CHAPTER 35
Gray and Praveen sat in the back of the police cruiser. Gray tried apologizing to Praveen, but his co-clerk held a blank stare, lost in his own head. The clerks had never suspected Praveen was gay, much less that he engaged in Craigslist hookups. Frankly, they never thought of Praveen as anything but a serious little work machine.
Gray had tried to explain their way out of the arrests. He was a lawyer, he mistook the situation, there was no crime, they were consenting adults. But Gray overheard the cops talking. As it turned out, Praveen and his friend—who’d been shuttled away in another cop car—had broken into the house. The other guy’s mother was a realtor, and he’d used her lockbox code to get into the property. It wasn’t the first time. And the kicker: that glass pipe.
Gray gazed absently out the window of the cruiser, the streetlights streaming by, the cops up front separated by the mesh cage. He was reminded of the last time he’d been in the back of a patrol car.
“When do we get to talk to a lawyer?” Arturo asked.
Sam, who was crammed next to Gray and Arturo in the backseat, was crying, shaking her head for Arturo to shush.
The cops ignored him. Arturo raised his voice. “I asked you a question.”
The cop in the passenger seat up front twisted around. “Shut the fuck up!” The guy had seen-it-all eyes and seemed exasperated about having to take a group of middle schoolers to the station house for joyriding. The end of his shift probably.
“We got rights,” Arturo said.
The cop chuckled. “Tell that to your new friends in the cell when they bend you over.”
At that, Gray joined Sam with the tears.
But there was no cell or abusive cellmates. Just a waiting room with walls covered in anti-crime posters. A teenager in cuffs: DRUGS COST MORE THAN YOUR BRAIN CELLS. A little girl alone on a swing: ARE YOU GOING TO BE THERE WHEN SHE NEEDS A PUSH? END GANG LIFE.
And then Dad appeared at the door. He looked tired, angry. A man in a suit was with him, skinny with a beard. Dad’s expression softened when he got a look at Sam.
“Let’s go,” he said, gesturing to the door.
“Dad, I’m sorry, we—”
Dad held up a hand, and Gray knew better than to keep talking. He and Sam kept the waterworks going as they sauntered out. Not Arturo; he strutted, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
When Arturo arrived at school the next day, he had two black eyes and a split lip.
One of the cops up front said something into the radio. Gray couldn’t make it out, but the officer sounded angry. Gray knew the feeling. He cursed ever meeting Agent Milstein. She’d sucked him into all this. Asking for his help. Showing him crime scene photos. Feeding his imagination.
“There,” one of the cops said, intruding on Gray’s thoughts. The police cruiser rolled to a stop.
A wave of worry traveled through him. They weren’t at the station house. A highway underpass. It was all graffiti and grime.
“Why are we stopping? What’s going on?” Praveen asked, his tone laced with fear.
One of the cops got out of the car. He opened the rear door and roughly put a hand on top of Praveen’s head as he hoisted him out. Gray watched as they escorted Praveen away. An interior light flashed from a Suburban tucked away near some brush by the underpass. There was a silhouette of a sedan parked next to the SUV.
The officers uncuffed Praveen and marched him to the Suburban. What the hell was going on? The back door of the Suburban opened, and a weary-looking Indian man climbed out. He said something to the officers, who nodded and then walked back to the patrol car. The Indian man barked something at Praveen, who looked at the ground. The man yelled something again, and Praveen lifted his head timidly. The man slapped Praveen hard across the face. Gray understood now. Praveen’s father. When Praveen was arrested someone must have called his old man, the White House chief of staff. Strings were being pulled.
But without someone to save Gray, what would they do with him? That question was answered when the black sedan’s door opened.
CHAPTER 36
“That was a stupid move, calling 911,” Agent Milstein said. She started the engine and tore out from the underpass, the tires flinging rocks against the wheel wells. She made her way from the murky side streets to the interstate. “What were you thinking?”
“I don’t know. You asked me to find the computer at the court. It was Praveen’s. Then I guess my imagination got the best of me.”
“Ya think?” Milstein said. She kept her eyes on the road. “If you thought he was up to something, you should have called me before you went to the house, not after. You should’ve waited. Not gone off like some bull in a china shop. If you would’ve called, I could’ve told you that we know Praveen isn’t the perp.” She jerked the wheel, racing around other cars.
“How was I supposed to know that? You haven’t exactly been a fountain of information. I was just trying to help.” Gray wondered if the feds had investigated everyone at the court. With more than four hundred employees, that seemed unlikely. They probably narrowed the field, focusing on men. The male clerks were a good place to start.
Milstein drove in silence for another few minutes. Finally, she said, “Look, I know this is stressful and we appreciate your help. I should’ve been—” She hesitated. “I should’ve been more forthcoming. I’m sorry, and I want you to know that I do appreciate that you’ve been trying to help.”
Gray let out a breath. His heart rate was returning to normal. “It’s okay. You’re right, it was stupid.”
“No, I actually should’ve never involved you.”
There was a long silence. Gray stared out the window as Milstein finally pulled off the interstate. He looked at the agent. “If you tell me what you’re looking for, I might be able to help.”
