CHAPTER

25

 

The chief justice of the United States Supreme Court possessed the figure and demeanor of a jolly, round little grandmother from Alabama, one who still liked to can her own vegetables and made jams and jellies. She was also the sharpest legal mind of her generation, and when President Harwell nominated her to be the top jurist in the land two years ago, she’d been confirmed with only twenty-four “no” votes on the Senate floor. After years of a Supreme Court that had been directed by ideological chief justices, Nan Darlington was a pragmatist, a centrist in every sense of the word.

Now sixty-four, Darlington had come to Washington a decade earlier upon being named to the D.C. Court of Appeals, which was well known as the “training ground” for the Supreme Court. She’d been on the federal bench in Birmingham for the decade prior to that. The chief justice and her husband, Professor Edmond Norman, who taught criminal law at Georgetown, lived in a beautiful old row house on O Street in Georgetown, not far from the law school.

Darlington was a creature of habit. When in D.C., she rose promptly at six o’clock each morning, ate a breakfast of two scrambled eggs, bread, and juice, exercised on her StairMaster for exactly thirty minutes, and spent a few minutes in her study, silent and alone, praying and meditating on the day ahead. Then she would quickly dress in one of the forty or so black suits she owned, would talk to her husband about what his day held, then would kiss him at the front doorway. She would be on her stoop at seven fifteen, awaiting her car and driver. She never kept them waiting.

This morning, two officers were stationed outside her front door, and they had been on the property all night. Periodically, Brent Graves assigned extra officers to her for a day or two as part of what he called “training operations.” But Darlington was not naïve. She suspected the extra security people at times coincided with threats against her or the Court. The extra officers at her door this morning were young and fairly new. She’d seen them both a handful of times—a woman with coal-black hair and a very tall young man who rarely spoke. “Good morning,” Darlington said to them. “I take it all is well?”

“Good morning, Justice Darlington,” the young woman said. “Everything is fine. How are you this morning?”

Darlington patted the woman’s arm, being the Alabama grandmother. “I’m well, thank you. September is a fine month, the weather is good, my back isn’t bothering me too much, and I have work on my desk. I don’t think I could ask for much more.”

At that moment, the black Town Car pulled to the front of the house. Darlington waved to the driver and started down the steps.

*   *   *

Graves had made his way through the ranks of the Judicial Security Division, first working security for federal courthouses in Kansas City, Denver, and Richmond before making it to D.C. He’d then been assigned to the D.C. Court of Appeals, and later the personal detail of Associate Supreme Court Justice Greene. When Darlington was appointed chief justice, he was named to head the Office of Protective Operations.

Six months after Darlington was sworn in as chief justice, Graves bought a house five doors down and across O Street from her. It was pushing the limits of his price range, but his wife loved it, and it put Graves in the position of actually seeing Darlington from time to time in a nonofficial capacity. He had no doubt that the chief justice considered him a personal friend by now. She trusted him.

Graves had juggled the duty rosters around a bit, and neither Thornton nor Pickett would be driving this morning. The driver was a middle-aged officer named Hellendaal, who’d joined the detail only three months ago. Graves had done some checking—Hellendaal was divorced, with no kids. Both his parents were deceased. His only family was a sister in New York. It was the best Graves could do.

He finished his first cup of coffee and prowled the empty house, thankful that his wife was still in Connecticut, dealing with her family and setting her mother’s affairs in order. He read the Post, drank more coffee, and pulled two cell phones out of his pocket, placing them on his mahogany dining room table. Just down the block, Darlington would be stepping onto her porch. She would banter with Thornton and Pickett, then make the short walk down the cobblestone walkway to where Hellendaal was waiting with the car.

*   *   *

Senior Inspector Hendrickson pulled into the Marshals Service’s Crystal City complex at a few minutes after seven. Tired from yesterday’s flights to and from Oklahoma City, plus a total of five hours in the car between the city and Carpenter Center, and frustrated by the wasted time he’d spent on Nick Journey, Hendrickson just wanted to fill out his travel vouchers and finish his report.

He went to his cubicle in the JSD section of the Marshals Service headquarters and completed his forms. He saved them to his computer, then printed copies. He took the old paper in the plastic sleeve that Journey had shown him yesterday and looked at it for a moment before tucking it into the file.

Damnedest thing I ever saw, Hendrickson thought. “Whereas” and “to wit” and all that archaic language, not to mention that strange symbol with the swords and star and eagle. Journey was reading ancient history and letting his imagination run away with him. He closed the file and walked it down the hall. Neither Graves nor his assistant was in yet, but he left the file on the assistant’s desk with a Post-it note asking her to give it to the boss. She was an efficient woman, and Hendrickson was sure she would see that Graves got it.

