Dirty Blonde

“I would. Thanks.”

“You’re going to represent yourself?” Meriden burst into loud laughter. Cate didn’t like his noise as much as her noise.

“Looks that way. Nobody else wants the job, and I used to be passable at the trial thing.” Cate shelved another casebook. She didn’t need to refer to the fact that she’d kicked his ass, because she was above that now.

“You’re so self-righteous. For a whore.”

“Guilty.” Cate smiled. Even that slur couldn’t trouble her Zen waters. All her secrets having been told, they lacked superpowers.

“This is ridiculous, what’s happening here!” Meriden said, raising his voice, and Cate unpacked another casebook. Thud!

“On that we agree. My working, you watching. Why don’t you help me unpack? Open that box in front of you.”

“I’m calling the marshals.”

“Go ahead, use my phone. Tell ’em I said hi.” Cate gestured at Val’s desk, near him. “But after hours, they don’t have the manpower to answer phones. It’d be faster to go down and get Tony.”

“Is that the way you want it?” Meriden shouted. “You want that indignity? Don’t you ever get enough of embarrassing yourself? They’ll throw you out, bodily!”

“I doubt that. You have no authority to order them to do anything, and my body is way better than yours.” Cate unpacked another book, Prosser on Torts. She had loved that class.

“We’ll see about that.” Meriden turned on his heel and stormed through the reception room, out of chambers, letting the door slam behind him.

Cate smiled and stuck Prosser, thick and green, on the shelf. Thud! She had maybe ten minutes before they came up. God knew what would happen then. She reached for another book.

But only three minutes later, the door to chambers opened again.

CHAPTER 48

“I’m in here, gentlemen,” Cate called from her office, examining her casebooks on the shelves. They made a nice, neat hardback row, and she ran her index fingers along the pebbled spines. She hadn’t seen them since law school, which may have been the last time she’d thought that she loved the law-until now. She’d have time to study it now, as an intellectual exercise, and to affect its development as a code of conduct for the governance of a society. She couldn’t imagine any job more exciting and important. It would more than make up for not being in court anymore, as a trial lawyer. Now, the action would be on the bench, merely a change of venue.

Cate reached in the box for another casebook. Heavy and red, clothbound with gold stripes on the spine: Antitrust Law by Areeda amp; Turner. She placed it on the shelf and reached in the box for a bookend, a bas-relief of Carpenter Hall, in brass. Then she remembered. Somebody had come in. So where were they? Maybe they hadn’t heard her.

“Hello?” Cate called out, holding the bookend. No sound came from the reception area. Her chambers were quiet. She felt a tingle of something. Suddenly, a dark head popped in the doorway, and Cate jumped, startled. “Emily! I thought you went home.”

“No. Did I scare you?”

“I thought it might be Meriden.”

“He’s gone. I saw him go down the judges’ elevator.” Emily entered the office, and her dark eyes shone with wetness, as if she’d been crying. She wore her dark raincoat and a long black skirt with her Doc Martens, and after a minute, she pulled something from her coat pocket. A black semiautomatic, its barrel lengthened by a silencer.

Cate blinked. “I don’t understand. Is this a joke?”

“You figured it out, didn’t you?”

“What did I figure out?”

“That I killed Simone.”

“What?” Cate couldn’t believe her ears. She froze, bookend in hand.

“I was standing at Val’s desk when she called you. You told her you figured out the real killer.”

“I did. Micah Gilbert.” Cate’s mouth went dry. Emily holding a gun, with a silencer?

“I don’t believe you. You knew it was me.”

“No, I thought it was Micah. It isn’t Micah? She had an affair with Simone. I even know where she bought the gun.” Cate remembered that her celebrity gun sat uselessly in a shopping bag. Not that she’d bought bullets, anyway.

“You really didn’t know? I mean, I never thought it would get this far.” Emily’s eyes went newly wet, and she raised the gun higher.

“No. Wait. What do you mean?” Cate suppressed the urge to panic. “Explain this to me. You owe me that. I thought we were friends.”

“Art Simone called me at home, after the pretrial. He said he’d pay me. All I had to do was call Micah and let her know when you were leaving chambers at night. So that she could follow you.” Emily’s Goth mascara began to run, her eyelashes turned to spiders. “I need the money really bad, you know that. I have school loans and no offer. He said he’d hook me up with the network’s legal department.”

Keep her talking. She’s already in a state. “So what happened?”

“He wanted more details, like what you wore, or how you looked the next day, after you’d been out. I said no, I wanted to end it but he said he’d tell you.”

“How’d you do it?” Where were Meriden and the marshals?

“I followed him to dinner and I shot him.” Emily’s eyes brimmed over, running black tears. “I had to. My family depends on me. You remember that day, when we talked about people and their dreams? This is their dream. I am their dream.”

“What about Marz?” What was taking them so long?

“I had to do it. After what happened in court, I knew it was my chance. His phone numbers were on the pleadings, and I called him on the cell. I told him to meet me, that I had inside info.” Emily sniffled. “He was so drunk, it was easy to make it look like a suicide.”

“How did you get the gun past the metal detectors?”

“The judges’ elevator. I went in and out with everybody for Judge Meriden’s birthday. When they went to lunch, I went to the gun store.” Emily’s eyes brimmed over, and a black tear rolled down her cheek. “I didn’t want to, Judge, but I had to. Or thought I had to, because of what you told Val, that you figured it out.”

“I would never think it was you,” Cate said softly. Her own emotions bubbled to the surface and she used them to her advantage. “Jeez, Em. You would really hurt me? Kill me?”

“I have to, to end it.” Emily sobbed and raised the gun higher, giving a panicky Cate her answer.

“Wait! No. Please, Em.” Cate heard sheer desperation in her voice. She had run out of time. The stalling wasn’t working. “You can’t do this. It’ll only make things worse. They’ll know it was you.”

“No, they won’t. Val thinks I went home. No one knows I’m still in the building. I’ve been hiding in the bathroom. The cleaning people already went through, and I’m staying the night. Tomorrow morning, I’ll be the one who finds you dead.”

My God. Cate’s fingers tightened around the bookend. She would get one shot.

Emily squinted, taking aim. “Sorry, Judge.”

CHAPTER 49