Final Appeal by Lisa Scottoline Read Free Book Online Page B

came into our chambers, if anyone. I watch the picture flicker to 17-B. It’s a view of the hallway outside the judges’ elevator on the seventeenth floor. On the wall hangs a fake parchment copy of the Constitution. Our floor is next.
    “Yeow!” Ray hoots as soon as the scene changes. Eletha is photocopying at the Xerox machine, her back to the camera. Her skirt clings softly to her curves, and with her back turned you can’t see how haggard she looks today. “Now ain’t that pretty?” he says, in a tone men usually reserve for touchdown passes and vintage Corvettes.
    Worrell grunts. “She’s all right.”
    Ray gives him a solid shove. “Listen to you, ‘She’s all right .’ Shit, man! She’s more than all right, she’s fine . And she’s mine, all mine. Right, Grace? Grace?”
    “Right,” I say, preoccupied by the scene on the TV screen, which shows Eletha walking down the hall and into chambers. Bingo. The camera would have seen whoever came into chambers last night, wherever they came from. “Where’s the tape?”
    Worrell looks at me blankly. “What tape?”
    “The tape. The tape of what the camera saw last night.”
    “We don’t tape.”
    “What?”
    “There’s no tape, lady.”
    “I don’t understand.” I look at Ray for confirmation.
    “I coulda told you that, Grace,” he says.
    I don’t believe this. “At the MAC machine they tape. Even in the Seven-Eleven they tape.”
    “Seven-Eleven’s got the money. This is the U.S. government. You’re lucky we got the goddamn judges.”
    Ray looks embarrassed. “Downstairs we tape. The monitors at the security desk, they tape the stairwell and the judges’ garage. Just not here.”
    “But somebody watches the monitors at night, don’t they?”
    Worrell leans back in the creaky chair, plainly amused. “Guess again.”
    “Maybe we should go,” Ray says.
    “Hold on. There’s no night shift?” I hear myself sounding like an outraged customer.
    “We got a fella walks around the halls,” Worrell says, “but that’s it. One marshal. The government don’t have the money for somebody to watch TV all night.” His face slackens as he returns to the screens.
    “All right. Who was the marshal last night, walking the halls?”
    “McLean, I think.”
    “McLean? Is he the big one with the mustache?” The Mutt of the Mutt-and-Jeff marshals I see in the mornings.
    Worrell nods. “Don’t you guys got some work to do?”
    “Let’s go, Grace,” Ray says.
    “Sure. Thanks,” I say, disappointed. So much for the short answer. We start toward the door but Worrell erupts into raucous laughter.
    “Holy shit, what a case this one is.”
    Ray glances at the monitor, then scowls. “I’d love a piece of that guy. He’s not crazy, he knows just what he’s doin.’ Jerkin’ us around.”
    I look back. One of the prisoners is smack in the middle of cell seven, standing on his head. “Jesus.”
    “What a country,” Worrell says. “That jerk’s gettin’ a nice bed for the night, and you know who’s gonna pay for it? You and me. The taxpayers. For him they got the money. For us, no. You talk to your boss about that, okay, lady?”
    But I don’t answer. I recognize the man in the cell. “Ray, let’s go.”

8
     

    “S hake and Bake is in jail?” Artie says, shocked.
    “Show me where, Grace.”
    “You can’t visit him.”
    “What do you mean I can’t visit him?”
    Eletha looks over wearily, dead on her feet against the bookcase in the law clerks’ office. “That lunatic is the last thing you should be worried about today.”
    “Grace,” Sarah calls from her desk, “what were you doing in the security office?”
    “I wanted to see the cameras.”
    “What cameras?”
    “You know, the ones in the hallways. I wanted to see who’s on the other side.”
    “Why?”
    “I was curious. I wanted to know if they saw anything peculiar.”
    “Is this about the noise?” Sarah asks.
    Ben looks up from the newspaper accounts of