The Outsider

by Anthony Franze

  The lawyer challenging the drone policy stepped to the lectern. “Mr. Chief Justice and may it please the court. This case isn’t about a policy on drones. Drones are just a tool, not a policy. The policy being challenged here is a policy on assassinations. Without congressional authorization or oversight, the executive branch has exceeded its authority in engaging in a drone war, an unlawful license to kill, which according to the government’s own secret records kills the innocent in more than ninety percent of the strikes…”

  For the next two hours Gray took it all in. Few sights were more riveting than watching a skilled advocate thread his or her way through the grilling of a hard case. Responding to Justice Marcus’s tangled hypotheticals, avoiding Justice Cutler’s hostile traps, going toe-to-toe with the brilliant chief. He’d heard that in the old days much of the advocacy before the court was mediocre. But the past ten years had seen large firms hire away staff from the solicitor general’s office, and there was now a specialized Supreme Court bar. Repeat players who knew the game well. The Filstein case had the finest lawyers in the country slugging it out. Even Jando v. United States, Gray’s lower-profile criminal case, brought out the heavy hitters. It was two hours of exquisite advocacy. Two hours of not thinking about the FBI and murdered women.

  At noon, the red light appeared on the lectern, the buzzer went off, and the justices disappeared backstage. Supreme Court Police officers in their immaculate dress blues shushed the masses as the spectators made their way out of the courtroom.

  The chief usually took a half-hour break after argument, then went to lunch. Gray decided he would approach him then about the visit from the FBI. The agent had warned Gray to tell no one about their conversation, and had made noises about obstruction of justice. But this was the chief justice of the United States. Gray stopped at the closet to drop off his papers, then made his way to chambers. As he headed into the reception area he saw Olga escorting two guests into the chief’s private office. One of them, the woman in the group, turned and gave Gray a hard stare.

  Agent Milstein.

  She held his gaze for a long moment, then she and her partner were whisked inside.

  CHAPTER 16

  Milstein studied Chief Justice Douglas. He was in his fifties, but had a boyishness to him. The lick of hair that fell on his brow, the earnest smile. He sat back comfortably in the large wing chair in his chambers. Next to Douglas in his own chair was Aaron Dowell, another chief, this one of the Supreme Court Police force. Not so youthful with his paunch, waxy skin, and jowls.

  Police Chief Dowell looked at Milstein and Cartwright, who sat across from Dowell and the chief justice. “So what’s the fire drill, why the emergency meeting?”

  The murder of the convenience store clerk on the fifth of the month—along with the killer leaving behind a quill pen—finally compelled Milstein’s boss to get off his ass and demand Dowell to give the Bureau access to the chief.

  “There was a murder last night,” Milstein said. “It’s connected to the others.”

  Dowell shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He’d previously minimized the connection between Dupont Underground and the attack on the chief justice. Milstein hoped things would be different now.

  “I’m sorry,” the chief justice said, “but I’m not following.” He looked at Dowell. “What’s this about, Aaron?”

  Dowell swallowed. “You remember we discussed that the Bureau thought there was a connection between the Dupont murders and the attack in the garage?”

  “Yes,” the chief said, “the feather pens left at the scenes. I thought everyone decided that the connection was tenuous? That the feathers might not be from the same stock or that the pen in the garage was already there?”

  “We didn’t know. There were a number of theories,” Dowell said timidly. “Out of an excess of caution, we increased the justices’ security details and changed some protocols. But we ultimately concluded that the evidence didn’t warrant more.”

  “And you were wrong, apparently,” the chief said pointedly.

  “The important thing,” Milstein cut in, giving Dowell a lifeline, “is that now we’re more certain about the connection.”

  “How so?” the chief asked.

  Cartwright joined the conversation. “Last night, a young woman was murdered at a convenience store in Hamilton Heights. The killer left behind a quill pen. It was from the same batch as the pens at Dupont and in the garage. There’s now no question the pens weren’t left at the scenes by accident or happenstance. The killer is purposefully leaving them for us to find.”

