But I’d come this far. I had to see what was cooking at the pro-life, white-supremacy get-together. Who were all these people? Where were they coming from?

  I walked around the courthouse, shouldered my way through the mass of humanity on the sidewalk, and climbed the front steps to get a bird’s-eye view. The pro-life protesters were out in force, milling around in front of the courthouse with signs like the ones I’d seen before.

  LIFE BEGINS AT CONCEPTION

  RIGHTS BEGIN IN THE WOMB

  A CHILD, NOT A CHOICE

  No surprise in that message. Nothing surprising about the messengers, either. In fact, the pro-lifers looked a lot like the people I’d seen the other day, when I ended up face down on Prairie Street.

  What I hadn’t expected was the counterprotest. A pro–reproductive rights group had assembled. Mostly young people. But definitely not locals. I was nearly blinded by the intense hues of their hair dye. I saw a lot of hot pink, some purple, some green, some blue. Their signs were just as colorful. Lots of neon-bright lettering.

  ABORTION IS HEALTH CARE

  BANS OFF OUR BODIES

  OUR BODIES, OUR ABORTIONS

  PREGNANT PEOPLE HAVE RIGHTS

  I shaded my eyes with my hand and scanned the whole crowd. I was searching for a familiar face. Looking for a single person I knew. Sounds crazy, but I swear—I couldn’t find one.

  I’d never seen so many white people in my life.

  Union Springs, Alabama, is a Black-majority town, and it was startling to see that the Black people in this public gathering made up such a small minority. I expected Black folks to spurn the pro-life party; after all, it was organized by redneck racists. But why hadn’t they shown up for the counterprotest? Why were there no Black folks carrying pro-choice signs?

  Was it old-time religion? Or was it fear?

  I noticed something else. There were no babies in strollers at this protest. No kids in wagons. No tots on parents’ shoulders.

  Everybody had left the kids at home.

  As I watched, the two groups started surging toward each other, shouting and screaming, with hate in their eyes. I saw a few local cops trying to maintain order, but it was a losing battle.

  A shiver ran right through me.

  This was no longer a rally. It was a fight.

  Suddenly, I heard the sound of truck engines roaring from around the corner. And I realized that things were about to get a lot worse.

  CHAPTER

  47

  I stepped down onto the crowded sidewalk just as a fleet of pickup trucks turned onto the square, honking their horns and forcing their way through the throng. Each pickup was covered with oversized images of pregnancies in utero. Confederate flags were draped across the truck beds.

  The pro-life side greeted the caravan like a conquering army. Just then, the lead vehicle started blaring music from roof-mounted speakers at a deafening volume.

  The tune was “Dixie.”

  That song always gave me goose bumps, in all the wrong ways.

  It wasn’t just the lyrics that riled me. It was knowing that “Dixie” had been the anthem of the Confederacy. A song about how great the South used to be. Back when Black people—my ancestors—were enslaved. And when the economy of the South rested on the flayed backs of their forced labor. To me that was what “Dixie” celebrated.

  I was not a fan.

  As the tune played, I saw a man across the street remove his ball cap and place his hand over his heart. Like he was hearing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Or watching US soldiers raise the American flag.

  I sidestepped some people on the sidewalk as the fleet approached. I wanted to cuss out the driver playing “Dixie.” Was ready to shake my fist, flip him the bird. I’m aware that would be behavior unbecoming of a candidate running for reelection to the office of circuit judge. I didn’t give a damn.

  When the lead pickup pulled close enough for me to see through the windshield, I froze for a second. I shouldn’t have been surprised. It was that goddamn Mason Phelps, the Grand Whatever of the local racist society. Shit.

  I stepped back. I didn’t want to give Phelps the finger or shout the F-word at him. He’d regard that as a win. I refused to let him think he had that kind of power over me.

  But he’d caught sight of me. As I tried to press back into the crowd, he peered out the driver’s window and our eyes met. I caught it, a flash of pure hate in that look. Replaced by a grin, scary as hell. He drove by slowly. I saw those brown teeth flashing at me, as Mason Phelps started laughing. Like he knew some ugly joke I wasn’t clued in on.

