The Outsider

by Anthony Franze

  “That the guy you said was so good to you?” Arturo asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t seem so good now.”

  “Ya think?” Gray said, not taking his eyes off the screen.

  “And the girl,” Arturo said, “she’s your lady?”

  Gray felt his throat catch. But he needed to stay focused, stay strong. “Yes,” he said, his voice hoarse.

  Arturo gave a small bow of the head. After a long moment, Arturo looked at the collage Gray had pinned on the wall. Gray had tacked up each page from the envelope under which he’d pinned handwritten notes.

  “Looks like some CSI shit goin’ on in here.” Arturo took a swig of his beer. “Don’t let Olivia see the holes in the walls, she just had the rooms painted. Interior design school.”

  “She your girlfriend?”

  A reluctant nod. Then: “So, you figuring this shit out?”

  “Actually,” Gray said, “I think I have.”

  Gray gestured to the first sheet of paper. Arturo read it aloud, “‘The Great Dissenter.’”

  “That’s the key to it all,” Gray said. He pointed to the GREAT DISSENTER page from the envelope. “‘The Great Dissenter’ was a nickname for Oliver Wendell Holmes, who was a Supreme Court justice.”

  Gray explained to Arturo that the killer in Dupont Underground had spray-painted O.W.H. and a phrase associated with one of Holmes’s cases on the wall. Gray then pointed to newspaper stories about the Franklin fire.

  “I remember that,” Arturo said. “Some motherfucker set the theater on fire and put padlocks on the outside of the doors.”

  Gray nodded. “Holmes is famous for an expression about the limits of free speech. He said, ‘you can’t shout fire in a crowded theater.’ Some of the survivors of the Franklin fire reported that someone had started screaming, creating a panic even before the blaze was very big.”

  Arturo creased his brow. “You think this Holmes guy is involved in Dupont and the fire?”

  Gray gave a dry laugh. “It’s not Holmes who did it. He’s been dead for years. The murders were just inspired by his work. By the lines in his decisions. The theater fire was before the family was murdered in Dupont. One was the answer to the other, one-upping each other.” When Arturo didn’t seem to be catching on, Gray added, “A game.” The words Lauren had written on the file.

  Arturo shook his head. “What kind of crazy mother—”

  “It gets worse,” Gray said, gesturing to the wall. He put a finger on the second sheet from the envelope: THE WORST SCOTUS DECISION EVER. Under it, a sheet of paper with KORA MATSU written on it. Under that, Gray had drawn a stick-figure depiction of the crime scene at Ben Freeman’s house. Two bodies, side by side, dismembered.

  “The convenience store victim’s name was Sakura Matsuka, but the killer wrote something at the scene in her blood: ‘Kora Matsu.’ Everyone thought it was a reference to her last name. But it wasn’t.” Under the page from the envelope was an article Gray had pulled from the Internet entitled, “Worst Supreme Court Cases in History.” Gray pointed to the first decision on the list: Korematsu v. United States.

  “There’s an infamous Supreme Court case where the justices upheld the right of the government to order Japanese Americans into internment camps during World War II.” Lauren had figured that one out.

  Arturo took another swig of beer, taking in what Gray was saying.

  “The Supreme Court case is named Korematsu.” Gray paused. “Korematsu. Kora Matsu.” Gray wondered if they’d chosen the victim based solely on her name. Or maybe it was the other way around, the idea for the challenge was inspired by her name.

  “No. Fucking. Way.” Arturo took another long sip of beer.

  “There’s more,” Gray said. He placed a finger on the stick-figure drawing of Ben Freeman’s son and girlfriend who’d been abducted at Union Station. He pointed again to the story listing the worst Supreme Court cases in history. “There was a case called Plessy versus Ferguson.”

  “Don’t tell me that couple was named Plessy and Ferguson?” Arturo said, his tone tinged with disbelief.

  “No, but Plessy was the case that upheld racial segregation in public places, allowing the states to segregate schools. It was later overruled by Brown versus Board of Education.”

  Arturo gave him an I have no idea what you’re talking about shake of the head.

