Mistress of Justice

note, everything I’d learned. I thought about you nudging me away from the other suspects and toward Clayton. I thought about what kind of strategist you were, about Clayton’s womanizing, about how it would be easy for you to get a gun from one of your clients in the criminal pro bono program. Your trips to Linda’s grave … I had my private-eye friend check out your mother. Yes, she was a paranoid schizophrenic. But she died four years ago. Oh, Mitchell, you looked me right in the eye and lied. I felt like crying when you told me about your mother!”
    Still, he held her eye, not a flicker of remorse in his.
    “Then,” she continued, “I called the Boston U.S. attorney’s office. Your friend Sam hasn’t worked for them for four years.… You faked that call to him from the street in front of your loft, didn’t you?” Her anger broke through. “You’re a pretty fucking good actor, Mitchell!”
    Then, calming, she continued. “Hard evidence? You yourself helped me there—that first day I met you, when you mentioned that the records in law firms reveal all kinds of information about where people’ve been and how theyspend their time. I went through the time sheets going back a year and figured out exactly what happened. It’s all right there: You and Linda working together, taking time off together, logging travel time to clients on the same date, joint meal vouchers. Then Linda’s time drops and she takes sick leave and files insurance claims because she’s pregnant. And not long after that she dies.
    “Then I found the Genneco security system contract negotiation files. And, yeah, it was checked out to Donald. But if he’d used them to get access to the botulism he sure as hell wouldn’t use his own name. Then I asked Mrs. Bendix to find any other files Donald had supposedly checked out recently. There was one—an insurance claim. Where a car went off the road and looked like it was going to sink in the reservoir in Westchester but ended up on a ledge of rock that kept it from sinking. In exactly the same place we drove into the reservoir that night. You needed to make it look like Clayton was desperate enough to kill us so he’d be desperate enough to kill himself. Right? Am I right?”
    Reluctantly he nodded.
    “Oh, sure, a lot of people had motives to kill Clayton. Thom Sebastian and Dudley and Sean Lillick … and Donald here. Even Donald’s wife. And probably a dozen other people. But I decided you were wrong—when you told me that motive is the most important thing in finding a killer. No, the most important thing is finding the person who has the
will
to murder. Remember your herald, Mitchell? Preparation and will? Well, of all the people in this firm, you were the only one I believed could actually murder someone. The way you destroyed that doctor on cross-examination … you had a killer’s heart. I could see that.
    “But even then I wasn’t absolutely sure. So I called Donald earlier tonight and we arranged this little play of our own—to find out for sure.”
    “You don’t understand,” Reece whispered desperately. “Clayton was pure evil. There was no way to bring him to justice otherwise. He—”
    Taylor’s hand flew up toward him, palm out. “Justice?”she raged. “Justice?” She sighed and lowered her head, speaking into the microphone hidden under her collar.
    “John, could you come in please?”
    The door opened and John Silbert Hemming entered. Reece stared up at the huge man as he gripped Reece’s arm tightly and stepped protectively between the lawyer and Taylor.
    The man said to her softly, “You could have stopped earlier, before he tried to use that.” Nodding at the gun. “We had enough on tape for a conviction.”
    She was looking into Reece’s evasive eyes as she said in a whisper, “I had to know.”
    The handcuffs went on quickly, with a crisp, ratchety sound.
    “You can’t do this!” Reece muttered bitterly. “You have no legal authority. It’s illegal detention and kidnapping. And that fucking tape is illegal. You’ll be subject—”
    “Shhhh,” John Silbert Hemming said.
    “—to civil liability and criminal charges, which I’ll pursue on the federal and state levels. You don’t know the kind of trouble—”
    “Shhhh,” the big man repeated, looking down at Reece ominously. The lawyer fell silent.
    Seeing Reece standing in front of her, oddly defiant, even angry at what they’d done to him, she wondered if she was