73

For Paige, the next seven days were a sleepless blur of preparation for the Supreme Court argument and for her grand jury appearance. She read cases until her eyes blurred and endured grillings from a moot court panel of Wyatt, Wellington, and Landon. They held four-hour sessions in Landon’s conference room, with the three lawyers sitting on one side of the large marble-topped table while Paige stood behind a podium on the other side and fielded questions. Wyatt had insisted that she be prepared to call each justice by name and not act like a rookie who just referred to everyone as “Your Honor.”

“But I am a rookie,” Paige had protested.

“You don’t have to sound like one,” Wyatt countered.

To help her memorize the justices’ names, Wellington came up with a system. They put a computer monitor in the middle of the table facing Paige. Each time one of the three lawyers asked a question, they first clicked a name on their computer, which popped up a picture of the Supreme Court justice who was supposedly asking the question. Paige would then refer to the justice by name when she answered.

She got used to the hardest questions coming from Justice David Sikes. He was young and brash, a true law-and-order type, and whenever Wyatt had a tough question, he would click on Sikes’s picture. The other justice Paige got tired of seeing, and had no problem remembering, was the Beard, the seventy-two-year-old former Texas judge named Barton Cooper. He was another sure vote against Paige and someone who would certainly try to trip her up.

The two justices whom Paige always mixed up were Justice Torres, the former senator from California, and Justice Augustini, the Harvard law professor who was also a novelist. They were both in their fifties, and Paige kept forgetting which one was which.

“Augustini has the curly hair and the mole,” Wellington said as if that solved everything. It also scared Paige to realize she would be close enough to use a mole as a distinguishing feature.

“Right,” said Wyatt. “Augustini is Italian, and Italians like spaghetti, so you’ll be able to remember the curly hair.” Typical Wyatt Jackson—profiling an entire nationality. But for some reason, it worked.

Every four-hour session was followed by a ten-minute break and another hour of tips from Paige’s three tormentors. Nothing was off-limits. Stand up straighter; project more; more eye contact; don’t shuffle your papers—and then there was the substance of her answers, which never seemed to satisfy anybody. She took notes on all of it and then ignored most of the comments on the theory that the best advocate was one who tried to be herself.

After the critique sessions were over, she would spend the next few hours alone with Wellington, listening to the audio of each question and answer, discussing ways to improve what she had said. It was exhausting work, but she liked it better than the sessions she spent with Landon Reed discussing her grand jury testimony.

Landon wanted Paige to take the Fifth Amendment in response to almost every question, but Paige thought that if she answered the questions fully and honestly she could pull off a miracle and talk the grand jury out of indicting her. After they debated this, Landon suggested that they see how well she might hold up on cross-examination. He took the next two hours questioning her about why she hadn’t produced her computer and what information she had obtained from the Patriot. He raised an eyebrow when she testified truthfully but the answer seemed hard to believe. And Landon knew how to lay on the sarcasm. There were lots of those “When did you stop beating your wife?” types of questions for which there were no good answers.

When they had finished, Landon showed Paige how much additional jail time she could be facing if the U.S. attorney tacked on a charge of lying to the grand jury. She was completely deflated. The best course, she acknowledged, would be to take the Fifth.

It seemed surreal that they were even having this conversation.

Because the law did not allow someone to assert a blanket Fifth Amendment privilege at the grand jury hearing, Paige and Landon spent the next session going over the types of questions she would answer and the ones where she would plead the Fifth. Defense lawyers weren’t allowed in the courtroom, but Landon would be just outside in the hallway, and if she had any doubt, she should ask for a break to consult with him.

“Won’t that look bad?” Paige asked.

“Paige, you’re going to be taking the Fifth Amendment to almost every question. It already looks bad.”

Her testimony was scheduled for Tuesday, and she began to obsess over the fact that she might be indicted just a few days before she was scheduled to argue at the Supreme Court on the first Monday in October. How could she stand up in front of the justices as an accused felon?

Wyatt didn’t seem concerned about it, but then again, he would be either out of the country or in prison. “You’re innocent until proven guilty,” he reminded Paige. “If it comes up, show a little righteous indignation. Heck, if it were me, I’d bring it up in court myself to show how desperate the government is to keep the truth buried in this case. Wear it like a badge of honor.”

Only Wyatt would view a pending indictment for obstruction of justice as a badge of honor, Paige thought. The justices certainly wouldn’t look at it that way.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Philip Kilpatrick had created a monster. He’d been afraid that might be the case, but he knew it for sure when he received the phone call from Harry Coburn.

“I got your waiver of the confidentiality agreement today,” Harry said. “Very accommodating of you.”

“Nice of you to call, because I’m revoking that waiver right now,” Kilpatrick said.

This brought a sarcastic laugh from Coburn. “Obviously you didn’t read the document. Wyatt Jackson is pretty clever. Says it can only be revoked in writing.”

“We both know you’ve still got an obligation to protect your sources.”

Kilpatrick didn’t like the way Coburn let the silence linger before responding to the comment.

“I’ll still protect you,” he eventually said. “But not because I have an obligation. It’s just that I always protect sources when I can count on them for future stories.”

“I’ve always sent my best scoops to you, Harry,” Kilpatrick said calmly. But even as he said it, he knew the dynamics had changed. Before, he would send the stories and Coburn would be gracious, almost fawning. Now Coburn had all the leverage.

“I heard something about a grand jury investigating the plaintiff’s lawyers for obstruction. What do you know about that?” Coburn asked.

Kilpatrick knew plenty. But he didn’t want to leak that story to Coburn. The man already had enough to hold over his head with the confidentiality waiver.

“I’ll look into it,” Kilpatrick said.

“If it’s true, I’d like to break the story before the Supreme Court argument.”

“As I said, I’ll look into it.”

“I appreciate your help. And I’m pretty sure they have a term for this new relationship we’ve developed,” Coburn said.

“What’s that?” Kilpatrick asked, somewhat caustically.

“We’re codependent, Philip. Have a great day.”