Mistress of Justice Read online

  She wrote the note quickly--he was due home at any moment--and she didn't want him here to deter her from what she 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 basically a blueprint about how to break into the place. You checked the file out and gave the information to your hit man. He broke in, stole some botulism culture and poisoned me!"

  "No, I swear I didn't."

  "And when that didn't work you sent him to stab me. Well, he's dead, Donald. How do you like that?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about." He started to turn and walk away.

  "No!" Taylor cried. "Don't move." She thrust the gun toward him. The partner stumbled backward, lifting his hands helplessly.

  "Taylor!" Reece shouted.

  "No!" she screamed and cocked the gun. Burdick backed against the wall, his eyes huge disks of terror. Reece froze.

  They stood in those positions for a long minute. Taylor stared at the gun, as if willing it to fire by itself.

  "I can't," she whispered finally. "I can't do it."

  The gun drooped.

  Reece stepped forward slowly and took the pistol from her. He put his arm around her shoulders. "It's all right," he whispered.

  "I wanted to be strong," she said. "I wanted to kill him.

  But I can't do it."

  Burdick said to them both, "I swear I had nothing to do--"

  She pulled away from Reece's arm and faced Burdick in her fury. "You may think you have the police and the mayor and everyone else in your pocket but it's not going to stop me from making sure you spend the rest of your life in jail!"

  Taylor grabbed a telephone off the table.

  The partner shook his head. "Taylor, whatever you think, it's not true."

  She had just started dialing when a hand reached over, lifted the receiver away from her and replaced it in the cradle.

  "No, Taylor ...," Mitchell Reece said. He sighed and lifted the gun, the muzzle pointing at her like a single black pearl. "No," he repeated softly.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  She gave a faint laugh of surprise.

  Much the same sound that Mitchell Reece himself had uttered when she told him a few days ago that Clayton had been murdered. Then her smile faded and with bottomless horror in her voice she said, "What are you doing?"

  His face was stone, his eyes expressionless, but the answer was clear.

  "You, Mitchell?" she whispered.

  Donald Burdick said, "One of you tell me what's going on here."

  Reece ignored him. Still holding the gun on both of them, he walked to the door, looked outside, made sure the corridor was empty and returned. He said to her angrily, "Why the hell didn't you stop when you should have, Taylor? Why? It was all planned out so carefully. You ruined it."

  Burdick, horrified, said, "Mitchell, it was you? You killed Wendall Clayton?"

  Taylor's eyes closed for a brief moment. She shook her head.

  Reece told her, "Wendall Clayton killed the woman I loved."

  Taylor frowned then said, "Linda? Linda Davidoff!"

  Reece nodded slowly.

  "Oh, my God ..."

  After a moment Reece said, "It was all about a man and a woman. As simple as that." His eyebrows rose. "A man who'd never had time for relationships, a woman who was beautiful and creative and brilliant. Two people who'd never been in love before. Not real love. It wasn't a good combination. An ambitious, tough lawyer. Best in law school, best at the firm ... The woman was a poet--shy, sensitive. Don't ask me how they became close. Opposites attract, maybe. A secret romance in a Wall Street law firm. They worked together
and started going out. They fell in love. She got pregnant and they were going to get married."

  A moment passed and Reece seemed to be hefting the words to select among them. Finally he continued, "Wendall was working on a case one weekend, and he needed a paralegal. Linda'd cut way back on her hours--that's when she'd stopped working for me and Sean Lillick took over. But she still worked occasionally. She did a few assignments for Wendall Clayton and he got obsessed with her. One weekend in September he found out she was at her parents' summer house in Connecticut, not far from his place. He went to see her, tried to seduce her. She called me, crying. But before I could get up there or she could get away there was a struggle and she fell into the ravine. She died. Clayton left her poem to make it look like a suicide."

  "This whole thing," Taylor whispered, "it was fake. You lied about everything.... Your mother, in the hospital? You weren't going to see her at all. You were going to Scarsdale--to take flowers to Linda's grave."