“We’ve got a solid lead now. I think you should stick to being a law clerk.”
“Seriously, I wanna help. But I can’t if I don’t know what I’m looking for.”
Milstein seemed to be deliberating whether to say more. She let out a breath through her nose. “This will sound unusual, but is there anyone around the court who likes owls?”
“Owls? Like the bird?”
“Yeah, you know, anyone a bird watcher or collect figurines of owls or seem to have an interest?”
“Not that I can think of.”
“How about the name ‘Whitlock?’ Have you heard anyone mention the name or a case from the nineties?”
Gray shook his head.
Milstein pulled up to Gray’s place in Georgetown.
“How’d you know I moved? How’d you—”
Milstein gave him a look.
“Thanks for helping me tonight,” Gray said.
“My pleasure,” Milstein said dryly. “Go be a law clerk, Grayson.”
Gray got out and watched the car fade into the night. He could’ve lost everything tonight. He decided he should follow Milstein’s advice. Leave the investigation to the professionals. Focus on being a law clerk. This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity he’d been given. If there was a killer amongst them, the FBI would find him. He hoped.
CHAPTER 37
The next time Gray saw Praveen it was, well, awkward. Gray arrived at work around seven-thirty, but Praveen had been there for some time, already buried in a stack of briefs. Praveen lifted his head, said hello, but that was all they spoke of it. So for the next three hours they worked in silence, the only sound the clicking of computer keyboards. The buzz of the intercom broke the quiet. From the speaker, Olga said, “The chief wants to see you and Praveen—now.”
The floor fell out from under him. Had the chief found out about the arrest? Praveen too looked like he’d been punched in the gut. Gray considered for a moment working out their story, but decided that they needed to just go take their medicine.
They made the death march to chambers. The chief was standing behind his desk, yelling into the phone. Keir was there, and looked at the floor when he
saw them. Had that little punk found out and told on them? That son-of-a—
“You tell her I won’t stand for it,” the chief barked into the phone. “I won’t. For the rest of her days in this building she can count on getting assigned every boring piece-of-shit opinion we get. A lifetime of dogs.” The chief listened again, and his face reddened. “You just fucking tell her!” The chief slammed down the phone.
Gray had never seen him lose his cool before. The funny thing was that the episode had the opposite effect on Gray. Praveen also looked like a weight had been lifted. They were summoned to chambers not because of Praveen’s Fifty Shades of Grey incident, but instead something about one of the cases.
The chief turned his attention to the clerks. “Cutler changed her vote on the Filstein case.” Gray immediately understood the significance. It was the biggest case of the term. The president’s drone policy. The vote initially was five-four with the chief in the majority. Gray recalled the clerk happy hour when Keir said Cutler was joining the chief’s side, giving him the fifth vote. But she must’ve changed her mind, turning a win for the chief into a loss. If Cutler flipped, Keir’s draft of the chief’s majority opinion would become the dissenting opinion.
The chief’s jaw set. He looked at the three clerks. “I need you to talk to Cutler’s clerks. Find out what you can. Also, talk to Justice Marcus’s clerks, see if there’s any way we can bring Marcus over to our side. You tell his clerks I’ll owe him.” The chief paused. “Where the hell are Lauren and Mike? We need them on this too.”
It was not uncommon for justices to use their clerks to back-channel. Academics referred to it as the “clerk network.” Gray doubted anything would change the vote, but he was just happy that he wasn’t explaining Praveen’s escapade.
The chief was breathing heavily. He turned and slammed his fist on the desktop. “Cutler will not get the best of me.”
CHAPTER 38
Milstein stood in line at a food truck parked in front of the field office. There was a line of a half-dozen trucks, most painted in primary colors with giant logos on their sides. Milstein’s truck sold Lebanese street food, and her mouth watered thinking of the shawarma sandwich. She wasn’t supposed to eat at any of the trucks. The head of the field office had banned FBI personnel from patronizing them since he viewed large vehicles so close to the building a safety risk. But the shawarma was worth Neal’s wrath. Milstein’s phone chimed and she glanced at the caller ID. She immediately stepped out of line.
“Special Agent Milstein,” she said, in her usual annoyed phone voice.
“This is Doctor Ladner from Hayfield Correctional.”
“Thank you for getting back to me so soon, doctor,” she said, hoping he might catch the sarcasm since she’d left him an urgent message a couple days ago. Milstein walked on the red brick that lined the front of the field office to a secluded spot near some shrubs. “We need some information on one of your former patients, John Whitlock.”
“Yes, I got your message. I remember John, though I can’t discuss anything specific about our sessions. They may be prisoners, but I still owe them a duty of confidentiality.”
“Understood. We’re having trouble finding Whitlock and wanted to see if you had any insights as to where he might go? We were told that he didn’t have any close friends on the inside, but that you were someone who got to know him.”
“Is he in some kind of trouble?”
“I can’t divulge the specifics, but we need to speak with him. It relates to what happened to him when he was a boy.” Milstein decided against suggesting that Whitlock was a suspect himself. She sensed that the doctor was invested in Whitlock and might be more forthcoming if he thought he was helping his former patient.
