The Last Justice (9 page)

"Griffin," he said.

Nash turned around. The traffic light changed, and the crowd at the corner began crossing. Several looks, and a voice or two, chided them for blocking the flow of pedestrians.

Nash's eyes darted over McKenna's shoulder.

"What is it, Griffin?" he said, turning to look.

But a sudden hard shove from behind sent him stumbling toward Nash. And in almost the same instant, a man wearing a camouflage jacket was there, thrusting his arm toward Nash's chest and abdomen in quick, repeated jabs. Looking perplexed, Nash fell forward, and he and McKenna hit the pavement hard, a pool of red already seeping through Nash's suit jacket and onto McKenna's hand and shirt.

Before McKenna had time to process what he had seen, the man who had stabbed Nash began pointing at McKenna and shouting, "He stabbed him! He stabbed him!"

Between the hammering thumps of his own heartbeat, McKenna thought he heard screams. And for reasons he would never be able to explain, he ran.

U.S. Supreme Court Building, Washington,

he first Monday in October had passed, but the Supreme Court still had only three of nine justices. The clerk had announced that the court would not sit until it had at least a quorum of six. As the most senior surviving member of the high court, Justice Gillian Wilson Carmichael was the informal acting chief, charged with handling the court's administration until the president nominated, and Senate confirmed, a successor to Chief Justice Kincaid.

Carmichael took the elevator from the ground floor to the Great Hall on her evening stroll around the building. It was a ritual she had started after Black Wednesday to break the monotony of the seemingly endless administrative tasks required of the chief. She thought it might also help with the loneliness, but the coldness and silence of the so-called "marble palace" had the opposite effect.

Alone in the elevator, she glanced critically at her reflection in the bronze doors. Her once striking red hair had dulled to a flat auburnbrown, with some gray around the temples-nothing like the elegant white tresses she had so admired on her grandmother. And though her green eyes still brimmed with intelligence, they were less noticeable than the deep wrinkles around them. For a woman in her late sixties, she was fit, thanks to a lifelong commitment to exercise, but some days her aching joints made her feel like an octogenarian.

Once in the Great Hall, she walked slowly, lost in thought, her heels clicking on the polished marble. She stopped now and then to gaze at one of the busts of former chief justices that sat in niches along the way. During one of these strolls, she had decided to authorize a memorial to the slain justices. Working with the court's curator, Carmichael had commissioned a bust of each of her fallen brethren to be displayed together at the center of the Great Hall near where the six caskets had lain in repose.' he sculptures would be dedicated in a ceremony on the first day that the court filled all of its vacant seatshopefully, soon. The nominees were supposed to be announced on the first Monday in October, but last-minute dickering with the names on the three-three deal had delayed the process. She had learned just yesterday that the announcement would be this week.

She didn't approve of the names rumored to be on the list-every one of them a thoroughgoing ideologue, many of them brash and altogether lacking the gravity befitting the high court. She may not have always agreed with the other justices on the Kincaid Court, but they all had gotten along well. Collegiality, she believed, was essential on a court Oliver Wendell Holmes had once described as "nine scorpions in a bottle." She thus feared what the court would become with six new overbearing, grandstanding personalities. But it was not her decision. Despite repeated requests from the press, she had refused to comment on the three-three deal and had made sure the law clerks were reminded of the court's notorious ninety-second rule: any clerk seen speaking with a journalist for more than ninety seconds would be summarily fired.

Nevertheless, Carmichael looked forward to the confirmation of new justices. She longed for a return to her routine and the country needed to move forward. She fretted a little over whether she had prepared the court adequately for the transition. They still had cases pending from the last term, cases for which votes had not yet been taken-decisions not finalized. More problematic, the assassinations had not slowed the growing mountain of petitions for certiorari filed. Even if Carmichael and the two other surviving justices had wanted to vote whether to accept new cases for review, they couldn't even do that much, since granting review required a vote of four. Thus, when the new justices joined the court, the backlog would be daunting indeed. The surviving justices had the authority to remit cases back to the appellate courts, but Carmichael simply would not be accused of dumping cases for expediency.

With that in mind, Carmichael had requested the thirty-six law clerks, who ordinarily would be leaving for lucrative and prestigious jobs, to stay on for an extra year. She had them and the incoming class working slavishly on detailed memos for each case-much more detailed than the usual "pool memos" used before Black Wednesday. Even the clerks who hadn't lived up to expectations were asked to stay on another year. The only exception, unfortunately, had been one of her clerks, Douglas Pratt. During the investigation of the assassinations, the law clerks were "of interest" and, hence, thoroughly scrutinized.

