books in Jefferson’s own hand, financial accounts. The man was a fanatic about keeping financial records. There are also manuscript volumes written by Jefferson. In addition to this, there are rare book manuscripts, part of Jefferson’s original library that was sold to Congress in 1814 after the Brits burned the capital in the War of 1812. A lot of controversy over that,” says Harry.
“What controversy?”
“Jefferson was getting on in years and teetering on the personal financial precipice when Congress paid him a lot of money for his library. People squawked. They thought it was too much, twenty-some-odd-thousand dollars. It doesn’t seem like much now, but back then it was a bundle. More than that,” says Harry, “the library was what you might call eclectic. It contained everything from philosophy to cookbooks. There were those in Congress who thought it included items that weren’t appropriate for a government library. According to Jefferson, if it was printed on paper and bound between two covers, it was a book, and that’s what libraries were made of. The man read everything.”
“So where do we start?”
“That’s why I called you in D.C.,” says Harry. “Congress formed a commission about eight years ago to digitize private presidential papers held in the Library of Congress, to put them on computers for access by the public. The group is called CEPP, short for Commission on Electronic Presidential Papers.”
“So?”
“So guess who the chairperson is.”
I shake my head.
“Arthur Ginnis. It seems history is one of his passions. They must have figured the commission could use somebody with his bona fides-a member of the Supreme Court.”
“Could have been just a ceremonial role,” I tell him.
“That’s a possibility, except for one thing,” says Harry. “ Scarborough ’s notes. The ones the cops seized from his Georgetown apartment.”
“What about them?”
“There are at least four references in Scarborough’s own hand to CEPP.”
“Yes.”
“And a note in one of the margins.” Harry hands me a photocopied page.
I study it. Double-spaced typed notes, some underlined in pen with interlineated handwritten notations I assume are Scarborough’s. Toward the bottom of the page, in the margin in ink, the words “get the letter from CEPP.” I read the typed notes in the body of the text. Scarborough is talking about the economics of slavery in Colonial America, where the most valuable import was Africans in bondage.
“Think about it,” says Harry. “If you’re Ginnis, you have an army of staff combing through piles of historic documents that no one has looked at in a long time. There’s no telling what you might find. What did she tell you?” Harry is talking about Trisha Scott.
“She knew about the letter,” I tell him. “She says Scarborough made reference to it in earlier drafts of the manuscript, before the book was published, but that this was all deleted because she says Scarborough couldn’t authenticate the letter. She claimed Ginnis wouldn’t know anything about it. That he wasn’t the source.”
“Did she tell you about his participation in this little venture?” Harry means CEPP.
“No.”
“You have to figure she clerked for him. A close friend, she must have known what he was involved in. So what do we have?” says Harry.
“A tiger by the tail,” I tell him. “A Supreme Court justice who probably won’t talk to us. Unless we can subpoena him.”
“That’ll be a neat trick,” says Harry, “getting through the phalanx of federal marshals that guard the Supreme Court building. And we don’t know what he’s gonna say.”
Harry is right.
“Let’s face it,” he says. “The letter is problematic. We don’t know what it’s worth on the open market. We don’t know whether someone might kill to get it, only that it’s a possibility. According to everything Bonguard and Scott told you, Scarborough only had a copy of the letter.”
“And that he may have had access to the original through someone else,” I add.
“Ginnis?”
“Maybe.”
“Still, we can’t prove that he had the original in his possession when he was killed,” says Harry. “Without that, you can’t prove motive for murder.”
“There is another possibility.”
“What’s that?” says Harry.
“That whoever killed Scarborough didn’t do it to get the letter.”
“Then why?”
“To keep its contents from being published.”
Harry gives me a quizzical look.
“Scarborough’s book, the language of slavery, the fact that this was still in the Constitution-these were known facts,” I tell him, “though not generally items of controversy until Scarborough mainlined them, put them up on a marquee, at which time they stirred up riots around the country.”
“So?”
“So people often don’t pay much attention to government until it hits them in the head like a two-by-four. Scarborough spelled it out in big letters, the continuing stigma, the national insult. If the letter is as explosive as he believed, there’s no telling what kind of fires it might ignite if it were published, especially in the kind of flammable prose used by Terry Scarborough. Not some dry scholarly work but a racial call to arms.”
“In which case it wouldn’t matter whether he had the original of the letter or a copy,” says Harry.
“Exactly.”
“But who would kill him for that?”
“Not our client,” I tell him.
“No,” says Harry. “Probably not.”
Harry and I have had our share of high-profile cases, but this one, tinged as it is by the issue of race, possesses an explosive quality all its own. To the extent possible, I have avoided the media, for there are obvious pitfalls here, questions the answers to which can be twisted to fit a dozen different political agendas.
This morning one of these has exploded on us like a roadside bomb during our trek to trial. In an effort to extinguish the flames from this, Harry and I meet with Carl Arnsberg at the jail. It is nearly seven in the evening, the first chance we’ve had to talk to him. Harry and I have been locked up in court all day with jury selection and pretrial motions.
Inside the closed cubicle, the little concrete conference room, Harry is first to erupt.
“Why the hell didn’t you tell us about these people? Surprises like this can lead to the death house. Who are they?” Harry’s face is flushed. He is angry.
Arnsberg avoids eye contact. “Friends,” he says.
“Why didn’t you tell us about them?”
“Didn’t think it was important,” says Arnsberg. He is sitting at a small stainless-steel table that is bolted to the floor, his head resting in his hands as he gazes down at its scratched surface.
“Not important?” Harry’s voice rises a full octave. “Lemme ask you. Do you know what they’re saying?” Harry looks at him.
“No.”
“They’re saying that you talked openly about kidnapping Scarborough, that you tried to talk the two of them into helping you. And that this all took place just two days before Scarborough was killed.”
“It’s not true.” For the first time, Arnsberg’s gaze comes up from the table. He looks at Harry straight on. “That’s a lie. I never asked anybody to help me. I was only talking.”
“We have their statement,” says Harry.
“I don’t care what you have. It’s a lie.”
It is a game played by prosecutors: Bury the needle in a stack of other needles. In reply to our request for
