The Last Justice

by Anthony J. Franze

  Kate knew that no one would believe the farce that she had been his hostage, but she did not fight with him. Frankly, she was relieved. She had left the Supreme Court Historical Society in cold silence. She did not believe McKenna had any role in Black Wednesday, but he had lied to her. And those lies would likely ruin both of them.

  When she reached the top of the steps under the monumental portico, she sat down on the wet marble and waited. Within minutes, several police cars with sirens blazing pulled in front of the Supreme Court Building. It was over.

  McKenna could hear the commotion as he walked to Union Station. He planned to turn himself in later today to give Kate some plausible distance from him.

  Feeling the vibration in his pocket, he fished out Aiden's cell phone.

  "This is Mako Messengers," a South Asian-accented voice said. "You called about tracking a package?"

  "Yes," McKenna said, feeling a surge of excitement. He had given up and had almost forgotten that the messenger service owed him a call.

  "We got hold of the bike messenger from our D.C. office. He swears he delivered the package. He said he remembers because it was an unusual delivery."

  "Where did he deliver it? What was unusual?" McKenna asked.

  "He said the package was originally going to the Justice Department building, but someone called in a delivery change at the last minute."

  "Where?" McKenna repeated impatiently.

  "He delivered the package to a plot at Arlington National Cemetery. It was his first time there, and it was hard to find the grave, so he remem-"

  McKenna hung up the phone and quickly dialed Aiden Porter's home number. When Aiden didn't answer, he left a voice mail. He then sprinted toward Union Station. He needed to catch the subway to Arlington.

  Lemp foster home, Brooklyn, New York

  he house was surrounded by a chain-link fence and had a rusted children's slide sitting askew in the corner of the yard. The drive from Mastic to Brooklyn had taken well over an hour. Milstein knocked on the door, and a listless teenage girl wearing a leather jacket and lots of black eyeliner greeted them.

  "Are your parents home?" Milstein asked the girl as three little kids in worn, grimy clothes ran screeching past the porch. One threw a shoe at the two fleeing him.

  "Parents?" the girl said. "Right." Swinging the door wide, she walked past them on her way out.

  Even from the entryway, the house smelled like a dirty cat litter box. Two more grubby kids came bouncing down the stairs as the detectives peered in.

  "Shouldn't these kids be in school?" Milstein said, looking at her watch.

  Assad waved at one of the kids, a round-faced boy who shuffled to the door. "Is your mommy or daddy home?"

  The boy pointed up the stairs. "I think that counts as inviting us in,"Assad said as he barged in and trotted up the stairs with Milstein on his heels.

  In the first room at the top of the stairs, the smell was even stronger.

  "Dear God," Milstein said. She called the precinct on her cell phone and told one of the detectives to contact Children's Services.

  Approaching one of the three rickety cribs that filled the room, Assad picked up a staring baby with a full diaper. The child seemed lethargic. None of the three babies made a peep. It was as if they had given up on crying.

  Assad laid the baby gently back down in the crib and walked resolutely down the hallway. Milstein followed closely behind. Each room was crowded with mattresses, and some had kids of varying ages sleeping or moping about. At the end of the hall was a closed bedroom door. Assad pushed it open. He and Milstein nearly gagged at the smell. The floor was covered with garbage and what looked like dog or cat feces. Flies buzzed around empty fast food containers filled with rotting food remnants and cigarette butts. An obese woman who looked to be in her late fifties lay alone sprawled on the bed. Her head raised at the noise, then dropped right back down. An empty pint bottle lay next to her.

  Assad shook the woman, and her eyes opened.

  "Who are you?" she said in a gravelly voice.

  "We're with the police," Assad said.

  The woman sat up quickly, grabbing her head in pain. "Officers, I-"

  "What's your name?" Assad demanded.

  "I had a headache and just needed a little nap," she said.

  "I said, what's your name?"

  "Beulah Lemp."

  Assad turned her around and cuffed her. "Get up," he said. "You're under arrest."

  "What for?"

  "For being mother of the year."

  As the woman cursed and then started to blubber, Assad felt Milstein's hand on his arm. "You need to calm down," she said.

  "I am calm," he growled back.

  "No, you're not, and it's not going to help. Why don't you go check on the babies until Children's Services gets here? Call and see if we can get the records from the foster care office. Let me deal with her."

  Assad started to speak, then stopped himself and left the room.

  "You'll have to forgive my partner," Milstein said. "He's just having a bad day." She took out the newspaper with Britney Goodhart's picture on it.

  "He don't understand," Beulah sniffed. "I'm doin' the best I can. State hardly gives me nothin.' It's hard since my husband died. This was his business."

  Milstein nodded understandingly. "Look, we're not here about the kids or any of this," she said, uncuffing the woman. "We just need to know if you recognize this woman. Her name is Britney Goodhart. Did she ever stay here?"

  Beulah looked at the picture for a moment. "I've taken care of a lot of kids over the years-memory's not so good anymore."

  Milstein pulled out the picture that had been taped on the mirror at the trailer, depicting a younger Goodhart in a fringed brown suede skirt, smiling with her parents.

