“Oh no,” Callie said. “Oh no. Stewart was damned either way. I guess I’m glad he didn’t know. Can you imagine what it would be like to know you were dying of cancer, that you’d be gone in six months?”
“Agents will be speaking to his doctors, see if he did know, but kept it to himself.”
Callie leaned her head against the seat back. “Poor poor Stewart.” She started crying, silently, tears rolling down her face. The dreadful irony of it. It was like losing him all over again.
BENRAVEN LOOKED around at the TV vans in front of Justice Sumner Wallace’s 1960s single-level home, and the three cars parked at the curb. “I wonder where the federal marshals are. Would you look at all the media.” He pulled his white Ford Crown Victoria, sedate on the outside, lots of muscle under the hood, in front of the house. Reporters jumped out of the cars and ran toward them.
Ben ignored them, looked over at the sprawling brick-and-wood house set back in the woods. “Even if you yelled, the neighbors wouldn’t hear you. It feels like we’re in the sticks somewhere, not in a corner of Chevy Chase.”
Ben and Callie climbed out of the car, trudged through the snow-covered sidewalk toward the front door, still ignoring the reporters. By the time they were halfway up the walk, the reporters had swarmed. Ben didn’t stop walking, just pulled out his badge, held it high, waved it in their faces, and shouted, “We have no comment at this time. We don’t have any news for you.”
The snow had thickened a bit. Callie kept her head down, hoping none of the reporters would recognize her.
It was not to be. “Hey, Markham, what are you doing here? I know Justice Califano was your uncle or something, but how come you get to go in with the cop?”
“Hey, sorry, Markham, but can you tell us—”
“What idiots,” she said under her breath, but at least two reporters caught her words. She continued to ignore all of them as best she could, just as Detective Raven did. The microphones were no longer in her face for the simple reason that Ben gave them all a look that could kill. That backed them up a foot, but no more.
“Why don’t you threaten them with your gun?”
“Doesn’t work. I tried it once, but as I recall, they laughed at me. You don’t make a threat unless you can back it up. That’s what my dad always said.”
“Your dad was a cop?”
“Oh yeah. Now he’s private. He’s a riot, finds humor in every case he takes. Once he was dealing with a real badass, but he told me how the guy broke out in hives whenever he visited his mother. He’s very successful. My father, not the badass.”
She blinked up at him and smiled, despite herself. She tuned out the reporters’ yells behind them. “I remember a lot of laughter, too, when my dad was alive. You’re lucky, Ben.”
“That depends. How would you like to have four siblings, all of them older than you, all of them obnoxious and nosy, always in your business, always trying to set you up with blind dates? I’ve had dreams of being an only child, like you.”
She laughed. “None of us are ever satisfied with what we’ve got. Like you’ve got this slight curl in your hair that’s real sexy, and you wear it a little on the long side that makes it even sexier, while I have this straight-as-a-board hair—”
His hair was sexy? Because he wore it too long? “I suppose you’re fishing for a compliment, aren’t you? However, since you’re perfectly able to see yourself in a mirror and know—well, never mind that. Nearly there, just keep walking.”
A TV reporter who’d had to wait for his cameraman to catch up to him yelled, “Hey, Callie, how do you feel about your stepfather being murdered in the Supreme Court?”
Callie stopped in her tracks. “That’s just too much.” She took a step toward the reporter, ready to do battle.
Ben grabbed her arm, said close to her ear, “Just be quiet. You’re already a story to them by yourself. Ignore them, keep your head down. In a minute we’ll be inside.”
Ben rang the doorbell and called out, “It’s Detective Ben Raven of the Metro Police. Please let us in.”
Ben knew they were being closely observed, and he held his badge to the peephole. Three shouted questions later, the door finally cracked open, and Ben was eyeball to eyeball with a federal marshal. They exchanged badges without saying a word.
