Blowout

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