McDonald removed a dated
Washington Post
from his favorite chair and sat. The chair, an antique rocker that had once belonged to James Madison, had been a gift from Jenny on their tenth wedding anniversary. It wasn’t particularly comfortable, but McDonald always got tingles when he thought about sitting in a chair in which the principal architect of the U.S. Constitution used to sit. McDonald was also fond of the chair because Jenny had searched long and hard for it, a point about which she would remind him during one of their rare spats. “I practically had to pry that chair from James Madison’s dead hands!” she would exclaim in response to something her husband had said that she didn’t appreciate. Her retort almost never had anything to do with what they were fighting about, but she seemed to think it was a conversation stopper. And it was. McDonald hated arguing with his wife.
After about ten minutes of rocking back and forth, McDonald stood and made his way—
willed
his way—to Megan’s room. He hadn’t visited his daughter’s room since the morning of her death. His housekeeper had dusted and vacuumed the room every week, but he personally hadn’t set foot in it. He couldn’t bear to do so. He didn’t want to do anything that might erase the last memory he had of the room. It wasn’t a significant memory, but he wouldn’t have traded it for anything in the world.
Megan, as usual, had overslept. Jenny, as usual, had asked her husband to wake their slumbering child. McDonald had entered Megan’s room with a warm plate of pancakes and bacon, Megan’s favorite breakfast. His daughter had rubbed the sleep from her eyes, sat up in her bed, and said, “Pancakes! Bacon!” It was amazing how she was able to go from zero to sixty in under ten seconds.
McDonald had said, “Correct, sweetheart. But you know Mommy’s rule.”
Megan repeated it by rote: “No eating in my bedroom.”
“Correct again, sweetheart. How’s this for a deal: I’ll keep your breakfast warm in the oven and then you can enjoy it with
real
maple syrup—the bottle we bought in Vermont last summer—after you wash your face and dress.”
“Hurray!” Megan had said. And she did what her father had asked. She always did.
CHAPTER 70
McDonald tossed his suitcase onto his bed. He didn’t unpack it, though. Instead, he grabbed a
R
EDSKINS
F
OOTBALL
jacket from his closet, made sure that all the lights were off, and headed to the front porch.
The Secret Service agent was listening to the football game in his car. He was startled by the soft tap on the passenger’s window. He spilled a bit of his coffee when he noticed it was McDonald. He quickly lowered the window. “Is everything OK, sir?”
McDonald said, “Yes. But how about taking a ride?”
“No problem, sir. Where to?”
“UVA hospital.”
“You got it.”
“Jay, isn’t it?” McDonald said, buckling his seatbelt.
“Yes, sir. Jay Blakeman.” The Secret Service agent kept his eyes riveted to the rural road in front of them. He didn’t want to hit a deer. His cargo was too valuable.
“How long have you been with the service?”
“Ten years, sir. I joined right out of college.”
“Where’d you go to school?” McDonald was an academic and always interested in where the people he met went to college.
The Secret Service agent smiled. “Tech.”
“Virginia Tech?”
“Yes, sir.”
“They assigned a Hokie to protect a Wahoo? No wonder the American people have such a low opinion of the government.”
They both laughed. Virginia Tech and UVA were archrivals.
Twenty minutes later, they arrived at their destination. Agent Blakeman had never been to UVA hospital. McDonald had been several times. Megan, like most little kids, used to get sick a lot. And when she did, McDonald usually considered it an emergency. When it turned out to be nothing more than an upset stomach or some other minor ailment, Jenny would chastise him, albeit lovingly, for overreacting.
They approached the information desk. A white-haired man on the north side of eighty put down the Sunday paper and said, “May I help you?”
“Yes, please. What room is Kelsi Shelton in?”
The old man said, “You’re Peter McDonald, aren’t you? There was a big story about you in yesterday’s paper. I recognize you from the picture. Congratulations on your appointment to the Supreme Court.” The old man searched for a pen and paper. “May I trouble you for an autograph for my grandson? He wants to be a lawyer. He’s applying to law schools this year. He’s got very good grades and he sure can talk up a storm.”
