The Supreme Court is one of our most sacred—and secretive—public institutions. But sometimes secrets can lead to cover-ups with very deadly consequences.

Terry Scarborough is a legal scholar and provocateur who craves headline-making celebrity, but with his latest book he may have gone too far. In it he resurrects forgotten language in the U.S. Constitution—and hints at a missing letter of Thomas Jefferson's—that threatens to divide the nation.

Then, during a publicity tour, Scarborough is brutally murdered in a San Diego hotel room, and a young man with dark connections is charged. What looks like an open-and-shut case to most people doesn't to defense attorney Paul Madriani. He believes that there is much more to the case and that the defendant is a pawn caught in the middle, being scapegoated by circumstance.

As the trial spirals toward its conclusion, Madriani and his partner, Harry Hinds, race to find the missing Jefferson letter—and the secrets it holds about slavery and scandal at the time of our nation's founding and the very reason Scarborough was killed. Madriani's chase takes him from the tension-filled courtroom in California to the trail of a high court justice now suddenly in hiding and lays bare the soaring political stakes for a seat on the highest court, in a country divided, and under the shadow of power.

Chapter One...

I open the envelope and start to paw through the photographs, the stuff sent to me in response to our discovery motion two weeks earlier. There are color glossies of the murder weapon, a common claw hammer with a fiberglass handle covered by a molded-rubber hand grip. In the photo it is lying on a tiled surface in a pool of blood. A small ruler lies on the tile next to the hammer for scale.

The next picture is a close-up of the claws themselves. A patch of bloody skin trailing several wisps of dark hair clings to the edge of one of the claws. The police photographer must have shot with a macro lens to get all the detail. No doubt they will want to use this one in front of the jury.

The next photo shows an elongated skid mark, apparently made by a shoe that slid in the blood and left a red comma coming to an end at the wall. The skid mark arcs out of the picture, making clear that its owner must have gone down when he hit the blood.

The fourth photo is a particular problem for us. I show it to Harry, who is seated next to me at the small metal table in the jail.

Harry Hinds and I have been law partners, "Madriani & Hinds," since our days back in Capital City years ago. We handle many kinds of cases, but predominantly we do criminal defense. Harry is more than a partner. For years he has been like an uncle to my daughter, Sarah, who is now away at college. I am widowed. My wife, Nikki, has been dead for almost fifteen years. To look at him, Harry hasn't seemed to have aged a day in the twenty years I've known him. He takes the evidence photo in his hand and looks at it closely.

It shows a palm print in blood and three very distinct fingerprints: the first, second, and third fingers of the right hand superimposed in rusted red on the clear white tile of the entry hall's floor.

"And they're a match?" he asks.

"According to the cops," I tell him.

"How did this happen?" says Harry. "How did you get your fingerprints not only in the blood on the floor but on the murder weapon itself?" This, Harry puts to the young man sitting on the other side of the table across from us.

Carl Arnsberg is twenty-three. He has a light criminal record—one conviction for assault and battery, another for refusing to comply with the lawful orders of a police officer and obstruction of justice during a demonstration in L.A. two years ago.

He looks at Harry from under straight locks of dark hair parted on the left. The way it is combed and cut, long, it covers one eye. He snaps his head back and flips the hair out of his face, revealing high cheekbones and a kind of permanent pout. Then he rests his chin on the palm of his left hand, elbow on the table holding it up.

The pose is enough to piss Harry off.

There is a small swastika planted on the inside of Arnsberg's forearm, discreet and neat. It has all the sharp lines of something recent, none of the blurring that comes as flesh sags and stretches with age. His other arm is a piece of art. The words Our Race Is Our Nation wrap his right forearm. This is followed by a number of pagan symbols in ink.

Arnsberg's pale blue eyes project contempt for the system that placed him here. It is an expression sufficiently broad to embrace Harry and me. I'm sure Arnsberg sees both of us as part of the process that keeps him here, in the lockup of the county jail.

"I asked you a question," says Harry.

"I told you what happened. How many times do I have to tell you?"

"Until I'm satisfied that I've heard the truth," says Harry.

"You think I'm lying."

"Trust me, son, you don't want to know what I'm thinking right now."

"Fine! I brought him his lunch to the room," says Arnsberg.

"Thought you said it was breakfast?" says Harry...

Steve Martini is the author of numerous New York Times bestsellers including Double Tap, The Arraignment, The Jury, The Attorney, and others featuring defense attorney Paul Madriani. Martini has practiced law in California in both state and federal courts and has served as an administrative law judge and supervising hearing officer. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.