The judge was preparing for the noon conference and hoped that Laura had finished her research in a tax case the justices would be discussing.
The door opened as Griffen finished signing a letter. He looked up when the door closed and started to smile.
But the smile disappeared when he saw his law clerk's face. She appeared to be on the verge of tears.
"We have to talk," Laura said with a trembling voice.
Griffen stood up and walked around the desk. "What's wrong?"
"Everything," Laura answered. "Everything."
Then she started to cry.
The conference room of the Oregon Supreme Court was spacious, with few furnishings aside from a large conference table and some ancient glass-front bookshelves. Four former justices glowered down on their modern counterparts from portraits on the walls. Chief Justice Forbes sat at the head Of the conference table with the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up and his tie loosened. Alice Sherzer put down her coffee cup and briefs at her place on Forbes's right. Vincent Lefcourt, snowy-haired and dignified, sat on Forbes's left.
Robert Griffen pushed through the door and almost ran into Mary Kelly, who was working on her first cigarette of the conference.
"Sorry," Griffen apologized.
Kelly was wearing a loose, sleeveless, forest-green dress. She brushed her honey-colored hair off her forehead and gave Griffen a casual smile.
"No damage done," Kelly said. Then she noticed Griffen's face and her smile faded. Kelly touched Griffen lightly on his forearm. He stopped.
"What's wrong?" Kelly asked in a low voice.
Griffen shook his head. "It's nothing."
Kelly shifted so her back screened their conversation from the other justices.
"Tell me what happened," she demanded.
Griffen looked away. Kelly's grip tightened. When Griffen looked at her, his face reflected his confusion. He was about to reply when Arnold Pope entered the room.
"Your wife looked terrific, Bob," he said maliciously. "Too bad you had to miss her argument."
Griffen paled, and Kelly looked at Pope as if he was an insect she'd found in her salad. At that moment, Frank Arriaga rushed in. He held up a sack from the deli across the street.
"Sorry, guys. My clerk was late with my fuel. Did I miss anything?"
"Relax, Frank." Forbes smiled. Arriaga sat next to Vincent Lefcourt, who looked on with amusement as Arriaga pulled a huge glazed jelly doughnut out of his brown paper bag.
"We're all here, so let's get started," Justice Forbes said.
"We can talk later," Mary Kelly assured Griffen.
Forbes squared the stack of briefs in front of him.
"I was going to begin with you, Frank, but you've got that monstrosity stuffed in your mouth, so how about it, Vincent?
What's your take on the State ex rel. Franklin?"
Justice Sherzer needed a memo in the morning on a probate issue, but Tracy was so upset by what had happened in the library that she had trouble concentrating. At five o'clock, she decided to take a break and finish the memo after dinner.
Tracy's garden apartment was on the second floor of a two story complex half a mile from the court. She had been a top student in college and law school, but she would have failed housekeeping. The front door opened into a living room that had not been cleaned in a week.
Newspapers and mail were strewn across the sofa. Tracy rarely watched television, and her small black-and-white set was gathering dust in a corner. Tracy's rockclimbing equipment was well cared for, but it was piled high next to the television.
The apartment came furnished. The only marks Tracy had made on the personality of the place were several photographs detailing her athletic feats. One photo in the living room showed Tracy standing on a track in front of a grandstand with her hand gently touching the shoulder of a girl who was bent over from the waist. The two women were wearing Yale track uniforms. They had finished one-two in the 1,500 meters to clinch the Ivy League title and looked exhausted but triumphant.
Another photo showed Tracy climbing a snowcapped mountain. She was wearing a parka with the hood thrown back and was brandishing an ice ax over her head. A photo in the bedroom showed Tracy hanging upside down from a rockface on one of the more difficult ascents at Smith Rocks in eastern Oregon.
As soon as she arrived at her apartment, Tracy dumped her clothes on the bedroom floor and changed into her running gear.