  The chief’s brow wrinkled. “Why? What’s it mean?”

  “We don’t know. He’s also leaving cryptic messages. At Dupont he spray-painted random words on the wall. At the convenience store, he wrote something in the victim’s blood. All of it unintelligible, but our people are trying to decipher if it means anything.”

  “What did he write?” the chief asked.

  “I’m afraid we can’t disclose that, Chief Justice,” Cartwright said.

  The chief sighed. “So what can I do for you?” the chief justice asked. “How can I help?”

  “We just have some questions, if you don’t mind?” Milstein said.

  “Of course.”

  “I understand you knew Amanda Hill, the lawyer killed at Dupont Underground?” Milstein asked.

  “Yes, Amanda was an old friend. I still can’t believe it. And to kill her mother and young child too…” The chief held a look of bewilderment.

  “Can you think of any reason why someone might target you and Ms. Hill?”

  Douglas rubbed his chin. “Like I told Aaron, I hadn’t seen Amanda in years.”

  “You weren’t close friends?”

  “I’d describe us more as colleagues. From years ago, when I was a district court judge. Amanda was a public defender. She appeared before me regularly back then.”

  Milstein knew this already, but an interview is a process, she’d learned long ago. “You didn’t have a personal relationship with her?”

  “No. I saw her in court or at bar functions. Judges have to be careful with such things,” he explained.

  “Can you think of any cases that could’ve made you both targets of the same person? Any other connection?”

  “No.” The chief answered quickly, it seemed too quickly. “She had hundreds of cases before me, mostly plea deals where I simply imposed the sentence, usually what the prosecution and defense had agreed to.”

  “Did you get any threats back then?”

  “All judges get threats. But nothing credible, nothing with any connection to Amanda.”

  Milstein nodded. “The young woman killed at the convenience store, her name was Sakura Matsuka. Did you know her?”

  “No.”

  “How about a man named Adam Nowak?”

  “No, should I?” Douglas said.

  “He’s a reporter. He used to work at the Post, but freelanced for the past several years.”

  The chief shook his head. “The name sounds familiar, but I don’t think I’ve ever met him.”

  “Phone records show that he called both Amanda Hill and Sakura Matsuka.”

  “He called both victims? Did he tell you what about?”

  “No,” Milstein said. “He’s dead too. The Franklin fire.”

  Even before the convenience store murder, Milstein knew that Adam Nowak had called Amanda Hill, the Dupont Underground victim. But the Homeland team running the Franklin fire investigation thought it was a coincidence. A single call between two victims of separate crimes didn’t mean there was any connection. Also, Homeland didn’t want Milstein mucking around with its investigation of the fire. But that morning, Milstein’s team ran the convenience store victim’s cell phone number in their database and got a hit. A few days before the Franklin fire, the reporter had also called Sakura Matsuka, the store clerk. So it was just a matter of connecting the dots. Feather quill pens were left at the Dupont Underground and convenience stor
e murders, which meant the two crimes were linked. And the reporter killed at the Franklin fire had called both victims; the reporter was the tip of the triangle.

  “So you think the same perpetrator started the Franklin fire?” the chief justice said.

  “It’s looking that way. And not just because of the phone call from the reporter,” Milstein said. “All of the crimes occurred on the fifth of the month.” This time Milstein stared directly at Dowell since he’d been one of the many who’d pooh-poohed Milstein’s suspicions that the killer would strike last night, on November 5.

  The chief justice let out an exasperated breath, sinking back into his chair. “Do you have any leads on the identity of this man?”

