Dirty Blonde (39 page)

Cate unpacked the first few books, mostly casebooks from law school, her go-to reference books, with sentimental value. She chose one, noting that Val must have wiped each one down before she packed it. She took the book to the empty bookshelves near the work table and set it on the shelf with a satisfying
thud
that echoed in the silent office, her thoughts skipping ahead with renewed energy. She’d replace all of her rules books and other reference books in the shelves nearest her desk, then rehang her diplomas and awards. She’d haul boxes she had never opened from the closet and unpack them for the first time, making arrangements of treasured photos and certificates from practice. She’d unwrap the office-warming gifts that her partners had given her and decorate the place. She’d finally make the office her own.

She turned back to the box of casebooks, shelving the next two with a happy, determined feeling. She’d just reached the middle of the box when she heard a noise in the reception area. The sound of the door to her chambers, opening.

Cate looked up from the law books in surprise.

CHAPTER 47

Even at the sight of her old enemy, Cate felt unusually calm, like Zen Judge. Maybe it was all this perspective she’d been getting. She hoped she hadn’t changed too much. She’d start throwing out Chanel jackets.

“What are you doing here?” Meriden asked, from the threshold to her office, his thin lips pursed. He stood disapproving in his houndstooth topcoat, maroon cashmere scarf, and black leather gloves that would have embarrassed most serial killers.

“Moving in,” Cate answered pleasantly. “I’m the new judge. What are you doing here?”

“I was working late and saw the light under the door, on my way to the elevator.”

“You mean you were killing time in your office until Val left, then you came in to snoop.” Cate smiled, but Meriden frowned.

“You know you’re not permitted in this building. Chief Judge Sherman has ordered your belongings shipped out and your docket reassigned.”

“He doesn’t have the power to do that.”

“Chief Judge Sherman runs this courthouse.”

“Granted,” Cate said, with a shrug, “but might doesn’t make right. He’s overstepped his power. Sherman may be the court administrator, but the Constitution affords him no greater status than it does me.” She remembered, in the beginning, being intimidated that her job description was in the United States Constitution. Now she rather liked the idea.

“He’s chief judge of the Eastern District.”

“I don’t see the words ‘chief judge’ anywhere in Article III. He has that title because he’s the most senior, and that’s all.” Cate slid another of her old casebooks from the box and shelved it with another great
thud
. It was fun to make noise.

“So you won’t go willingly.”

“Thank you, no. I earned this job, and I want this job. It’s mine and I’m keeping it.”

Meriden arched an eyebrow. “Have you been drinking?”

“No, I’ve been growing up.”

“About time.”

“I agree.”

Meriden snorted. “So you’ll fight us? You’ll
sue
the court? Your
colleagues
?”

“If you were colleagues, you wouldn’t try to throw me out. I don’t think of it as a fight. I think of it as asserting the power of the law. No one’s above it, not even judges. Especially not judges.”

Meriden shook his head. “What lawyer would be crazy enough to sue the Eastern District?”

“I would. Thanks.”

“You’re going to represent yourself?” Meriden burst into loud laughter. Cate didn’t like his noise as much as her noise.

“Looks that way. Nobody else wants the job, and I used to be passable at the trial thing.” Cate shelved another casebook. She didn’t need to refer to the fact that she’d kicked
his
ass, because she was above that now
.

“You’re so self-righteous. For a whore.”

“Guilty.” Cate smiled. Even that slur couldn’t trouble her Zen waters. All her secrets having been told, they lacked superpowers.

“This is ridiculous, what’s happening here!” Meriden said, raising his voice, and Cate unpacked another casebook.
Thud!

“On that we agree. My working, you watching. Why don’t you help me unpack? Open that box in front of you.”

“I’m calling the marshals.”

“Go ahead, use my phone. Tell ’em I said hi.” Cate gestured at Val’s desk, near him. “But after hours, they don’t have the manpower to answer phones. It’d be faster to go down and get Tony.”

“Is that the way you want it?” Meriden shouted. “You
want
that indignity? Don’t you ever get enough of embarrassing yourself? They’ll throw you out, bodily!”

“I doubt that. You have no authority to order them to do anything, and my body is way better than yours.” Cate unpacked another book,
Prosser on Torts
. She had loved that class.