McDonald signed his name on the piece of paper and returned it to the old man. “Tell your grandson good luck. The law is a noble profession. As far as I’m concerned, though, there’s still one more step in the process. The full Senate must vote to confirm my nomination. What happened yesterday was merely a committee vote.”
The old man didn’t appear to hear a word McDonald had said. He was too busy checking the computer for Kelsi Shelton’s room number. “Room 512,” he said. “The elevator’s around the corner to the left.”
McDonald could hear that the television was on in Kelsi’s room. He knew they wouldn’t be waking her. She was watching the Redskins game.
He said to Agent Blakeman, “I didn’t even know she liked football.”
She didn’t. But Brian Neal did.
Agent Neal spun around in his chair when he heard the knock on the door. He stood the instant he realized it was Professor McDonald. “Good afternoon, sir,” he said.
Kelsi said, “Who is it?”
McDonald said, “It’s Peter.”
Neal stepped out of Kelsi’s line of sight.
Tears filled Kelsi’s eyes. “It … it’s a good game. The Redskins just hit a home run.”
McDonald smiled at Kelsi’s malapropism, walked to her bed, and hugged her.
They hugged for five full minutes. It didn’t seem long enough.
McDonald finally said, “How are you feeling, kiddo?”
Kelsi tried to answer but couldn’t. Instead, she began to cry. “Sorry,” she said, after she had regained her composure. She dabbed her eyes with the sleeves of her sweatshirt. She pulled her sleeves over her hands as makeshift mittens to comfort herself.
Megan used to do the same thing.
PART II
The Marble Temple
CHAPTER 71
Robert Johnson, the legendary African American blues musician, sung in one of his most famous songs:
I got to keep moving, I got to keep moving
blues falling down like hail
blues falling down like hail
Uumh, blues falling down like hail
blues falling down like hail
and the days keeps on worryin’ me
there’s a hellhound on my trail,
hellhound on my trail
hellhound on my trail.
Dontrelle Davis couldn’t “keep moving” fast enough.
Davis, who was black, worked at an auto repair shop on the west side of Charleston. He had asked his employer for the day off to visit his sick mother in the hospital. His employer refused. A heated exchange of words ensued. The employer tried to hit Davis with a wrench, and Davis struck back in self-defense. The employer suffered a broken nose. Davis dislocated his shoulder. No charges were filed by either party—Davis, because he was too scared to do anything about it; the employer, because he had an alternative means of redress.
The Klan dragged Davis deep into the woods. They stripped him of his clothes and chained him to a tree. They stacked kerosene-soaked wood around him and saturated his body with motor oil. They cut off his ears, fingers, and genitals, and skinned his face. They plunged knives into his flesh, and cheered at the contortions of his body and the distortion of his features. Davis’s eyes bulged out of their sockets and his veins ruptured.
Davis could be heard screaming, “Oh, my God! Oh, Jesus!” His blood sizzled in the fire. His heart and liver were removed and cut into several pieces, and his bones were crushed into small particles. The konklave scrummed for souvenirs.
One of the nighthawks handed Senator Alexandra Burton the largest portion of Davis’s heart.
The Charleston den had been surprised to see a sitting United States senator at their konklave. They had long known that Senator Burton sometimes offered support for their activities—Earl Smith had mentioned it to them on several occasions over the years—but it nevertheless caught them off guard when Burton exited a car driven by Smith’s nephew. They were speechless when the senator announced that she was the imperial wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and that she felt compelled to deliver the news in person that both Earl Smith, the grand dragon of the South Carolina Realm, and Billy Joe Collier, the klailiff, were dead.
Burton then stated that she was proud to report that she had selected Clay Smith to replace his uncle as grand dragon. Scattered murmurs rippled through the konklave about Clay’s age and inexperience, but there was nothing the brothers could do about Burton’s choice. A hydra who foolishly uttered a derogatory remark about Burton’s gender was pulled to the side and stoned.
Burton also said that she was sorry to report that Peter McDonald had been confirmed by the full Senate as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
One of the nighthawks said, “You mean that nigger lover Earl was tellin’ us about?”