  Milstein shook her head. “No. Worse, our behavioral experts say the killer is just getting started.” She paused a beat. “And we have less than a month until he strikes again.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Gray spent the rest of the day in the closet working on his pool and bench memos, trying not to think about the FBI. Trying to shake the images from the gruesome photos, but they kept creeping into his thoughts. He assumed someone must have stolen a batch of quill pens from the court because no one at One First Street could be involved, right? He considered the staff at the marshal’s office, which was charged with ordering the pens and dispensing them to advocates appearing for argument. Beyond the hundreds of officers on the police force, the marshal’s staff was mostly college kids and senior staff. There was his former supervisor Martin, who made the female staffers feel uncomfortable, but the guy who’d attacked Gray and the chief in the garage was svelte, agile, not like doughy Martin. Who else could it be? A voice interrupted his thoughts.

  “You notice I didn’t mention this office when I offered you the job?” The chief justice stood in the doorway, an amused look on his face. He gazed about the windowless office, Gray at his desk, hemmed in by a small mountain range of legal papers. “I think we need to get you some air. Got time for dinner?” The chief plucked Gray’s suit jacket from the hook.

  Twenty minutes later, Gray and the chief were sitting in a plush booth at The Palm. Despite the otherwise refined setting, the restaurant’s walls were covered with sketches depicting politicians and local celebrities. The chief directed Gray to the unflattering caricature of the justices, which was all giant noses, sagging cheeks, and sinister expressions. “My ex-wife said they captured me perfectly,” the chief said.

  The restaurant was filled with the glad-handing Capitol Hill crowd, boisterous men and women, most of whom couldn’t resist stopping by the chief’s table to say hello.

  When the salads arrived, Gray waited until the chief picked up his fork. Both because he didn’t want to start first and because he needed to make sure he used the correct utensil of the many spread before him. The chief seemed to notice Gray shadowing him. He made a show of selecting his fork.

  “So, how’s it going?” the chief asked. “You seem to be picking things up quickly,” he said, taking a bite.

  “I’ve been lucky to have help from the other clerks.” Not entirely true, but always better to be gracious, his mom always said.

  The chief gave a fleeting smile, one that suggested he knew better. He seemed to be stealing looks at Gray’s tie, stained from lunches past, and his suit jacket, straight from The Godfather. They were interrupted by another visitor, the Senate majority leader. Much of the meal went this way, the stop/start of dining with Washington’s version of a movie star. The head of the third branch of government.

  The chief turned the discussion to work. “What’d you think of the Jando argument today?”

  In Jando v. United States, the court was tasked with deciding the scope of the “exclusionary rule”—the rule that courts have to throw out evidence when the police obtained the proof by violating the suspect’s rights. If the cops failed to read a suspect his Miranda warnings or searched a house without a warrant, the evidence was excluded and the government couldn’t use it against the defendant. But there was an exception, a fail-safe the police often relied upon: inevitable discovery. If the cops would have inevitably discovered the evidence even if they hadn’t violated the suspect’s rights, then all would be forgiven. The evidence admissible. The case was about the scope of the inevitable discovery rule.

  “The argument was strong from both sides,” Gray said.

  The chief examined him. “But who do you think should win, the government or the criminal defendant?”

  “Really tough. If the exclusionary rule is designed to deter police from breaking the rules, won’t expanding the inevitable discovery exception undermine that?”

  The chief thought about it. “It might, but my experience is that most cops are good people. Why should the criminal go free if a good cop would’ve found the evidence even if the bad cop hadn’t broken the rules?”

  “But the rule encourages all cops to be good. If the bad cops know there won’t be consequences, won’t they take more shortcuts? Won’t even the good cops be tempted?”

  “Theoretically. But when I was a district court judge most of my docket was criminal cases, and I saw the realities of the system. It’s easy to decide these rules in the abstract—when you read about them in a law school textbook—but it’s much different when you see a victim sitting in the courtroom. What if you were the judge who had to let someone you knew was guilty, a violent criminal, go free? Could you do it, Grayson? Even if you knew that, statistically speaking, he’d do it again? Hurt, or even kill, someone else. You’d free him simply because an officer got carried away? Even if they would have found the evidence without the officer’s misconduct?”

