The Outsider

by Anthony Franze

  The chief called them in and the four clerks stood at his desk—opera music filling the air from an iPod docking station nearby—as he read the short memo.

  Without saying a word, the chief pressed a button on his office phone and dialed. He had it on speaker so the clerks could hear. It rang several times until finally there was a voice on the other end.

  “I was wondering when you’d call,” the voice said. It was Justice Wall. It sounded like he was on a cell phone, driving perhaps.

  “Peter, I have you on speaker, and my clerks are here,” the chief said.

  “Wonderful,” Wall replied, a tinge of sarcasm.

  “I’m hoping you’re going to do the right thing tonight.”

  “Save the cop killer because the needle may hurt a little?”

  The chief rolled his eyes. “It’s not just ‘a little,’ and you know it. And there’s credible evidence he’s innocent.”

  Wall guffawed at that.

  The chief continued, “Anton Troy’s poor, black, and with a seventy IQ. Convicted in a broken Alabama system based on the testimony of a jailhouse informant, who’s recanted. His trial lawyer was twenty-seven years old, and it was his first death case.”

  “The appeal isn’t about his guilt or innocence—or the effectiveness of his counsel—he’s had many, many appeals on those issues, and he’s lost them all,” Wall said. “Every single one over the past twenty years.”

  Lauren reached over the chief’s desk and pointed to something on the memo. The chief glanced at the document, then said, “Since you’re mentioning the timing, twenty years on death row—living two decades with a death sentence hanging over his head—the delay alone should constitute cruel and unusual punishment.”

  Wall barked a laugh. “He caused the delays with all these appeals. Your argument is akin to the man who kills his parents and then pleads for mercy on the grounds that he’s an orphan.”

  The chief justice looked at his clerks and shook his head.

  “I’m sorry,” Justice Wall said. “You should call Cutler, maybe you’ll have better luck … if I don’t get to her first.” The phone clicked off.

  The chief massaged his temples as the opera singer’s voice rose to a crescendo. Douglas looked at the old grandfather clock in his chambers. “There’s not much time. I’m going to try Justice Cutler. Thank you for your hard work.” He was politely kicking them out of his office. Gray left chambers knowing that the chief would be fighting for Anton Troy’s life. All they could do now was wait.

  CHAPTER 13

  It was nearly three in the morning, and Gray and his co-clerks went outside for some air. The marble portico was lit up by floodlights built into the facade. Already word had spread, and the protesters were filling the plaza with their candles and singing and cardboard signs. Some disheveled reporters, called in from home, were filming the scene.

  It was odd because this case, this terrible event, was the first time Gray felt like he belonged, and some guilt accompanied that. The four of them didn’t say much, though Keir griped that Mike had been a no-show. Justice Cutler’s clerks were also outside, huddled in a small circle, occasionally shooting glances at them.

  Gray and his co-clerks sat on the marble steps, staring out at the warm white glow of the Capitol dome. Should he be praying? Should they be doing something? As a marshal’s aide, he’d heard about the death stays, but it was always just an abstraction. He’d assumed, like much of the public, that if the defendant was found guilty, he’d probably done something horrific and deserved to die. In fact, Gray’s duties working on the cert pool memos analyzing death penalty cases had hardened his views on capital punishment. The petitions contained the stories of monsters. Men who had raped and murdered children. Men who had taken pleasure in the torture of innocents. But the chief’s opposition to capital punishment caused Gray to think about the issue in a new light. The chief was the smartest man he’d ever met, and if he thought the death penalty should be thrown out, who was Gray to disagree? Yet Anton Troy had received a trial, multiple appeals, and that cop’s family …

  At 3:24 a.m., a cell phone bleated. First one phone, then another, until a cacophony of phones rang out in the night. The final vote was in. Gray stood and stared at the words carved above the portico. EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW. The gravity of the job was hitting him. He wasn’t being melodramatic. The next few minutes truly meant life or death for Anton Troy.

  They all darted through the six-ton bronze front doors, which the officers had slid open after-hours especially for the clerks, and ran through the Great Hall into chambers.