*   *   *

Graves was tempted to walk outside, just to be sure that Darlington was where she was supposed to be. But that would have been a break in routine, one that could be possibly witnessed by neighbors. Graves never went outside in the morning until he was ready to leave. Georgetown had no Metro stop, and he drove himself to Crystal City every day.

Graves had timed it over and over. He knew the chief justice’s habits as well as he knew his own. Darlington would stand and chat on the porch for thirty to forty-five seconds. Then it was forty seconds down the walkway, ten to actually get in the car. The driver would shut the door. It would take him fifteen to twenty seconds to move around to the front and get in the driver’s seat.

Graves checked his watch. Darlington should be climbing into the backseat right about now. He flipped open one of the cell phones, the one he’d picked up in the envelope at the park in Herndon. With his other hand, he absently jingled the contents of his pants pocket. Along with the keys and coins there, he felt the gold pin, the one with G.W. engraved on it. Its solidity calmed him, steeled him for the task.

His thumb hovered over the phone’s keypad.

*   *   *

Darlington took the driver’s arm and held it as she lowered herself into the Town Car.

“How is your back, Madam Chief Justice?” Hellendaal asked her.

She squeezed his arm. “Please don’t call me ‘Madam.’ ‘Justice Darlington’ is fine. My back is fair today, thank the Lord.”

“Glad to hear it, ma’am,” Hellendaal said.

“This is a different car,” Darlington said.

“Yes, ma’am. Time to switch them out.”

“Really, I don’t need the largest car in the fleet, you know. I bet this thing gets terrible gas mileage, and with the price of gasoline, the taxpayers really shouldn’t have to pay all that much for me to ride in this big old boat of a car.”

Hellendaal smiled. “Gas certainly isn’t getting any cheaper, ma’am.”

He closed the door, waved to Pickett and Thornton on the porch, and started toward the front of the Town Car.

*   *   *

Graves looked at his watch again, remembering the instructions: the number of the other phone, the one with the red strip, was programmed into this one as speed-dial number two.

He flexed his fingers like a pianist sitting down to perform, then pressed the number two on the phone’s keypad and the green button that would connect the call.

*   *   *

Darlington didn’t carry a briefcase, only a small purse. Work stayed at the court, and she never brought it home. She had a cell phone, but saw no need to carry it on the short drive to and from the office. She occasionally used it when traveling, but found it to be more of a nuisance than a beneficial tool.

She smoothed the lapel of her jacket and watched as the driver walked around to the front of the car.

She heard the muffled trilling of the phone, and her first thought was that it had come from behind her. But that didn’t make sense—her hearing must be playing tricks on her. First it was her back, now the hearing. Her eyesight would go next, no doubt.

“Is that your phone?” she called to Hellendaal, and the car exploded.

*   *   *

Hellendaal screamed as a part of the Town Car’s wheel well smashed into his head. A jagged edge raked across his face, narrowly missing his right eye and slicing a deep cut all the way to his ear.

He twisted and stumbled but stayed on his feet, shambling around the edge of the burning car. The car’s back half was enveloped in a halo of flame. Glass from the shattered windows crunched. Smoke boiled into the clear September sky. Hellendaal couldn’t see Darlington through the smoke and the flames.

Pickett and Thornton ran down the walkway. Pickett already had her phone out, talking quietly, urgently. People in the stately row houses of O Street began to drift outside. At least two senators, an ambassador, and the Secretary of Commerce lived on this block.

Within ninety seconds, sirens cut the air. Washington Metro PD and Fire and Rescue units arrived on the scene. Hellendaal was treated by the trauma team and loaded into an ambulance to Georgetown University Hospital. Professor Edmond Norman, the chief justice’s husband, came to his doorway. He first looked down at the pieces of burning metal in his yard; then his eyes trailed toward the car. He took another step. Thornton ran back up the sidewalk and held him back.

“Not yet, sir,” Thornton said. “We have to secure the scene first. I’m sorry, sir.”

Thornton looked toward the car, as if he weren’t sure of what he’d seen. Norman did the same; then the older man sagged into Thornton’s arms.

*   *   *

Just over one minute from the time the car exploded, a tall silver-haired figure emerged from five doors down, on the opposite side of the street. He stood still for a moment; then his feet began to move. Within three steps, he was moving at a dead run. He passed Commerce Secretary Newcomb and his wife, a bathrobe-clad Senator Brenson, and a growing crowd of spectators. He felt the intense heat from the car, and he almost gagged on smoke and the unmistakable and sickening smell of charring flesh.

A few seconds later, Brent Graves was in command of the scene, and before Chief Justice Darlington’s body was even extricated from the car, the investigation had begun.