Then she set off along a seven-mile loop she had mapped out when she moved to Salem.
As Tracy ran, she thought about the incident in the library.
She could not understand Laura's reaction. Laura disliked Justice Pope, so why would she protect him if he had made a pass at her?
Maybe there was some other explanation for what she had seen, but Tracy could not think of one that made sense. Something was definitely going on in Laura's life. Tracy remembered how drawn and pale Laura looked when she surprised Laura reading the Deems transcript. Laura's angry outburst in the library was in keeping with the agitated state in which Tracy had observed her during the past few days, but what was causing Laura's anxiety?
After her run, Tracy showered, then ate a Caesar salad with baby shrimp and two slices of a thick-crusted sourdough bread.
She threw the dirty dishes in the sink, then walked back to the courthouse across the Willamette University campus. In the daytime, the rolling lawns and old shade trees made Willamette a pleasant place to stroll. But at dusk, during summer break, the university was deserted.
Streetlights illuminated the walking paths, and Tracy stayed on them when she could. The temperature had dropped and a cool breeze chilled her. Halfway across campus, Tracy thought she saw someone move in the shadow of a building. She froze and stared into the dying light. The wind rustled the leaves. Tracy waited a moment, then walked on, feeling silly for being so skittish.
The Supreme Court was deserted when Tracy let herself in at seven-thirty. It was eerie being alone in the empty building, but Tracy had worked at night before. The clerks' offices ran along the side of the Supreme Court building that faced the Capitol. An open area dominated by a conference table stood between their offices and the mail room. The top of the conference table was littered with staplers, plastic cups, paper plates and law books.
No two chairs around the table were of the same type and none were in good repair. Behind the table was an alcove with a computer and the only printer. Scattered around the area were bookshelves, filing cabinets and a sagging couch. Tracy walked past the open area and down a short hall to her office. She found the notes she needed for the memo on the probate issue, turned off the lights in the clerks' area, and walked upstairs to the library.
A footnote in a law review article mentioned some interesting cases.
Tracy wandered around the stacks and found them. They led her to other cases and she became so absorbed in her work that she was surprised to discover it was almost ten o'clock when she was ready to write the memo.
Tracy gathered up her notes and turned off the library lights. Her footsteps echoed on the marble staircase, creating the illusion that someone else was in the building. Tracy laughed at herself. She remembered how jittery she'd been earlier in the evening when she walked across the Willamette campus. What had gotten into her?
Tracy opened the door to the clerks' area and stopped. She was certain all the lights had been off when she went up to the library, but there was a light on in Laura Rizzatti's office. Someone must have come into the building while she was upstairs.
"Laura?" Tracy called out. There was no answer. Tracy strained to hear any sound that would tell her she was not alone.
When she heard nothing, she looked in Laura's office. The drawers of Laura's filing cabinet were open and files were all over the floor.
Transcripts were scattered around. Someone had ransacked the office while Tracy was upstairs in the library.
Tracy reached for the phone to call Laura. The door to the cler
ks' area closed. Tracy froze for a moment, then darted to the door and pulled it open. There was no one in the hallway. She ran to the back door and looked through the glass. No one was in the parking lot. Tracy tried to calm down. She thought about reporting what had happened to the police. But what had happened?
Laura might have caused the mess in her office. That was not unreasonable, given the state Laura had been in recently. And she might have imagined hearing the door close. After all, she had not seen anyone in the building or the parking lot.
Tracy was too nervous to stay in the deserted courthouse. She decided to leave her notes and write the memo early in the morning. Tracy turned on the lights in the clerks' area and headed for her office. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something under the conference table.
Tracy stopped. A woman's leg stretched out into the light. The rest of the body was hidden in shadow. Tracy knelt down. The body was twisted as if the woman had tried to crawl away from her attacker. Blood ran through the curly black hair. The head was turned so that the dead eyes stared at Tracy.