  I shivered, right there on the street. A chill ran all the way down my back. An omen, Mama would say. Like somebody was walking on my grave.

  As the line of battered pickup trucks moved through town, a handful of people in the pro-life crowd gave them some patchy applause. Not many, though. I saw a number of people in pro-life shirts who looked visibly uncomfortable. It seemed like not all the pro-lifers were down with the Confederate flags. I saw that as a positive indicator. Calmed down a hair, caught my breath.

  The pro-choice response was much stronger. Young people wearing ROE and PLANNED PARENTHOOD shirts elbowed me as they moved into the street, booing the parade.

  A young man used his BRING BACK ROE sign to whale away at the Confederate flags waving from the truck beds. “Fascists! Fucking traitors!”

  Other counterprotesters followed suit, shouting at the trucks as they passed.

  The kids with neon hair didn’t seem terribly frightened or intimidated. Some of them were even laughing. Making fun of Mason Phelps. Openly mocking him.

  And I saw pro-lifers who weren’t overjoyed to have Phelps as the leader of their movement. Some of them were packing up, moving on.

  The sight gave me a lift. I was glad to see people mocking Phelps. I relished the insults they threw at him. But still. It wasn’t smart for those protesters to disregard Mason Phelps and his friends. It worried me. They hadn’t been exposed to him for years, like I had.

  A young woman stepped off the curb and flung an egg at the cab of one of the dusty pickups, shouting, “Hey, Dixie! That all you got? Bunch of losers!”

  I had to smile at that. At that point, I even thought maybe I was wrong to have worried. It looked like the white supremacists’ attempt to lead the abortion protest was fizzling.

  That was when I spotted the last vehicle in the motorcade. A huge box truck. Plain white, no flags, no slogans, no markings. It lumbered slowly up Prairie Street and came to a stop about a block from where I was standing.

  The door of the cab opened. I watched the driver hop out. Aside from being white, he looked nothing like Phelps or his shaggy crew. No long, greasy hair. No baseball cap.

  This guy was fit and muscular, with a short military haircut. Dressed in immaculate khaki pants and a red polo shirt.

  He jogged to the back of the white truck and opened the doors.

  “It’s Patriot Front!” someone called out. “They’re white nationalists!”

  Suddenly, two dozen men jumped out and moved into formation.

  To me, they didn’t look homegrown. Probably from out of state. Guests of honor, invited by Mason Phelps. He was probably thrilled to see them.

  They were all fit white guys, dressed in the same red-and-khaki outfit that the driver wore. Some kind of uniform. Their faces were covered with white gaiters, like the face coverings during the height of COVID. These days, in my experience on the bench, those face coverings were used by people who were trying to avoid identification.

  The men were all armed with assault rifles.

  “Sweet Jesus,” I whispered.

  I overheard frantic voices nearby. The neon-haired young people were all shouting, “Call the cops!”

  One young woman followed behind the formation, screaming at them. “You can’t do this! It’s illegal!”

  Clearly, the woman wasn’t from Alabama. If she was, she’d know that the men with assault rifles were not breaking any law. Alabama was an open-carry state. No permit required.

  As the armed, masked men began their march down the street, I heard more frenzied shouts.

  Sure enough. The “Dixie” melody started up again from Phelps’s truck speakers. He must have been expecting the reinforcements. At the sight of all the guns, people on the sidewalk started to scatter.

  I’d seen enough.

  It was time to get the hell out of town.

  As I headed for the back of the courthouse, I was getting pushed and shoved from all sides. There was panic in the air—the kind of hysteria that gets people trampled and killed.

  No way I could get to my car. The crowd was too thick. Instead, I grappled my way up the stairs of the courthouse and forced my way to the main entrance. Fumbled in my bag for the key ring. I was one of a handful of people in Bullock County entrusted with the key to the courthouse door.

  When I got the key in hand, I got shoved so hard that I dropped the keys on the ground.

