“Damn shame,” he said, nodding at the story Rider was focused on. “One of the best and brightest,” he said as Rider silently mouthed the headline again: SUPREME COURT CLERK SLAIN.
“Did you know him?” Rider asked. It couldn’t be connected. There was no way in hell.
“No. But if he was clerking up there, you know he had to be top of the top. Murdered too. Shows you how dangerous times have become. Nobody’s safe anymore.”
Rider stared at him for a moment, and then looked down at the paper and the accompanying photo. Michael Fiske, age thirty. He had earned a Ph.D. from Columbia University and then gone on to the University of Virginia Law School, where he had been editor-in-chief of the Law Review. He was the senior law clerk for Justice Thomas Murphy. No suspects, no clues, other than a missing wallet. Nobody’s safe anymore. He tightly gripped the paper as he stared at the grainy, depressing photo of the dead man. It couldn’t be. However, there was one way to find out.
He excused himself and slipped into his office, where he called the Supreme Court clerks’ office.
“We have no case with the name Harms, sir, either on the regular or IFP docket.”
“But I’ve got a return receipt that shows it was delivered to you people.” The voice on the other end again delivered the perfunctory message.
“Don’t you have some way of keeping track of your mail up there?” The polite answer Rider received did not sit well with him. He yelled into the phone. “Rufus Harms is rotting in the damn stockade and you people can’t keep track of your mail.” He threw down the phone.
Somewhere between its arrival and the point where a case was actually placed in the official system, Rufus Harms’s filing had apparently disappeared. And so had Rufus Harms. Rider suddenly felt chilled.
Rider looked down once more at the newspaper. And a Supreme Court clerk had been murdered. It all seemed so far-fetched, but then so had the story Rufus told him. Then another thought hit him even harder: If they had killed Rufus and the clerk, they surely wouldn’t stop there. If they had what Rider had filed with the Court, then they would know that Rider had played a role in all of it. That meant he could be next on their hit list.
But come on, he told himself, you’re just being paranoid. And that’s when it finally dawned on him. The sheaf of phone messages that Sheila had collected while he had been away. He had idly skimmed through them, returning the ones he felt were most important. The name, the damn name.
He clawed through his desk until he found the pink pieces of paper. His hands flew through them, scanning, scanning, finally ripping the pile apart in his rising anxiety, until he found it. He looked down at the name, the blood slowly draining from his face. Michael Fiske had called him. Twice.
Oh, my God. In an avalanche of thought, visions of his wife, the condo in Florida, his grown children, all the years of billable hours, flew through his mind. Well, damn if he was waiting around for them to come get him. He punched his intercom and told Sheila he wasn’t feeling well, to convey that to his visitor and the other gentlemen who would shortly arrive, and accommodate them any way she could.
“I won’t be back today,” he told her as he hurried through the reception area. I hope I will someday. And not in a coffin, he added silently.
“All right, Mr. Rider, you take care.”
He almost laughed at her remark. He had phoned his house before leaving the office, but his wife wasn’t in. As he drove along, he had already made up his mind what he was going to do. The two had kicked around the idea of taking a late fall vacation, maybe down to the islands, one last dose of sun and water before the ice set in. Only they might stay awhile. He’d prefer to pour his savings into staying alive than into securing the view of a Florida sunset he might never get a chance to see.