Walcott waved his hand. “Ah, well, I suppose you can’t help it. Once a lawyer…”
She slammed the car door hard enough that her bodyguard jumped.
She was late for court. The judge was looking around irritably. “Ms. Camden?”
“I’m sorry, Your Honor. I was unavoidably detained.”
“Avoid it, Counselor.”
“Yes, Your Honor.” The courtroom was nearly empty, despite the importance of the case to Constitutional law. Fish-migration patterns did not rivet the newsgrids. In addition to the opposing parties and their counsel, she saw one reporter, state and federal environmental officials, three youngsters she guessed to be either law or ecology students, one ex-judge, and three witnesses.
And Richard Keller, who was not due to testify as her expert witness until tomorrow.
He sat in the back of the room, as upright as if on brainies, a thick-set man surrounded by four bodyguards. That must be what happened when you lived year in and year out in Sanctuary; the rest of the world looked even more dangerous than it was. Richard caught her eye. He didn’t smile. Something in Leisha’s chest turned cold.
“If you’re finally ready to start, Counselor…”
“Yes, Your Honor. We are. I call Carl Tremolia to the stand.”
Tremolia, a burly fisherman who was a hostile witness, stalked up the aisle. Leisha’s client’s eyes narrowed. Tremolia wore a We-Sleep electronic pin on his lapel. There was a disturbance by the door; someone was talking to the bailiff in an insistent undertone.
“Your Honor, I petition the court to order the witness to remove his lapel pin,” Leisha said. “Given the circumstances of the case, political opinions of the witness, whether expressed by words or jewelry, are prejudicial.”
The judge said, “Remove the pin.”
The fisherman tore if off his jacket. “You can make me take off the pin but you can’t make me buy Sleepless!”
“Strike that,” the judge said. “Mr. Tremolia, if you do not answer only when spoken to I will charge you with contempt…What is it, Bailiff?”
“Sorry, Your Honor. Message for Ms. Camden. Personal and urgent.”
He handed Leisha a slip of hard-copy. Call Kevin Baker at office immediately. Urgent and personal. “Your Honor…”
The judge sighed. “Go, go.”
In the corridor she pulled a comlink from her briefcase. Kevin’s face appeared on the miniature screen.
“Leisha. About Walcott—”
“This is an unshielded link, Kevin—”
“I know. It doesn’t matter, this is in the public record. Hell, in a few hours the whole fucking world will know. Walcott can’t file for those patents.”
“Why not? Samplice—”
“Forget Samplice. The patents were filed two months ago. Neat, clean, unbreakable. In the name of Sanctuary, Incorporated…Leisha?”
“I’m here,” she said numbly. Kevin had always told her that nobody could falsify the government’s patent files. There were too many backups, electronic and hard-copy and free-standing off-line. Nobody.
Kevin said, “There’s more. Leisha…Timothy Herlinger is dead.”
“Dead! I saw him not a half-hour ago! Riding away on a scooter!”
“He was hit by a car. The deflection shields on his scooter failed. A cop happened to come by a few minutes later, put it right on the Med-Net, and of course I have all nets monitored to flag key names.”
She said unsteadily, “Who hit him?”
“A woman named Stacy Hillman, gave her address as Barrington. I have wizards checking her now. But it looks like an accident.”
“Scooter deflector shields are Y-energy cones. They don’t fail; it’s one of their main marketing points. They just don’t. Not even on a shoddy We-Sleep scooter.”
Kevin whistled. “He was riding a We-Sleep scooter?”
Leisha closed her eyes. “Kevin, send two bodyguards to find Walcott. The best bodyguards you can hire. No—your own. He was at Samplice a half-hour ago. Have him escorted to our apartment. Or would your office be safer?”
“My office.”
“I can’t leave court until two at the earliest. And I can’t ask for a recess. Not again.” She had already used recesses in this case to go to Mississippi and to Sanctuary. To Sanctuary twice.
Kevin said, “Just go ahead with your case. I’ll keep Walcott safe.”
Leisha opened her eyes. From the courtroom door the bailiff watched her. She had always liked that bailiff, a gentle old man who liked to show her too-expensive holos of his grandchildren. At the other end of the corridor stood Richard Keller, back preternaturally straight, waiting. For her. He knew what Kevin’s call was about, and now he stood waiting. She knew it, as certainly as she knew her own name.
How had he known what Kevin was about to tell her?
She went back to court to ask the judge for a recess.
Leisha led Richard to her office a block away, not touching him as they walked, not looking at him. Inside, she opaqued the window all the way to black. The exotics, passion flowers and ginger and flame orchids, began to close.
She said quietly, “Tell me.”
Richard gazed at the closing flowers. “Your father grew those.”
She knew that tone of voice; she had heard it in police interrogation rooms, in jails, in court: the voice of a man who will say anything that comes into his head, anything at all, because he has already lost everything. The tone carried a certain amount of freedom, of a kind that always made Leisha want to look away.
She didn’t look away now. “Tell me, Richard.”
“Sanctuary stole Walcott’s research papers. There’s a network, Inside wizards and Outside Sleeper underworld, very complex. Jennifer’s been building it for years. They did it alclass="underline" Samplice, First National Bank.”
This was nothing new. Richard had told her as much in Sanctuary, in Jennifer’s presence. “I have to say something, Richard. Listen carefully. You’re talking to Walcott’s counsel, and nothing you say here is off the record. Nothing. Marital privilege of confidentiality won’t apply to anything Jennifer said to you in front of a third party or parties, such as the Sanctuary Council—Article 861 of United States Code. You can be required to repeat what you say here under oath. Do you understand?”
He smiled, almost whimsically. The tone was still in his voice. “Of course. That’s why I’m here. Record it if you like.”
“Recording on.” To Richard she said, “Go on.”
“Sanctuary altered the file patents. Again, both electronically and hard-copy. The dates were chosen carefully—all the hard-copy applications in Washington are stamped ‘Received,’ but none have reached the review stage of significant official signatures or fingerprints. That’s what Kevin was telling you, wasn’t he?”
“He told me he didn’t think anybody could get into the federal system, not even his people.”
“Ah, but he would be trying from the Outside alone.”
“Do you have specifics? Names, dates, said in front of third parties as part of conversations that would have taken place even if you and Jennifer weren’t husband and wife?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have written proof?”
Richard smiled slightly. “No. All hearsay.”
Leisha burst out, “Why, Richard? Not Jennifer—but you? Why did you?”
“Could anybody give a simple answer to a question like that? It’s a whole lifetime of decisions. To go to Sanctuary, to marry Jennifer, to have the kids—” He got up and walked over to the flowers. The way he fingered their hairy leaves made Leisha rise and follow him.