Innocent kc-8

by Scott Turow

  I ask, knowing better, if it's something she ate.

  "It's this whole fucking thing, Nat," she answers.

  "We can cancel," I say. "Tell them you're sick."

  She's still gripping the can but shakes her head vehemently. "Let's get it over with. Let's just get it over with."

  When she feels good enough to take a few steps, we move to a decrepit picnic table with a squeaky bench, the surface decorated with spray-painted slogans and hunks of bird shit.

  "Oh, gross!" she says.

  "What?"

  "I puked in my hair." She is inspecting the blondish strands with obvious pain.

  From the car, I bring a half-drunk bottle of water and a couple of old napkins preserved from fast-food meals, and she does her best to clean up.

  "Just tell your parents you found me under a viaduct."

  I say she looks great. She doesn't. She's lost all color, and a team of rodents might have held a track meet in her hair. I have given up consoling her or asking why.

  She asks me to drive, which means she must assume my role as guardian of the cupcakes. Anna volunteered to bring dessert and has baked four giant cupcakes, each of our individual favorites with our names frosted on top. My dad will get the carrot cake he adores, and my mother a kind of blueberry muffin made from soy flour. For herself and me, she prepared something far more decadent, these giant killer double chocolate chip balls. She grips the plate from both sides in her lap and positions the quart of ice cream she bought for a la mode between her feet.

  "Can I beg one thing," she says as I'm about to trigger the ignition. "Don't leave me alone with either one of them. Okay? I'm not in the mood for any heart-to-hearts. Just tell me to go upstairs and look at your room. Something like that to get me out of the way. Okay?"

  "Okay." She has actually made this request several times before.

  In a few minutes, we are at the house in which I grew up. These days, every time I arrive it looks different to me-smaller, quainter, a little like something from a fairy tale. It's an odd structure to start, the kind of thing my mom would pick, with weeping mortar and this supersteep roof, a style that doesn't seem to match the abundant flowers that remain in bloom in urns and pots in front. All the time I was growing up, my mom said she couldn't wait to move back to the city, but when my dad proposed it a couple years ago, she'd changed her mind. The fact they're still here reflects the enduring stalemate between them. She wins. He resents it.

  My mom sweeps the door open before we even set foot on the stoop. She's wearing a little makeup and one of these waffle-fabric athletic suits, which is pretty much dressed up for her when she's at home. She hugs me and then raves about the baked goods as she accepts the plate from Anna, kissing her cheek breezily in the process. She apologizes as soon as we are through the door. My dad and she have been working in the garden all day, and they are running behind.

  "I sent your father to the store, Nat. He'll be right back. Come in. Anna, can I get you anything to drink?"

  I've told Anna that my mom likes red wine, and she bought a fancy bottle, but my mom decides to save it for dinner. Anna and I each take a beer from the fridge for now.

  My mom's moods are so unpredictable that often when I'm headed out here to visit, I will call my dad's cell to discuss her as if she is a weather balloon. 'Bad day,' my dad will warn me. 'Lower than catfish crap.' But she is rarely as visibly excited as she seems tonight, dashing around the kitchen. Hyper is not usually in her emotional range.

  Anna has never been here before. My mom really doesn't open the house to anyone but family, and I show Anna the living and family rooms, identifying all my now dead grandparents and my cousins in their photographs and letting her poke me about all my little-kid pictures. Eventually, we rejoin my mom in the kitchen.

  "It's simple," my mom says about dinner, "just like I promised. Steak. Corn. Salad. Anna's cupcakes. Maybe with a little ice cream." She smiles, a cholesterol nut relishing the thought of being evil.

  Together Anna and I take on the salad. A knockout cook, Anna has started on a dressing, using olive oil and lemon, when my dad comes in with several plastic bags bearing the orange logo of Mega-Drugs. He thunks them down on the counter, extends his hand to Anna, and then gives me a quick hug.

  "I never would have predicted this," he says, motioning to the two of us. "It makes too much sense."

  We all laugh, then my mom makes my dad look at the stuff Anna baked. He chips a tiny bit of frosting off her muffin. Anna and my mom both cry out at once.

  "Hey, that's mine," my mother tells him.

  "You have the longest name," my father points out.

  My dad is limping as he moves around the kitchen, and I ask how his back is.

  "Rotten at the moment. Your mother had me digging for her new rhododendron all afternoon."

  "Here," my mother answers. "Take your Advil and stop complaining. The exercise is good for you. Between the campaign and George Mason's rotator cuff, I don't think you've had any kind of workout all month." My dad normally plays handball a couple times a week with Judge Mason, and he does look a little softer than usual. He puts the pills my mom hands him on the counter, then disappears into the family room and comes back with a glass of wine for her.

  "Did you remember the appetizers?" she asks as he's in the fridge, taking a beer for himself.

  "Yes, horse deserves," he declares, a rotten joke he has made since I was a boy. He bought aged cheddar and Genoa salami, family favorites, although my mom will not eat much of that. She loves the pickled herring he brought home, but she'll have only a piece or two because the salt is bad for her blood pressure, so my dad has also come back with yogurt, which he mixes with onion soup to make a dip, while Anna and I set out the carrots and celery that were already in the refrigerator, as well as the other items my father got.

  As we are all toiling, my mom questions Anna about work and then with no apparent segue about her family.

  "Only child," she explains.

