Blowout

head.
    “Then why would he do this, Eliza?” Sherlock asked.
    “It doesn’t say much for his morals, does it?” Eliza jumped up, began pacing, then whirled about. “Oh, Danny, you little pecker-head.” And her eyes filmed with tears again. She began rubbing her face, not looking at either of them, probably looking inward to a young man she’d liked, a young man she’d believed she’d known, a young man she’d like to punch out, if only he wasn’t already dead. She would never see him again to yell at him.
    Sherlock said, “He was killed within twenty-four hours of Justice Califano. That means that when he heard about the murder Saturday morning, he realized that what he knew was worth a lot of money. And he managed to notify the person who hired the killer. What could he have known, Eliza?”
    “Oh God, I don’t know. All right? How would I know what Danny knew and didn’t know?”
    “You knew Justice Califano,” Savich said. “Danny must have overheard him talking with someone, or he may have read something Justice Califano left lying on his desk by accident. Something. Think back, Eliza.”
    She sat back down on the sofa, clasped her hands between her blue-jeaned knees, and rocked a bit.
    Savich’s voice deepened slowly, and he stretched his words out evenly. It was his interview voice, deep and soothing. “I want you to think back to Friday. You’ve just come in. I want you to tell us exactly what Danny did on Friday morning. Don’t leave out a thing. Think particularly about when he had the opportunity to speak privately with Justice Califano. Just relax and think back, Eliza.”
    But she wasn’t ready, and said instead, “Danny’s mom, dad, and three brothers live in New Jersey.”
    “Yes, they’ve been notified.”
    “You didn’t tell them why you think he was murdered, did you?”
    “No,” Savich said. “They’d spoken to him yesterday when the news of Justice Califano’s murder hit the airwaves. They wanted to make sure Danny was all right. He reassured them and told them not to worry. Now, it’s time, Eliza. We need you. Danny needs you. You’ve been thinking about Friday for the last three hours. Talk to us.”
    “I have, yes,” she said, still distracted. But Eliza Vickers was smart. She turned her eyes to Savich. Sherlock knew what she was seeing—dark fathomless eyes, eyes that held no threat at all, but an invitation to trust, and the unspoken promise of understanding. Sherlock recognized the concentration on Eliza’s face. She sat forward a bit, all her own attention on Justice Califano’s lover and senior law clerk, a woman she wished she could have met under different circumstances, a woman who could have been a friend.
    Eliza spoke slowly, her voice cool and steady now. “Friday morning, all the Justices meet alone in the Chief Justice’s conference room, at exactly ten-thirty. Like clockwork. But Stewart seemed to have forgotten about it. I reminded him. He went flying out of his chambers at exactly ten-thirty a.m.”
    “When did he arrive that morning?”
    “At a quarter of eight. Always the same time. Stewart was very punctual. On Friday, we arrived at the same time, as usual, and had coffee together. He ate his morning sesame bagel while we reviewed several cases before the Eighth Circuit. Every Justice is responsible for supervising one or more of the thirteen Federal Appellate Courts. Stewart supervised the Eighth. We went over the majority opinion Fleurette had drafted for Winters v. Kentucky, reviewed several bench memos Danny had prepared and a postoral argument memo I’d written. Stewart moved through all of this very quickly. Then he said he had some things he needed to do and wanted to be alone for a while.”
    “This was unusual?”
    “No, not at all. That’s why I didn’t mention it to you this morning. I left him about a quarter to nine.”
    “What sort of things, in your experience, would occupy him in the mornings? Matters of the Court, personal things, outside business?”
    Eliza’s eyes remained locked on Savich’s. “All of those things. The Court was revisiting the death penalty in the upcoming case on Tuesday. I knew he was chewing on that one, trying to determine if they should overturn the opinion they rendered in 1989.
    “Now that I think of it, since we’d been talking about this case for several days, I don’t think he needed more private thinking time about it. No, this had to be something else. Maybe it was about