  Beulah studied the picture. "Ah, the little Injun girl. I remember her," she said. "That was a long time ago. She was a runner."

  "An athlete?"

  "Couldn't keep her here. She kept running away."

  "Do you have any records?" Milstein asked. "I'm trying to locate her and one of the other foster kids who may have stayed here during the time she was here."

  "State keeps the records."

  "Do you remember anything about her other than that she ran away?"

  Beulah thought for a moment. "I reckon she said some of the boys were messing with her."

  "their names?"

  "Don't remember. There was of 'em meaner'n a snake. Liked to hurt the other kids. I had to get the cops to get em out of here."

  "You don't remember their names?"

  "I told you, I get lotsa kids," Beulah said, shaking her head.

  "When she said the boys were messing with her, did you call the police or do anything?"

  "I prob'ly did. I just don't remember."

  "Do you remember if one of these boys had a tattoo or a mark on his neck?"

  "Not that I remember."

  "I need to know their names-anything that could help identify them. It's important. There could be some reward money in it for

  "Like I said, state keeps the records. Maybe the local cops have something. They was always in some kind of trouble. Or maybe the school."

  "What school?"

  "Wilson High, down on McKinley Street." She pointed to the corner. "Take a left, four blocks up. All the older kids go there, at least till they quit or get kicked out or pregnant. The girl and them boys went there. Been years, though."

  Twenty minutes later, a Children's Services case worker and a uniformed officer arrived. They approached Beulah, who asked them for a cigarette. The officer gave her the Miranda warning.

  "You said you didn't need to do this," Beulah hissed.

  "Guess I lied," Milstein said as she left the room.

  j Edgar Hoover Building, Washington,

  s Kate Porter at the field office yet?" Pacini said to a member of the commission task force who walked into the war room. "Is she talking?"

  "I don't know, sir,"
the agent replied. "I was coming to report on another development."

  "Which is ... ?"

  "Douglas Pratt's talking."

  "And?" Pacini said, visibly annoyed.

  "Right-sorry, sir. It turns out that Pratt is Liddy Kincaid's grandnephew, her sister's grandkid. Chief Justice Kincaid helped get him the job at the Supreme Court."

  "So that explains Pratt's calls to her and why the court hired a moron, but did he admit to working for the Hassans?"

  "Kind of. He said he never met the brothers but was hired by Task Force Investigator Group to try and get the court to accept the Hassan appeal. He assumed TFI was working for the Hassans. As a backup plan, TFI had him plant the camera in Carmichael's chambers. The plan was to blackmail Justices Kincaid and Carmichael if needed. Pratt swears they ultimately decided that approaching the justices with the pictures was too risky."

  "So why'd McKenna send us the photos? And what was with the disguise kit in his house?"

  "Pratt says they didn't try and use the pictures with the justices, but that he and one of the TFI agents went rogue and decided to use them to squeeze Liddy Kincaid for some money. Says he wore the disguise occasionally when he met with TFI to avoid someone recognizing him from the court. He swears TFI never asked him for help with the assassinations-says he thinks they had nothing to do with it."

  "And we're just supposed to believe him?"

  "He's passed a polygraph. He's wetting his pants over being a suspect for Black Wednesday. Our profilers believe him."

  Pacini sighed. "So we're back to nothing-is that what you're telling me?"

  The agent swallowed. "I don't know that we're back to nothing. Maybe the Hassans still played a role, just not through Pratt."

  Another FBI agent came in, out of breath.

  "What is it?"

  "We contacted the messenger service this morning about the package Parker Sinclair sent McKenna. They told us Sinclair had originally sent the package to McKenna's office at Justice but that Sinclair called at the last minute and changed the delivery site. He paid extra to have it delivered to Arlington National Cemetery."

  "Arlington? Why the hell would he do that?"

  "We don't know."

  "So why are you rushing in here like it's some kind of emergency?"

  "When we called, the messenger service said someone had already contacted them wanting the same information about the delivery."

  "McKenna?"

  "We don't know, but the messenger service spoke with the caller about a half hour ago."

  Pacini grabbed his coat off the back of a chair. "Get a team to Arlington," he said. "Go!"

  Wilson High School, Brooklyn, NY

  ith its high-fenced perimeter and manned security gate, the place looked more like a prison than a high school. Assad stopped at the gate and held up his badge to the windshield. A man wearing an unbuttoned shirt with a private security logo on the sleeve waved them through with barely a glance.

  At the front entrance of the tall rundown building, the guards let them walk around the metal detectors, as if police visits were routine. A guard pointed them toward the school's office.

  Assad tried to open the glass door to the office, but it was locked. A woman's voice from a speaker said, "Can I help you?"

  Through the window Assad could see a woman eyeing him from the reception desk. He held up his badge. "We're with the police. Can we speak with the principal?"

  With an exasperated look, the woman pushed a button, and the door buzzed open. Before they reached the reception desk, Assad and Milstein were met by a tired-looking black man in his thirties. Milstein explained that they were here about an important investigation, and asked him about records on former students.

  "Files that old aren't in the computer," the principal said. "They're in storage-it'd take a week or two to get them."

