The Rose Conspiracy Page 14

  After thirty minutes he turned off the interstate, and within minutes he was into the rolling hills of Virginia. The countryside was encircled with black horse fence and dotted with tidy houses and barns. He could smell the hay and the grass in the air.

  When he got to a long driveway with a large, ornate white sign that said High Meadows Equine Center, he turned in and started slowly rolling down the gravel drive toward the stables.

  Then his cell phone started ringing. He was tempted not to answer. He looked down. It was Julia calling from his office. He decided to pick up.

  “Are you on your way into the office?” she asked him. Her voice was high and tight, like someone plucking the shortest string on a harp.

  “No,” he said. “I’m staying clear of the office today. I’m out in the countryside this morning, then back to my condo where I will spend the rest of the day getting ready for the oral arguments in Vinnie’s case. Preparing in peace and quiet.”

  “You may want to rethink that,” she said sharply.

  “I don’t think so,” he said firmly.

  “Well, just so you know, things are falling apart around here.”

  “Define ‘falling apart,’ ” Blackstone retorted. “Do you mean a few pictures are tilted on the walls, or that the ceiling is caving in and people are being buried under the rubble?”

  “I’m not a structural engineer. My masters was in chemistry before I went to law school, remember?” Julia snapped. “Let’s just say it’s not a good time for you to be out of the office.”

  “Okay,” he said reluctantly, pulling his Maserati over to the side of the driveway and guiding the stick shift into neutral. “Let’s hear it.”

  “You got a call from the clerk of the Court of Appeals. They have some question about the appendix you filed for the appeal. And seeing that your oral argument is tomorrow, I would think you ought to call her back.”

  “The only part of the file I took with me was the argument section,” he said. “I left all the rest of the file, including the appendix, at the office. Ask Frieda, she’ll help you locate it before you call the clerk back. I’m sure you can handle it for me.”

  “The next problem is more serious.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “A lawyer from the Senate Judiciary Committee called. He said he was inquiring about your conversation with Senator Collings. Said that there was a complaint by the senator that you were in a restricted area of the Capitol Building under false pretenses. That you harassed the senator. That sort of thing. He said if he didn’t hear from you today they would ‘take further action.’ Those were his words. He didn’t sound like he was kidding.”

  “Give me his number.”

  Julia called out the numbers, and Blackstone jotted them down on a notepad in his car.

  “What else?” Blackstone asked.

  “Oh, I’ve saved the best for last,” Julia said. “Your ditzy client Vinnie Archmont called up all weepy. ‘I need to talk to you.’ Said she hasn’t heard from you since and these are her exact words—‘that wonderful dinner we had together’—wants to set up another ‘date night’ with you.”

  Blackstone was silent.

  “Excuse me for saying it,” Julia said, flashing into anger, “and I know you are always the professor and I am always playing the student. But have you entirely lost your mind? You’ve got a first-degree-murder defendant on trial for her life and you’re playing footsy with her.”

  “Technically, she’s the one playing footsy with me.”

  “Do you even care that the DC Bar Association could try to take away your license to practice if this goes down bad?”

  “I know what I’m doing,” Blackstone said. But he hadn’t mustered enough bravado in his voice to fool either Julia or himself.

  “Okay, well,” Julia said with exasperation in her voice, “you’ve been told. Now I guess it’s my job to try to clean up after the elephants while you go to the circus.”

  “Clever metaphor,” he said. “But just one question.”

  “What’s that?”

  “‘Where are the clowns?’” he said half-singing.

  “Do you really want me to answer that?” she snapped and then hung up.

  Blackstone turned off his phone and eased his car into second gear, heading for the huge building of stables at the end of the road.

  “Real glad I took that call,” he muttered out loud.

  When he got to the end he parked his car alongside a large black barn. He could hear the whinnying of horses inside the stable. As he rounded the corner he saw a short Hispanic man carrying a feed bucket. When the man saw Blackstone he stopped in his tracks.

  “Mr. Blackstone!” he said with surprise and a big grin. “Good to see you here, sir. So good. And so long. Been a long time.”

  “Too long, Manny,” he said.

  “Blackjack is in his stall,” the stablemaster said. “Was out in the big paddock, in the fields all last night.”

  “Yeah, just like his owner. Up all night.”

  Manny laughed and said, “Remember where your tack locker is?”

  “I think so,” Blackstone said, and headed into a corridor in the back of the barn lined with storage doors. He stopped at his, unlatched the door, and swung it open. He could smell the leather of his saddle. He grabbed it and gathered up the blanket, bridle, and reins and carried them through the corridor and then into the main section of the stables.

  Manny already had Blackjack out of his stable and had the Arabian cross-tied between two beams in the middle of the barn.

  “I’m real glad you at least kept Blackjack, Mr. Blackstone,” he said, and then smiled when he said that.

  Blackstone knew what he meant. When Marilyn and Beth were alive he had bought a tall, milky-white thoroughbred for his wife and a pony for his daughter that he also kept out at the stables. But after the car accident he had sold them off.

  As Blackstone walked up to Blackjack, the horse bobbed his head just a little and then snorted a great puff of air through his nostrils.

