Final Appeal

“I’ll check if you have a fever.”

“You have to use the thing. The glass thing. Grandma says you can’t tell with your hand, not really.”

Thanks, Mom. “Maddie, I’ve never used a thermometer with you and I’ve never been wrong. I can tell with my hand.”

“No, you can’t. It’s not science.”

I look out the window into the night. The orange lights are twinkling again, running in thin strips to the river, the way they were that night. I was sitting right here, but tonight is different from before. It’s raining hard, a spring down-pour, and Armen is gone. The streets below glisten darkly.

“Mom?”

“Tell you what. Remember last week, how you wanted to wear your party dress to school and I said no?”

“The purple one?”

“Yes. Well, I’ll let you wear it tomorrow, just this one time, since it’s a special occasion.”

“What special occasion?”

I think of the case file; it’s in here somewhere. “We’ll make one up. Happy Thursday.”

“You’re silly.”

“I am. I get it from you.”

She giggles. “Mom, I have to go now. The commercial’s over.”

“What, are you watching TV? It’s after nine o’clock!”

“It’s Disney.”

“Disney is still TV. What happened to reading?”

“Just Donald Duck, then we have to turn it off.”

“All right, but after that it goes off. Now go get ready, you don’t want to be too late to bed.”

“Yes, I do,” she says, hanging up.

I press down the hook and am about to try Winn when I see a dark form reflected in the window. Someone must be in the doorway behind me. I hang up and twist around in my seat.

The gun is the first thing I see.

I scramble to pick up the phone.

  30

“Hang up, Grace,” Ben says. He closes the door behind him and locks it from the inside. “Hang up.”

The phone clatters uselessly onto the hook. “Ben?”

“Surprise! Did you find the file yet?”

“What? How—”

“Lexis. The computer saves the last search request, remember? I saw it after lunch when I logged back on. Nice search request, by the way. You’re improving.” He moves to the head of the conference table and points the gun at me.

I’m terrified. My mouth turns to cotton. No one is around. Eletha is at class. God knows where Winn is, or security. “How did you get that gun past the metal detector?”

“I took the judges’ elevator.” He smiles down at the gun, handling its heft with satisfaction. He looks strange, unhinged. “I bought this the other day. Isn’t it nice?”

“What are you doing, Ben?”

“It’s not what I’m doing. It’s what you’re doing.” He slips a finger inside his jacket, pulls out a small piece of white paper, and holds it up. “Your suicide note. Sign it.” He places the paper in front of a brown package that reads PHOTO OF A MOUNTAIN. “Oops, I almost forgot.” He puts a rollerball pen on top of the paper.

I don’t touch the letter or the pen. I can’t believe this is happening.

“Please sign, Grace. Make it easy on yourself.”

My own suicide note. A fake suicide. Oh, no. “Did you kill Armen, Ben?”

“Yes.”

I can barely catch my breath. I assumed wrong.

“I didn’t plan to, if that’s any consolation.”

“But why?” It comes out like a whisper.

“Why did I kill him? What’s the difference?

“I want to know, to understand.”

“I wanted that clerkship.”

I stare at the paper. It’s almost inconceivable. “You wanted a clerkship that bad? A job?”

“It’s the Supreme Court of the United States, Grace. I’ve been preparing for it my entire adult life. I’ll teach after that, then on to the appeals court. I intend to end up on the high court myself. I wasn’t about to let Hightower stand in my way.”

“It was Armen who stood in the way.”

He flinches slightly. “Sacrifices had to be made.”

Armen: a sacrifice for a young lawyer’s ambition. “But you could’ve gotten the clerkship anyway.”

“Why take a chance?”

I don’t understand. I feel sick with fear and dread. “You got the clerkship, so why this? Why me?”

“It’s your own fault. You were the one digging around. You dug up McLean, now there’s a glitch. It’s only a matter of time before he points the finger at me.”

“Did McLean kill Faber?”

“The reporter? Yes, at my suggestion. Faber was too close to finding out.”

Two men dead. I feel stunned. “Was McLean the one who hit me on the head?”

“No, that was me. Now open the letter and sign it. I want no question later that you wrote it.”

I feel myself break out into a sweat. The lethal black eye of the gun barrel is almost at my head; I think of the gunpowder star the detective found on Armen. “What does it say?”

“That you hired McLean to kill the reporter. You see, Faber had found out that you had killed the chief.”

I look up at him behind the large gun barrel. “Why would I kill Armen?”

“Sexual harassment is a terrible thing. He raped you that night in the office.”

“He did no such thing!”

A smug smile inches across his lips. “I heard. You were very willing, McLean said.”

“You—”

“Of course, McLean was all too happy to help you cover up the murder. He’s been nursing his hate for a decade. He thinks the chief ruined his life, so it didn’t take much convincing to get him on board. I bought him a few drinks and pointed him in the right direction.” He levels the gun at me. “Sign, please.”

I pick up the paper and unfold it. It’s neatly typed, and the last line makes me sick inside:

I love my daughter very much.

I stare at the paper. I love my daughter very much. Maddie. She’ll think I abandoned her. I know how that feels. I fight back the tears; I’d beg if it would do any good. “She needs me, Ben,” I said hoarsely.

“You were the one who wouldn’t let it lie.”

I look at the note. The typed letters seem to swim before my eyes against a vast backdrop of brown packages. PRAYER RUG. STATUE. ANOTHER STATUE. Then I remember the label on one of the other packages. BIG THING.

The cudgel. It’s on the chair by the window. Eletha called it a baseball bat. How will I reach it? I need time to think. Stall him.