Callie said, “We wondered where you were.” She saw another federal marshal standing behind him, and an older woman with a tired face peering over his shoulder. “Come in quickly, Detective Raven, Miss, before those jackasses try to knock you down to try to get to Justice Wallace,” said Federal Marshal Ted Ricks. The federal marshal behind Ricks cracked his knuckles. “Yeah, hurry it up.”
Ricks said, “They’ve been lurking for about two hours now. We figured inside was the most useful place to be.” He grinned. “And the warmest.”
The older woman stepped up. “Justice Wallace thought to speak to them, but he decided he prefers a more dignified setting. We’re locked up tight in here, prisoners in our own home. My husband is in his study.”
Ben introduced himself to her when the two federal marshals stepped out of the way. Naturally Mrs. Wallace knew Callie. Ben said quickly, “Ms. Markham isn’t working for the Post on this, ma’am. She’s along to help.”
“I’m sorry about your stepfather, Callie,” Mrs. Wallace said. “Very sorry for all of us really, especially poor Sumner, who’s naturally devastated.” Callie could only nod and took her hands. There was strength and comfort in them. Mrs. Wallace was wearing old black wool pants, a baggy Redskins sweatshirt, and house slippers. Whenever Callie had seen her before, she’d been dressed to the teeth, an elegant, well-coiffed woman who knew her own worth. But now all she looked was exhausted. Callie knew that Beth Wallace and her mother got along well, although Callie didn’t know how close they were. It was Callie who remembered to take off her coat and wipe her boots on the small rug inside the front door. Ben followed her lead. Callie hung up their coats in the front closet. Mrs. Wallace gestured down the hallway. “Both of you, come along now.” The federal marshals remained by the front door, Ricks looking out the peephole at the reporters milling around.
Mrs. Wallace led them down a long hallway. Every wall, every surface, was covered with Art Deco art and artifacts from the 1930s. Their footsteps sounded loud on the oak floors, echoing up to the twelve-foot ceiling.
“Sumner is devastated by this,” Mrs. Wallace said again, as if there were simply no other words available to her, “as you can well imagine.” She paused a moment, drew herself up, knocked on a door at the end of the hall, and immediately opened it.
The room was dark. Mrs. Wallace sighed, walked into the gloom, and turned on a lamp. It sent out a circle of stark light, and in the center of that circle sat an older man on a small sofa, perfectly upright, his hands clasped between his legs, eyes staring straight ahead.
“Justice Wallace,” Ben said as he walked to the man, his badge out. “I’m Detective Ben Raven from the Metro Police. I’d like to speak to you, sir.”
Justice Wallace slowly turned his head to look up at Ben. Then he looked beyond him to Callie. “Callie? What are you doing here? Why are you with this police officer?”
“I’m not here as a reporter, sir. I’m here as part of my stepfather’s family.”
Slowly, Justice Wallace rose, walked to Callie, and took her in his arms. She was nearly as tall as he was. He felt strong as an ox, she thought as she hugged him tightly. “Stewart was a fine man, a fine Justice,” he said, his voice choking. “Dear God, I will miss him.” He hugged her more tightly.
Callie wanted to cry; it was odd, but what held her back was the thought that this man had actually made a pass at her mother, the wife of another Justice who was supposed to be his best friend. So she merely comforted him as best she could, wondering if he was bitterly sorry now for what he’d done.
After a few more moments, Justice Wallace straightened. His shoulders went back. His bearing was once again that of a Justice of the Supreme
Court, strong and in control.
He turned to Ben. “Won’t you sit down, Detective? Beth, would you please get us coffee?”
Callie didn’t want any coffee, but Mrs. Wallace had already turned away.
“Why are you here, Detective? Where is the FBI? As you saw, we already have two federal marshals to guard us. From a murder attempt or to protect us from the media, I don’t know. Do you?”
“I would say both, sir,” Ben said. “As for the FBI, they’ll be here to talk to you, Justice Wallace. I’m part of the team put together by the Bureau. I really appreciate you seeing me. If you don’t mind, sir, any information you could give me about Justice Califano would be helpful.”
