Mr. Justice (28 page)

“Fuck you!” Kelsi said. She picked up a rock and threw it at Clay.

The rock hit Clay in the head. “Shit!” He rubbed his hand against his forehead. He was bleeding again. “Goddamn.” He stared down at Kelsi with murder in his eyes.

Kelsi trembled. She finally saw Clay Smith,
klansman
. She finally saw the hate that lived in his heart.

“I should kill you right here and now, bitch.” He studied the blood on his hand. He wiped it on his pants leg.

Kelsi knew Clay was serious. He had already tried to kill her once. “S … sorry …” She started to cry. It wasn’t a howl. It was a weep.

Clay was immune to howls. The niggers he had lynched howled. He was a sucker for a woman weeping, though. Most men were. His mood softened. “Don’t worry about it.” He reached again for the cut. “I’ve had worse.”

“N … now what?” Kelsi said. She was hoping she didn’t already know.

“Good news. I think I can let you go. Not today, but probably tomorrow.”

“Why? Wh … what changed?”

“Don’t worry about that part of it. Just be glad that it looks like things’ll turn out the way they should’ve turned out in the first place.”

CHAPTER 92

Brian Neal took a swig from the plastic bottle that accompanied him everywhere he went. Many Americans were obsessed with bottled water, and Neal was among them. He sometimes regretted paying for something he could get for free, but at this particular moment he was glad he had something to drink. He wiped the sweat from his face. He glanced back at his car. He could barely see it. He could barely tell where he had parked it. That was good. He had made a conscious choice to hide it. He didn’t want whoever might have kidnapped Kelsi to know he was looking for her.

Neal marched up a hill and through trees and brush. He swatted at gnats, flies, and other sundry insects. The MapQuest printout he had discovered on the floor of Kelsi’s apartment directed him to the campground. It was a beautiful spot. He wasn’t much of an outdoorsman, but his hike to the Trout Pond Campground persuaded him that he should give it a try. Perhaps he would invite Kelsi… . He would need to find her first.

He did. He did find her! He spotted her through the brush. She was several hundred yards away, but even from a distance he knew it was her—the blonde hair, the long legs, the porcelain skin. Kelsi Shelton was the most beautiful woman that Brian Neal had ever seen. He was about to call out to her when a rugged-looking young man appeared out of nowhere and handed her something to eat. Neal couldn’t see the young man’s face, which was obscured by a baseball cap pulled low on his forehead and a week’s worth of stubble, but from a distance he resembled a young Colin Farrell, the Irish bad boy who no woman seemed able to resist.

Neal’s heart sank. His insecurities resurfaced. He concluded that Kelsi had decided to date one of her classmates rather than him. He had been so jealous of Justice McDonald that he had forgotten that Kelsi was surrounded by scores of eligible young men every day in law school … young men who had much more in common with her than he did.

Clay Smith said, “I’m glad you decided to eat.”

Kelsi spooned the last of the oatmeal into her mouth. She stared into the horizon and watched a hawk circling above. “I suppose it’s true what they say: prisoners on death row savor their final meal.”

Clay shook his head. “Don’t be so dramatic. You’ll be OK. Justice McDonald will do what he needs to do.”

Kelsi kept watching the hawk. “But will you, Clay? Will you?”

After a brief silence, Clay said, “You mentioned a while back that you recently learned who your father is … that you found out his name and where he lives.”

“Billy Joe Collier. So?”

“I’m from Charleston, too. Remember?”

“I remember. You mentioned that the day you tricked me into bed. But so what?”

Clay ignored yet another jab about conning Kelsi into sleeping with him. She had calmed down, and he didn’t want to upset her again. He said, “I know him.”

“You know my father?” Kelsi finally looked at Clay. Her eyes were wide and full of hope.

“I don’t know him well, but I have met him a couple of times. He’s a friend of my uncle’s.”

“What’s he like? Is he nice? Is he married? Does he have kids?”

Kelsi Shelton was asking the sorts of questions children would ask about a parent they’d never met. Clay Smith—klansman, serial killer—didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth.