  They knew the outcome by the look on the chief’s face.

  “I’m proud of you all,” he said. “But the vote is the vote.”

  Gray felt his face flush. It was hard to swallow.

  The clerks soon gathered in the courtyard huddled around an iPhone, following tweets of a local Alabama newspaper’s live coverage of the execution. It should have taken only a few minutes to kill Anton Troy, but it went on for nearly an hour—an hour in which Troy writhed in pain, an hour of his convulsing and gasping for breath. The final indignity for Anton Troy came at 4:29 a.m.: the world was first informed of his death via Twitter.

  Gray didn’t remember the reaction of the others. The sound of that knock on the chief’s door just kept echoing through his head.

  Clunk, clunk, clunk.

  Nails in a coffin.

  Gray headed to the public restroom off the Great Hall. He went inside the stall and shut and locked the door. He sat on the toilet tank, feet on the closed lid, and put his face into his hands. And he cried. He hadn’t let it out like that since his mom had told him about his father’s cancer returning. But, unlike for Dad, there’d be no happy ending tonight. He knew it was an overreaction. The stress of the new position, the lack of sleep. He didn’t know how long he was in there, but the lights—set on motion detectors—at some point clicked off.

  When he finally left the stall, the lights came back on and he caught his reflection in the mirror. Bloodshot eyes, cheeks puffy and flushed. He ran cold water and leaned over the sink, splashing his face. He needed to compose himself. He didn’t need to give Keir or the others more ammunition against him. He’d Googled that “Snuffy the Seal” thing. It referred to a commercial for Discovery Channel’s Shark Week. The ad was of a fake local news report about efforts to save an injured seal. As rescuers lowered Snuffy back into the ocean, a great white shark jumped out of the water and devoured the seal. Gray was no expert on metaphors, but he got the point.

  Ten minutes later, as he waited outside for his Uber, he wondered how many times this very scene had happened. How many Anton Troys denied their last hope? How many law clerks crying in the bathroom? In the two thousand law clerks since Justice Horace Gray hired the first clerk, he couldn’t be the only one, could he? A black sedan rounded the corner and pulled to the curb. Gray climbed into the backseat, exhausted. He was startled by the presence of another passenger.

  “Sorry, I thought I’d ordered this one. I didn’t know—”

  “Hello, Mr. Hernandez,” the woman said.

  That took him aback. Who was she? How’d she know his name? And what was she doing in his Uber? Then he realized that it wasn’t an Uber car. The woman held up a gold badge. On its face were three letters: FBI.

  CHAPTER 14

  Gray was not in the mood for more questions about the attack in the garage. He’d been interviewed by the Supreme Court Police three times already, and now the FBI? And at five-thirty in the morning? No thanks. The car pulled from the curb.

  “I’m Agent Milstein.” She offered her hand. The agent looked about in her mid-thirties, but she could’ve been older. She had high cheekbones, no makeup. There were dark circles under her eyes, strands of hair wisping in her face, as if she too had been up all night. She didn’t introduce the beefy guy up front who was driving.

  “Look, I’ve already told the Supreme Court Police everything I can remember about the att
ack, and it’s been a long night, so can’t we do this some other—”

  Milstein held up a hand for him to quiet. She directed his attention to an iPad. Gray wasn’t expecting what he saw when she swiped her finger across its face. “What the hell?” he said, looking away. It was a crime scene photo. Three female victims—one old, one middle-aged, one a little girl—lined up. Their skin was gray, each had purple bruises around the neck. He tried to blink away the images. “What’s this about?”

  The agent met his eyes. “I’m sorry you had to see that. But I wanted you to understand I’m not here about a simple mugging.”

  Gray just stared at the agent, dumbfounded.

  “Those victims,” she added, “they were three generations of a family. Grandmother, mother, and a young girl named Isabelle. Strangled. They probably watched each other die.”

  Gray swallowed. “The Dupont Underground murders?” Gray had seen the media coverage. The lawyer and her family killed last summer, just before he’d started his messenger job at the court. “I don’t understand.”