Justice Wallace sighed. “So many guards, so much security assigned to keep us safe. How could this have happened? In the Supreme Court Building, the bedrock of the rule of law in our nation, the symbol of freedom and balance in our government?”
Now that was eloquent, Ben thought, a lot more statesmanlike than hitting on Margaret Califano. Ben decided there was no reason for him not to tell him. “It appears that the killer knew one of the guards would go outside for a smoke. He hit him on the head, took his uniform, and came right back in. It was after midnight, quiet, and unfortunately he succeeded.” It was a lousy excuse, Ben knew, but it was the truth. “Justice Wallace, I understand you were Justice Califano’s closest friend. Did you notice anything different about him on Friday? Or during the past week? Did Justice Califano appear distracted, perhaps worried about something?”
“No, not at all. Stewart appeared the same as always on Friday, and throughout the week as well. I knew he didn’t want to revisit the death penalty in the upcoming case, but then again, neither did I.”
“Why would that be, sir?”
“He believed it wasn’t a good case for the anti-death-penalty people to use since this sixteen-year-old boy had murdered three people in a particularly brutal manner. Still, he hadn’t made up his mind about overturning the ruling they’d made in 1989. The liberal Justices wanted to swing him around to their way of thinking to gain a plurality. There was lots of maneuvering. I don’t know what Stewart would have ended up deciding to do.”
“But you don’t believe he was in the Supreme Court Library to think about this particular case?”
“It’s possible. Whenever Stewart wanted to be alone to think, to study a case or a contentious issue like this one, he went to the library. He simply felt an affinity for it. He enjoyed being among those thousands of books that give us the roots of what we are as a people. They helped focus his mind, he said, on the meaning of his work.”
“Do you have any idea who could have killed him?”
Justice Wallace began rubbing his hands together, like Lady MacBeth, Callie thought, and wasn’t that a strange image to appear in her mind? He said finally, his voice slow and thoughtful, very much like a Justice rendering an opinion, “No, there was no one, either in his past or in the present, that I know of.”
“Do you know of anything on a more personal level that was bothering Justice Califano? Some disagreement he’d recently had? Some argument?”
“No, naturally not. Stewart was very well liked. He was happily married. He had a stepdaughter everybody likes.” He sent something close to a smile in Callie’s direction.
“You were his best friend, sir?”
“For many years. We both went to Harvard Law. In those years, we drank too much, spent too much time in clubs.” He fell silent, sighed.
For the good old days? Ben had to remind himself that the Justices of the Supreme Court had once been young and that meant doing stupid things, but it was still tough to believe. Justice Wallace was one of the Supremes, so high up he could call the President by his first name.
It was time to move on, time to go to the meat of the matter. He thought of what Savich had said to him. “Remember, Ben, any of the Justices could probably have you taken out and shot, so be diplomatic, be respectful.” Well, this wasn’t going to be respectful at all. Ben could almost hear the firing squad readying their rifles, but he formed the words in his mind and managed to get them out of his mouth. “Would you tell me, sir, whether you’ve been personally involved with Margaret Califano?”
Justice Wallace’s eyes flashed. What? Rage? Embarrassment? No, not embarrassment, but what? Astonishment that he’d been observed and was being called on it? That was probably it. His face paled a bit as he drew in a long, slow breath. Ben prepared himself to be lambasted, possibly threatened. He was aware that Callie was staring intently at Justice Wallace.
But all the Justice said was, “That’s ridiculous.”
“Yes, of course it’s ridiculous,” said Mrs. Wallace from the door. “How dare you, young man, intimate such a thing? You are speaking to a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.”
Ben wanted to apologize, but he held himself still. He looked briefly at Callie. She was still staring at Justice Wallace’s face, not moving.