“We’ll see about that.” Meriden turned on his heel and stormed through the reception room, out of chambers, letting the door slam behind him.

Cate smiled and stuck Prosser, thick and green, on the shelf.
Thud!
She had maybe ten minutes before they came up. God knew what would happen then. She reached for another book.

But only three minutes later, the door to chambers opened again.

CHAPTER 48

“I’m in here, gentlemen,” Cate called from her office, examining her casebooks on the shelves. They made a nice, neat hardback row, and she ran her index fingers along the pebbled spines. She hadn’t seen them since law school, which may have been the last time she’d thought that she loved the law—until now. She’d have time to study it now, as an intellectual exercise, and to affect its development as a code of conduct for the governance of a society. She couldn’t imagine any job more exciting and important. It would more than make up for not being in court anymore, as a trial lawyer. Now, the action would be on the bench, merely a change of venue.

Cate reached in the box for another casebook. Heavy and red, clothbound with gold stripes on the spine:
Antitrust Law
by Areeda & Turner. She placed it on the shelf and reached in the box for a bookend, a bas-relief of Carpenter Hall, in brass. Then she remembered. Somebody had come in. So where were they? Maybe they hadn’t heard her.

“Hello?” Cate called out, holding the bookend. No sound came from the reception area. Her chambers were quiet. She felt a tingle of something. Suddenly, a dark head popped in the doorway, and Cate jumped, startled. “Emily! I thought you went home.”

“No. Did I scare you?”

“I thought it might be Meriden.”

“He’s gone. I saw him go down the judges’ elevator.” Emily entered the office, and her dark eyes shone with wetness, as if she’d been crying. She wore her dark raincoat and a long black skirt with her Doc Martens, and after a minute, she pulled something from her coat pocket. A black semiautomatic, its barrel lengthened by a silencer.

Cate blinked. “I don’t understand. Is this a joke?”

“You figured it out, didn’t you?”

“What did I figure out?”

“That I killed Simone.”

“
What?
” Cate couldn’t believe her ears. She froze, bookend in hand.

“I was standing at Val’s desk when she called you. You told her you figured out the real killer.”

“I did. Micah Gilbert.” Cate’s mouth went dry.
Emily holding a gun, with a silencer?

“I don’t believe you. You knew it was me.”

“No, I thought it was Micah. It isn’t Micah? She had an affair with Simone. I even know where she bought the gun.” Cate remembered that her celebrity gun sat uselessly in a shopping bag. Not that she’d bought bullets, anyway.

“You really didn’t know? I mean, I never thought it would get this far.” Emily’s eyes went newly wet, and she raised the gun higher.

“No. Wait. What do you mean?” Cate suppressed the urge to panic. “Explain this to me. You owe me that. I thought we were friends.”

“Art Simone called me at home, after the pretrial. He said he’d pay me. All I had to do was call Micah and let her know when you were leaving chambers at night. So that she could follow you.” Emily’s Goth mascara began to run, her eyelashes turned to spiders. “I need the money really bad, you know that. I have school loans and no offer. He said he’d hook me up with the network’s legal department.”

Keep her talking
.
She’s already in a state.
“So what happened?”

“He wanted more details, like what you wore, or how you looked the next day, after you’d been out. I said no, I wanted to end it but he said he’d tell you.”

“How’d you do it?”
Where were Meriden and the marshals?

“I followed him to dinner and I shot him.” Emily’s eyes brimmed over, running black tears. “I had to. My family depends on me. You remember that day, when we talked about people and their dreams? This is their dream.
I
am their dream.”

“What about Marz?”
What was taking them so long?

“I had to do it. After what happened in court, I knew it was my chance. His phone numbers were on the pleadings, and I called him on the cell. I told him to meet me, that I had inside info.” Emily sniffled. “He was so drunk, it was easy to make it look like a suicide.”

“How did you get the gun past the metal detectors?”

“The judges’ elevator. I went in and out with everybody for Judge Meriden’s birthday. When they went to lunch, I went to the gun store.” Emily’s eyes brimmed over, and a black tear rolled down her cheek. “I didn’t want to, Judge, but I had to. Or thought I had to, because of what you told Val, that you figured it out.”

