Indispensable Party (Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller No. 4) (21 page)

He sat back in his chair and contemplated
Gavin for a moment. Then he said, “I’ve answered your question, now perhaps you
can do me the same courtesy. What do you want with Celia Gerig?”

Although Bricker phrased his
demand as a question, he spoke with the assurance of someone who expected to be
obeyed and respected. In Gavin’s experience, a man like Bricker would be thrown
off-balance if his authority was questioned.

 “That’s between me and Celia. Take
me to her,” Gavin responded.

Bricker clenched his jaw. A
muscle twitched in his cheek. Gavin waited.

Finally, Bricker said, “She’s
unavailable right now.”

Although Bricker’s daughter had
said Celia was dead, Gavin hoped the girl was mistaken. “The last time I saw
Celia, she was very ill, Mr. Bricker. I’d like to make sure she’s okay.”

Bricker closed his eyes briefly
then snapped them open. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but, sadly, Celia’s
passed away. As you say, she was quite ill, and she succumbed to her illness.”

Gavin’s head spun. He swallowed
hard, suddenly thirsty. Sweat dripped from his hairline.

Bricker squinted at him. “Mr.
Russell, are you okay?”

Gavin gulped and tried to nod.
His vision blurred and he felt dizzy, lightheaded. He pushed the mask up to the
top of his head and gasped for air.

A remote part of his brain
registered surprise that he was having such a strong physical reaction to the
news of Celia’s death. He struggled to his feet, gripping the edge of Bricker’s
desk to steady himself. He felt like he was underwater, swimming. The lights
were growing dim at the edges of his vision.

Far off, from a great distance,
he heard Bricker’s voice calling his name.

Gavin swayed, the lights went
out, and he crumpled to the floor.

Sasha and
Connelly were walking into a Tex-Mex restaurant a block away from the task
force’s building, when Sasha’s phone buzzed. Naya’s name scrolled across the
display.

“Why don’t you grab us a table?”
she suggested to Connelly. “And order some chips and guacamole. I’ll be right
in.”

Connelly walked over to the
hostess station and Sasha huddled in the restaurant’s foyer and answered the
call.

“How’s the weather, Naya?” she
said by way of greeting, scanning the menu posted inside the door.

“Snowing like crazy. But, Mac, I’m
not calling to chat,” Naya said. Her voice was calm but tight.

Sasha abandoned the menu and gave
Naya her full attention. “What’s up?”

“You’re not going to believe
this, but the D.C. District Court Clerk’s Office just called.”

“Did we screw something up with
the filing?” Sasha thought that was highly unlikely given their shared
attention to detail, but she supposed nobody was perfect.

“No, the papers are fine. The
case has been assigned to the emergency hearing judge, Judge Minella.”

“Great, maybe we’ll get an order
soon.”

“Oh, we’ll get an order soon. The
judge scheduled argument for two-thirty,” Naya said.

“What day?”

“Today, Sasha. You have to appear
in the D.C. District Court in three hours and argue the motion.”

Sasha nearly dropped the phone.

“Mac, you there?”

“I’m here. The judge scheduled an
argument on an
ex
parte
motion? There’s no one on the other side.”

 “I know what
ex parte
means,
Mac. I don’t know what this guy’s thinking; maybe the clerk screwed up. You’ll
show up and everyone will have a good laugh, then the judge’ll sign your order
and you’ll walk out of there,” Naya said.

Right. A federal judge would
just good-humoredly laugh off a screw up. More likely, it would end up being
her fault somehow.

“But, if he really wants me to
argue, I don’t have the file. I don’t even have a copy of the brief,” Sasha said,
trying to keep her rising panic out of her voice.

“Listen, you can do this. I
explained to the clerk that you’re in D.C. today but you don’t have access to a
printer. He was really nice about it. If you go to the counter in the clerk’s
office and ask for Lamar, he’ll give you a packet that contains copies of
everything we filed.”

“Lamar. Got it.” Sasha exhaled.
Maybe she could do this. It was a clear-cut argument.

“Uh, two more things. My new best
friend Lamar tells me Judge Minella is … mercurial.”