  “We need your help.” The agent held his gaze; there was an intensity to it.

  Gray’s thoughts jumbled. Had she mistaken him for someone else? Why would the FBI possibly need his help? The photos kept leaping back at him. The little girl, she couldn’t have been much younger than his nephew. Who would do such a thing to a child? The headache that he’d felt creeping up on him was pounding now.

  “The murders are connected to the Supreme Court,” Agent Milstein said. “And we need someone who can look into some things for us.”

  “Whoa, hold on.” Gray raised his palms. “I’m just a law clerk. You need to talk to the Supreme Court’s police, I’m not—”

  “Grayson,” Milstein interrupted. “I know this is unusual, but you need to trust me on this. We need someone like you.”

  When Gray didn’t respond, Milstein pulled up another photo on the iPad and held it out to him.

  “If that’s more pictures of them,” Gray said, “I’m not looking.”

  “It’s not them,” the agent said.

  Gray dared to glance down. Vomit immediately reached his mouth. He swallowed it back down. “For Christ’s sake.” The photo wasn’t of the family, that part was true. It was of a young woman, she looked Asian, but it was hard to tell because her face was swollen, covered in blood. She was tied to a chair, shelves of food behind her, a grocery or convenience store. Even Milstein swallowed hard at the photo.

  “At each crime scene, the killer left something—something he wanted us to find.” The agent stared intently at Gray. “Something I think you’ll recognize.” She swiped the iPad again.

  Gray reluctantly followed her glance. He was relieved that the image was not more victims.

  “You know what that is?” Milstein asked.

  It was a photo of a white goose-feather pen, like the kind from Shakespeare’s days.

  “It was left at the murders at Dupont Underground. We found an identical pen at a murder scene tonight, a young woman beaten to death at her family’s convenience store.”

  Gray looked at Milstein. He realized that she’d just come from the scene. He was still having a hard time processing.

  Agent Milstein furrowed her brow. “You know where those feather pens come from, don’t you?”

  Gray realized where she was going with this. The Supreme Court gave out feather quill pens as souvenirs to lawyers arguing cases before the court. It was a tradition dating back two hundred years, when Chief Justice John Marshall gave quill pens and inkwells to advocates. These days, the pens were placed at counsel’s table before all oral arguments. A marshal’s aide would place two quill pens at each counsel seat, crisscrossed in an X. “The court gives them out, but you can probably buy those pens anywhere,” Gray said. “I think they even sell them in the court’s gift shop.”

  Milstein’s head snapped back and forth in sharp dismissal. “Not these pens.” She tapped her index finger on the screen. Her nails were unpainted, chewed on. “These were handmade. And we found the supplier. She’s one of the only people in the world who makes these things. And guess who her biggest customer is?”

  “The Supreme Court,” Gray said.

  The agent gave a little nod.

  Gray was quiet for a long time. Then: “So what exactly is it you want me to do?”

  “You worked in the marshal’s office, which is in charge of the quill pens. You know the people there, know the office. And you’re a law clerk now, which I hear pretty much gives you the run of the place. So I’m just asking that if you see anything you let me know.” She paused a beat. “And if I call and need something, you’ll help.”

  “I still don’t see why you’re coming to me. Surely, there’s other people with more—”

  “You’re the only one who’s an outsider,” Milstein said. “The only employee in the entire building who didn’t work at the court at the time of the Dupont Underground murders. And we think the killer is linked to other crimes before you were hired.”

  Milstein suspected someone at the court. Gray could be trusted because he’d had no access to the quill pens at the time of the Dupont murders. And maybe the FBI wanted to work independently from the court’s police force since the court’s squad was technically part of the marshal’s staff.

  “But do you want to know the other reason you should help us, Grayson?” Milstein said. She must have seen the skepticism on his face.

  Gray nodded, as the car pulled to the curb in front of his basement apartment. They knew where he lived.

