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THE MOMENT MOODY stepped off the witness stand, my father declared a recess until Monday

I followed Moody, LJ, and Jonah down the steps of the courthouse into a barrage of questions accounpowdery sh that crowd of news her head up, walking straight ahead

We brushed off the last pesky reporters and walked three blocks to the Stringer house We waited until we had Moody in the War Room before anyone spoke

“What did you think you were doing?” I asked “You got up under oath and told the biggest, fattest lie in the history of Mississippi And all the ti like a fool!”

She was grinning like that now “I tried to keep the smile off my face,” she said

“Why didn’t you tell us you were going to do that?”

“’Cause if I had, you’d have told me not to do it This way I could scare the devil out of that Loophole Lewis, and your daddy the judge, and Phineas Eversman, and everybody else as in on the lie”

“But you lied in order to counter their lie,” I shouted “That’s perjury!”

“So what?” she said “You fight fire with fire Lewis can’t contradict me If he does, he’ll have to ad time after the raid”

“Oh, I understand what you were doing, all right,” I said “I just want to knohat gives you the right to—”

“Ben,” said LJ “I don’t see how this hurts us I think it can only help”

I sank onto a chair “I think so too, as bad as that is What do you think, Jonah?”

Jonah was looking out the narrow second-floor

“Itto form,” he said

Then he turned from theand faced the three of us