Fiske watched her go, aroused again at the sight of her naked body, the delicate, sensual tensing of her back, legs and buttocks. He sat down at the kitchen table and looked around the cozy space. He had stood on the rear deck for a while and watched the sun slowly rise over him. Dawn always seemed so much purer over water, as though these two essential elements of life, heat and water, produced a near-spiritual performance. He glanced back at the stairs as the sound of the shower started. He had watched Sara after she had fallen asleep. In the darkness of the night, their mingled scents a second skin, it had seemed as though he belonged next to her, and she to him. But then the blunt clarity of morning had come. Fiske lifted the coffee cup to his lips, but then quickly put it back down. If he had called his brother back right away, Mike would be alive right now. Fiske could never dodge that truth. He would, in fact, have to live with it forever.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
* * *
Elizabeth Knight also awoke at the crack of dawn, showering and dressing quickly. Jordan Knight still slept soundly and she made no move to wake him. She brewed the coffee, poured a cup, took her notebook and sat out on the terrace and watched the sun come up. She looked over every page of her materials for oral argument today, which included the last bench memo Steven Wright would ever author. His blood seemed to replace the ink on the page. As she thought this, she had to fight back the tears again. She swore to herself that he wouldn’t die in vain. Ramsey would not carry this day, this case. Knight already had great incentive to make sure that Barbara Chance and women like her could sue the Army for damages for, in essence, condoning the cruel, sadistic and illegal behavior of its male personnel. The organization had not been invented that deserved immunity from such action. But now her motivation, her will to win, to beat Ramsey, had grown a thousandfold. She finished her coffee, packed her briefcase and took a cab to the Supreme Court.
* * *
Fiske rubbed his reddened eyes and tried to put the memory of the night before and its bewildering complexities out of his mind. He sat in a special section reserved for members of the Supreme Court bar. He looked over at Sara, who sat with the other clerks in a section of seats perpendicular to the bench. She looked over at him and smiled.
When the justices appeared from behind the curtain and took their seats, Perkins finished his little speech and everyone came to rigid attention. Fiske looked over at Knight. Her subtle movements, an elbow resting lightly here, a finger sifting through paper there, were those of nearly uncontrollable raw energy. She looked, he thought, like a rocket straining at its tethers, desperately wanting to explode. He looked over at Ramsey. The man was smiling, looking calm, in control. If Fiske were a betting man, though, his chips would be at the extreme right of the bench, directly in front of Justice Elizabeth Knight.
The case of Chance v. United States was called.
Chance’s attorney, a hired gun from Harvard Law School, who made a practice of appearing before the Supreme Court with much success, launched into his argument with vigor. Until Ramsey cut in.
“You’re aware of the Feres Doctrine, Mr. Barr?” Ramsey asked, referring to the 1950 Supreme Court opinion first granting immunity from lawsuits to the military.
Barr smiled. “Unfortunately, yes.”
“Aren’t you asking us to overturn fifty years of Court precedent?” Ramsey looked up and down the bench as he said this. “How can we decide this case in favor of your client without turning the military and this Court on their heads?”
Knight did not let Barr answer. “The Court did not allow that argument to dissuade it from overturning the segregated school system in this country. If the cause is right, the means are justified, and precedent cannot stand in the way of that.”
“Please answer my question, Mr. Barr,” Ramsey persisted.