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.

CHAPTER 4

WASHINGTON, D.C.
SATURDAY MORNING