He said, “Danny O’Malley is dead. He was murdered.”
Savich, knowing that Sherlock, Ben, and Callie were watching them as closely as he was, saw the punch of surprise, then as his words sank in, the shock that showed clearly on their faces. None of them seemed particularly distraught yet, probably because of the unexpected blow they were absorbing.
“Okay,” Ben Raven said, “let’s all sit down and talk about this.”
Tai Curtis, a law clerk for Justice Sumner Wallace, a tall, slender, good-looking young man, the one they’d been told disliked Eliza Vickers, looked like he’d been slapped. He streaked his fingers through his hair, standing it on end. “Oh, not Danny. That just can’t be right, he’s—oh shit, man. You aren’t kidding us? Hey, you want one of us to confess?”
“Actually,” Savich said, “spontaneous confessions don’t happen all that often.”
It was Bobby Fisher who asked, “Why would someone kill Danny, Detective Raven?”
Ben said, “Danny was murdered because he was somehow involved in this. Maybe he tried to blackmail the killer or the person who hired the killer. We’re thinking Danny might have known something that he unfortunately didn’t pass along to us. He was killed not twenty-four hours after Justice Califano.”
There was more on the four faces now—fear, stark fear. Ben couldn’t blame them. One of their own was dead, suddenly, violently. He said, looking at each face in turn, “He paid the ultimate price for a stupid decision.” His voice sounded hard as nails, Callie thought. “We hope that none of you would now consider hiding anything from us, for your own personal gain, or for any other reason. If you know something, tell us now, for your own safety. I don’t want to see any more dead bodies. If you’ve never seen a murdered body, come with me to the morgue and I’ll let you see firsthand what could happen to you.”
The three men looked ready to be sick.
Sonya McGivens, another law clerk to Justice Sumner Wallace, grabbed a slice of cold pizza out of a delivery box from Pizza Heaven and began chewing on it. A long string of cheese fell over her chin but she didn’t seem to notice.
Savich noted that she was a knockout—a tall blond with classic features—and a bare midriff down to well below her navel. She was wearing bad-girl pants that barely covered her pelvic bones, and a lacy white top. Savich wondered if one of the reasons Justice Wallace had hired her was because of her looks. He also wondered if the Justice had ever lost his head with this young woman.
She said between frantic bites, “None of us know a thing, honest, Detective Raven.”
Bobby picked up the last slice of pizza that looked nearly petrified. He held it out belatedly toward Callie. “No, thank you, you go ahead,” she said, and tried not to shudder.
Ben said to Bobby, “I understand you were in Justice Califano’s chambers Friday morning, shooting the breeze with Eliza Vickers until you remembered the Chief Justice’s meeting, and took off.”
Bobby Fisher slowly nodded. “Yeah. I wanted—” He stepped away from the other three law clerks, came close to Ben. “Okay, I don’t want you to think I’m keeping anything back. The deal is I wanted to ask her out, but Eliza was playing hard to get. There was this show at the Kennedy Center I wanted to see. I wanted her to go with me.”
“Did she accept?” Sherlock asked.
Bobby shook his head. “No, she never accepted. I guess that was maybe my last shot. Who cares? No tragedy. Usually she acts like a bitch to me, anyway.”
“She was a bitch because?” This from Callie, who, if they believed she was a local cop like Ben Raven, was fine. Better yet, since she hadn’t ever met these four, they didn’t know her relationship to Justice Califano.
Bobby shrugged his narrow shoulders, looked away from her, not meeting her eyes. “She didn’t like me. Called me Justice Alto-Thorpe’s clone, and the way she said it wasn’t nice. Sure, I usually agreed with my own Justice, she’s brilliant, you know? Why wouldn’t I want to be like her?”
Callie said, “So, you think Eliza was a bitch because she wouldn’t go out with you? Isn’t that a bit over the top, Bobby?”
The other three law clerks were standing, all attention. Tai Curtis and Sonya McGivens nodded in agreement. Dennis Palmer looked blank, probably an expression he’d cultivated.
“Look, she wouldn’t go out with me, and she wasn’t very polite about it. It’s not like I’m a pauper. I could take her nice places. And being a law clerk in the Supreme Court means I’m no run-of-the-mill law school graduate.”