“I don’t know where John is. When he’s off his medication, he often turns to the streets. We made good progress. But unfortunately, they don’t get the support when they’re on the outside.”
“Does he have any family that would take him in? Any friends?”
“If I recall, John never knew his father, and his mother passed away when he was a boy.” This Milstein already knew.
“How about other family?”
“Not that I’m aware of. He was placed in the system after his mother died. I believe his younger sister was adopted, but not John. If he had any other family, they likely couldn’t deal with raising someone with a significant disability.”
“You mean John’s brain injury?”
“Exactly. You can imagine how hard it is to adopt a kid in his teens, much less one with baggage and a disability. The system bounced him around until he was eighteen, then released him into the wild with no skills. It was only a matter of time before he was homeless or locked up.”
“Is Whitlock still angry about what happened? Is he the type to seek revenge?”
There was a long silence on the other end.
“You think John is seeking out revenge?” When Milstein didn’t respond, the doctor said, “That doesn’t sound like John at all.”
“What do you mean?”
“For starters, John has significant impairments. Long-term planning, revenge, it isn’t within his abilities.”
“So you think it’s impossible for him to plan out a crime?”
“Impossible? I don’t know. But if the crime required any level of planning or organization, I’d say it’s highly unlikely. But beyond that, John isn’t a violent man. The best way to describe him is a sweet six-year-old in a grown man’s body.”
“You say he’s not violent, but I thought he was in for assault and battery? He nearly beat a man to death in a bar fight. Doesn’t sound like he’s a total stranger to violence, doctor.”
“Yes, but it was because he was defending a woman at that bar. If you look at his history, he’s high functioning, but has impulse control problems because of his injury,” the doctor said. “Every time he’s been violent it was because he thought he was protecting someone. He was disciplined at his special needs school for violence against a schoolyard bully. He’s had many run-ins over the years of this sort. His condition often makes his responses disproportionate. But he was always trying to defend, not harm.”
“Nevertheless, doctor, he’s been a violent man.”
“Yes, driven by a need—a need he doesn’t fully understand—to protect. I can’t go into specifics of my sessions with him, but he has great guilt over what happened when he was a boy.”
“We know about his sisters.”
“So you can imagine what that might do to a young man, particularly one who suffers a disability related to the trauma. The guilt caused his mother to commit suicide. Imagine what it did to him. This was a home with no father. He was only a teenager, but he was the man of the house. He feels like he should have stopped the man who took his sisters.”
“But doesn’t that also suggest he might go after those he thinks were involved in what happened to his sisters? The people he thinks destroyed his family?”
“I just don’t see it,” the doctor cut in. “His disability makes him unable to hold even menial jobs. Every time he’s released he ends up back on the street. He can do very well when he’s on his meds, but his history shows he won’t take them unless he’s in a controlled environment. And revenge? Against who? The perpetrator is dead, John knew that much. So who? Even if there was someone else, how would he find them? I don’t think John owns a computer, much less knows how to use one. John can function with direction, with supervision, but without it…”
“Is there anything you can tell me that could help us find him? Somewhere he might go? The kind of places he liked on the street?”
“Like I said, once they leave the facility, they’re on their own.”
“Is there anything else you could tell me that may help us?”
“I can send you his file here at Hayfield. It contains a photograph of him, the visitor register, copies of any letters he received. He’s a loner, so I doubt any of it will be helpful, but I can have it scanned a
nd e-mailed to you.”
“That would be great.”
“Have a good Thanksgiving, Agent Milstein.”
Milstein ended the call, and walked back to the food truck. The doctor’s description of Whitlock did not fit the profile of the perp. The Behavioral team thought the killer was highly educated, organized. The crimes themselves said that much. The Franklin fire was masterfully executed. The fire was started and locks placed on the outside doors without anyone seeing the perp. For the Dupont murders, the perp had sent Amanda Hill an untraceable computer message. And the convenience store had been doused with bleach. None of it sounded like a street person with the IQ of a young child. But if not Whitlock, then who?
CHAPTER 39
By midweek it was clear that Justice Cutler wasn’t changing her mind on the Filstein case. That afternoon, Keir called a clerks’ meeting to discuss last-ditch ideas on how they might turn Cutler around. When Gray walked into Keir and Mike’s shared office, Mike was on the tattered couch tossing the football up in the air and catching it. Praveen and Keir sat at the two workstations.
Lauren arrived last. “I talked to Travis again, and Cutler isn’t budging,” she said.
“Are any of Cutler’s other clerks still around?” Praveen asked.
“Just Cynthia,” Lauren said. “The rest have left for Thanksgiving.”
Keir clasped his head with a hand, massaging his temples. “This is a disaster. My flight leaves in two hours. This was gonna be my biggest case of the term.”
“Yeah, that’s what’s important,” Lauren said.
Keir shot her a look. “Fine, you all give up.”
“We’re not giving up,” Mike said. “Lighten up, man. It’s not the end of the world.” Mike took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Let’s go talk to Cynthia. I’ll come with you, since I don’t want you scaring the shit out of her.” Mike looked to the rest of them. “Maybe you guys can talk to Justice Marcus’s clerks.” Mike tossed the ball to Gray.
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