Mistress of Justice

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Taylor Lockwood had never liked this room – the big conference room in the firm.

For one thing, it was always dim – a pastel room so underlit that the colors became muddy and unreal. For another, she associated it with the large meetings in which the paralegal administrator would gather her flock and give them all a rah-rah pep talk, which amounted to a plea not to quit just because the raises this year were going to be only 5 percent.

Mindless, proletariat babble.

Nonetheless, at eight o'clock in the evening, here was Taylor Lockwood, sitting in a large swivel chair at the base of the U, the chair Donald Burdick reserved for himself.

Suddenly the huge teak doors to the room opened and Mitchell Reece ran inside.

He stopped, gasping, when he saw the gun in her hand.

She looked at him with surprise. "Mitchell, what are you doing here?"

"Your note. I read the note you left. Where did you think I'd be?"

"I told you not to come. Why didn't you listen to me?"

"What're you going to do with the gun?"

She smiled absently. "It's pretty obvious, isn't it? I've got to save us."

"The US attorney's coming tomorrow. Don't do this to yourself."

"The cops? The U S attorney?" She laughed skeptically. "And what would they do? We don't have any evidence. You and I are never going to be safe. We got run off the road, I was poisoned. I was almost stabbed to death."

"What?"

She didn't tell him about the latest assault just yet. She muttered, "It's just a matter of time until we're dead – if I don't stop things right here. Now."

"You can't just shoot somebody in cold blood."

"I'll claim self-defense. Insanity."

"The insanity defense doesn't work, Taylor. Not in cases like this."

She rubbed her eyes.

"The man who stole the note's dead."

"What?"

"The janitor or whatever he was, the one who put the poison in my food – him. He tried again. He chased me into the subway. But he got electrocuted."

"Jesus. What did the police say?"

"No." She shook her head. "I didn't go to them. It wouldn't do any good, Mitchell. They'd just hire somebody else."

"Well, who is it?" he asked. "Who's behind all this?"

She didn't answer. She glanced up, over Recce's shoulder, and said, "Turn around and find out." She hid the gun behind her back and called, "We're over here. Come on in."

Reece spun around.

A figure emerged from the dull light of the hallway into the deeper shadow of the end of the conference room. Donald Burdick, his posture perfect, like a ballroom dancer's, stepped past the doors, which swung closed with a heavy snap.

The partner called from across the room, his voice ringing dully, like a bell through fog. "Taylor, it is you." He nodded at Reece.

"Surprised to see I'm still alive?"

"Your call, it didn't make any sense. What's all this about Wendall's death?" He walked to within ten feet of them and stopped. He remained standing. "We thought you were sick."

"You mean, you hoped I was dead." She slowly lifted the gun.

His mouth opened. He blinked. "Taylor, what are you doing with that?"

She started to speak. Her voice choked and then she cleared her throat. "I had a speech rehearsed, Donald. I forgot it. But what I do know is that you hired that man to steal the note and set up Clayton's suicide. Then you had him run us off the road and try to kill me – twice."

The dapper partner gave a harsh bark of a laugh. "Are you crazy?" He looked at Mitchell for help. "What's she saying?"

Reece shook his head, gazing at Taylor with concern.

"I went through the file room logs, Donald. You checked out a file for Ge

"Maybe I did. I don't remember. Ge

"But there'd be no reason to check this file out. It wasn't active. As part of a contract negotiation their insurer analyzed their pathogen storage facility in New Jersey. It was basically a blueprint about how to break into the place. You checked the file out and gave the information to your hit man. He broke in, stole some botulism culture and poisoned me."

"No, I swear I didn't."

"And when that didn't work you sent him to stab me. Well, he's dead, Donald. How do you like that?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." He started to turn and walk away.

"No!" Taylor cried. "Don't move." She thrust the gun toward him. The partner stumbled backward, lifting his hands helplessly.

"Taylor!" Reece shouted.

"No!" she screamed and cocked the gun Burdick backed against the wall, his eyes huge disks of terror Reece froze.

They stood in those positions for a long minute. Taylor stared at the gun, as if willing it to fire by itself.

"I can't," she whispered finally. "I can't do it."

The gun drooped.

Reece stepped forward slowly and took the pistol from her. He put his arm around her shoulders. "It's all right," he whispered.

"I wanted to be strong," she said. "I wanted to kill him. But I can't do it."

Burdick said to them both, "I swear I had nothing to do -"

She pulled away from Recce's arm and faced Burdick in her fury. "You may think you have the police and the mayor and everyone else in your pocket but it's not going to stop me from making sure you spend the rest of your life in jail!"

Taylor grabbed a telephone off the table.

The partner shook his head. "Taylor, whatever you think, it's not true."

She had just started dialing when a hand reached over, lifted the receiver away from her and replaced it in the cradle.

"No, Taylor," Mitchell Reece said. He sighed and lifted the gun, the muzzle pointing at her like a single black pearl. "No," he repeated softly.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

She gave a faint laugh of surprise.

Much the same sound that Mitchell Reece himself had uttered when she told him a few days ago that Clayton had been murdered. Then her smile faded and with bottomless horror in her voice she said, "What are you doing?"

His face was stone, his eyes expressionless, but the answer was clear.

"You, Mitchell?" she whispered.

Donald Burdick said, "One of you tell me what's going on here."

Reece ignored him. Still holding the gun on both of them, he walked to the door, looked outside, made sure the corridor was empty and returned. He said to her angrily, "Why the hell didn't you stop when you should have, Taylor? Why? It was all pla

Burdick, horrified, said, "Mitchell, it was you? You killed Wendall Clayton?"

Taylor's eyes closed for a brief moment. She shook her head.

Reece told her, "Wendall Clayton killed the woman I loved."

Taylor frowned then said, "Linda? Linda Davidof?"

Reece nodded slowly.

"Oh, my God."

After a moment Reece said, "It was all about a man and a woman. As simple as that." His eyebrows rose. "A man who'd never had time for relationships, a woman who was beautiful and creative and brilliant. Two people who'd never been in love before. Not real love. It wasn't a good combination. An ambitious, tough lawyer. Best in law school, best at the firm. The woman was a poet – shy, sensitive. Don't ask me how they became close. Opposites attract, maybe. A secret romance in a Wall Street law firm. They worked together and started going out. They fell in love. She got pregnant and they were going to get married."

A moment passed and Reece seemed to be hefting the words to select among them. Finally he continued, "Wendall was working on a case one weekend, and he needed a paralegal. Linda'd cut way back on her hours – that's when she'd stopped working for me and Sean Lillick took over. But she still worked occasionally. She did a few assignments for Wendall Clayton and he got obsessed with her. One weekend in September he found out she was at her parents' summer house in Co