  “Back off!” I shouted. Bending down, I picked the keys up. My hands were shaking as I jammed the key into the dead bolt lock and turned it.

  As I grabbed the handle, I felt a crush of bodies behind me, pushing toward safety.

  I was still holding the door when I heard the gunshots.

  And the screams.

  CHAPTER

  48

  BULLOCK COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE UNION SPRINGS, ALABAMA

  Two hours later, I was sitting in the sheriff’s office, giving my statement to Deputy Lonnie Sparks—another cop I’d known since he was a kid.

  It felt like the shooting had gone on for an eternity. In fact, it had lasted about ten seconds. Nobody was killed, thank God. Multiple hospitalizations, mostly from folks getting trampled when the shooting started. The bullet wounds were mostly grazes.

  I related all the information I could recall. Every detail of my observations on the street. I shared descriptions and names of the people who sought shelter at the courthouse when the rampage began. I was talking so long and so fast that my voice was getting raspy.

  Lonnie stopped taking down what I was saying. “You need something to drink, Judge Mary?”

  “I could use a Diet Coke,” I croaked.

  He smiled. “Be right back.”

  As Lonnie walked down the hallway, I looked around the office. The whole force had been mobilized for the rally, and now they were trying to sort out the aftermath. But this was a lot bigger than the Union Springs PD. No disrespect, but most of these officers were used to dealing with domestic disputes and drunk-and-disorderly calls. They’d never seen anything like this.

  Neither had I.

  “I hear you’re thirsty.” I turned around. Mick Owens was standing there, dangling a frosty can of Diet Coke. “Come talk,” he said. “You can finish your statement later.”

  I grabbed the can. “You got a deal.”

  I followed him into his crowded office in the corner of the floor. He looked back at me.

  “You owe me a dollar for that Coke, Mary.”

  “I don’t owe you shit, Mick.” I popped the can and took a long, deep gulp.

  He propped his boots up on his desk. “I just got back from the hospital. Taking statements, getting information. Records of injuries. Seeing who had video or pictures on their phones.”

  “It’s a miracle nobody died out there,” I said. “Why weren’t you more prepared? You knew it was brewing.”

  “I surely did not.”

  “The hell? This has been stirring up for months. Shoot, the governor has been threatening to send in the National Guard since the Bria Gaines case was filed, seems like. So why wasn’t the Guard called in today?”

  “Nobody could’ve foreseen this, Mary. It’s not our people raining shit down. It’s outside agitators. We wouldn’t be having these problems if publicity wasn’t dragging in a bunch of crazies.”

  He was right, in part. But he was leaving something out. “It wasn’t only out-of-towners. You can’t blame a faceless enemy for this. I know what I saw. You saw the same thing. Mason Phelps was leading that Dixie demonstration. He’s been hyping it up for weeks.”

  Mick waved me off with a hand. “Don’t you worry about Mason Phelps. Couldn’t organize a keg party.”

  “You telling me not to worry? This was his party, he could’ve wiped out our town today. I know he planned it. He was over at Coley’s after Cocheta’s funeral, handing out Replacement Theory flyers.”

  Mick sighed and wiped a hand over his face. “Mary, Mason Phelps is a worthless shithead, everyone knows that. And a true Alabama cracker, racist to the core. I don’t fool myself, I know what he’s capable of, where his sympathies lie. But I’ve come down hard on him. Kicked his ass more than once. He doesn’t mess with me. Trust me, I’ve got Phelps and his buddies under control.”

  “You call what happened today under control?”

  “Look. I talked to Phelps at the scene. He said it wasn’t him that was doing the shooting. He said one of the guys from out of town brought a defective firearm. Went off accidentally. Then people went nuts. Shoving and running and knocking each other down.”

  “That’s bullshit.” My prom date was no Sherlock Fucking Holmes, but he wasn’t that stupid. “You were out there, Mick! Did those guys look like the types to carry defective firearms?”

  “Mary, take it easy.”

  “I don’t think anything went off accidentally. Do you have anyone in custody?”