  The two stood eye to eye for a moment, looking at each other. Blackjack pawed the ground. Blackstone took his right hand and slowly ran it up the horse’s long skull and then down his neck and along his glistening black back all the way to the withers.

  Blackjack gave a little stomp with his front hoof.

  After saddling him up, Blackstone led him out to the gate where Manny was waiting. Manny opened the gate to the big oval training ring.

  Blackstone thrust his left foot into the stirrup and swung himself up deftly and toed his right foot into the other stirrup. He was fully in the saddle on the powerful Arabian again, and it felt good.

  He spent an hour just warming up and putting Blackjack into a trot and then a canter. Nothing fancy. Just getting to know each other again.

  At the end, when he was ready to bring him in, he gave him the cluck and a whistle and a little nudge of his boot and Blackjack exploded into a full gallop that sent Blackstone’s hair flying.

  When he was done, he swung down and onto the ground. Manny was there waiting by the gate.

  “I’ll take him in for you, Mr. Blackstone, curry him down. Take care of your tack for you,” Manny said. “You got things to do, I bet.”

  “Thanks, Manny,” he said, and handed the lead rope to the stablemaster.

  As Manny was walking the black Arabian back to the barn he shouted out to Blackstone. “You come back again, okay? Blackjack here’s been lonely for his pal.”

  Blackstone smiled and nodded and then walked over to his car.

  After he slid into the soft leather seat he dialed up the number for the Senate Judiciary counsel.

  A man answered.

  “Judiciary,” he said.

  “I’m returning a call from one of your counsel,” Blackstone said. “This is J.D. Blackstone. Don’t have a name for who called me.”

  “That would be me,” the man said. “I’m Billy Baxter, Senior Counsel for Senator Collings o
n the Judiciary Committee. Uh…you must be on a cell phone. I can’t hear you very well, I’m afraid…you’ll have to speak up.”

  “Yeah, I’m out in the countryside leaving a horse stable, just barely in cell-phone range, I guess,” Blackstone said.

  But Blackstone didn’t elaborate beyond that. This was the other guy’s move.

  “So Mr. Blackstone, I called you,” Baxter said, taking the lead, “because I have received a complaint from Senator Collings about an encounter you had with him in the restricted area just outside the Senate chambers.”

  “Things must really be slow there in Judiciary for you guys,” Blackstone barked. “Do they have you issuing jaywalking tickets now too?”

  “Professor Blackstone,” the man said, “this is very serious. I have instructions to contact the Capitol Hill police and have you charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct, and then to file an ethics charge against you with the bar association for unprofessional conduct, if—”

  “If what?” Blackstone said, interrupting. “If I don’t do what?”

  “If you don’t send a written apology to Senator Collings.”

  “You can take out your little BlackBerry that I’m sure you carry with you,” Blackstone said, “and type in today’s date and enter a memo right there. And type this into the keypad, Billy boy—‘Professor Blackstone says that he will give an apology when there are icebergs in hell’—make a note of that.”

  “Is that your response?” Baxter said coldly.

  “That and one other thing,” Blackstone added. “Senator Collings’s actions against me will look suspiciously hostile before the jury in my murder case when I subpoena him to testify. He will have a lot of explaining to do—under oath.”

  There was a tense pause, and then finally Baxter spoke and said he would convey that message to Senator Collings immediately.

  Blackstone turned on the ignition to his car and then slowly eased his Maserati down the long gravel road.

  Back to reality, he thought to himself.

  CHAPTER 30

  While driving home from the country, Blackstone dialed Vinnie on the phone but only got her voice mail. He called her cell phone and got the same. After her bubbly voice message he left his own message.

  “Sorry we’re missing each other. Let’s get together. Right now I’m getting ready for oral argument tomorrow. I’ll let you know how it goes.”

  He usually made a point of inviting clients to attend the oral arguments. In this case, though, he figured that Vinnie wouldn’t want to come. Besides, the argument would be highly technical and procedural.

  Blackstone pulled into his parking spot and trudged up to his condo.

  He kicked off his boots, turned the ringer off on his phone, and then spread out the file at his work table—with photocopies of cases, his argument outline, and the rest in front of him.

  Blackstone would spend the rest of that day and through the night, preparing. He would take a few breaks to grab microwave food from the freezer or to make some reps on his Nautilus equipment to work up a sweat and refocus his mind.

  He wouldn’t sleep, or even try to, that night. He would save that for after his arguments before the Court of Appeals. He knew all the traditional physiological rules, and how maximizing physical rest and lowering stress increases human performance. But he rationalized his brutal approach to preparation this way: Those rules, he would say to himself, don’t apply to a guy with a sleep disorder.

  But just as quickly as he would tell himself that, he would then follow it up with another question: Sleep disorder—is that really what my problem is?

  By the time the early light started streaming through the shutters of his study the next morning, he felt he had maxed out his preparation on the case. His multidisk CD player was halfway through the Suite in F-sharp by Ernst von Dohnanyi, the Hungarian composer, when he walked over to it and turned it off.

  “Why couldn’t Mom have named me after a decent Hungarian composer?” he asked out loud with a smirk. “Like Liszt? Or Bartok?”