“A mercurial judge, how rare,”
Sasha deadpanned.

Naya snorted. “Point taken. And
the second thing is I checked the flights. There’s a Hemisphere Air flight that
I might be able to make. Maybe. If the stars align. And it doesn’t get canceled
because of the snow. I could be there by two-thirty or close. But I’d have to
leave now.”

The offer brought a smile to
Sasha’s face. “I appreciate that more than you know. And, ordinarily, I’d love
the moral support, but even if you did make it, you wouldn’t get here in time
to do anything but watch. Besides, we both know you need to get home this
evening and get your chair out before you lose your spot.”

Naya lived in Point Breeze, which
was typical of Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods. Many of the homes sat close to one
another on narrow streets with no off-street parking. Finding a spot to park
could prove difficult under any circumstances, but when there was a snowstorm,
scarce parking became nearly nonexistent. Banks of shoveled snow ate up
precious spots along the street. So homeowners would shovel ‘their’ spots right
in front of their homes, and then put out chairs to save those hard-won spots
whenever they left again. Having done the work to clear the spot, the theory
went, the shoveler was then entitled to park in that spot until the snow
melted.

The parking chairs ranged from
folding chairs to lawn chairs to kitchen chairs to barstools. On occasion, a
recliner that had outlived its useful life as living room furniture appeared
along the curb to guard a coveted parking spot. Somehow the system worked: the
chairs were respected, never moved or stolen.

Naya laughed. “Come on, now, you
know Carl probably already shoveled me a spot and plopped a chair down in it.
We’ve got about six inches so far.”

Poor, long-suffering, love-struck
Carl had been trying to get Naya to date him as long as Sasha had known her. Naya
insisted she didn’t have romantic feelings for Carl, but Sasha thought she
could detect a warming in Naya’s demeanor toward her neighbor. He’d been at her
side constantly over the summer right after her mother had died.

“So, leave at five and go home
and thank Carl. I’ll call you after the hearing.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. Unless you’re secretly
hoping to see Lamar …” Sasha teased her.

“Yeah, right. Well, I guess you
shouldn’t need me. I mean, you’ll be arguing unopposed right? Pretty hard to
lose that argument,” Naya teased her right back.

“Virtually impossible,” Sasha
agreed.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Leo was impressed
by Sasha’s calm as she told him that instead of having margaritas and burritos,
they were going to race to the federal district courthouse in D.C. to pick up
some papers and then camp out while she prepared for an argument in a few short
hours.

Despite the fact that his legs
were considerably longer than hers and he wasn’t wearing four-inch heels, he
had to struggle to keep up with her as she strode back to the parking lot.

“You might need to testify,” she
said over her shoulder.

“Wait, what?”

“You’re my fact witness. You
verified the motion, so if the judge has questions about the facts, I need to
have you ready to address them,” she said.

“Oh,” he said, his stomach
sinking. He’d never testified in court before.

His dismay must have shown on his
face, because she met his eyes and smiled. “It’ll be okay, Connelly. I’ll make
sure you’re prepped. And, besides, this is an
ex parte
hearing. There
won’t be anyone there to cross-examine you.”

“What does that mean, though?”

Sasha stopped at the passenger
side door. “It means this’ll be a walk in the park, okay?”

She spoke with such conviction
that he decided his concerns were unfounded. “Okay,” he agreed.

Sasha
studiously ignored Connelly’s fidgeting. He sat beside her at counsel’s table
drumming his fingers, jiggling his leg, and clearing his throat—in short, doing
everything except reviewing the motion she’d placed in front of him.

She wasn’t really concerned
about him, though. He already knew the facts, and she knew how to gently lead a
witness. She focused on familiarizing herself with the cases she’d cited in her
supporting brief, trying to identify any weaknesses or differences between her
case and the precedent that might give the judge pause. Truth was, she felt
confident. Good, even.

She wondered if she’d finally
been practicing long enough that she was losing her jitters. By rights, having
a hearing on an emergency motion thrown in her lap on essentially no notice
should have left her unsettled and apprehensive. Instead, she was eager to get
started—even in front of a temperamental judge.