  "Any other way we might try and find out anything about a former student?"

  "You mean right now?"

  Milstein nodded.

  He thought for a moment. "Maybe yearbooks? The library should have a set going back thirty years." He escorted them to the moldysmelling basement of the school's library and then hurriedly left them when a voice bellowed from his walkie-talkie about a disturbance in a classroom.

  "This isn't right," Assad said, looking about him at the cluttered, mildewed gloom. "Kids shouldn't have to be in a place like this."

  Milstein gave him a gentle gaze. Eight years as a homicide cop, and he was still a prep school idealist at heart.

  "This is a needle in a haystack," Assad grumped, handing her a stack of six yearbooks. "Don't you think going through foster care records will be faster?"

  "They said it will take weeks to pull those files. And you know the foster system-do you really think they kept detailed records?"

  Assad shot her a look.

  "Chase, we're close to something here-I know it," Milstein said. "Britney Goodhart knew something. She was branded by a guy who had brands on his neck."

  "Okay," Assad said, retreating. "Let's find the needle."

  Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia

  cKenna walked from the metro station up the steep incline to the graves of his wife and child. When Colin died, Isabel had decided that this was where he needed to be buried. Not because it was a famous burial site, but because she and Colin had spent many trips here visiting Grandpa's grave-Isabel's late father had been career military, and a Purple Heart recipient. McKenna momentarily imagined Isabel and Colin walking on the irregular granite paving stones, talking, holding hands. Isabel hadn't just wanted him buried here; she needed it. It took McKenna only a brief mention to the sympathetic attorney general, and somehow it was done, never mind that Colin didn't meet formal Arlington eligibility requirements. And when Isabel was killed, there was no question she would want to be near her little boy.

  McKenna made his way to Colin's headstone. Kneeling on the damp ground, he pushed aside some tall grass near the stone, but there was no package. He ran his hand over the smooth white stone and was brought back momentarily to their last hug, when his little boy had died in his arms at the hospital.

  Colin's weak voice whispered in his head: Ire you stealing my good, Daddy?

  He lingered there for another moment, then moved to Isabel's headstone. Again he searched the grass, but there was nothing. Either the agents had found the package or the messenger had never delivered it. No matter-it was time to turn himself in.

  Kissing his hand, he touched the stone and said, "I'm obviously doing really well without you, Isabel. I miss you." Then he stood up, and was turning to leave when his eye caught something next to a miniature American flag planted near Isabel's father's gravestone.

  The package.

  It was a brown envelope wrapped in a plastic bag, protecting it from the rain. McKenna tore open the top. He was reaching inside when a voice stopped him.

  "Hello, Jefferson."

  A man with a pockmarked face and camouflage hunting jacket was walking toward him.

  Hart Senate Building, Capitol Hill

  he Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on the six nominees to the high court was about to begin. To expedite the proceedings, the eighteen committee members had agreed to forgo their traditional opening statements, which, in past hearings, had taken a full day.

  By agreement, there would be no harsh questions, no witnesses for or against the nominees, no written report to the full Senate. It would be a perfunctory rubber-stamp session, a throwback to the days before the nomination process had become so politicized.

  The six nominees sat in a row in comfortable seats at a large table draped with bright red skirting, facing the senators. A dozen press photographers knelt in front of the nominees, clicking frantically away before the hearing began.

  Chairman Tye Goldman, a Republican senator from Florida, sat tall against a backdrop of the Senate seal affixed to the marble wall behind him. He adjusted his microphone, signaling that he was about to
begin, and waited as the room came to order. He looked out at the full hearing room. Behind the nominees were their family members and the "Sherpas" assigned to guide them through the process, and members of the press filled the long tables to the far left and right of the room.

  "Good morning," Chairman Goldman said, waiting another moment for silence. "Today we are gathered for a historic event: the hearing to address the president's nominees for chief justice of the United States and associate justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. We welcome the nominees and their families."

  The six nominees thanked the chairman.

  Goldman took a sip of water and said, "I'd like to begin this hearing by acknowledging the families of our fallen heroes. If you could please stand ..." The families of the justices killed on Black Wednesday stood up in the gallery, and the room filled with applause.

  When the clapping subsided, Chairman Goldman said, "I hope you know the pride and gratitude the nation feels for the great role your loved ones played in safeguarding our democracy. If they were here, I think they would be proud of the bipartisan effort and unparalleled cooperation that resulted in these fine individuals being chosen to continue their legacies."

  There was more applause.

  "Having had the privilege to know some of the late justices personally, I can say that they would appreciate that we are expediting this process and forgoing the usual practice of allowing each member of the committee to provide an opening statement."

  Light laughter filled the room.

  "Now, before we begin, I would also like to acknowledge that there are some who have been critical of this proceeding and complain that we should have several days, or even weeks or months, of hearings for each of these fine nominees. The argument for that approach, as I understand it, is that the hearing today and vote in the Senate tomorrow are happening at an unprecedented speed and pursuant to an unusual bipartisan agreement. I disagree. I'm reminded of a story about Abraham Lincoln." Chairman Goldman paused for effect.