Beth Wallace wasn’t through. “The thought that Sumner would ever do anything like that, it’s nonsense. Both Stewart and Margaret were our friends, both of them. It is also an insult to me, Detective. My husband is faithful to me, always has been. And to ask such a thing at this time, in the context of Stewart’s death—it’s reprehensible.” The silver tray she carried trembled in her hands. Callie quickly jumped to her feet and took the tray.
Ben wished Mrs. Wallace could have remained out of sight for two minutes more. Well, damn. Her timing couldn’t have been worse. And that was all he was going to get—a denial. He nodded as he said, “Please let me apologize to both of you. There are some questions a policeman is forced to ask even though he doesn’t want to. To return to Justice Califano’s professional career. Can you think of anyone who hated Justice Califano enough to kill him?”
“Of course not,” Justice Wallace said without hesitation. “If there were ever such a question, any threatening correspondence, for example, it was forwarded to the FBI immediately. They always follow through on such things. Of all the Justices, Stewart was least likely to receive hate mail. Realize, Detective, that the nine of us spend most of our time in the Supreme Court Building. We’re not out haranguing defense lawyers or sentencing criminals, haven’t been for many years.”
There was a moment of tense silence, then Justice Wallace said, “You don’t believe this was a terrorist act, do you, Detective?”
“I don’t know, sir. And since we don’t know, that’s why you have two federal marshals assigned to guard you. They will remain until we’ve solved this case. Now, sir, for our information, and with my apologies, would you please tell me where you were last night?”
Justice Wallace raised an eyebrow and said, “Both my wife and I were home last night, playing bridge with our next-door neighbors, the Blairs. They left at around midnight. Isn’t that right, Beth?”
Beth Wallace nodded. “Then we went to bed.” She looked down at the beautiful silver coffeepot no one had touched. “It does occur to me to mention Eliza Vickers. She was Stewart’s senior law clerk. She isn’t a very nice woman.”
Justice Wallace frowned at his wife. “There’s nothing to say about her, Beth.” When she attempted to open her mouth again, he said over her, “Eliza is one of the most effective law clerks at the Court. She was always locking horns with Stewart, always debating, especially when she really cared about something. She would nearly hold him prisoner in his office when she wanted to bring him around to her way of thinking.” He sighed. “She was with him nearly a year and a half. He could speak of nothing but keeping her on with him beyond two years, something that’s very rare.”
Beth Wallace said, venom in her voice, “She disliked him, I know it for a fact.”
Now this exchange was peculiar, Callie thought. She said, “Mrs. Wallace, why do you think that?”
“It’s nonsense,” Justice Wallace said, before his wife could speak. “You rarely visited the Court. How would you know?”
&n
bsp; “Tai Curtis, one of your own law clerks, told me, Sumner.”
Justice Wallace looked embarrassed, but he managed a dry laugh, waved his hand in dismissal. “Ah, Tai dislikes her because she’s a better law clerk than he is. Forget her, Beth.”
Mrs. Wallace looked at the coffeepot. She said nothing more.
They took a respectful leave of Justice Sumner Wallace and his wife, and shook hands with the federal marshals who were still standing near the front door. Ben was already plotting when he could speak to Mrs. Wallace alone. The reporters were still outside when they left, shouting questions, but all they got for it was a quickly pressed-together snowball that Callie hurled at one of the reporters. She hit him in the head.
“I always say to make use of what’s available to you,” Ben said. “Not a bad shot.”
Callie gave a quick bow to the laughing reporters, and got into the car. “Where are we going now?” She was staring through the veil of snow at the face of Bob Simpson of Fox, a man she’d turned down some months before, which hadn’t made him very happy. She gave him a little finger wave. “Others will come to interview Justice Wallace?”
“Oh yeah,” he said, carefully easing the Crown Vic onto the street.
Callie hung on to the chicken strap, and watched the world slide by. Fortunately there weren’t many cars out, Washingtonians evidently living up to their reputations for self-preservation.
“I’m taking you back to Colfax. Then I’m going to the Hoover Building. We’re having our first big organizational meeting. I’ve never been involved in something this explosive, but—”
He shut up like a spigot.