  “We’re a small force, Mary. We’re working on it.”

  I could tell that I was getting under his skin.

  Good. I decided to burrow a little deeper.

  “Working on it? Just like you’re working on solving Cocheta’s murder? Was that just an accident, too? Did Cocheta accidentally get lynched in her own backyard?”

  “Goddamnit, Mary!” Mick swung his right arm and swiped everything off the top of his desk. Coffee cup, papers, pens, pads. His nostrils were flaring. “I don’t answer to you!” he shouted. His chest was puffed out, voice rumbling. “I’m an elected official—just like you. The voters gave me this position. I answer to the people.”

  “Yeah, well, the people are wondering why you can’t solve a case.”

  I stood up. He still towered over me. “Get out of my office,” he muttered. “Before I lose my temper.”

  I looked down at the mess on the floor. “I think you already lost it.”

  “Fuck you!”

  “Thanks for the Coke.”

  “Leave!”

  Whatever. I was tired. I wanted to go home, anyway. I picked up my bag and turned to head out the door. When I was almost there, Mick called after me.

  “Hey, Mary! You wanna know what the people are saying to me? What I hear is they want to know why Judge Mary Stone won’t get that goddamn abortion case over and done with! Try the fucking case! Then everybody in Bullock County can put it behind us.”

  I paused for a second. Was that really what folks were saying about me? Maybe so. But I’d never admit it. Not here. Wouldn’t give Mick Owens the satisfaction.

  As I walked out into the hallway, he had one more thing to say. He shouted it so loud everybody in the office could hear it.

  “If anyone gets killed over this abortion case, Mary—that’s on you! It’ll be your fault! Blood on your hands!”

  CHAPTER

  49

  His words stayed with me. The accusation preyed on my mind. I kept thinking about what he’d said, that I was the one responsible for damage being done. I was to blame for the harm that folks were suffering.

  Paying mind to Mick Owens’s judgment was a novel circumstance. I’d never held his opinion in high regard. Not even back in high school, when we were going out. I wasn’t attracted to his brain back then, as I sat in the wooden bleachers. Watching him run down the court in a Hornets uniform. Leap into the air and dunk the ball.

  But even Sheriff Owens could be right on occasion. Like a broken clock, twice a day. So I’d been turning an idea over in my head. Something that might reduce the probability of violence and unrest in Union Springs. I was almost convinced that it was the best option.

  That, or the worst. There was a possibility that it would hasten the demise of the community. There was that, too.

  I hustled past Luna’s desk on Friday, so deep in thought I forgot to say Good morning. She jumped out of her chair and followed me.

  “Judge? Got something you need to see.”

  I pulled my suit jacket off, hung it on the coatrack, right by my black robe. “Somebody file something? I’ve been waiting for confirmation of a settlement from Barry McCurry. Has he called?”

  “No, no court business. It’s a media thing.”

  A wave of irritation rolled, almost making my skin itch. “Stop right there!”

  I extended my hand, like I was face guarding her.

  “Luna, don’t devil me with the nonsense you see on social media. I’m determined to keep far away from that. If I don’t read it, don’t see it, it can’t ruin my day.”

  “Judge, I think you should check it out.”

  I leveled a look at her. “Luna. Is it something on social media?”

  “Yes, it’s on social. But that’s not the only place.”

  “What did I just say?”

  Luna’s shoulders straightened. She turned her back on me. Returned to her desk, then marched right back into chambers with a stack of newspapers clutched to her chest. Which she dumped directly onto my tidy desktop.

  “Someone left these right in front of the courtroom, all of them. Ross found them when he unlocked the courtroom door this morning. I promised him I’d show them to you.”

  She made a quick exit. Had her hand on my door, ready to shut it. “And yeah—the pictures are on social media, too. Facebook, X, Insta, and TikTok. I checked this morning.”

  Before she slammed the door, she stuck her head back in. “I’ll hold your calls.”

  I lifted the top newspaper. It was a supermarket tabloid. When I leafed through the stack, I counted a dozen copies.