Mistress of Justice

had to do.
    In her scrawled handwriting Taylor promised that she’d explain everything to him later—if she wasn’t killed or arrested—but she begged him to please, please stay away from the firm tonight. After all the deceit and horrors of the past two weeks she’d learned who Wendall Clayton’s killer was. She’d gotten a gun and, finally, she was going to make sure that justice would be done.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
     
    Taylor Lockwood had never liked this room—the big conference room in the firm.
    For one thing, it was always dim—a pastel room so underlit that the colors became muddy and unreal. For another, she associated it with the large meetings in which the paralegal administrator would gather her flock and give them all a rah-rah pep talk, which amounted to a plea not to quit just because the raises this year were going to be only 5 percent.
    Mindless, proletariat babble.
    Nonetheless, at eight o’clock in the evening, here was Taylor Lockwood, sitting in a large swivel chair at the base of the U, the chair Donald Burdick reserved for himself.
    Suddenly the huge teak doors to the room opened and Mitchell Reece ran inside.
    He stopped, gasping, when he saw the gun in her hand.
    She looked at him with surprise. “Mitchell, what are you doing here?”
    “Your note! I read the note you left. Where did you think I’d be?”
    “I told you not to come. Why didn’t you listen to me?”
    “What’re you going to do with the gun?”
    She smiled absently. “It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? I’ve got to save us.”
    “The U.S. attorney’s coming tomorrow! Don’t do this to yourself.”
    “The cops? The U.S. attorney?” She laughed skeptically. “And what would they do? We don’t have any evidence. You and I are never going to be safe. We got run off the road, I was poisoned. I was almost stabbed to death.”
    “What?”
    She didn’t tell him about the latest assault just yet. She muttered, “It’s just a matter of time until we’re dead—if I don’t stop things right here. Now.”
    “You can’t just shoot somebody in cold blood.”
    “I’ll claim self-defense. Insanity.”
    “The insanity defense doesn’t work, Taylor. Not in cases like this.”
    She rubbed her eyes.
    “The man who stole the note’s dead.”
    “What?”
    “The janitor or whatever he was, the one who put the poison in my food—him. He tried again. He chased me into the subway. But he got electrocuted.”
    “Jesus. What did the police say?”
    “No.” She shook her head. “I didn’t go to them. It wouldn’t do any good, Mitchell. They’d just hire somebody else.”
    “Well, who is it?” he asked. “Who’s behind all this?”
    She didn’t answer. She glanced up, over Reece’s shoulder, and said, “Turn around and find out.” She hid the gun behind her back and called, “We’re over here. Come on in.”
    Reece spun around.
    A figure emerged from the dull light of the hallway into the deeper shadow of the end of the conference room. Donald Burdick, his posture perfect, like a ballroom dancer’s, stepped past the doors, which swung closed with a heavy snap.
    The partner called from across the room, his voice ringing dully, like a bell through fog. “Taylor, it
is
you.” He nodded at Reece.
    “Surprised to see I’m still alive?”
    “Your call … it didn’t make any sense. What’s all this about Wendall’s death?” He walked to within ten feet of them and stopped. He remained standing. “We thought you were sick.”
    “You mean, you
hoped
I was
dead!”
She slowly lifted the gun.
    His mouth opened. He blinked. “Taylor, what are you doing with that?”
    She started to speak. Her voice choked and then she cleared her throat. “I had a speech rehearsed, Donald. I forgot it.… But what I do know is that you hired that man to steal the note and set up Clayton’s suicide. Then you had him run us off the road and try to kill me—twice.”
    The dapper partner gave a harsh bark of a laugh. “Are you crazy?” He looked at Mitchell for help. “What’s she saying?”
    Reece shook his head, gazing at Taylor with concern.
    “I went through the file room logs, Donald. You checked out a file for Genneco last week. I saw your signature.”
    “Maybe I did. I don’t remember. Genneco’s my client.”
    “But there’d be no reason to check
this
file out. It wasn’t active. As part of a contract negotiation their insurer analyzed their pathogen storage facility in New Jersey. It was