Fighting Chance(3)

She had her cell phone out on the front passenger seat, where she could grab it in an emergency, and she had the other cell phone out, too—the one she bought at the kiosk in the King of Prussia Mall. That was not entirely satisfactory. Martha was sure there were security cameras all over the mall, including some trained on that kiosk. There could be a tape somewhere with a picture of her on it, buying that very cell phone.

Then there was the whole GPS tracking thing, or whatever it was. They could tell where a call had been made and where the person who received it had been. It didn’t matter how “untraceable” the phone was if it could in fact be traced to someplace you were known to be. That meant she couldn’t use it to call someone from home, and she could use it in the car only if she was moving. She could not use it while she was parked right here behind the courthouse, no matter how much she wanted to.

She stared at the prepaid phone for a bit and then reached over to put it into her bag. She would have used nothing but prepaid phones if she thought she could get away with it, but in the end, she’d decided that wouldn’t be a good idea. A woman in her position was expected to have a cell phone. She was expected to have an expensive one. That was how Martha had ended up with the iPhone 5, which she honestly felt was more annoying than functional.

Martha stuffed that phone into her bag, too, then picked up the bag and grabbed her briefcase. There were five security cameras in this lot. One was trained on the front gate. The rest were installed to make sure all parts of the lot could be seen at all times. She’d heard once that there was no such thing as a perfect surveillance system. Every system of security cameras had a blind spot.

If that was true, Martha had never been able to find one.

She got out of the car and locked it up behind her. She sent up a little fume of annoyance on the subject of John Henry Newman Jackman, the city’s mayor. In New York, Bloomberg and Giuliani had made the city nearly as safe as an upscale suburb, but Jackman was a first-class ass. He didn’t care if the city burned to the ground, so long as his base was happy.

And Martha knew exactly whom his base consisted of.

She went up the small flight of concrete steps to the courthouse’s back door. There was a security camera there, and she got out her little can of black spray paint. She aimed it at the camera lens far over her head. Then she double-checked it to make sure she’d gotten it all.

She put the can back in her bag and punched in her access code on the pad at the side of the door. Martha’s watch read 8:35. It was early for the courthouse, but it was not exactly early. Court wouldn’t get into gear until ten o’clock, but that was because the court system was also run by asses.

The security guard was already on duty, a uniformed policewoman with a gun on her hip and a strained expression. Martha saw her look of surprise and pretended she hadn’t.

“Is Celia in already?” she asked.

Martha had no idea if this was something the guard would know. Celia was her personal assistant, and came to work every morning by bus.

The policewoman started to say something. Martha sailed right past her. She didn’t really care if Celia was in or not.

She went down the back corridor that was painted such an awful shade of beige—vomit beige, she always thought of it. They brought the kids through that corridor when it was time for court. The idea was not to expose them to ridicule or publicity by bringing them up the sidewalk. Martha thought that was asinine.

Martha passed the door to the corridor that went to the courtrooms themselves and opened the thicker one that went to the offices. There were security cameras in these corridors, too, but she had spray-painted them last night, and she was pretty sure that security hadn’t managed to “fix” them yet. She took the can out and did the one closest to her door, just to be safe. Then she went on through.

Most of the offices were dark. One, her own, all the way at the end of the hall, was lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree.

“Celia?” Martha said.

Celia Markhall put her head out the door and made a little wave. “Good morning, Your Honor. I wasn’t expecting you for at least another hour. I’m afraid I’ve got things in a mess in here.”

Celia Markhall was the fifth assistant Martha had had in the past nine years, and she wasn’t any better than the rest of them. She was blond in the only way people can be blond when they’ve reached the age of fifty-six, and she was much too peppy.

Martha pushed past her into the outer office. There were paper files on the desks there, placed about in little stacks. She went past them without bothering to think about what they were for and into the inner office with its big mahogany desk and its antique wall clock. The antique wall clock was Martha’s own, brought from her home in Wayne.