While Justice Sleeps(109)
“To tie up loose ends.” Jared added, “They’ll probably set a meetup for Avery. Lure her in and take both her and Rita out. The three of us will be next.”
Ling’s gasp was matched by Noah’s imprecation. “What in the hell can we do? Either way, we’re dead. We’re out of options.”
“No, we’re not.” Avery moved past Jared and made her way to the door. “Agent Leighton?”
“Yes?”
“We need to go out. Now.”
The agent reached for her communicator. “Where to?”
“Bethesda Naval Hospital.”
* * *
—
Ling and Noah sat in the waiting room, joined by Agent Leighton. Down the hall, Avery and Jared entered Justice Wynn’s hospital room. The muted whirring of respirator and monitors provided the only sound.
“He looks so frail,” Jared murmured. This was his first time seeing Justice Wynn in the hospital. His image of his father, a vibrant force of a man, had been winnowed away, replaced by the sickly, wiry body prostrate on a bed that looked too large for him. “Like a different man.”
A cue tripped in Avery’s brain, but she couldn’t quite access the message. She murmured the lines from the letter: “If I had accepted absurdity and given smallpox to my child, I would not be mourning him today. It’s not quite right.”
“We’ve searched for the phrases, Avery. No one said it.”
She raked her hand through her hair. “Smallpox refers to you, to Boursin’s. He blames himself for passing it on to you. The atrocity is the research conducted by Hygeia. But he had no connection to them.”
“No connection? He knew what our government did, but he still kept his mouth shut and never told anyone what he’d found.” Jared added grimly, “None of this would be happening if he’d recused himself and revealed the truth. No one should have died.”
“He had an answer, Jared. All I have to do is find it.”
“There’s nowhere else to look.”
“There must be.” She’d dissected the letter and every bit of information she’d collected. The riddle, she thought, had been too clever. Perhaps more clever than she was. “I don’t know where else to look, but there’s an answer. He would tell me that we’re in the endgame now. The most important pieces are in play, and I’ve got only a few moves left.”
“What are they? Because I’m not seeing many.”
Avery hesitated. “Your father taught me more than any professor about the law and reasoning. This puzzle is like a ruling. Usually, we get the case and we let the record and the questions guide the answer. But when he has a long-standing posture on an issue, it’s up to his clerks to find the evidence to support the outcome.”
“How would you do that?”
“Research.” What she’d done nonstop since the day she learned her new role. “I’ve read case law and journal articles and unpublished rulings on every aspect of this issue. I don’t know where else to look.”
Jared returned his gaze to his father. “Maybe you’re going too deep.”
“In what way?”
He thought quietly for a moment. “When we used to go to the cabin, I’d beg him to take us out in a boat. Then, after we got a ways from the dock, I’d pester him to go even farther out. So far we could barely see the cabin.”
“And he wouldn’t?”
“Nope. I remember one time, I threw a fit and threatened to jump out of the boat and swim to the center of the lake.”
“I can only imagine his reaction.”
Jared smiled fondly. “He didn’t tell me no. But he warned me that I might not be ready for what would happen. That while I was a strong swimmer, sometimes the question wasn’t what a person could do. It was what waited in the unknown. The judge said that the wisest minds understand not simply the depths and the surface, but everything in between.”
“The space in between.”
“Yes, the space in between.” A rueful grin quirked his lips. “I always thought it meant he was too lazy to row that far or too stingy to buy a motorboat.”
Her mind returned to the strange conversation in his office all those months ago. The space in between. Eighteenth-century physicians. Just quit and suffer the consequences. French literature. “God, I know where it is.”
“Where what is?”
“The clue. The last clue. It’s at his house.” Avery leaned past Jared to stroke the immobile arm that lay on the sheet. “Justice Wynn, I’ve got it.”
* * *
—
The alarm trilled as Avery punched in the code. Jared followed her inside, trailed by Noah and Ling. They looked at Jared as they entered the house.
“Do we know what she’s looking for?” Noah asked Jared.
“She does.” At least, he assumed she did. She’d been mostly silent on the ride over, only asking that he call the others, and he could fairly hear her mind working. They entered the library, and she headed for the far wall of books. He joined her, staying a few paces away. “Can we help you look?”
“No. I’ve got it.” She walked along the shelves, tracing titles as she went. Midway across, she stopped. Slowly, she inched out a volume. The cover was dusky rose, embossed with gold lettering. “Voltaire.”