Sycamore Row - John Grisham

She did as he instructed, and when she finished she said, “Wow. Great way to start the
week.”
“Not so for old Seth,” Jake said. “Please note that this arrived in the mail this
morning, October 3.”
“So noted. Why?”
“The timing could be crucial one day in court. Saturday, Sunday, Monday.”
“I’m going to be a witness?”
“Maybe, maybe not, but we’re just taking precautions, okay?”
“You’re the lawyer.”
Jake ran four copies of the envelope, the letter, and the will. He gave Roxy a copy to
enter into the firm’s newest case file, and he tucked two away in a locked drawer in his
desk. He waited until 9:00 a.m. and left the office with the original and one copy. He
told Roxy he was headed for the courthouse. He walked next door to Security Bank,
where he placed the original in his firm’s lockbox.
Ozzie Walls’s office was at the county jail, two blocks off the square in a low-slung
concrete bunker built on the cheap a decade earlier. A tumorlike appendage had been
added later to house the sheriff and his staff and deputies, and the place was crammed
with cheap desks, folding chairs, and stained carpet fraying at the baseboards. Monday
mornings were usually hectic as the weekend’s fun and games were tidied up. Angry
wives arrived to bail their hungover husbands out of jail. Other wives stormed in to sign
papers to get their husbands thrown into jail. Frightened parents waited for details of
the drug bust that caught their kids. The phones rang more than usual and often went
unanswered. Deputies milled about choking down doughnuts and sipping strong coffee.
Add to the usual frenzy the bizarre suicide of a mysterious man, and the cluttered outer
office was especially busy that Monday morning.
In the rear of the appendage, down a short hallway, there was a thick door covered in
white hand-painted lettering that read: OZZIE WALLS, HIGH SHERIFF, FORD COUNTY. The door
was closed; the sheriff was in early on Monday, and on the phone. The caller was an
emotional woman from Memphis whose child had been caught driving a pickup truck
that was hauling, among other things, a sizable quantity of marijuana. This had
happened the previous Saturday night near Lake Chatulla, in an area of a state park
where illicit behavior was known to be common. The child was innocent, of course, and
the mother was eager to drive down and retrieve him from Ozzie’s jail.
Not so fast, Ozzie cautioned. There was a knock at his door. He covered the receiver
and said, “Yes!”
The door opened a few inches and Jake Brigance stuck his head through the crack.
Ozzie smiled immediately and waved him in. Jake closed the door behind himself and
eased into a chair. Ozzie was explaining that even though the kid was seventeen, he had
been caught with three pounds of pot; thus, he could not be released on bond until a
judge said so. As the mother railed, Ozzie frowned and moved the receiver a few inches