The Divine Appointment (21 page)

“And what about precedent, Judge Shelton? Can a decision such as
Roe v. Wade
be overturned?”

The room fell silent and Judge Shelton shifted in his chair. Again, a question for which Judge Shelton was prepared.

“Senator, not all precedents are created equal. Some vary in strength, and overruling a weaker precedent might be merited in some instances. As to a specific case, it would be inappropriate for me to comment on whether a previously decided case should be affirmed by the Court or overruled. That same issue might come before the Court again, and I cannot ethically discuss it in these proceedings.”

Porter liked the answer. And it didn’t alarm anyone in the room. A murmur of noise resumed. Judge Shelton’s answer was exactly the way they had practiced. No hints, no forecasts, no previews. That was the way the game of Senate confirmation hearings was played, and Judge Shelton played it well. Porter was pleased.

Washington DC

After he had finally opened the envelope, Holland Fletcher left several messages for Tiffany Ramsey on her voice mail at the Supreme Court building. He left his home number, his wireless number, and the direct line to his desk at the
Post
. He had tried to reach her all day Monday. All messages had gone unreturned. He had driven by her town house several times over the weekend but had never seen her car parked in front. One reason he wanted to talk with her was simply to hear the sound of her voice. But more important, he had questions for her about Senator Proctor and Jessica Caldwell. He called again, but this time added something extra to his message.

“Tiffany, this is Holland Fletcher with the
Washington Post
. Please call me back on my direct line. I have some information about Senator Proctor I want to discuss with you.”

Within ten minutes the phone on his desk rang. It was Tiffany.

“You really need to stop calling me,” she said.

Holland had a pen in his hand and a notepad on his desk. Like all good reporters, he was prepared to scribble down whatever Tiffany said. It didn’t matter so much whether he correctly recorded what she said so long as at least part of it was right and it fit into the article he was writing.

“If you had returned my earlier calls, I wouldn’t need to keep calling. I’m just trying to write a story.”

“I told you before that I don’t want to be interviewed for your story. Jessica was a friend—”

Holland cut her off midsentence with his first question. “Do you know that Senator Proctor owns the town house you live in?”

Silence. No words, no sound, no breathing. There was complete silence from Tiffany’s end of the telephone.

“Tiffany, did you hear me?”

“I heard you, but what does that have to do with anything?”

“Did you know it?”

“Not really.” The tone of her voice wasn’t very confident.

She knew something and Holland was determined to get it out of her. He pressed further. “What does that mean, ‘not really’? Either you know or you don’t know.”

“Look, Holland. It’s dangerous for you to be calling me and for me to be talking to you. Please stop calling me.”

Dangerous!
“Why is it dangerous?”

“I’m not talking to you anymore. Good-bye, Holland.”

Holland heard her disconnect the call. He listened to a dead line for several seconds and then a dial tone. He finally hung up and stared at his empty notepad. He wrote the words
Senator Proctor
and
dangerous
, but he didn’t know what they meant.

The law offices of Elijah J. Faulkner, Jackson, Tennessee

Jill Baker knocked on the frame of Eli’s open door, and he glanced up from behind his desk. He waved her to the sofa in his office. It was Wednesday, the second week of July. Eli and Jill had been working on Tag Grissom’s case for six weeks. Eli could tell the case was really beginning to get to Jill.

“I called the lab to get the status on the DNA test,” she said. “They received the tissue samples from the fetus last week from the coroner’s office.”

Jill’s voice was detached. He knew she was still troubled over exhuming Jessica Caldwell’s body. Eli didn’t like it any more than she did. But it had to be done. His choice was either to seek DNA testing on the fetus or only halfway represent Tag Grissom, and the latter wasn’t an option. If he took on a case, then he had to do everything possible to win. Even if that meant exhuming a body, and even if he didn’t want to.

“How long before they’ll have any results?”

Jill sank into the sofa in Eli’s office. Her face was blank, and her voice distant. “Probably about two weeks. Maybe sooner, but not likely. They’re pretty backlogged.”

“I’d like them sooner, but two weeks will be fine. That’ll give us about two or three more weeks before the trial starts. We’ve got our work cut out for us with Eli’s DNA matching the skin fragments under Ms. Caldwell’s fingernail. I hope these new tests have a different result. We need a break.”

“I know. Randy made me mad the other day at the cemetery.”

Jill still looked miserable. Her countenance was downcast. Eli knew what she was going through. It was the gut wrenching that came from handling murder cases. It was the reason he had quit taking them…until this case. And there were times when he wished he didn’t have this one.

“You can’t let it get to you.” Eli spoke with concern and understanding. And he spoke from experience. “This is a tough business, and sometimes we have to do things that aren’t pleasant.”

“I know, but this has been really difficult. I don’t have a mother and father, and now Jessica’s parents no longer have a child. Life is weird and unfair sometimes. And we made her family endure the whole emotional roller coaster again by exhuming Jessica’s body.”

Jill’s despondency was only partially about the Caldwell family, Eli realized. The rest was about her own life. She had no family. No mother. No father. And it was the same as if she had no brother. He was worthless. That had to be a difficult way to live. Jill was an attractive young woman, but to Eli’s knowledge she didn’t have a boyfriend and rarely even dated.

“Have they buried her body again?” Eli asked.

Jill flicked away a wisp of hair that had fallen into her face and turned her face from Eli. “Yeah, last Friday. I didn’t go back. I couldn’t. One time at that cemetery was enough for me.”

