Blow Out

CHAPTER

3

SUPREME COURT BUILDING

FIRST STREET N.E. AND EAST CAPITOL STREET

WASHINGTON, D.C.

LATE FRIDAY NIGHT

A SSOCIATE J USTICE Stewart Quinn Califano stepped out of the underground garage, bent his head against the cold wind blowing in his face, and walked around to the front of the Supreme Court Building. He paused to look up at the sixteen marble columns at the west entrance that supported the famous pediment and the words incised on the architrave above: Equal Justice Under Law. He loved the neoclassical style of this magnificent building, one that would be his home until he shucked off his mortal coil, or retired, something he couldn’t begin to imagine. Every time he entered, it was like walking into a Greek temple. Once inside, he greeted the three guards at the west entrance security checkpoint, making a point to ask about their wives, Amanda, Georgia, and Tommie, passed through the airport-like security gate, and stepped into the main corridor of the Great Hall. He paused a moment to give a little salute to the closed-circuit TV camera, not three feet above his head, and made his way through the Hall, his footsteps echoing loudly on the marble floors. He was well aware that every guard on duty tonight already knew he was here, alerted since he entered the garage. Not a single one would be surprised at his presence close on to midnight, even on a bone-cold Friday night in January. It was his habit to come here at all hours.

He paused a moment, as he always did, to admire the monolithic marble columns that rose to a coffered ceiling. The first time he’d visited the Supreme Court Building he’d been twenty-two years old, in his first year at Harvard Law School, and he’d stood there staring at the Great Hall’s incredible beauty and opulent detail, its acres of creamy Alabama marble.

The guards never dared ask him why he came long after closing hours. Truth be told, this was his refuge, a place he found utterly and completely private in the hours when most everyone was safely home. He could come here and be certain no one was listening or looking, the one place where he was safe from prying eyes, endless conversations, endless wrangling, and Eliza, he thought, smiling.

He quickened his pace, giving the Court Chamber at the end of the Great Hall only a cursory look. He walked to the right and paused in front of his chambers, his footsteps echoing loudly. He looked back at the romantic gloom and saw the shifting movements of the guards in their rubber-soled shoes. His hand was already on the doorknob, his eyes on the personalized placard that had been placed there seventeen years before, when he realized he would prefer to be in the library tonight. His inner office would feel too close, too full of recent conversations with Eliza, Fleurette, and Danny, his law clerks, and the tears of one of his secretaries, Mary, who was retiring come March.

Justice Califano turned and walked quickly to the elevators that took him to the third floor and the 500,000-volume library. He heaved a deep satisfied breath as he entered the main reading room. He loved this place, with its hand-carved oak-paneled walls, its soul-deep warmth that came not from the oak and mahogany but from all the books that surrounded him. Here there were no cameras, no electronic eyes to monitor his activities. He took off his coat, his cashmere scarf, and his leather gloves and laid them on a chair at his favorite study table. He took his time adjusting the old-fashioned lighting fixture. He paused a moment and looked toward the beautiful arches. He sat down, leaned back in his chair, and thought about Jackson v. Texas, a death penalty case the four liberal justices had voted to hear that was coming up on Tuesday. They wanted to revisit the Stanford v. Kentucky case of 1989 that allowed by a five-to-four decision the execution of juvenile offenders age sixteen and over. They were hoping to swing him and Justice Elizabeth Xavier-Foxx over to their side to gain a plurality and do away with the death penalty for all minors. It probably wasn’t the best case to push into the court, Stewart thought, since the sixteen-year-old boy had committed three particularly heinous murders. He was, according to his father during his original trial, a psychopath, exhibiting all the classic symptoms from the time he was eight years old. The father had tried to have him committed, but the boy was charming and intelligent, and the psychiatrists and social workers had failed to see through it. Then came the murders. Now he faced a death sentence in Bluff, Texas.

