Final Appeal by Lisa Scottoline Page B

canines.
    “She’s going to jump!” Galanter shouts.
    “No, she won’t.” My hand inches up to Bernice’s neck and I grab the red leather collar securely in my hand. “Don’t move yet, Judge.”
    “Hold her!” Galanter screams, slipping away from in front of Bernice.
    “No, wait!” I yell, as Bernice lurches after the fleeing judge. My arms almost tear loose from their sockets and my heels skid along the carpet. Sarah throws her arms around my waist as Bernice thrashes in my grip, torquing her enormous body left and right in desperation. Her frantic barking reverberates in the tight corridor. I bury my face in a mountain of fur and hold on for dear life.
    “SuperJew to the rescue!” Artie shouts. He tackles Bernice in midair, and she yelps in pain and frustration.
    Galanter scrambles down the hall, pant legs flapping. He reaches his chambers and slams the door.
    I release my grip on the dog, and so do Artie and Sarah. Bernice explodes out of the pileup and races to Galanter’s chambers. She leaps onto the closed door and barks wildly.
    “Jesus.” I collapse next to Sarah and Artie, both flat on their backs on the carpet. I can’t catch my breath; the coffee stain heaves up and down. Bernice has never acted that way before, and you don’t have to be Oliver Wendell Holmes to figure out why.
    “Can you believe that?” Eletha says.
    “It’s his aftershave,” Artie says. “Or his personality.”
    Sarah rolls over and looks at me grimly. “What do you think, Grace?”
    What do I think? I think I may not be able to complete my fact-finding mission on Susan, but I know where to find Galanter. I think the new chief judge will be needing an assistant. With experience.
     
    “How do you know all this?” I ask Ben at the end of the day, in Armen’s darkening office.
    “That’s what I’ve been wonderin’ too,” Eletha says, without looking up from the folders she’s been filing. On the cardboard box it says DEAD FILES . “Why does Mr. Safer here know every damn thing before I do?”
    “One of Judge Galanter’s clerks told me, the only one who’s still speaking to us after what Bernice did.” Ben casts a cold eye at the dog, sleeping soundly where Armen’s area rug used to be.
    “But how can they hold phone argument in Hightower ?” I ask. “You use the phone for status conferences, little things like that. Not for argument on a death case.”
    “Why not?” He crosses his arms, his oxford shirt a crisp white.
    “Death is different, that’s why not.”
    He looks up at the ceiling, searching the recessed lights like other people gaze at the stars. “Where have I heard that before?”
    “Anthony Amsterdam, when he argued before the Supreme Court in Gregg v. Georgia ,” Eletha says. “‘Death is final. Death is irremediable. Death is unknowable; it goes beyond this world.’”
    “How did you know that, Eletha?” Ben says with obvious surprise.
    “Oh, I been workin’ in de big house for a while now, Mr. Ben.” She laughs naughtily. “It was in one of Armen’s articles. I typed it and I never forgot it.” Her smile fades and she returns to the box. “Hand those folders to me, Grace, the ones in front of you.”
    I slide the case files and appendices along the smooth tabletop. “Ben, when are they going to hold this phone argument?”
    “Tonight at seven.” He checks his watch. “An hour and a half.”
    “After the close of business?” Curiouser and curiouser.
    “They have to do it tonight, to leave time for the Supreme Court to decide the appeal. It’s Hightower’s fault. He caused it by waiting until the last minute.”
    Now I understand. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the timing or the Supreme Court. Galanter doesn’t want argument during regular business hours because that would be public.”
    “Not necessarily.”
    “No? You think the newspapers would let the panel hold a closed argument in this case? The first death case here in decades? They’d be