Judge Eleanor Mercer did not offer an emotional family greeting.
She turned her slate-gray eyes onto me, looked down at Arthur Mercer’s tweed jacket, down at the unpolished bronze transit pin, down at the silver eagles on my collar, down at the four-hundred-page vellum brief in my arms, and then down to the four-inch titanium key resting in my gloved right hand:
“Is the chain of custody intact, Lauren?
Ben?” the Judge asked.
Her voice had no volume; it was fifty decibels of pure, un-forgiving Maine iron:
“Did the child’s report survive the trash can without legal defect?”
“Clara’s report is pinned to the wall of Room Three-B under the seal of the Marine Corps, Aunt Eleanor,” I answered:
“The classroom ambush in Oceanside was dismantled four hours ago.”
“The communications logs have been decrypted by naval intelligence.”
“The sixty billion dollars in diverted defense reserves has been frozen in Zurich.”
