The Divine Appointment Read Online Free Page A

knew it had to happen sometime. The justices on the Supreme Court were getting older, making a vacancy inevitable. She just hadn’t thought it would be Justice Martha Doyle Robinson’s seat. She was one of the younger members of the court, and one of Stella’s favorite jurists.
    Stella had hoped there would be no vacancies during the Wallace presidency. Even now she still couldn’t comprehend how he had been elected eighteen months earlier. She detested Richard Wallace. He represented everything she opposed, and since the day after he was elected, Stella had been working day and night to ensure that he wouldn’t be reelected.
    But fate—and pancreatic cancer—had handed President Wallace an opportunity to change the shape of the Supreme Court, and Stella was determined to thwart him at all costs. Had one of the four conservative justices died, it wouldn’t have been an issue. President Wallace could have appointed whomever he wished and Stella wouldn’t have raised a hand. But Justice Robinson’s seat was a different story altogether.
    No legal scholar needed to speculate about how Justice Robinson would vote on certain cases or issues. Her opinions were very predictable—always to the extreme left of every issue. And Justice Robinson stood, unwavering, on the one issue that was of paramount importance to Stella—the right of a woman to choose to have an abortion. That’s why Stella admired her so much.
    Pushing her red-rimmed bifocals farther up from their resting place at the end of her nose, Stella dared anyone to cross her, particularly on this day. The National Federation for Abortion Rights—the largest pro-choice organization in the country—carried tremendous weight, and she was president. Her Avenue of the Americas office was the main war room for the campaign to defeat any conservative Supreme Court candidate nominated by President Wallace.
    Stella made her grand entrance at 10:00 a.m., just as she did every day. Her employees scampered to hiding places when she entered, but she caught a couple in the break room before they could escape. She barked instructions at one of them and yelled at the other. After they ran scared from the room, she smiled to herself and poured a cup of hot coffee. Then she strode off to her office. She loved the power. Aides and staff all scurried to satisfy her demands. The NFAR office buzzed with the same noise and energy as a campaign headquarters during the last few days of an election. Justice Robinson had been dead less than twenty-four hours and Stella had her office ready for battle.
    Once inside her personal office, Stella plopped down in her chair, reviewed her battle plans, and began making phone calls to senators’ offices and news outlets. She demanded to be interviewed on CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox so she could spew her venom at President Wallace and any nominee he submitted. Executives with every network and cable news station cowered and agreed immediately to whatever she wanted. Nobody dared to cross the heavyset, midforties redhead who was known for her cutthroat politics. Next Stella called the newspapers and demanded op-ed space in the New York Times , the Washington Times , the Washington Post , and the Los Angeles Times , to name a few. By noon all her demands were met, and she checked the media off her to-do list.
    “Valerie,” Stella called out from her chair behind the desk. Covering the phone, cradled to her ear, with her hand, she peered over the top of her glasses at her assistant. “I need an updated list of every appellate court judge—state and federal—in the country who is a member of any right-wing legal organization. That’s where Wallace is likely to look.”
    Valerie Marcom scribbled notes on a steno pad. She had been working for Stella for the better part of the last five years. She was of average appearance, with short, mouse-brown hair, and wore black-rimmed glasses. Stella kept her around because she did what she was told and