  “The holding in Plessy was that segregation was okay so long as the facilities provided to each race were equal—it was called the ‘separate but equal doctrine.’” Gray paused. “It’d be okay to segregate schools if the schools for whites and blacks were equal.”

  “Schools are still segregated,” Arturo said.

  “Fair enough,” Gray said, thinking of the two white kids who’d attended Obama High. “But not by law.” Gray pointed at the stick figures. “The FBI showed me a photo of the former agent who was killed, along with his son and son’s girlfriend. They were an interracial couple. Lined up side by side, dismembered. Separate. And the body parts were perfectly aligned. Equal. Separate but equal.”

  Arturo nearly choked on his beer at that one. “This is some gross shit. Who is it? Who did this shit?”

  Gray’s gaze moved to the television screen. The news was replaying Chief Justice Douglas’s remarks at the press conference.

  “No way,” Arturo said.

  Gray nodded.

  “This is one sick motherfucker.”

  “Not one sick motherfucker,” Gray said. “Two.”

  CHAPTER 65

  “What do you mean, two?” Arturo asked, still examining Gray’s crime scene wall.

  “The chief’s boyhood friend, Justice Wall. They’re competitive as hell. And these papers”—Gray gestured to the coffee-stained pages from the envelope—“they came from the envelope the chief and Wall use to communicate with each other inside the court.”

  Arturo let out a loud breath. “Hold on. You think they were competing to come up with the most creative way to kill based on Supreme Court cases and shit?”

  “Yeah. And it explains the alibis. The feds had no leads because everyone who could’ve been involved had an alibi for at least one of the murders. Wall was out of town for the Franklin fire, but the chief was here. The chief was out for Dupont, but Wall was in town. The chief was at the court the night the convenience store clerk was killed, but Wall never came in. The chief was on Martha’s Vineyard on Christmas when Ben Freeman and the couple were killed, but not Wall. No one considered it was two people who could be in two different places.”

  Arturo’s expression was skeptical. “This don’t feel right.”

  “And maybe it was more than a game.” Gray pointed to the newspaper story about Justice Wall’s confirmation hearing. “This was in Lauren’s file. The reporter who was killed in the Franklin fire wrote a scathing story about Wall during his confirmation hearing. And Lauren said this summer she saw the chief justice having an argument with Amanda Hill, the woman killed in Dupont Underground. Maybe they were doing each other’s dirty deeds. The chief killed the reporter, Wall killed Hill.”

  “Did the justices have beefs with the other victims?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So you think they’re crazy psychos and calculating killers offing their enemies? Those two things don’t go together. It don’t make sense.”

  Gray agreed it sounded crazy, but he was onto something. He was sure of it. “There are famous examples of killers working together like this. Haven’t you heard of Leopold and Loeb? Never mind. Maybe they’ve been doing it for a long time. Maybe they just never got caught.”

  Arturo’s face crinkled. “You the smart one, Ponyboy, but I known me some killers, and this don’t seem right.”

  “If it’s not them, who?”

  Arturo shook his head. “I don’t know. But it don’t matter. I’ll help with whatever you need.” Arturo added, “You have to know, though, nobody’s gonna believe this shit, not without some proof.”

&n
bsp; Gray sat on the bed and exhaled loudly. Arturo was right. No one would believe it. Hell, he was doubting it himself.

  Arturo then placed a finger on the third sheet from the envelope. “What about this one? ‘The thirty-seventh law clerk.’ That motherfucker better watch his back. Who is it?”

  Gray stared back at him. “That one’s easy,” he said. “It’s me.”

  CHAPTER 66

  “No one followed you?”

  “Nope,” Sam said. She pushed into the bedroom of Arturo’s apartment. She wore a rain jacket and baseball cap. She pulled off the cap and shook out her hair, which flowed past her shoulders. She looked about the room, shaking her head. Arturo was out “making his rounds,” whatever that meant.

  “You shouldn’t have come,” Gray said. “I don’t want you mixed up in this.”

  Sam ignored him. “Can you believe this place? I need to have him decorate my loft.”

  “How’d you know I’d be here?”

