The words “credibility” and “integrity” were synonymous with him and his work. Alex’s reputation was unblemished by even the hint of scandal.

Though deceived through his pride into denying the reality of the Living God, Alex nonetheless lived a life of exemplary character and devotion to his craft. Without him being aware of it, the Lord had strengthened and protected him so that someday he might fulfill His purpose.

That time had finally arrived.

“Mr. Carson, I’m Alex Anderson. Do you know who I am?” Alex waited to approach Peter until the buzz of activity in the courtroom died down and the authorities had finished their work.