Although Pratt was cleared of any involvement in the killings, the investigation uncovered his mounting debts and gambling problem, and he was deemed undesirable. Pratt was allowed to resign on good terms. Word had it that Harrington & Caine, a prestigious D.C. firm, had given him a two-hundred thousand dollar signing bonus to join its elite appellate team.

Carmichael reached the oak doors that separated the Great Hall from the court chamber. She still hadn't gathered the courage to set foot in the courtroom since that awful day. Bracing herself, she pushed against the heavy door but then turned away.

Ten minutes later, at her cluttered desk in her chambers, she stared blankly across the room, unable to concentrate, when a timid knock on the door jarred her. Jim Peckham, interim chief of the court's police force, stuck his head in. He had just returned from the Supreme Court Commission meeting in New York.

"Hello, Jim," she said. "Please come in."

Just a few months ago, Carmichael had never even met Peckham. He had shot up in the ranks when, in true Washington fashion, all his bosses resigned amid widespread criticism over the security lapses that not only had failed to prevent Black Wednesday but actually added the chief justice to the body count. The media had picked up a story that Peckham, a mid-ranking member of the force, had been raising security issues to his bosses for over a year. Carmichael knew that Peckham needed her support if he wanted his interim position to become permanent. She assumed it was for this reason that Peckham had barely hesitated when she asked him to give her periodic reports on the commission's investigation-an obvious breach of confidentiality.

"The meeting in New York lasted only a few hours, and I'd like to report that they have solid leads," Peckham said. "But everything I heard today-absolutely everything-was guesswork. I'm afraid that until the investigation makes further progress, it's probably a waste of your time to go through it all."

"Humor me," Carmichael said.

"Of course." Swallowing, he began his report. "The prevailing theory is that the assassinations were not by a terrorist group, or ideologically based at all. The best lead remains the mark on the shooter's neck. They think-"

"I know all that," Carmichael cut in, annoyed at hearing what she could get on the evening news. "Tell me something new."

"Yes, my apologies," Peckham said. "There were a few new developments reported. Solicitor General McKenna identified two cases of interest."

Carmichael listened intently as Peckham explained the delay theory that McKenna had presented about the Hassan and Nevel Industries cases. The cases sounded familiar, but she couldn't recall many specifics about either.

"Anything else?" she said, sounding unimpressed.

Peckham hesitated.

He took a deep breath. "There was a discussion of Chief Justice Kincaid's widow." Peckham wiped his brow with his hand. It was common knowledge in the small town community at the high court that Carmichael and Kincaid were close friends. They had been law partners decades ago, and Kincaid had pushed for her nomination to the court. The two had breakfast regularly together in the court cafeteria. They even jointly managed the office football pool-a tidbit that had received some interest in the legal press before Black Wednesday, back when such light gossip dominated reports about the court.

Carmichael felt her heart sink at the mention of Liddy Kincaid.

"It was leaked to the press today, so you may have seen reports already."

"No," she replied in the most neutral tone she could muster. "What are they saying?"

"There were large cash withdrawals from Mrs. Kincaid's accounts in the weeks before Black Wednesday. And she refuses to say what she did with the money. She's hired counsel and refuses to speak with the commission. Apparently, Chief Justice Kincaid had seen a lawyer about a divorce a few weeks before he was killed."

Carmichael felt sick to her stomach, but she kept her composure. She thought of Chief Justice Kincaid: his rugged masculinity, his gruff wit and droll stories, his kind heart. What with his unusual background of having been a professional football player and then a law professor, the legal press had adopted a description of him that originated with the late Justice Byron White: "He's both Clark Kent and Superman."

Carmichael's affair with Kincaid had been as unexpected as it was exhilarating. Liddy Kincaid had been acting erratically, threatening both her and Chief Justice Kincaid when he raised the issue of divorce.

She loved him, and he was gone. And she could tell no one.

Chinatown, Washington, D.C.

cKenna had run several blocks, into a Chinatown alley strewn with broken bottles and Mandarin newspapers. He leaned back against a brick wall, panting, his mind racing, and pulled out his BlackBerry and speed-dialed Kate. She caught it on the first ring.