“I would never think it was you,” Cate said softly. Her own emotions bubbled to the surface and she used them to her advantage. “Jeez, Em. You would really hurt me?
Kill me?
”

“I have to, to end it.” Emily sobbed and raised the gun higher, giving a panicky Cate her answer.

“Wait! No. Please, Em.” Cate heard sheer desperation in her voice. She had run out of time. The stalling wasn’t working. “You can’t do this. It’ll only make things worse. They’ll know it was you.”

“No, they won’t. Val thinks I went home. No one knows I’m still in the building. I’ve been hiding in the bathroom. The cleaning people already went through, and I’m staying the night. Tomorrow morning, I’ll be the one who finds you dead.”

My God.
Cate’s fingers tightened around the bookend. She would get one shot.

Emily squinted, taking aim. “Sorry, Judge.”

CHAPTER 49

Suddenly Cate threw the brass bookend at Emily, hitting her in the cheek.

“Ahhh!” the clerk yelled, staggering backwards, her hand flying to her left eye. Blood appeared at a cut on her cheekbone.
Pfftt! Pfft!
Bullets flew into the tiled ceiling as she fell, knocking over stacked boxes.

Cate bolted for the door of her office, past the boxes. She flung the door open wide.

Onto an angry Jonathan Meriden. “Cate, the marshals are on rounds, and I—”

“She has a gun!” Cate screamed, barreling into him, plowing him backwards into the opposite wall.

“Stop, Judge!” Emily bellowed from chambers.

Meriden’s eyes popped. “
What?
” he asked, shocked.

“Run!” Cate screamed, disentangling them. She thought fast. Meriden still held his passcard for the judges’ elevator. He’d be dead if he went with her. She shoved him to the left, setting him in motion. “Take the elevator!” she shouted, tearing down the hallway in the opposite direction.

“Help!” Meriden shrieked, taking off toward the judges’ elevator.

Cate ran for her life to the stairwell.

“No!” Emily yelled, the sound coming from the hallway now.

Cate hit the staircase at speed and straight-armed the door, banging into the stairway and grabbing the rail not to fall on the concrete stairs. She flew, grabbed the railing, and whirled around the corner at the landing, half-running and half-stumbling down the tight stairwell as it wound tightly down.

Pttt ptt ptt!
Bullets exploded into the concrete wall.

“Help!” Cate screamed. The marshals might hear her. They were on rounds. Her breath came in panicky bursts. She almost caught a heel on the stair. She grabbed the railing, frantic.

Cate tore down the third floor, then the second. Did the fire stairwell go all the way down? She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t take a chance. She’d be trapped at gunpoint.

Pttt!
Bullets flew into the wall.

Cate burst through the stairwell door into the hallway near the clerk’s office, skidding across the waxed floor. She ricocheted off the wall, righted herself, and went flat-out for the two-story escalator that led to the courthouse lobby. The escalator was turned off, and Cate ran down the up escalator, her heart thundering. In the next second, she heard Emily’s heavy tread behind her. Ahead lay the polished expanse of black granite. The lobby floor.
Almost there!

But the metal detectors and the security desk were empty.
No one left on guard?
Cate tore down the steps, trying not to fall.

Ping ping ping!
Bullets strafed the stainless steel of the escalator.

Cate’s shoulder suddenly felt odd. Had she been hit? Emily was right behind her. The clerk had a clear shot to finish her off.

Suddenly Cate’s heel caught in the ridge of an escalator step. She fell, hurtling forward and down, banging her head against the metal side of the escalator, scraping her cheek against the sharp stair edge, rolling end over end. She tumbled to the bottom, her bruised cheek smacking into the cold granite.

She heard a man shout, “Help! Help!”

Meriden. He must have reached the lobby.

“Judge Meriden, stop!” Emily shouted, thudding down the escalator stairs in her heavy shoes.

Cate raised her head and saw Meriden streaking for the courthouse exit, his topcoat flying.

“Stop right there!” Emily bellowed. She raised her gun and aimed it at Meriden.

Cate gathered all of her strength and staggered to her feet just in time to throw a surprise block into Emily.