  Reece nodded.

  The nail of Taylor's index finger touched the marble. "Oh, Mitchell, it's so fucking clear now." She looked at Burdick. "Don't you see what he's done?" She turned to face Reece, who leaned against the dark, dried-blood-red conference table, looking gaunt and pale. "You got one of your criminal clients from the pro bono program--what? A hit man, a killer, a mercenary soldier? You got him to break into your own file cabinet, steal the Hanover note and hide it in Wendall's office. Then you had him bug your own office so you'd look as innocent as possible. You recorded some conversations then planted the tapes with the note. You had me track him down."

  She thought for a moment. "Then, at Clayton's party, I found the receipt from the security service: upstairs, where you sent me to search--after you planted it there.... Finally I found the note in Clayton's office." She laughed bitterly. "And after the Hanover trial your hit man killed him right away--because he couldn't very well be accused of something he hadn't done."

  The lawyer made no effort to deny any of this.

  She continued, "And his suicide note ... It was fake, wasn't it? Who forged it? Another criminal client?"

  The associate lifted his eyebrow, conceding the accuracy of her deduction.

  She laughed bitterly, glancing at the partner.

  Men of most renowned virtue ...

  Reece was gazing at her, impassive as a statue.

  Eyes still on Reece, locked on his, Taylor said, "And Donald was a big help, wasn't he?" She turned to the partner. "Nothing personal, Donald, but you laid a pretty damn good smoke screen." Her hands were shaking now. The tears started. "And as for me, well, you were keeping pretty close tabs on your pawn. All you had to do was look across the pillow."

  A bit of emotion blossomed in his face at this--like the first cracks in spring ice. Reece took a Kleenex from his pocket and began rubbing the trigger guard and grip and frame of the gun. He nodded. "You won't believe me if I tell you that what happened between us wasn't part of the plan."

  "Bullshit! You tried to kill me!"

  His eyes grew wide. "I didn't want to hurt you! You should have stopped when you were supposed to!"

  Burdick said, "But Mitchell, how could you risk it? You love the law. You'd risk everything for this, for revenge?"

  He smiled with a look as bleak as a hunting field in December. "But there was no risk, Donald. Don't you know me by now? I knew I'd get away with it. Every nuance was planned. Every action and reaction. Every move anticipated and guarded against. I planned this exactly the same way I plan my trials. There was no way it wouldn't work." He sighed and shook his head. "Except for you, of course, Taylor. You were the flaw.... Why didn't you just let it go? I killed an evil man. I did the firm--hell, I did the world--a favor."

  "You used me!"

  Donald Burdick sat heavily in a chair, his head dipping. "Oh, Mitchell, all you had to do was go to the police. Clayton would've been arrested for the girl's death."

  The young lawyer gave a harsh laugh. "You think so? And what would've happened, Donald? Nothing. Any half-assed criminal lawyer could've gotten him off. There was no witness, no physical evidence. Besides, you of all people ought to know how many favors Clayton could've called in. The case wouldn't've even gotten to the grand jury."

  His attention dipped for a moment to the gun. He flipped it open expertly and saw six cartridges in the cylinder. Then from his pocket he took the note that Taylor Lockwood had written to him, the note about going to confront a killer. He folded it into a tight square, stepped forward and stuffed it into her breast pocket.

  She whispered, nodding at it, "I wrote my own suicide note, didn't I? I kill Donald and then myself. Oh, my God ..."

  "It's your fault," he muttered. "You should've just moved on, Taylor. You should've let Clayton stay in hell and let the rest of us get on with our business."

  "My fault?" She leaned forward. "What the hell happened to you? Has it all caught up? Finally? Pushing, pushing, pushing ... years and years of it. Win the case, win the goddamn case--that's all you see, all you care about! You don't know what justice is anymore. You've turned it inside out."