A popping noise to her right
drew her attention. She gave Connelly a sidelong glance. He was cracking his
knuckles.

She leaned over to tell him
to relax, when the door from the judge’s chambers opened. A matronly African-American
woman in her late fifties entered the courtroom. Her graying hair was pulled
back in a tight bun. She wore a black skirt and cardigan sweater over a white
blouse. Her shoes were the very definition of sensible. She looked
grandmotherly, but Sasha had learned that, when applied to a judge’s deputy
clerk, grandmotherly could just as easily translate into stern as sweet. A
clerk was responsible for insulating her judge from the world, including, but
not limited to, clueless legal interns, wet behind the ears law clerks,
confused
pro se
litigants, and angling attorneys. It was the sort of job
that could sour a person’s disposition pretty quickly. Add to that the fact
that federal judges were appointed for life and tended to keep their deputy
clerks until one of the pair died or retired, and it wasn’t unusual to run into
a clerk who’d seen it all and was impressed by none of it.

Sasha straightened in her
chair and placed a hand over Connelly’s. She smiled brightly, but not too
brightly, at the woman.

“Good afternoon,” Sasha said.

The woman exhaled and pulled
her cardigan closed in front of her.

“You counsel for
Serumceutical?” she asked in a weary voice.

“Yes, ma’am,” Sasha answered.

The clerk nodded her head
toward Connelly. “That your client or your co-counsel?”

“This is Leo Connelly; he’s an
officer of the company.”

“Client, then. Well, come on.
Judge Minella wants to do this in chambers.”

Sasha nodded. It made sense.
There was no need for the formality of the courtroom when she was the only
party appearing. She scooped up her files, and she and Connelly stood.

Connelly started to walk
toward the deputy clerk, but the woman stopped him before Sasha could.

“This door here is for court
personnel only. Follow me,” she said in a not-unkind voice, as she walked
around the bar and skirted the well. Sasha and Connelly followed her through
the gallery and out into the gleaming marble hall.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch
your name, Ms. …,” Sasha began.

“Mrs. Walker,” she said.

She kept up a brisk pace,
trailed by Sasha and Connelly, for the short walk to the heavy oak door to
chambers. She unlocked the door using a key that she wore around her wrist on a
springy elastic band.

Inside, bookshelves lined the
walls. A bronze statue of a fish sat on a small table just to the left of the
door. To the right, two law clerks sat at desks that faced one another, typing
away on desktop computers, stacks of Westlaw printouts piled around them.

One of them looked up at Mrs.
Walker from under a sweep of brown bangs that had been streaked pink.

“Is this the TRO?” she asked,
reaching for a legal pad.

“Mmm-hmm, but Judge said no
need to attend, Tallie.”

The girl’s face fell. Her
co-clerk smiled slyly down at his research. A rush of memories flooded Sasha’s
mind—all the petty competitions that sprang up between law students, summer
associates, and junior attorneys, anyone at the bottom of the legal pecking
order, desperate to find a purchase to claw his or her way up a rung.
Apparently, judicial law clerks were not immune.

Mrs. Walker moved on and
stopped in front of the judge’s secretary’s desk. Sasha and Connelly stood
beside her.

The secretary could have
passed for Mrs. Walker’s sister. She placed a finger in between the pages of
her
People
magazine and peered at them over half-moon glasses that were
attached to a colorful beaded chain.

“This the movant?” she asked
Mrs. Walker.

“Right. This here is Attorney
McCandless. And this gentleman is a client representative,” Mrs. Walker said.

“Good afternoon. The judge is
ready for you, so you all go ahead in,” Mrs. Walker’s slightly friendlier
sister said with a smile before returning to her magazine.

Mrs. Walker rapped on the
door behind the secretary’s desk and then eased it open.

The judge’s private office
was spacious. In addition to an executive desk, the room housed a set of tall
bookshelves, a high-backed couch, and a long, highly-polished conference table.
Sasha counted ten chairs arranged around the table.

One of the chairs was
occupied by a surprisingly youthful-looking jurist. He had a full head of dark
hair that matched his robe. His face was unlined, and his brown eyes were
alert.