  Gray still didn’t agree. In Hamilton Heights, he’d seen good and bad cops. The job was hard enough without giving the good ones excuses to cut corners. But based on the chief’s tone, he knew it was time to retreat. “I never thought of it that way.”

  “Well, you should start thinking hard about it because I need you to write a draft opinion for me. Think you can write something persuasive where the government wins?”

  “I’m sure I can.”

  “That’s the spirit.”

  The waiter arrived with the main course, two New York strips: the menu said corn fed, aged, covered in béarnaise. “I have an unusual question,” the chief said, cutting roughly into the slab of meat. “Have you noticed anything out of the ordinary around the building? Anyone acting suspiciously?”

  Gray assumed the questions were prompted by the chief’s meeting with the FBI. He considered again telling Douglas about his own encounter with the agents. But he thought of Milstein’s stare as she went into the chief’s chambers. Last night, she’d warned him to tell no one about their meeting, that it could constitute obstruction of justice. He doubted that, but the agent had pulled the chief into the loop, so it was better left alone. “Out of the ordinary? No.” True enough. But Gray wondered if the chief was concerned that someone at the court was involved. “I saw FBI agents visiting today. Is everything okay?”

  “Nothing to worry about,” the chief said. “Just more questions about what happened in the garage.”

  Gray wondered why the chief lied. The FBI probably told him to keep things confidential too, though Gray doubted they threatened him with obstruction.

  “Have the other clerks told you about our ‘First Saturday’ outings?” the chief asked, changing the subject again.

  “No, they haven’t.”

  “The first Saturday of every sitting,” the chief said, “Justice Wall and I have an event. An outing with all of our clerks. Forcing you out of the office ensures your heads stay clear.” The chief dabbed his mouth with his napkin. “You’ll see on Saturday.” It was more of a command than an invitation.

  After the chief paid the check, he said, “You have time to run a quick errand with me?”

  “Of course.”

  A half hour later they were at Saks Fifth Avenue at Mazza Gallerie in Friendship Heights.

  “I want to share with you
something my father taught me, Grayson,” the chief said, as they browsed through the racks of high-end garments on the top floor of Saks. “You’ve gotta look the part to be taken seriously in this world.” The chief tested the fabric of a suit’s lapel with his thumb and index finger, then directed the salesperson to take it and two other suits to the fitting room.

  Gray soon was standing on a platform in front of a tri-folding mirror, a tailor darting around him with a measuring tape. The chief sat in the lounge area of the fitting room, drinking a cappuccino the salesperson had brought him, occasionally giving the tailor instructions. “More off the jacket sides.” “Cuffs on the pants? You can’t be serious?”

  “I can’t accept this,” Gray said as the chief handed a gold card to the salesperson.

  “Consider it my personal thank you. You did save my ass, after all.”

  “You’ve already done so much.”

  “No, hiring you helped me. You’re a bright young man, and already a damn good clerk. And you also helped right a problem with how we hire at the court. We all get set in our ways and hire from the same feeder judges, the same schools, which produce the same types of people, usually smart kids born from families that are legacies of those schools.”

  The whole thing was a bit too Pretty Woman. And spending so much, the designer labels, didn’t feel right. The Hernandezes weren’t poverty-stricken like some of the families in the apartment complex. They were what the media would call “the working poor.” That didn’t mean Goodwill or Salvation Army. It meant trotting up to the Kmart in Silver Spring at the end of every summer to buy school clothes. It meant wearing your jeans until you could no longer tolerate the Expecting a flood? comments from classmates; borrowing a leather jacket from Arturo in the winter, not asking where he got it. And it meant on your fourteenth birthday wanting desperately that expensive pair of sneakers, the ultimate status symbol in your middle school, and getting the Payless version instead. It meant feeling like a jerk when you just couldn’t hide the disappointment and you hurt your mom’s feelings. Gray was never one for labels on his clothes after that. But what could he do? He couldn’t exactly say no to his boss, the Chief Justice of the United States.