“That’s right.” A warm sensation rushed over Burton’s body. Although she was profoundly disappointed by the Senate’s vote to confirm McDonald, she felt rejuvenated being in the company of her fellow patriots. She also knew that there was still time to stop McDonald. It would be more difficult now that McDonald was a Supreme Court justice, but it wasn’t impossible. After all, Burton said to herself as she joined in the singing of the Klan’s sacred song, John Wilkes Booth had stopped Abraham Lincoln.
CHAPTER 72
It wasn’t until 1935 that the U.S. Supreme Court got its own building. From 1800 until 1935, the Court was housed in cramped quarters in the U.S. Capitol. Prior to 1800, the Court sat in the Merchants Exchange Building in New York and Independence Hall and City Hall in Philadelphia. The Court finally received a home of its own after Chief Justice William Howard Taft lobbied for one in order to distance the Court from Congress as an independent branch of government.
Peter McDonald had served as a law clerk to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, argued more than a dozen cases before the nation’s highest court after his clerkship had ended, and visited the Court many times over the years for his academic research. Nonetheless, his heart skipped a beat when he pulled his Volvo station wagon into the Court’s underground parking lot on his first day as an associate justice.
“Good morning, Mr. Justice,” the parking lot attendant said. “Where’s your driver?”
“You’re looking at him,” McDonald said, smiling. He had declined the car and driver to which he was entitled by statute. He was a modest man, and just because he now occupied one of the most powerful positions in the federal government didn’t mean he had forgotten how to drive.
McDonald went out of his way to chat for a few minutes with the parking lot attendant. He spoke with every Court employee he encountered on his way to his chambers, which explained why he was thirty minutes late by the time he arrived.
McDonald had convinced his longtime faculty secretary, Mildred Jacobs, to accompany him to the Court. Mrs. Jacobs—everyone, including McDonald, called her
Mrs.
Jacobs—was in her early seventies, comfortably married to
Mr.
Jacobs for the better part of four decades, and about as much fun as a root canal. But she also was as efficient as a Hollywood celebutante during a Rodeo Drive shopping spree. That’s why the instant she saw McDonald burst through the chamber’s door, she said, “You’re late.”
McDonald hung his trench coat on the coat rack next to Mrs. Jacobs’s desk. He said, “I know.”
“If you know, why are you late?”
McDonald smiled sheepishly and glanced at his watch. “Sorry about that, but I’ve got a few minutes yet before I’m scheduled to meet my clerks. I’ll be in my office.”
Mrs. Jacobs had made certain that McDonald’s office was decorated how he would like it. She had secured for his use the desk once occupied by Felix Frankfurter, who, like McDonald himself, had worked as a law professor prior to being appointed to the Supreme Court. Sundry personal items were sprinkled throughout the room: a baseball autographed by Dustin Pedroia, McDonald’s favorite player; a hole-in-one certificate from Birdwood Golf Course, McDonald’s proudest athletic achievement; a copy of the first issue of the
Yale Law Journal
for which McDonald had acted as editor in chief; and a photograph of McDonald and former Chief Justice Rehnquist.
Mrs. Jacobs had taken special care with regard to McDonald’s vast book collection. The complete series of the U.S. Reports was shelved in the bookcase closest to McDonald’s desk. The U.S. Reports were the casebooks in which the official opinions of the Supreme Court were published. As of the current term, they consisted of 553 bound volumes and soft-cover preliminary prints of an additional three volumes. A final five volumes’ worth of decisions also existed in individual slip-opinion form. Volumes were added to the set at the rate of three to five per term, and they were generally between eight hundred and twelve hundred pages long.
Likewise within reach of McDonald’s desk were his favorite monographs on constitutional law. Mrs. Jacobs had been working for McDonald long enough to know what they were: John Hart Ely’s
Democracy and Distrust: A Theory of Judicial Review
; Bruce A. Ackerman’s
We the People: Foundations
; Larry D. Kramer’s
The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review
; and Ronald Dworkin’s
Law’s Empire
. All were penned by law professors who taught at elite law schools. But the book that Mrs. Jacobs had awarded prominence of place was Douglas Scott’s
To Secure These Rights: The Declaration of Independence and Constitutional Interpretation
, which had been presented to McDonald by a colleague after a Federalist Society debate.