  Then he took a shower, donned his dark suit and tie, gathered up his file and argument notebook, and headed out. He drove to the federal courthouse off Constitution Avenue, in the Federal Triangle area of downtown Washington. He parked his car and walked at a fast clip over to the courthouse. His case was scheduled to be the first one to be argued that morning.

  At the corner of 3rd and Constitution he stopped, just momentarily, before a bronze statue, now green with tarnished age, of the English jurist Sir William Blackstone. He stared at the image of the man in the long, flowing judge’s wig and cape, clasping a law book.

  J.D. Blackstone gave the statue a modified salute and then hurried over to the front doors of the courthouse, where he went through the metal detectors, went up to the clerk’s office to sign in, and then headed to the courtroom.

  Henry Hartz, flanked by one of his Assistant U.S. Attorneys and another man in a suit, was already in the courtroom, standing at the government’s table.

  The courtroom was already filled with news reporters, some court personnel who were curious, and members of the public.

  Blackstone went over to shake Hartz’s hand. Hartz shook hands coldly, and then introduced the Junior Assistant U.S. Attorney with him.

  Then Blackstone glanced over at the other man in the suit next to Henry Hartz who had not been introduced. He was a handsome man, in his late thirties, and Blackstone thought he carried himself like a police officer, but wasn’t sure.

  “This is Detective Victor Cheski,” Hartz announced casually, introducing the man to Blackstone. “As you know, he is our lead investigator on this case.”

  Blackstone reached over and shook hands with him, and Cheski gave him a firm handshake and a confident smile. Then the lawyer strode over to the defense table, where he laid down his argument notebook, a copy of the appendix of materials from the court docket in his case, and a blank notepad.

  Suddenly he was aware of someone standing next to him.

  He looked up, and to his surprise it was Vinnie Archmont, smiling. She was leaning over the defense table with her hand on his file.

  “Just wanted to wish you luck—but I really don’t think you’ll need it,” she purred quietly. “Thanks for being my hero on this.”

  He smiled back and reminded her that in appeals cases the clients had to sit in the audience section.

  She nodded and then made her way back to her seat in the crowded courtroom. Blackstone thought it was a little strange that Vinnie had chosen to attend the oral arguments, particularly because her modus operandi thus far had been to distance herself as much as possible from the criminal case against her. But he didn’t have time to focus on that.

  The bailiff called out for the courtroom to rise. In a loud shuffle of feet every one stood up quickly.

  Three black-robed federal appellate judges entered from behind the bench and took their seats. On the right was an elderly male judge, nearly bald, with glasses, and on the left a younger judge, also a man. In the center, acting as chief judge, was Judge Susan Lowry, in her fifties, peering over her reading glasses.

  “Appearances, please,” the clerk called out.

  “Henry Hartz, AUSA, for the United States Government,” Hartz said.

  “J.D. Blackstone, for the defense,” Blackstone said.

  “Very well,” Judge Lowry said, “are counsel ready to proceed?”

  They both indicated they were.

  Blackstone strode up to the podium first. The little light on the podium was green. He had alerted the clerk that morning that he would be reserving a substantial amount of time for rebuttal, so his opening would be short and concise.

  He began to recite to the three-judge panel the procedural status of the case and then went into the core elements of the written indictment against his client. That is when the older judge interrupted him.

  “Counsel,” the judge said, “what is the relevance of the Horace Langley note to the criminal elem
ents of this case as outlined in the indictment?”

  “As I indicated to the trial judge during motions,” Blackstone said, “the note goes to motive for the crime.”

  “And the trial judge rejected that argument, correct?”

  “Yes,” Blackstone said with a smile, “an error that I am hoping Your Honors, in your collective wisdom, will soon correct.”

  The other two judges chuckled, but the older judge did not.

  “But why is this note necessarily relevant to motive?” the older judge said, pressing in. “All three of us have looked at the note that was submitted with the record in this case under seal. Frankly, while I will not disclose what is actually in that note, of course—and all the parties have agreed that it bears the handwriting of Horace Langley, the late Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution—nevertheless I will say that it seems to reveal nothing, at least on the surface, that would describe who may have killed Secretary Langley, or why.”

  “With all due respect,” Blackstone shot back, “while I agree with you, Your Honor, that the note, superficially, does not answer the who question, it may well answer the why question. And as you know, Your Honor, from your experience yourself as a former prosecutor, once you answer the why question, then the ‘who’ in the ‘who-done-it’ often follows very quickly.”

  “But counsel,” the younger male judge asked, “that could be said of anything in any file of any federal prosecutor. Is that all it takes? For a defense lawyer to speculate wildly about how this document or that might possibly reveal motive behind a crime and thereby supposedly exonerate the defendant? That would mean that the government would then have to open all of its files, willy-nilly, for every defense lawyer in every federal criminal case—based merely on the speculative fancies of creative defense lawyers. Is that your understanding of what the law is?”

  Blackstone had expected that noose to be slipped around his neck during argument. He knew it would come. But somehow, it always surprised him how uncomfortable it felt when a noose started tightening.