  "Don't lecture me," he said wearily. "Don't talk to me about things you can't understand. I live with the law, I've made it a part of me."

  Burdick said, "There's no way you can justify it, Mitchell. You killed a man."

  Reece rubbed his eyes. After a moment, he said, "You get asked a lot why you go to law school. Did you go because you wanted to help society, to make money, to further justice? That's what people always want to know. Justice? There's so little of it in the world, so little justice in our lives. Maybe on the whole it balances out; maybe God looks down from someplace and says, 'Yeah, pretty good, I'll let it go at that.' But you know the law as well as I do, both of you. Innocent people serve time and guilty ones get off. Wendall Clayton killed Linda Davidoff and he was going to go free. I wasn't going to let that happen."

  Taylor said, "The suicide note--Clayton's. 'Men of most renowned virtue ...' How does it go?"

  Reece said, " 'Have sometimes by transgressing most truly kept the law.' "

  "You meant it about you, then, not Clayton."

  Reece nodded solemnly. "It's about me."

  "Mitchell," Burdick whispered, "just put the gun down. We'll go to the police. If you talk to them--"

  But Reece walked slowly over to Taylor. He stood two feet away. She didn't move.

  "No!" Burdick shouted. "Don't worry about the police. We can forget what happened. There's no need for this to go beyond this room. There's no need...."

  Reece glanced at the partner briefly but didn't speak. His whole attention was on Taylor. He touched her hair, then her cheek. He nestled the muzzle of the gun against her breast.

  "I wish ..." He cocked the gun. "I wish ..."

  Taylor wiped the thick tears. "But it's me, Mitchell. Me. Think about what you're going to do."

  "Please, Mitchell," Burdick said. "Money, do you want money? A fresh start somewhere?"

  But it was Taylor who raised her hand to silence the partner. "No. He's come too far. There's nothing more to say."

  At last there were tears on Reece's face. The gun wavered and rose. For a moment it seemed to be levitating; maybe he intended to touch the chill muzzle to his own temple and pull the trigger.

  But his deeper will won and he lowered the black weapon to her once more.

  Alice, in this dreadful world on the other side of the looking glass, remained completely still. There was no place to go. All she could do was close her eyes, which is what she now did.

  Mitchell Reece, practical as ever, held his left hand to his face to protect himself from the blast--and her spattered blood--and then he pulled the trigger.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  In the hushed conference room the metallic click was as loud as the gunshot would have been.

  Reece's eyes flickered for a moment. He pulled the trigger three more times.

  Three more clicks echoed throughout the room. His hand lowered.


  "Fake," he whispered with the tone of someone observing an impossible occurrence. "It's fake?"

  Taylor wiped the streaming tears from her face. "Oh, Mitchell ..."

  Burdick stepped forward and firmly lifted the gun away from him.

  Taylor said, "The gun's real, Mitchell, but the bullets're just props." She shook her head. "All I had was speculation. I needed proof that you did it."

  Reece leaned against the wall. "Oh, my God." He was staring at Taylor. "How?" he whispered. She'd never seen such shock in anyone's eyes--pure, uncomprehending astonishment.

  "A lot of clues I finally put together today," she said. "What got me wondering was the poem, Linda's poem."

  "Poem?"

  "The one that Wendall left as her suicide note. I read it in the hospital and, you know, everybody thought it was a suicide note. But nobody really understood what it was about. It was a love poem. It wasn't about killing herself, it was about leaving solitude and loneliness and starting a new life with somebody she loved. Anybody who was going to kill herself wouldn't leave that as a suicide note. Danny Stuart, her roommate, said she wrote it just a few days before she died."

  He was shaking his head. "Impossible. You couldn't make that kind of deduction, not from the suicide note back to me."

  "No, of course not. It's just what put the idea in my head that maybe she didn't kill herself. But then I started to think about everything that'd happened since you'd asked me to help you find the 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 they spend 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.