The Tenth Justice by Brad Meltzer Page A

the door. As he left the building, he saw Lisa walking up the steps of the Court. “Where’re you going?” she asked.
    “I’m having bad stomach cramps,” Ben said. His face was ashen. “Can you tell Hollis I had to go home sick?”
    “Of course. Are you okay?”
    “I just need to go home.”
    When Ben entered the house, he walked straight up to his room, sat on the bed, and tried his best to relax. He slowed his breathing. He imagined a walk in a quiet forest. He thought about the silence of scuba diving. Keep calm, he told himself. It’s okay. Worse things can happen. Cancer. The plague. Death. Unable to sit still, he paced inside the little room. Over and over he repeated the sequence of events. “Damn!” he finally said aloud. “How could I have been so stupid?” Moving back to the bed, he again tried to relax. It was no use. He wondered what he should do. Should he go to Hollis? If he did, he’d be fired on the spot. No, there had to be a better way out. As his mind played through the different alternatives, he kept coming back to the same conclusion: The first step was finding the person who caused this disaster. Ben knew he had to find Rick. His thoughts were interrupted when a car pulled into the driveway.
    “Ben!” Nathan yelled from downstairs.
    “I’m up here,” Ben called.
    Nathan dashed up the stairs two at a time and charged into Ben’s room. “What happened?”
    Ben sat on the bed, his head in his hands. “I totally blew it,” he said.
    “What? Tell me.”
    Ben raced through the story. “And I think this guy Rick might’ve leaked the info to Maxwell.”
    Nathan stared out the window. “You don’t know that,” he said. Speaking calmly and slowly, he explained, “There’s no reason to believe the worst.”
    Looking up at his friend, Ben recognized Nathan’s consoling-but-lying voice. “Nathan, I know Rick did it. No one risks millions on a guess like that. He even sent me flowers to say thank you. He set me up and I fell for it completely. It was easy for him. All he had to do was some quick research and make a call to the Court once the new clerks started. The justices aren’t there; we’re wet behind the ears. It’s simple.”
    “I don’t understand.” Nathan leaned on the windowsill. “You never asked Hollis about Rick?”
    “No way,” Ben said. “I didn’t want Hollis knowing I was getting advice from the outside. Lisa and I have to look as smooth as possible.” Ben’s gaze dropped to the floor. “FUCK!” he yelled, pounding the bed. “That was so damn
stupid
of me!”
    “There’s nothing you can do about it,” Nathan said, trying his best to comfort his friend. “Maybe we can try to find Rick. Do you have his phone number?”
    “I already checked it. Disconnected. But I do have his address.”
    “You really don’t have to come,” Ben said as he opened the door to Nathan’s old maroon Volvo.
    “You make me take off work, and then you want to dump me while you go check out this guy’s house?” Nathan asked. “Forget about it.”
    “It’s not that I’m trying to leave you out of anything—”
    “I know,” Nathan said. “And I’m not here because I’m afraid of being left out. I’m here because I want to help you.”
    “I appreciate it,” Ben said as Nathan pulled out of the driveway. “I just didn’t want to get you involved with my problems.”
    Nathan drove up Seventeenth Street, and pulled into a parking spot a few blocks from the address. “Let’s walk up.”
    Ben looked up at the dark clouds. “Do you have an umbrella? It’s about to pour.”
    “There should be one under your seat,” Nathan said.
    Located near the city’s business district, 1780 Rhode Island was a building displaced in time. Designed in the late 1970s, it was bilious green, eight stories tall, and had tinted, full-story glass windows. A sore thumb on any architectural hand. After pushing open the heavy glass doors, Ben and Nathan walked into the lobby and