Supreme Justice

Chapter Sixty-five

Someone knocked on Brad’s office door. When he looked up, Gi

“This is a pleasant surprise,” he said. “Why aren’t you in the salt mine?”

Gi

“Remember you told me that you didn’t think I’d get in trouble at the firm because I took pictures of the TA Enterprises file?” Gi

“Sure. Masterson’s dead, and that associate…”

“Greg McKenzie.”

“Right, McKenzie. He’s not going to open his mouth. If he wants to make partner, McKenzie will want everyone at Rankin Lusk to forget how tight he was with Masterson, so he’s not going to talk about the TA Enterprises file. I think you can forget about the CIA, hashish, and ninja assassins and go back to worrying about your billable hours.”

Gi

She was quiet for a moment, and Brad could see that something was bothering her.

“I’m thinking of leaving Rankin Lusk,” Gi

“What brought this on?”

“When you said that McKenzie would try to distance himself from De

Brad looked the woman he loved in the eye. “Do you want to be associated with the type of people you’ve just described, regardless of the money?”

Gi

“We will be poor but honest, like characters in a Dickens novel.”

“Oliver Twist didn’t have student loans.”

Brad smiled. “We’ll be OK, kiddo. Between Justice Moss and Justice Kineer, we have enough heavyweights on our side to get work. And this time, look for something you really want to do. Don’t just think about the money. This is your second job at a huge law firm, and they’ve both left you with a sour taste in your mouth.”

“Your term on the Court is more than halfway through. Have you given any thought to what you’d like to do?”

“I guess I do have to start thinking about next year. The government doesn’t pay that well, but the work is exciting. I’m thinking the Justice Department or a job in the Congress.”

Gi

“No, what?”

“I do think we’ll be OK.”

Epilogue

Monte Pike sat in one of the conference rooms in the district attorney’s office with his jacket off, his sleeves rolled up, and his feet propped on a corner of the long table that dominated the room. Pike had put the Woodruff case on the back burner while he waited to see what the Supreme Court did. He had plenty of other cases to keep him occupied, and the four months it had taken for the Court to reverse had helped him to come at the case with fresh eyes.

Pike was reading the unanimous opinion of the Court, which held that the state-secrets privilege could not be used to keep exculpatory evidence from a defendant facing the death penalty. Pike knew that Mary Garrett was going to come at him with artillery blazing this time around, and he would be lucky if he got a conviction. He took a sip of his latte as he stared at the boxes that covered the table. They were the same boxes filled with evidence relating to Max Dietz that Garrett and Dana Cutler had gone through months ago. Bob Hunsacker had no idea what the women had been looking for. Now Pike was going to go through the boxes to see if he could figure out what had piqued Cutler’s and Garrett’s interest.

Pike finished the opinion and laid it beside his drink. He stared down the table at the boxes as if willing them to give up their secret.

“Where are you, little fella?” Pike asked the evidence. “Better tell me now and save yourself a lot of pain, ’cause you can run, but you can’t hide.”

Acknowledgments

Supreme Justice was a lot of fun to write because it gave me an excuse to tour the United States Supreme Court as part of my research. I argued a case there in 1978, but I was in my early thirties and only in my fifth year of practice and way too nervous to ask for a tour. My thanks to the Honorable Diarmuid O’Sca

My thanks to Professor Sue Deller Ross of Georgetown Law School for introducing me to former Supreme Court clerk Rebecca Tushnet, who answered my questions about a clerk’s daily routine. Thanks also to my son-in-law Andy Rome for hooking me up with Richard Bartlett, another former clerk. I also made good use of Edward Lazarus’s descriptions of the life of a Supreme Court law clerk in his book Closed Chambers (Crown, 1998).

I could not have written Supreme Justice without help from several experts: Brian Ostrom and Dr. Karen Gunson rode to the rescue once again by answering questions about medicine and science-areas in which I am woefully ignorant. Charles Gorder, Barry Sheldahl, and Fred Weinhouse helped me develop an issue that could, theoretically, come to the Court someday. Finally, the help of ship captain Sid Lewis was invaluable.

I don’t know about other authors, but I need a good editor to take my first draft and make it into a book that can be published. Sally Kim did an excellent job cleaning up my mess. Thanks also to Maya Ziv, her assistant; Jonathan Burnham; Heather Drucker; the HarperCollins sales force and art department; and all the others at HarperCollins who have given me so much support over the years.

I can never thank Jean Naggar, Je

And finally, I thank Doreen, my muse, who is always in my heart.