  “You had nowhere else to go.”

  She was right about that.

  “The agents talk to you yet? I doubt my parents would tell them about you, so I don’t know how else they’d—”

  “They came by,” she interrupted. “Some of your friends at the court”—she did air quotes as she said this—“told them about me.”

  “What’d the agents say?”

  “It was a lot of implied threats about harboring a fugitive. That I didn’t really know you. That you were basically a sadistic killer. You know, the usual…”

  He wasn’t clear if she was making light for his sake or her own. But it was helping him collect himself. To think more clearly.

  Gray showed her the crime scene wall he’d set up in the bedroom. Her mouth was agape as he walked her through his theory.

  “But the chief was attacked in the garage,” Sam said. “He couldn’t have—”

  “Staged,” Gray interrupted.

  “You think it was Justice Wall in the ski mask?”

  Gray nodded.

  “I don’t under—”

  “They set the whole thing up so I’d be the hero.”

  “Why would they do that? What would be the point of it?”

  “The feds had been looking into people at the court after the Dupont murders because the killer left behind a quill pen. Maybe Douglas and Wall realized they’d taken the game too far and wanted a fall guy if they needed one. Maybe they knew the press would find a connection between the killings, maybe they knew there’d be intense scrutiny. They needed the investigation closed before agents started looking closer at them.”

  “So pick the poor kid in the messenger’s office?”

  Gray nodded. That first day in the conference room, the job interview, the chief said he’d been to the pizza shop. Not the kind of place the chief would otherwise frequent. Unless he was looking into the background of their potential scapegoat. Gray reflected on the seduction of it all. The flattery, the condo that would give them a way to plant evidence, the loaner car that they could monitor or use to take them to their crimes.

  Sam’s face turned hard. “So why don’t we call this agent you’ve been talking to?”

  The thought had already crossed his mind. But any call to Milstein could potentially be traced to Arturo’s place.

  The bedroom door burst open and in walked Arturo. “The famous artist is here,” he said. He opened his arms and gave Sam a hug. She blushed. “You guys hungry?” he asked. “My guys brought some dinner. I told them you liked Mr. Fong’s.”

  They all converged in the living room. Arturo’s crew fluttered around like caterers, putting out the Chinese food. During dinner, they kicked around Gray’s options, and he kept coming back to the same place. Calling Agent Milstein. Arturo said he had an untraceable burner phone. “Keep the call under a minute. That’s how long it takes to track a location,” Arturo said.

  “How do you know that?” Sam asked.

  “Didn’t you ever watch The Wire?” Arturo said with a grin, handing Gray the phone.

  Gray decided it was worth the risk. He retrieved Milstein’s business card from his wallet and tapped in the number.

  “Milstein,” the voice answered.

  “It’s Gray Hernandez.”

  There was a long pause. “Grayson, I’m glad you called. Where are you? What the hell are you doing running?”

  Gray didn’t answer. He eyed the stopwatch on Arturo’s iPhone to make sure he was keeping it under a minute. He explained how the murders were connected to famous Supreme Court decisions. The competition between Douglas and Wall. By the time he was done, he had only twenty seconds left.

  Milstein didn’t react. “You should come in. It’s the only way I can—”

  “You need to be looking at the chief justice and Justice Wall. It’s all a game.”

  Ten seconds left.

  “Gray, it’s not them. You need to trust me on this.”

  “Please,” Gray said. “I know how it sounds, but you need to—”

  Arturo snatched the phone from his hand and disconnected the line.

  “She thought I was crazy,” Gray said.

  “She’ll hopefully look into it anyway,” Sam said. “You said she’s—”

  “Holy shit,” Arturo interrupted. He stared at the television, which was muted. On the news ticker at the bottom of the screen: WORST WEEK IN SUPREME COURT’S HISTORY … LAW CLERK MISSING … GOVERNMENT’S TOP LAWYER IN HIGH COURT KILLED … LAW CLERK A SUSPECT …

  “The world gone cray-cray up there at the Supreme Court,” Arturo said.