Tracy choked back a sob and lurched to her feet. She knew she should feel for a pulse, but she could not bring herself to touch Laura Rizzatti's slender wrist. She also knew instinctively that it would make no difference.
The first officers on the scene told Tracy to wait in her office. It was so narrow she could almost touch both walls if she stood sideways.
Above her desk was a bulletin board with a chart of her cases. Next to the desk, on the window side, an old fan perched on top of a metal filing cabinet. Several briefs and some transcripts were stacked neatly on the desk next to a computer.
A slim woman in a powder-blue shirt, tan slacks and a light blue windbreaker walked into the office and held up a badge. She looked like she had been awakened from a deep sleep. Her blue eyes were bloodshot and her shaggy blond hair had an uncombed look.
"I'm Heidi Bricker, a detective with Salem PD."
In Bricker's other hand was a container of hot coffee with a McDonald's logo. She offered it to Tracy. "Can you use this?"
"Thanks," Tracy answered wearily.
Bricker sat down beside Tracy. "Was she a friend."
Tracy nodded.
"It must have been some shock finding the body."
Tracy sipped from the cardboard cup. The coffee was hot and burned the roof of her mouth, but she didn't care. The physical pain was a welcome distraction.
"What were you doing here so late?"
"I clerk for Justice Sherzer. She's working on a case with a complex probate issue and she needed a memo from me on a point of law, first thing in the morning."
"What time did you start working?"
"Around seven-thirty."
"Where were you working?"
"Upstairs in the library."
"Did you hear or see anything out of the ordinary?"
"No. You can't hear anything that's said in the clerks' offices when you're upstairs in the library."
Detective Bricker made some notes in a small spiral notebook, then asked, "Was Laura a clerk?"
Tracy nodded. "For Justice Griffen."
"What did Laura do for Justice Griffen?"
"She researched legal issues being argued before the court, drafted opinions and read Petitions for Review filed by parties who've lost in the Court of Appeals."
"Could she have been murdered because of something she was working on?"
"I can't imagine what. There isn't anything we know that isn't public record."
"Why don't you explain that to me."
"Okay. Let's say you were convicted of a crime or you lost a lawsuit and you didn't think you received a fair trial. Maybe you thought the judge let in evidence she shouldn't have or gave a jury instruction that didn't accurately explain the law. You can appeal. In an appeal, you ask the appellate court to decide if the trial judge screwed up. If the trial judge did make a mistake and it was serious enough to affect the verdict, the appellate court sends the case back for a new trial.
"A court reporter takes down everything that's said in the trial. If you appeal, the court reporter prepares a transcript of the trial that is a word-for-word record of everything that was said. An appeal must be from the record. If someone confesses to a crime after the trial, the confession can't be considered on appeal, because it's not in the record."
"So there's nothing an appellate judge considers that's secret?" Bricker said., "Well, sometimes there are sealed portions of the record, but that's rare. And no one is allowed to tell the public which justice is assigned to write the opinion in a case or what views the justices express in conference. But that wouldn't have anything to do with Laura."
"Then why would someone ransack Laura's office?"
"I don't know. A burglar wouldn't be interested in legal briefs and transcripts. No one except the lawyers and judges involved in a particular case would be interested in them."
"What about jewelry, cash?"
"Laura didn't have much money and I never saw her with any jewelry worth killing for."
"Can you think of anyone who would want to hurt her? Did she have a boyfriend, an ex-husband with a grudge?"
"Laura was single. As far as I know, she didn't have a boyfriend. She kept to herself, so there might have been someone I didn't know about, but . . ." Tracy paused.
"Yes?" Bricker asked.
"I feel odd about this."
"About what?"
"Is what I tell you confidential?"
"Our reports have to be revealed to the defense in certain cases, if there's an arrest, but we try to keep confidences."
"I don't know if I . . ."
"Tracy, your friend was murdered. If you know something that could help us catch the killer . . ."
