cigarette of the conference.
'Sorry,' Griffen apologized.
Kelly was wearing a loose, sleeveless, forest-green dress. She brushed her honey-colored hair off her forehead and gave Griffen a casual smile.
'No damage done,' Kelly said. Then she noticed Griffen's face and her smile faded. Kelly touched Griffen lightly on his forearm. He stopped.
'What's wrong?' Kelly asked in a low voice.
Griffen shook his head. 'It's nothing.'
Kelly shifted so her back screened their conversation from the other justices.
'Tell me what happened,' she demanded.
Griffen looked away. Kelly's grip tightened. When Griffen looked at her, his face reflected his confusion. He was about to reply when Arnold Pope entered the room.
'Your wife looked terrific, Bob,' he said maliciously. 'Too bad you had to miss her argument.'
Griffen paled, and Kelly looked at Pope as if he was an insect she'd found in her salad. At that moment, Frank Arriaga rushed in. He held up a sack from the deli across the street.
'Sorry, guys. My clerk was late with my fuel. Did I miss anything?'
'Relax, Frank.' Forbes smiled. Arriaga sat next to Vincent Lefcourt, who looked on with amusement as Arriaga pulled a huge glazed jelly doughnut out of his brown paper bag.
'We're all here, so let's get started,' Justice Forbes said.
'We can talk later,' Mary Kelly assured Griffen.
Forbes squared the stack of briefs in front of him.
'I was going to begin with you, Frank, but you've got that monstrosity stuffed in your mouth, so how about it, Vincent?
What's your take on the State ex rel. Franklin?'
Justice Sherzer needed a memo in the morning on a probate issue, but Tracy was so upset by what had happened in the library that she had trouble concentrating. At five o'clock, she decided to take a break and finish the memo after dinner.
Tracy's garden apartment was on the second floor of a two story complex half a mile from the court. She had been a top student in college and law school, but she would have failed housekeeping. The front door opened into a living room that had not been cleaned in a week.
Newspapers and mail were strewn across the sofa. Tracy rarely watched television, and her small black- and-white set was gathering dust in a corner. Tracy's rockclimbing equipment was well cared for, but it was piled high next to the television.
The apartment came furnished. The only marks Tracy had made on the personality of the place were several photographs detailing her athletic feats. One photo in the living room showed Tracy standing on a track in front of a grandstand with her hand gently touching the shoulder of a girl who was bent over from the waist. The two women were wearing Yale track uniforms. They had finished one-two in the 1,500 meters to clinch the Ivy League title and looked exhausted but triumphant.
Another photo showed Tracy climbing a snowcapped mountain. She was wearing a parka with the hood thrown back and was brandishing an ice ax over her head. A photo in the bedroom showed Tracy hanging upside down from a rockface on one of the more difficult ascents at Smith Rocks in eastern Oregon.
As soon as she arrived at her apartment, Tracy dumped her clothes on the bedroom floor and changed into her running gear.
Then she set off along a seven-mile loop she had mapped out when she moved to Salem.
As Tracy ran, she thought about the incident in the library.
She could not understand Laura's reaction. Laura disliked Justice Pope, so why would she protect him if he had made a pass at her?
Maybe there was some other explanation for what she had seen, but Tracy could not think of one that made sense. Something was definitely going on in Laura's life. Tracy remembered how drawn and pale Laura looked when she surprised Laura reading the Deems transcript. Laura's angry outburst in the library was in keeping with the agitated state in which Tracy had observed her during the past few days, but what was causing Laura's anxiety?
After her run, Tracy showered, then ate a Caesar salad with baby shrimp and two slices of a thick-crusted sourdough bread.
She threw the dirty dishes in the sink, then walked back to the courthouse across the Willamette University campus. In the daytime, the rolling lawns and old shade trees made Willamette a pleasant place to stroll. But at dusk, during summer break, the university was deserted.
Streetlights illuminated the walking paths, and Tracy stayed on them when she could. The temperature had dropped and a cool breeze chilled her. Halfway across campus, Tracy thought she saw someone move in the shadow of a building. She froze and stared into the dying light. The wind rustled the leaves. Tracy waited a moment, then walked on, feeling silly for being so skittish.
The Supreme Court was deserted when Tracy let herself in at seven-thirty. It was eerie being alone in the empty building, but Tracy had worked at night before. The clerks' offices ran along the side of the Supreme Court building that faced the Capitol. An open area dominated by a conference table stood between their offices and the mail room. The top of the conference table was littered with staplers, plastic cups, paper plates and law books.
No two chairs around the table were of the same type and none were in good repair. Behind the table was an alcove with a computer and the only printer. Scattered around the area were bookshelves, filing cabinets and a sagging couch. Tracy walked past the open area and down a short hall to her office. She found the notes she needed for the memo on the probate issue, turned off the lights in the clerks' area, and walked upstairs to the library.
A footnote in a law review article mentioned some interesting cases.
Tracy wandered around the stacks and found them. They led her to other cases and she became so absorbed in her work that she was surprised to discover it was almost ten o'clock when she was ready to write the memo.
Tracy gathered up her notes and turned off the library lights. Her footsteps echoed on the marble staircase, creating the illusion that someone else was in the building. Tracy laughed at herself. She remembered how jittery she'd been earlier in the evening when she walked across the Willamette campus. What had gotten into her?
Tracy opened the door to the clerks' area and stopped. She was certain all the lights had been off when she went up to the library, but there was a light on in Laura Rizzatti's office. Someone must have come into the building while she was upstairs.
'Laura?' Tracy called out. There was no answer. Tracy strained to hear any sound that would tell her she was not alone.
When she heard nothing, she looked in Laura's office. The drawers of Laura's filing cabinet were open and files were all over the floor.
Transcripts were scattered around. Someone had ransacked the office while Tracy was upstairs in the library.
Tracy reached for the phone to call Laura. The door to the clerks' area closed. Tracy froze for a moment, then darted to the door and pulled it open. There was no one in the hallway. She ran to the back door and looked through the glass. No one was in the parking lot. Tracy tried to calm down. She thought about reporting what had happened to the police. But what had happened?
Laura might have caused the mess in her office. That was not unreasonable, given the state Laura had been in recently. And she might have imagined hearing the door close. After all, she had not seen anyone in the building or the parking lot.
Tracy was too nervous to stay in the deserted courthouse. She decided to leave her notes and write the memo early in the morning. Tracy turned on the lights in the clerks' area and headed for her office. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something under the conference table.
Tracy stopped. A woman's leg stretched out into the light. The rest of the body was hidden in shadow. Tracy knelt down. The body was twisted as if the woman had tried to crawl away from her attacker. Blood ran through