Eli felt compassion for Jill. She had worked for him for three years. But the relationship had always been employer and employee. Now he saw a side to her that he’d never seen. She wasn’t all business. She had emotions and felt pain like everyone else, and she was reliving some of her worst memories. Memories that no teenager should have to create. But she had been forced to because of that accident and her parents’ death, and this case had caused them to come racing back. Even worse was the fact that Jill didn’t have anyone to lean on when she was troubled.

“It’ll all be over soon,” he consoled. “And you know you can talk to me about anything at any time.”

“I know, but I’ll be fine.”

The Hart Building, Washington DC

Same song, third verse. And Porter hoped it was the last verse. The senators had gone through two rounds of questioning the previous day and Judge Shelton performed perfectly. One more cycle of questioning had been scheduled for Wednesday. Judge Shelton danced delicately and unscathed around such controversial issues as abortion, executive powers, and racial quotas. The media—as much as it hated to—was already christening Judge Shelton as the next Supreme Court justice.

Porter smiled when he watched the morning news programs. He smiled even more when he read the morning editorials. He felt as though the confirmation was on the downhill slide. If the committee finished today, then there could be a committee vote by the end of the week and on to the full Senate by the end of next week.

Porter walked tall in his freshly polished shoes as he entered the Hart Building. His shirt was starched, his suit was clean and straight from the dry cleaner’s, and his tie was knotted perfectly. He was confident. Very confident.

He breezed by the windows in the Hart Building that opened onto Constitution Avenue with barely a peek. It didn’t matter that the pro-life group had diminished in size from the previous day or that the pro-choice group had doubled in size again. They had had no impact on the hearings up to this point.

But in that fleeting look he noticed something unusual: no Stella. It took two steps past the window for that fact to register with Porter. He stopped, retreated to the window, and looked again. Still no Stella. He couldn’t find her anywhere.

“Maybe she’s finally given up,” Porter mumbled to himself.

Amelia Island, Florida

“Mrs. Carlson,” the woman at the door said, “I just need a minute of your time.”

“Who is it, Dot?” Myron called out from the back porch. He and Dot had converted the house’s veranda into a screened-in back porch. It kept the insects out during the summer. It was just after 9:00 a.m. eastern time on Wednesday. After finishing breakfast, he had rolled himself to the back porch to watch the ocean waves crash onto the beach. It was a very relaxing activity.

Dot had cleared the table and cleaned the kitchen before they heard the knock at the door.

Dot had gone to answer it. “It’s a reporter with a newspaper in Washington,” she called back to Myron. “She wants to talk to you about Dunbar.”

“A reporter? I don’t want to talk to a reporter.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell her.”

Myron could hear the conversation between Dot and the woman at the door continue, so he rolled his wheelchair from the porch into the house and toward the front door.

“It’ll only take a few minutes. I have a couple of questions for Professor Carlson that I need in order to finish my article, then I’ll be on my way.”

Myron rolled his wheelchair to where he could see the woman at the door. Red-rimmed glasses. Overweight. Rust-colored hair. He immediately disliked her.

Dot tried to close the door on her, but the woman blocked it with her foot.

“What kind of questions?” Myron said. His voice was gruff.

Dot opened the door slightly more but not enough for the woman to enter completely. The woman looked at Myron through the opening. She seemed surprised and tried to force the door open wider. But Dot held firm.

At last the intruder gave up and spoke to Myron from the threshold “Professor Carlson, I didn’t see you there. I’m Cynthia Wellington with the
Washington Times
and I have a few questions for you concerning Judge Shelton’s confirmation hearings.”

“I think it’s a big waste of time, that’s what I think. There. I answered your question, now leave.” Myron liked being crotchety at times and was quite proud of himself for being short with this reporter.

Dot began pushing the door closed again, but the woman wouldn’t move her foot.

The woman pressed against the door with her shoulder. “Do you think he would vote to overturn
Roe v. Wade?
”

Myron was leaving the room and was almost where he could no longer see the intrusive woman. But he stopped and looked back at the door. It was a weird scene. Two women were standing at the same door. One was trying to close it while the other tried to keep it open. It made him laugh inside. And he was always glad to tell a living, breathing soul what he really thought about the
Roe
decision. Even greater pleasure came from being cantankerous about it.

“I hope so!” Myron yelled. “It was a terrible decision. Dunbar dissected it point by point in a research paper when he was a student of mine. It was one of the greatest pieces of writing I ever saw. I get it out and read it all the time. There is absolutely no way to support the
Roe
decision under any provision of the Constitution.”

The woman finally removed her foot, and Dot managed to close the door.

“Thank you,” Myron could hear the woman say from beyond the door.

“Bah,” Myron grunted, then rolled himself back to the screened-in porch.

Dot followed him. “I wish you hadn’t talked to her. It’ll only get your blood pressure up.”

“I’ve never felt better. I was just glad to yell that at someone other than you. It’s about time somebody else listened to me.”

Myron watched and listened to the waves crashing against the shoreline and smiled. He was quite proud of himself. It had been too long since he’d been able to lecture someone. He preached like that to Dot all the time, but he knew she never listened and only patronized him. But now one more person knew exactly what he thought about
Roe v. Wade
and that pleased him. Maybe that reporter would print what he said in her newspaper, and thousands more would know the truth. The thought made him smile even more.

Stella Hanover returned to her car, parked in the driveway of the Carlson home. It had taken five hundred dollars to discover the house’s location from some of the locals, but it had been worth every penny—she hoped. Professor Carlson hadn’t provided much information, but maybe it was enough. It was all she could get. As she began to drive away, she dialed a number on her wireless.

“He’s got something,” Stella said. “He mentioned something about a research paper. See what you can find and then you need to disappear for a while.”