Tracy told Detective Bricker how Laura had been acting and about the incident between Justice Pope and Laura in the library.
"It may have been nothing," Tracy concluded. "Laura never said Pope tried anything, but it was obvious to me he'd made a pass at her."
"Okay. Thanks. If I talk to Justice Pope about this, I won't tell him my source. Can you think of anything else that might help?"
Tracy shook her head wearily.
"Okay. You've been a big help, but you look like you're at the end of your rope. I'm going to have someone drive you home. I may want to speak to you again," Bricker said, handing Tracy her business card, "and if anything else comes to you . . ."
"I'll definitely call, only I don't think I know anything I haven't told you. I can't imagine why anyone would want to kill Laura."
Tracy waited on the landing while an officer checked her apartment. She was exhausted and had to lean against the railing to keep herself erect.
It was hard to believe that Laura, to whom she'd spoken only hours before, was no longer alive.
"Everything's okay, miss," the policeman said. Tracy hadn't heard him step out of the apartment and she jumped slightly. "I checked the rooms, but you make certain you lock up tight. I'll cruise by every hour, just in case."
Tracy thanked the policeman. She locked up, as he'd advised.
Tracy wanted nothing more than to sleep, but she wondered if she could.
The first thing she noticed when she entered her bedroom was the flashing light on her answering machine. Tracy collapsed on her bed and played back her only message. Laura's voice made her gasp.
"Tracy, I'm in trouble. I have to talk to you. It's nine-oh-five.
Please call me as soon as you get in, no matter how late it is. I have to . . ."
Tracy heard a doorbell ringing in the background just before Laura stopped speaking. There was a pause, then Laura finished the message.
"Please call me. I don't know what to do. Please."
Chapter FIVE in the days following Laura's death, everyone at the court tiptoed around Tracy as if she had some rare disease, except for Justice Sherzer, who invited Tracy to move in with her. She declined, insisting on staying alone in her apartment and facing her fears.
>
Friday was oppressively humid. The portable fan barely stirred the air in Tracy's tiny office. The workmen's compensation case she was working on was as dry as dust and the heat made it hard to concentrate. Tracy was taking a sip from a diet Coke she had purchased more for the ice than the drink when Arnold Pope stormed in. His face was florid and he glowered at Tracy. With his bristly flattop and heavy jowls, he reminded her of a maddened bulldog.
"Did you talk to a woman named Bricker about me?" Pope demanded.
Tracy was frightened by the sudden verbal assault, but she refused to show it.
"I don't appreciate your yelling at me, Justice Pope," she said firmly as she stood to confront the judge.
"And I don't appreciate a clerk talking about me behind my back, young lady."
"What is this about?" Tracy asked, fighting to keep her tone even.
"I just had a visit from Detective Heidi Bricker of Salem PD.
She said someone accused me of making a pass at Laura Rizzatti in the library. She wouldn't tell me who'd made the accusation, but only three of us were there. Did you think I wouldn't figure out who was slandering me?"
"I told Detective Bricker what I saw."
"You never saw me make a pass at Laura Rizzatti, because that never happened. Now, I want you to call her and tell her you lied."
"I'll do no such thing," Tracy answered angrily.
"Listen, young lady, you're just starting your legal career. You don't want to make enemies. Either you call that detective OF . . .
"Is something wrong?" Justice Griffen asked from the doorway. He was wearing a short-sleeve white shirt. His top button was open and his red-and-yellow paisley-print tie was loosened.
The heat had dampened his hair and it fell across his forehead.
From a distance, he could have been mistaken for one of the clerks.
Pope whirled around. "This is between Miss Cavanaugh and me, he said.
"Oh? I thought I heard you threatening her."
"I don't care what you think, Griffen. I'm not going to stand still while this girl makes false accusations about me behind my back."
"Calm down, Arnold. Whatever happened between you and Ms. Cavanaugh, this is no way to deal with it. All the clerks can hear you yelling at her."
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