Ground Truth Read Free

when the second “ah ha!” hit. The missing piece of his mosaic had a name and needed only to be fitted into place.
    There was just one problem. She hated him.

Chapter 4
    May 30
    7:45 p.m.
    IN THE SPLIT second before Jack could reach him, Peck swung the barrel of the Smith & Wesson .45 away from Anita, stuck the muzzle in his own mouth, and squeezed the trigger. The sound of the blast filled the room. Shock filled Peck’s eyes as the back of his skull exploded.
    His chair crashed backward. Peck sprawled awkwardly, eyes staring vacantly toward the wicker ceiling fan. A dark stain spread from beneath his head. In the bookcase, which stood a few feet behind the desk, a gluey mess of tissue and blood had splattered the rows of beige and red Pacific Reporter 3rd Series law casebooks.
    Jack’s ears rang. Gasping for breath, he struggled to his feet from where he lay across the broad desk. Peck had been too fast.
    This was impossible, incomprehensible. Peck had been such a powerful force, he couldn’t have done this to himself, couldn’t be dead. Jack’s impulse was to pull the chair upright and restore his father to his authoritative place. Instead, he backed away.
    Behind him, Anita screamed and screamed while beating his back with her fists. “You bastard,” she sobbed. “You could have stopped him.”
    He turned to comfort her, but her eyes were wide with shock. She backed out the door, ran down the hall and up the stairs. A moment later, a door slammed.
    Was she right? Could he have stopped Peck?
    He dropped into the leather chair near the door of the study, sweat cold on his face. His hands trembled. His body was reacting while his mind remained in shock—disconnected, unable to take action. But beneath his horror at Peck’s gruesome act there was an odd detachment, and for a moment he experienced more relief than grief. The son-of-a-bitch was gone. The pressure was off.
    Peck had long ago made himself impossible to love. The wedge between them probably started when Jack was five, the day his father said, “Time to stop that ‘Dad’ crap. Call me Peck.” Being a father was only a role he played in public, and even then, only when it suited him. It was something he did because part of his own reputation depended on how well his protégé performed. Peck needed Jack the same way a grand master chess player needs a pawn to move around the board.
    Peck had named his only son John Jay Strider and insisted that everyone call him John Jay because he was related to the famous jurist through his mother’s lineage. Peck reminded him from time to time that John Jay had been president of the Continental Congress, author of some of the Federalist Papers, and first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
    When he was eight, he had rebelled at the affectation and would answer only to “Jack.”
    A few weeks before she died, his mother told him bluntly that he should stop teaching at Stanford Law. “You’ve locked yourself in an ivory tower, focused on that damned ‘Supreme Court track.’”
    She was referring to the fact that Peck had tried to plan every step of Jack’s life to put him in position to be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States. He called it “keeping on the Supreme Court track.” Whatever Jack did was met with Peck’s stern admonition to do better. Jack’s instinct had been to push back against his father’s heavy hand but, truth was, striving for excellence suited him fine. In his first year at the university he’d also realized that a career in law sounded good too.
    As a Stanford Law student, he graduated first in his class. As a professor of law, he projected an easygoing but confident image, published articles in major legal journals, and was called a rising star on the law school faculty. At the same time, he’d been developing the skills and temperament needed to make a contribution on the Court if he got the opportunity.
    Now, with one squeeze of a trigger, Peck had set in