  Milstein pulled up another photo on the tablet. Gray hesitantly glanced at the photograph. It was of another quill pen next to a yellow evidence marker on a concrete floor.

  “It’s from the same supplier. She puts a tiny ID number on each pen so she can authenticate them. This one is from the same set as the one found at Dupont. And at the convenience store tonight. You know where we found this pen?” She gestured to the photo.

  Gray shook his head.

  “We found it in the garage of the court.”

  Gray was feeling the heat in his face now. Pulse thumping at his temples.

  “Whoever attacked you and the chief justice,” she said, “he dropped it.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Gray arrived at the court at 9:45 a.m. the next morning, much later than he should have since oral arguments started at ten sharp. He was exhausted, emotionally hungover, but he shouldn’t have slept in. It was the November sitting, so on top of the cert pool memos and death penalty stays, there was the third responsibility of a clerk: writing bench memos. Summaries of each case that the chief justice would use to prepare for oral arguments that would occur over the next two weeks. Gray had written the memo for Jando v. United States, one of the cases scheduled for argument that morning. He was supposed to attend the arguments for all of his assigned cases, and he didn’t want the chief to look out and see an empty seat in the clerk’s section.

  Gray rushed into his office, his eyes fixed on the old phone on his desk. Luckily, the message light wasn’t on. The chief hadn’t called needing anything before the argument. He threw his backpack on the floor, gathered up the argument file for Jando, and hurried down to the chamber.

  Gray slipped into a seat in the clerk’s section next to Keir. His co-clerk gave him a dismissive nod.

  The court was hearing two arguments that morning. First up was the Filstein case, about the president’s controversial drone-strike policy; second was Gray’s Jando case, which involved the scope of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on illegal searches.

  Gray’s heart rate was returning to normal. He’d made it just under the buzzer, the chief hopefully none the wiser that he’d nearly been late.

  He turned to Keir. “Packed house,” Gray said, scanning the gallery.

  Keir sniffed. “Of course it is. Filstein’s the biggest case of the term. Don’t worry, the room will clear out when your case is argued.”

  Gray ignored hi
m, taking in the scene. The room was encased in marble columns that shot up to a forty-four-foot gilded ceiling. The raised bench stretched nearly the width of the room. In front of the bench were the counsel tables. On the right, members of the solicitor general’s office, the government lawyers who represented the United States in all Supreme Court cases. They were considered the best and brightest advocates in the country. Their confidence bordered on the cocky, but it was reined in because they looked silly in their morning coats and striped pants—the getup reminded Gray of old-time wedding outfits—a tradition the SG’s office still clung to for some bizarre reason. On the far left, the other advocates appearing for argument with their sweaty palms and well-tailored suits. And the remaining five hundred seats filled with lawyers, the press, dignitaries, and the general public, all perched on uncomfortable pews and creaky old wooden chairs.

  When Gray was in law school he’d watched many oral arguments, a hobby his classmates didn’t quite understand. He’d read that Chief Justice Douglas once said he got a lump in his throat every time he marched through the heavy curtains and took the center seat. But it wasn’t until Gray became a law clerk that he fully understood what the chief meant. Every time Gray entered the chamber now he too got a lump in his throat, realizing he was part of the institution, part of something greater than himself. Had some of that feeling diminished when the court failed to save Anton Troy? Maybe. But he still sat up straight and with pride when he heard the buzz from the ceiling and the marshal cried: “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! All persons having business before the Honorable, the Supreme Court of the United States, are admonished to draw near and give their attention, for the Court is now sitting. God save the United States and this Honorable Court.”

  The Nine emerged in threes from three openings in the burgundy curtains and took their seats. The chief, looking a little weary from the late night on the Anton Troy case, started the morning by swearing in lawyers who had applied for admission to the Supreme Court bar. Though the certificate looked good on a lawyer’s office wall, the requirements were minimal, effectively $200 and a pulse. Nevertheless, the chief treated the occasion seriously. And today was special. A group of deaf lawyers had applied. Always a class act, the chief used sign language to affirm their admission. He then called the Filstein case.