  Gray shushed everyone and turned up the volume. A cable news anchor stood in front of the Supreme Court building. “Adding to the bizarreness of it all, Dora Baxter, the solicitor general, the federal government’s representative in the Supreme Court, died en route to the hospital after a fatal hit-and-run while on her morning jog. Witnesses say the driver ran down the prominent lawyer. But the initial impact was not what killed her. The assailant did the unthinkable, and reversed the car and ran over Baxter as she lay injured in the street…”

  “No. Fuck no!” Gray shouted at the television.

  Sam and Arturo looked at one another, unsure why Gray was so upset until the correspondent continued. “My sources tell me that federal agents are looking for a vehicle owned by Chief Justice Douglas—a car he apparently loaned to his law clerk Grayson Hernandez to drive during the term. Authorities are trying to locate Mr. Hernandez, whose whereabouts, I’m told by sources close to the investigation, are unknown.”

  They hadn’t only planted evidence at the chief’s condo. They took the car from Lauren’s house and made it look like Gray had run down the solicitor general. Gray thought back to Lauren seeing Justice Wall and Dora Baxter at Gray’s condo. Then to New Year’s Eve, Wall and a woman arguing in his chambers.

  “Maybe I should ask your wife if the panties are hers.”

  “So now you’re threatening me?”

  “Maybe it’s not a threat.”

  Sam put her hand on his shoulder. “We’re gonna get through this.”

  “The thirty-seventh law clerk,” Gray whispered to himself. The words on one of the sheets in the envelope.

  “What?” Sam said.

  “Dora Baxter, during her confirmation hearings, was asked about the fact that the SG often is called ‘the tenth justice.’ Baxter joked that she’d heard that the more accurate description of the job was like being the thirty-seventh law clerk,” Gray said. “Me and the SG, the thirty-seventh law clerks. Even now, they’re still playing the game.”

  He decided right then that he was going to make them pay. To beat them at their own sick game.

  CHAPTER 67

  Gray and Sam holed up in the bedroom since they found it hard to concentrate amid the thumping music and partying in the rest of the place.

  “You think they’re ever going to stop out there?” Sam said.

  Gray shrugged.

  They had spent much of the night kicking around how t
o proceed. Should he call Milstein again? Should he call the press? He was so angry at himself for getting sucked into the chief and the court and all of it. It had been a cruel illusion—a setup—from the beginning. Arturo and Sam were having a hard time believing it, but it was true. Each crime was the answer to the other. The chief killed the reporter at the Franklin Theater, shouting fire in a crowded theater, starting the first challenge, “the great dissenter.” Wall responded with another Oliver Wendell Holmes decision with the Dupont Underground murders and “three is enough.” Wall then threw down the next challenge, “the worst SCOTUS decision ever,” and the chief answered with the convenience store worker and Korematsu. Wall’s response, the separate-but-equal decision and FBI agent Ben Freeman’s son and girlfriend. Then “the thirty-seventh law clerk,” Dora Baxter and Gray.

  “What about the last challenge?” Sam asked.

  She pointed to the wall. The last page in the envelope: FILSTEIN SWING VOTE. WEDNESDAY. A RACE. FIRST THERE WINS. LEAVE 1FS @ 7PM.

  “I’m glad you asked. That’s what gave me the idea.”

  With the music seeping through the walls and Sam sitting across from him on the bed, he told her his plan.

  “They’re planning to go after Justice Cutler. I think the game is that they will kill her and try to blame it on me.”

  Sam gave him a skeptical glance.

  “She’s the swing vote on a case called Filstein. The chief and Wall both need her vote, but she keeps changing her mind. If she’s dead, the case will be four-four and the lower court’s ruling will stand. That would be a win for the chief and Wall. The challenge is ‘Wednesday, a race, first there wins,’” Gray said. “Tomorrow is Wednesday. The challenge is a race to get to Cutler. They both have to leave the court—‘1 FS’ means One First Street—at seven o’clock, and the first one to get to Cutler and take care of her wins. We’ll beat them there. Catch them in the act. Film it. A trap.”

  “But if only one of the justices made the challenge, how will the other know since Lauren took the envelope? Or what if they know she took it?”