Final Appeal

brain churning.

The marshals look grim at their stations behind the security desk and at the X-ray machine. They have to know about McLean’s arrest. Ray is nowhere in sight, only Jeff. He barely nods as I walk through the detector. I head upstairs alone and unlock the door to my office. I want to do some research on Lexis before going into chambers.

The joke is on me.

I open the door to my office and it isn’t there anymore.

The bookshelves, previously full of duplicate case reports and green pebbled volumes of Pennsylvania statutes, are empty. Dismantled overnight. The rug has been torn up, exposing a cement floor covered with yellowed streaks of sticky gum. All the furniture is gone; only my desk and computer remain, not counting the view.

I’m gutting your office, Galanter said. He even paid overtime. He must really like me.

I step through the tacky goop, my pumps sticking at the soles, until I reach my desk. I sit with my feet stuck straight out until I find a legal pad to rest them on. At least my papers and computer are still there. I log on to Lexis and the modem sings to me. A glittering double helix comes on, the logo of the legal research company. Don’t ask me why.

WELCOME TO LEXIS! says the screen. Machines greet us everywhere in the modern workplace; it’s the people we can’t find. PLEASE TYPE IN YOUR SEVEN DIGIT IDENTIFICATION NUMBER.

I watch the polite sentence disappear. Ben, computer maven, has rigged it so we don’t have to log on each time. The only downside is you have to erase the last user’s research.

YOUR LAST SEARCH REQUEST WAS FREE SPEECH AND ARTNETT. DO YOU WANT TO CONTINUE WORKING ON IT? Y OR N?

Probably Sarah’s. I press N, then punch in GENFED, then 3CIR, to retrieve only cases in the Third Circuit.

The screen says, READY FOR YOUR SEARCH REQUEST.

“Give me a minute, whiz,” I tell it. I’m not as speedy on this program as I should be; Lexis was born about the same time Maddie was, and my refresher training’s no match for a 486 chip. I squeeze my eyes shut and think. Assume Armen decided a case when McLean was a cop, and McLean was a witness of some kind. That means I need cases that will contain both names. I open my eyes and type in AL MCLEAN AND WRITTENBY (GREGORIAN).

In a nanosecond the screen says, YOUR REQUEST HAS FOUND NO CASES.

Shit. So there’s two possibilities: a dry hole or a lousy drill. Guess which is likelier. I double-check the search request. Wrong. Al’s name is probably Albert, or Alan. If he testified in court he would use the more formal name. I type in AL! MCLEAN AND WRITTENBY (GREGORIAN). It should retrieve all incarnations of Al imaginable. I sit back, proud of myself.

Not for long. YOUR REQUEST HAS FOUND NO CASES.

Damn it! I sigh at the computer. It’s in there somewhere, I feel it. Every judge has enemies; they make at least one with each case. In desperation, I type in MCLEAN AND WRITTENBY (GREGORIAN).

The computer says, YOUR REQUEST HAS FOUND ONE CASE.

“Yes!” One case is all I need. Excited, I squint at the template above the keys and hit .fd, which is computer for gimme gimme gimme!

Clermont v. Brewster comes up. An old case, 1983. Armen was on the panel and wrote the opinion. But it’s not a criminal matter. I don’t understand.

I type in .fu, which stands for full case and not what it usually stands fo.

The case comes up in full. I type .np to get to the next page, then the next, deflating slightly with each new screen of white-on-blue text. There’s no police testimony in it at all; it’s a medical malpractice case. A woman, Elaine Brewster, sued a doctor for not diagnosing her skin cancer early enough to save her life. A jury awarded her a whopping $15 million. On appeal, the Third Circuit reversed. Armen, writing for the panel, found the evidence of the doctor’s negligence was insufficient to go to a jury, a sympathy vote but legally indefensible.

I hit .np and the next page pops onto the screen.

Then I see it. Highlighted in bright yellow by the computer.

Mr. McLean.

A man who testified in the trial court about the plaintiff’s pain and suffering, but not in his capacity as a cop. He testified that the plaintiff had been a beautiful woman, spunky enough to keep her own name after marriage. Elaine Clermont. The disease reduced her to an invalid, her skin blackened and eaten away.

The woman was his wife.

McLean lost his wife to cancer and he lost $15 million to Armen. That’s it.

I ease back into my chair, staring at the screen. I should be happy, but I’m not. Too much pain, too much death. I imagine McLean going to Armen’s to kill him. Bernice would have known McLean from the courthouse. So would Armen; he would have let him in without question. But Armen wouldn’t have remembered McLean from a ten-year-old case. He never saw McLean testify in the first place; the appellate court bases its decisions on a record. Armen would have assumed McLean was his protector. He would have assumed wrong.

But why would McLean wait ten years to get Armen? I don’t know the answer, but I intend to find out.

My hand is shaking as I pick up the phone to call Winn. It’s not hard to convince the young girl who answers the phone that I’m Winn’s cousin, I sound pretty depressed. I tell Winn the story and after he gets over the initial surprise, his tone turns cautious. “How do we know it’s the same McLean?” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“You said the computer searches the name exactly, right?”

“Right.”

“So how do we know it’s the same man?”

“How many Mr. McLeans can there be who had a case before Armen?”

“Maybe one, but that’s not the point. The question is, can we charge this McLean just because a guy with the same name had a motive to kill Armen?”

“But it’s him.”

“McLean is a common name.”

“Not really.” It sounds feeble, even to me. I went to high school with one.

“Does it at least say he was a cop?”

I scroll through the case. “No. It identifies him as the husband, that’s all. He’s only mentioned in the opinion for a paragraph.”

“Does it say his age?”

“No. But the wife was thirty at the time. That would be about right.”

“Only if you assume she married a man about her age, but an assumption’s not enough to charge a man with murder. The whole thing could be a coincidence. After all, why would McLean wait ten years to kill him? Can’t we verify it somehow, get the actual record instead of just the opinion?”

Of course. I should have thought of that. “The record will have the trial transcripts, all his testimony. Address, work history, the whole thing.”

“Where’s the record now?”

“The case was from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, so the record would be downstairs in the district court file room. It’s in this building, unless it’s archived.”

“Can you get it? I mean without your standard B and E.”

I smile. “We order district court records all the time. We call on the phone, they deliver them to chambers.”

“When will you have it?”

“In four hours.”

“Four hours? I thought you said the file room was downstairs.”

“This is the federal government. They have to fill out forms and type up receipts. If I went downstairs and got it myself, I’d have the answer in fifteen minutes.”

“Do it the normal way. I want everything by the book.”