Supreme Justice by Phillip Margolin Read Free Book Online Page A

realistically, we’re talking three months at a minimum.”
    “Shit.”
    “Of course, the easiest way to do it is to find the rest of the body. Get me a hand, and we can print it; a pelvic bone, and I can give you the sex.”
    Daphne studied the grisly evidence. Who are you? she wondered. Then she stood up and looked around. Normally she would have found the shush ing sound the stream made and the deep green of the forest restful. Today the woods had become a sinister place where the rest of the unknown victim might be hidden.
    Daphne dialed headquarters on her cell phone. It was lucky that they were in a quiet time of the year, because she was going to need a lot of help searching the woods for the rest of Mr. or Ms. X. They’d have to mobilize the Explorer Scouts, get some cadaver dogs from the state police. It would be a logistics nightmare.
    Daphne briefed the chief and told him what she needed. It was only after she hung up that she remembered the weather forecast. A storm was coming in, the first of the year. If they didn’t find the rest of the body quickly, the parts might be buried under snow by tomorrow night.

Chapter Ten
    Court had been in session, so Brad didn’t get a chance to talk to Justice Moss until late in the day. When he walked into chambers, the judge was writing a draft of an opinion in longhand on a yellow legal pad. A computer stood on a worktable in a corner of the room, gathering cobwebs because Moss, who maintained that she was an old dog who could not learn new tricks, insisted on working with pencil and paper as she had during much of her legal career.
    “What can I do for you, Mr. Miller?”
    Brad sat in a high-backed, black leather chair across from his boss. “Something odd happened, and I thought you should know about it.”
    Moss laid down her pencil and gave Brad her full attention.
    “Last night, I was working out in the gym, and Wilhelmina Horst, one of Justice Price’s clerks, struck up a conversation. During it, she mentioned that Price was upset about something you did in conference that concerned the Woodruff petition for cert. Then she asked me what you were going to do in the case.”
    “What did you say?”
    “I told her I didn’t know anything about the case, which is true. I wouldn’t have thought much about the conversation, except that earlier in the day, while I was eating lunch, Kyle Peterson, another of Price’s clerks, did the same thing. I told him what I told Horst, and he dropped the subject, but I had the distinct impression that they were trying to pump me for information about your vote on the cert petition.”
    Justice Moss frowned and went quiet. After a bit, she looked across the desk.
    “Justice Price and I had a disagreement during the conference, and the clerks probably overheard him venting. Thanks for telling me about the conversations, but I’m not concerned.”
    Brad started to leave. He was halfway to the door when Justice Moss spoke again.
    “Don’t mention this to anyone else, Brad. Millard shouldn’t have talked about something that went on in conference, and I don’t want anyone to know what goes on there.”
    “Don’t worry. I’ve forgotten what happened already.”
    When Brad entered his office, it was empty. Harriet never left work this early, so he assumed that she had gone for a run. He continued to work on a memo outlining his views of the legal issues in a case he’d been assigned. After working steadily for three quarters of an hour, he took a break and printed out a section of the memo. Then he went on the Internet and Googled Millard Price’s name. A long list of hits appeared, and he clicked on a biography on Wikipedia. The first thing that caught his eye was Price’s long friendship with Dennis Masterson, a partner at Rankin Lusk, whom Brad had met at a party at the firm during Ginny’s first week as an associate. With Masterson as Dartmouth’s quarterback and Price at halfback, the Two Amigos, as they were