“Harriet saw him putting the ski mask in his attaché.”

“I forgot about that.” Justice Moss sighed. “Before Peterson was killed, I was certain of Millard’s involvement in the attempt on my life. It made sense. What goes on in conference is secret. Not even you clerks know. That means that one of the justices had to have told the people who wanted me dead that I was responsible for deferring the vote on Woodruff. But my theory means nothing if the attempt on my life was for reasons having nothing to do with that case.”

“That’s true, but finding those racist tracts was pretty convenient. It offers a clear-cut explanation for an attack on an African American and closes the door on any further investigation into a link between the attack and Woodruff v. Oregon.”

“You think Peterson was set up to derail our investigation?” Moss asked.

“He could still be the person who attacked you, but he might not be some kind of Aryan Nation, White Brotherhood assassin.”

“Why the doubts?”

“We’ve discovered a link between Justice Price and the China Sea.”

Brad told his boss about Dana’s investigation in Oregon and the discovery of the TA Enterprises file in the subbasement. Then he showed Justice Moss the pictures Ginny had taken with her cell phone.

“It looks like Justice Price was upset about the possibility of Woodruff being granted cert because he’s afraid that his part in the drug-smuggling operation will become public knowledge,” Brad said.

“After seeing the pictures of the TA Enterprises file, I’m almost positive that Justice Price was involved with the China Sea in some capacity,” Moss said.

“Proving his involvement or anything else that happened that night may be impossible, Judge. The ship is gone, along with the dead men and whatever was in the hold. Oswald and Swanson are dead, and God knows where the night watchman is or if he’s alive. They’re the only people who could give eyewitness testimony about the murders, and Oswald is the only person who had an opinion about the hashish. There’s still Oswald’s report about the hashish and the dead men, but that’s also worthless as evidence without Oswald.

“And as far as the file in the subbasement is concerned, I’d be shocked if Dennis Masterson hasn’t taken care of it. Our photos prove that Justice Price created the TA Enterprises shell corporation but there’s nothing in the pictures that proves why he did it or ties the file to the China Sea.

“Finally, John Finley is dead, and his statements to Sarah Woodruff are hearsay. And, not to put too fine a point on it, a person facing execution is not the best witness if you are trying to prove someone else committed the crime.”

“This is very disturbing,” Felicia Moss said when he was done.

“Dana has gone as far with this as she can, and I think it’s too dangerous for me to continue working on the matter. Dennis Masterson knows Ginny was poking around in the TA Enterprises file. The day she took the pictures, a man tried to kill her.”

“Oh, my God,” Moss said.

Brad told Justice Moss about the incident at the law firm. She looked grim as she listened.

“I should never have involved you,” Moss said when Brad was done. “I don’t know what I was thinking, especially when I thought Millard might have been behind the attack.”

“It’s time to confide in Keith Evans, Judge,” Brad said. “We can trust him to be discreet. We’re not detectives. Let Keith do his job. Dana’s right. It’s time for the amateurs to step down and let the professionals take over.”

“I agree. You have no idea how grateful I am for your help, Brad, but in light of what you’ve told me, I definitely want you to cease any involvement in the matter.”

“I will after I do one more thing. I don’t think you should have any contact with the FBI. When we started this, you told me how much trouble you could get in if anyone found out that you were going outside the record to investigate a case that was in front of the Court. Let me brief Keith. I’ll tell him that everything was my idea.”

“How will you explain knowing about my motion to defer voting on the Woodruff cert petition and Millard’s actions in the conference?”

Brad’s brow furrowed. Then he brightened. “Wilhelmina Horst and Kyle Peterson both talked to me about the way Justice Price acted when he came back from the conference. I’ll just say that Kyle told me. No one will be able to find out what he really did.”

“All right, but as soon as you’ve briefed Agent Evans, you will shed your secret identity as an ace detective and revert to being a mild-mannered law clerk. That’s an order. And until this is over, I’m giving you and Ms. Striker police protection.”

Brad didn’t make a single complaint about the order, and he was grateful that Ginny was going to be protected. He was anxious to back away from their investigation of international drug dealing and intrigue and go back to his peaceful humdrum existence.

Chapter Fifty-five

All during dinner and the play, Daphne’s brain was swamped with ideas for discovering the identity of the person who had dismembered her victim. The body parts had been found in the forest surrounding the campus. That didn’t mean that the victim had to be a student at Inverness, but she was young, so Daphne decided that the college registrar’s office was not a bad place to start.

As soon as she got to work the next morning, Daphne placed the call and asked if the victim had been a student at the school. After some hemming and hawing about the confidentiality of student records and a few transfers to people further up the food chain, she learned that no one by that name had been a student at Inverness University. Daphne was disappointed until she remembered that the law school had a separate registrar’s office. She slapped her palm against her forehead. “Of course, dummy,” she murmured. “A twenty-eight-year-old would be in graduate school.”

Rather than put up with the obstruction she knew she’d encounter from the registrar, Daphne decided to pay a visit to the dean of the law school. Daphne had met Tom Ostgard on a number of occasions since moving to Inverness, and her Ivy League degree had given her the credibility she’d needed to convince him to let her co-teach a course in the law school’s clinical program.

There had been heavy flurries that morning, and the stillness that accompanies the fall of fresh snow still cloaked Inverness. The children were in school and a lot of the townsfolk had chosen to stay indoors. The college students paid no attention to the cold and wandered across campus with red noses and cherry-colored cheeks.

The Robert M. La Follette School of Law was housed in a redbrick building that stood on the eastern edge of the campus, away from the undergraduate schools. It had been named for “Fighting Bob” La Follette, who was Wisconsin ’s twentieth governor and had served the state in the House of Representatives and Senate in the early part of the twentieth century. The dean’s office was on the third floor, and Daphne climbed the stairs for the exercise, dodging students too engrossed in legal arguments to pay attention to where they were going.

Tom Ostgard, a nationally respected scholar in the area of property law, was a reed-thin man in his early sixties. He had a fringe of gray hair surrounding his shiny dome and wore wire-rimmed glasses that magnified his brown eyes.

“You’re not here to arrest me, are you?” joked Ostgard, who was fascinated by Daphne’s connection to a world of mayhem and disorder that he had never encountered.

Daphne smiled. “Have you been up to something I should know about?”

“Sadly, no. My life is still that of the dull academic. Seriously, though, what’s up? You’re going to teach next semester, aren’t you?”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world. The students are great, and I love being back in academia.”