Stewart was interested in hearing the lawyers’ arguments about what had changed since 1989, both for and against. He hoped they would cover new ground, but chances weren’t good. Though he wasn’t certain which way he’d vote, he knew he was leaning toward the exclusion of all juveniles from death penalty eligibility, although by the time a juvenile offender actually faced the lethal injection, he’d be at least forty years old.

He stroked the soft leather arms of his chair, the one he’d first sat in when he’d walked into the library right after his confirmation. It was, he thought, rather cool to be one of the Supremes, so charmingly misleading, since all of them were grandparents. It was time, he thought, time to make decisions, time to stop thinking about upcoming cases. His hand shook slightly as he pulled the sheaf of papers from his breast pocket and smoothed them out on the shiny table. He began to read.

He paused a moment, looked up. He thought he’d heard footsteps. It was the guards, making their rounds, he thought, and went back to his reading. Since 9/11, the number of guards protecting both the building and the personnel had been tripled, and more sophisticated equipment had been installed, but not in the library, thank God.

He read what he’d written earlier in the day, felt a shot of renewed anger, then paused yet again. More footsteps, soft, but closer. And moving slowly, very slowly. He didn’t know any of the guards to tiptoe around. It was probably someone new come up here to check on him, to make sure everything was all right.

He swiveled in his chair and looked toward the darkness. Then he looked through the row of arches. Finally, he turned to look toward the open library doorway. In all directions he saw only midnight shadows surrounding the small circle of light he’d provided for himself. Suddenly, he felt afraid.

He heard a voice, a deep voice, close yet somehow muffled, whispering something. To him? He half rose in his chair, his hands on the arms.

“Who’s there?”

Was that his voice, that thin whisper layered with fear?

There was dead silence, but it was no longer comforting. He called out louder, “Who’s there? Say something or I’ll call the guard.”

Califano stood, reached for his coat, only to remember he didn’t have his cell phone. He looked toward the internal call phone on the wall not ten feet away from him. Guards could be here in a matter of seconds.

He wasn’t a coward, but it didn’t matter. Fear had him by the throat, hurling him into a race toward that phone, his hand outstretched when something thin and sharp went around his neck. “Now, isn’t this nice?” a voice whispered against his ear.

Califano pulled at the wire. Tight, so tight. He couldn’t breathe, even though his shirt collar was between the wire and his skin.

The low quiet voice said near his left ear, “Now, this won’t get it done, will it?” Something struck him on the head. Pain and white lights fired through his brain, and he felt himself falling. His hands fell away and his shirt collar was ripped downward, exposing his bare skin.

He was hurled to his knees, his attacker behind him. He felt the wire digging into his flesh, felt the welling sticky blood, felt such pain he wept. The wire loosened a bit and somehow he managed to get his fingers beneath it, and that low, intimate voice laughed. “Well now, a fighter, are you?”

Slowly, inexorably, the wire tightened, sliced right through his fingers. His brain was crystal clear in that instant when he knew he would die if he didn’t do something. Now. The wire cut smoothly into the bones of his fingers, and his brain exploded with pain. Still, he managed to push outward enough to scream. It wasn’t loud, but surely a guard would hear him, hear that strange sound and come running.

“That was pathetic, Mr. Justice, but I think that’s enough now.”

Had he heard that voice before, or was it the intimacy of death making the voice sound familiar? The wire jerked tighter. The explosion of agony made tears spurt from his eyes. He felt the wire cut through the last of his finger bones. It was inside his throat now, and soon it would cut all the way through his neck. He couldn’t breathe now, couldn’t think.

The god-awful pain was easing, his brain was blurring, his thoughts breaking apart, scattering, but amazingly, his last thought before death was, I would vote the death penalty for that psychopath boy.

When the wire loosened and was pulled back up over his head, Justice Stewart Quinn Califano fell over onto the floor of the Supreme Court library, the quiet air now filled with the smells of death’s final insults.