“He’s very nice. My uncle is always talking about how much fun they have hunting and fishing together.” Clay noticed the hawk—a red-tail—that Kelsi had been watching. It had a dark brown band across its belly, formed by vertical streaks in its feather patterning. Its tail was brick red on top and yellow on the bottom. “He would love this place.”

Brian Neal was halfway down the trail to his car when he heard Kelsi scream: “Fuck you! Get off me!” Apparently, Kelsi’s new boyfriend had reverted to type. Neal had been in relationships before, and he knew that couples sometimes fought. But this didn’t sound like a fight… . This sounded like rape.

Neal raced back up the hill as fast as his legs would carry him. He had never moved so quickly in his life. He had been involved in a few incidents as a Secret Service agent that required sudden bursts of speed, but trying to save Kelsi had shifted him into a gear he didn’t know he had.

“Get off her, asshole!” Neal demanded as he crashed through the brush. “Get off her!”

Kelsi turned. She said, “Brian. Please help me.
Please
.”

Neal’s fixation on the fear in Kelsi’s voice—on the fear on Kelsi’s face—caused him to commit a fatal error. It was a mistake that all Secret Service agents were constantly reminded to guard against… . He took his eyes off the bad guy.

When Neal did, Clay grabbed a log. When Neal reached Kelsi, Clay slammed the log against Neal’s skull.
Pow!

One hard smash was all it took. But Clay added a second for the sheer enjoyment of it.

Neal crumbled to the ground. Blood poured from the side of his head. It mixed with the dirt to form a muddy pool.

“Brian!” Kelsi cried out. “Please, God, not Brian!”

CHAPTER 93

Peter McDonald had an open-door policy at UVA law school. That meant that students were free to drop by and ask questions anytime they wished. Most of his colleagues saw students by appointment only; they met with them rarely, if ever.

The Supreme Court of the United States wasn’t an academic institution, and security concerns dictated that visitors to the justices’ chambers be few and far between. McDonald nevertheless almost never closed his door. Old habits were difficult to break. Today, he broke one. Today, he closed his door. Today, he was worrying about when he would hear from Justice Lowry.

There was a knock on McDonald’s door. “Come in,” he said. He was expecting a research memorandum from one of his law clerks concerning a statutory construction case the Court was scheduled to hear arguments about at the end of the week. The case involved ERISA—the Employment Retirement Income Security Act of 1974—the federal statute that regulated employee health and pension plans. McDonald had taught constitutional law at UVA and knew next to nothing about the ins and outs of one of the most important laws on the books. He had asked his law clerk to write a background memo for him.

But it wasn’t his law clerk knocking at his door. It was one of the messengers who delivered communiqués from chamber to chamber. The outside world might’ve communicated via e-mail or telephone, but the members of the nation’s highest court conversed the old-fashioned way—by pen and paper. That was why it was so unusual for McDonald to have visited Justice Lowry in chambers.

The messenger said, “I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr. Justice McDonald. But Justice Lowry said this was urgent. Mrs. Jacobs told me to bring it right in.”

The messenger handed McDonald an envelope. The envelope was sealed, and it had Lowry’s signature written across the back to signal that it was meant for McDonald’s eyes only.

McDonald took the envelope from the messenger’s outstretched hand and said, “Thank you, Adrian.”

The messenger smiled at the thought that McDonald, a Supreme Court justice, knew his name.

McDonald watched the messenger close the door on his way out. The Court’s newest member opened the envelope. Justice Lowry’s note was only two sentences long, but they were the most important two sentences that McDonald had ever read:

I have decided to join Justice Witherspoon’s opinion. I have informed the chief justice that we have both agreed to do so.

The note was signed,
D.D.L
. Donald Dickinson Lowry. McDonald folded it and placed it in his pocket. He thought about what Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. had famously written about making decisions, judicial or otherwise:

The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done.

Then he thought about Kelsi Shelton.

CHAPTER 94

It took several minutes for the chief justice to gavel the courtroom to order. Ordinarily, one loud rap on the wooden block by the presiding judge was immediately met by cathedral-like silence. This was no ordinary day. Not only was the Supreme Court holding an unscheduled Thursday public session, but the chief had taken the unprecedented step of permitting live television coverage of the proceedings. Several of his colleagues had objected vigorously to the prospect of cameras in the courtroom. “We aren’t
The People’s Court
,” one of the associate justices had insisted.  The associate justice was referring to the long-running TV show. “I beg to differ,” the chief justice had replied. “‘We the people,’ according to the preamble; in the United States, the people are sovereign.” The chief justice was invoking the Constitution.

The calm lasted for only a moment. The storm returned when President Charles Jackson and Senator Alexandra Burton took their seats at their respective counsel’s table. The two powerful political leaders acknowledged one another with a quick nod but otherwise directed their attention to the bench.

The chief justice again sounded his gavel. “Order!” he said. “The courtroom will please come to order!” He shot a hard glare at a CBS television reporter who was providing commentary from press row. The reporter didn’t appear to notice. But he stopped in mid-sentence when one of the assistant U.S. marshals assigned to provide the day’s security placed a large hand over his microphone.

Calm restored, the chief justice said, “The Court is ready to announce its decision in 11-426, Tucker and the University of South Carolina. Copies of the decision will be available from the Public Information Office immediately following this afternoon’s session.” The chief justice paused. Then he said, “The Court is well aware of the significance of today’s decision. That’s why we have taken the unprecedented step of permitting television coverage of the proceedings. Let me be clear, however: I have instructed the marshal’s office to promptly remove anyone who creates a disturbance, no matter how small. Witness, for example, our friend from CBS News.”

The spectators turned to their right and watched while a marshal escorted the reporter who had failed to heed the chief justice’s decree from the courtroom.

The chief justice turned to his right—the spectators’ left—and said, “Justice McDonald will announce the decision of the Court.”

The chief justice had called an emergency private conference of the Court the moment he received word that Justices Lowry and McDonald had switched their votes. It was the chief’s idea for Peter McDonald to be listed as the author of the Court’s opinion in
Tucker v. University of South Carolina
. Justice Witherspoon didn’t object. Ralph Witherspoon was a student of Supreme Court history and knew that William Brennan, the liberal lion whose seat he now occupied, wrote many a landmark opinion credited to others.

McDonald had gone along with the chief’s suggestion because he wanted to reassure the nation that no member of the Supreme Court was beholden to the president who appointed him. Moreover, the opinion that an understandably nervous Justice McDonald was about to summarize from the bench went far beyond Justice Witherspoon’s disquisition on precedent; the Court’s newest member would be articulating a
substantive
basis for overruling
Grutter v. Bollinger
.

McDonald cleared his throat and said, “Thank you, Mr. Chief Justice. And thank you for the confidence you have shown in me by assigning me such an important opinion as my first for the Court. As my colleagues well know, I struggled mightily with it. I—we—know what’s at stake.”

McDonald’s candor, a rare display of humility from a Supreme Court justice, caught the courtroom by surprise. The courtroom would have been stunned had McDonald also mentioned that he and Justice Lowry had changed their minds and decided to rule for Senator Burton’s family. By custom, that information would be kept confidential until every member of the Court who had participated in the decision had left the Court and their private papers—draft opinions, internal memoranda, and the like—were deposited in the Library of Congress. McDonald had saved Lowry’s note for precisely that reason.

McDonald reached for his legal pad and read aloud: “As those who were patient enough to sit through my confirmation hearings well know, I was a law professor prior to being honored with an appointment to the Supreme Court. As a law professor, I spent a lot of time thinking about how the Constitution should be interpreted. I have read scores of books written by colleagues at law schools across the country arguing that the Constitution should be interpreted in the manner they suggested in their books. I found the various books interesting but unsatisfying. Why unsatisfying? Because they didn’t seem to be based on anything other than the specific law professor’s idea about what he or she thought the law should be. Some made better arguments than others—Ronald Dworkin’s insistence that the Constitution be read to advance the goal of human dignity was particularly difficult to resist—but that was only because some law professors have better argumentation skills than others. Professor Dworkin, for example, was a champion debater in college. Bluntly stated, I didn’t think constitutional interpretation should turn on matters of rhetorical style.”