  "Like Nat. That's probably an important thing to have in common."

  Anna is chopping onion for the salad, which has brought a dribble from her eyes, and she makes a joke of it.

  "It wasn't that bad of a childhood," she says.

  The three of us laugh uproariously at the remark. Now that it's actually happening, Anna seems to be doing fine. I understand. Every spring for more years than I could count, I was convinced I would never remember how to hit a baseball and found myself amazed the first time I felt the buzz of solid contact and heard the ringing of the bat.

  Anna diverts further inquiries by asking my father about the campaign.

  Cutting more salami, he says, "I'm pretty sick of hearing about John Harnason."

  My mom turns from the counter to shoot my dad a look. "We should never have had to go through any of this," she says. "Never."

  I catch Anna's eye to warn her, as I should have before, about this subject.

  My dad says, "It'll be over soon, Barbara."

  "Not soon enough. Your father hasn't slept through the night all month."

  She enjoys this role, telling on my dad, and he turns away, knowing better than to risk further comment. I thought my father's nights as an insomniac were long past. When I was a boy, there were periods when he was up, roaming the house. I would sometimes hear him and was actually comforted to know he was awake, able to dispel the nighttime spooks and demons I feared. Listening, watching now, I can feel that the weight of the household is different in some minute way. The campaign seems to have brought the usual silent conflicts between my parents more into the open.

  Accustomed to my mother's criticisms, my father offers her the appetizer platter, which he and Anna and I seem to be doing a good job of hogging down. Then my dad takes the steaks out of the fridge and begins to season them. He needs more garlic powder, he says, and heads down to the basement to bring it up.

  "Boys cook?" my dad asks me when he's ready to face the fire.

  "Mom, you mind
if Anna looks around upstairs while we're out there? I wanted her to see my room."

  "Anything you like up there, Anna, feel free. Nat won't let me throw away a thing. Don't you think a shelf full of baseball trophies is just what your new place needs?"

  We all laugh again. It's hard to tell if this jolliness is nerves or actual enjoyment, but it's uncharacteristic for the home in which I was raised. Out of sight of anybody else, Anna rolls her eyes at me from the staircase, while I follow my dad out to the porch. The sun is setting, falling into the river in a vivid display of colors, and there is a little fall coolness to the air.

  My dad and I play with the knobs until the barbecue is ignited, and we stand there watching the flames spread between the burners as if it were a religious rite. When I was a child, my mom always surrounded me in a way that didn't seem to require words, and maybe as a result I have never gotten the knack of talking to my dad. Of course, I didn't really talk all that much to anybody before Anna, which must mean something, I guess. Naturally, my dad and I have conversations, but they are usually to the point, unless we are talking about law or the Trappers, the two subjects where we are liable to become animated together. Usually my principal communion with my father comes, like now, from coexistence, breathing the same air, firing off occasional comments about the flames or the way the meat is sizzling.

  In my junior year of high school, I realized I did not especially like baseball as a sport. At that point, I was the starting center fielder on the Nearing team, although I was sure to lose the spot to a terrific freshman, Josey Higgins, who unlike me had no trouble hitting breaking pitches and was even faster in the field. He went on to a full ride at Wisconsin State, where he was All Mid-Ten. What came to me almost in a single moment as I was trained on a fly arcing its way to me was that I had watched baseball on TV and trotted onto the field every summer since I was six years old only so I could talk about it with my father. I was not especially resentful, just unwilling to continue doing that once I understood. When I quit, I heard little complaint from the coach, who was plainly relieved not to have to deliver the inevitable speech about the good of the team. Everyone-including my dad-always thought I dropped out rather than warm the bench, and I have been just as happy to leave it that way.

  When we have been standing there some time, he asks what I am going to be doing next week when my clerkship is over. I've decided to go back to subbing while I work on my law review article, on which I've recently made some progress. He nods as if to say it's a reasonable plan.

  "So overall?" he asks as he's ducking left and right around the smoke.

  "I'm really happy, Dad."

  When I turn, he's stopped to look at me intently with a largely unfathomable expression, while he allows the billows to surround him. I realize it's been a long time since I answered either of my parents that way. Over the years, I far more often have fended off their questions about my state of being by describing myself simply as 'okay.'

  To evade my dad's attention now, I take a long draft of my beer and look into the small yard where I played as a child. It once looked as big as the prairie. Now the little continuous space has been broken by the new rhodie, three feet high if that, with its glossy leaves and the fresh earth surrounding it my father turned today. Things change, and sometimes for the better. I am proud Anna is here with me, pleased with myself for realizing how good she'd be for me and pursuing her and making her love me, and I'm happy I have brought her together with these other people I love. It's one of those moments I hope I will always remember: That day I was so happy.

  CHAPTER 22

  Tommy, November 4, 2008

  Over the years, the PA's office, like any other institution, had developed its own odd protocol. The boss stayed put. The prosecuting attorney walked into his office in the morning with his briefcase under his arm and never left, except for lunch and court. It was nominally a sign of respect. Everyone who needed to speak to him came to the mountain. But the practice actually protected the freewheeling demeanor within the PA's office. Guys could stand in the hallways sixty feet apart and talk over a case while they tossed a softball. People could say "fuck" as loud as they wanted to. Deputies could badmouth judges, and cops could spout. Within his inner sanctum, the PA conducted himself with a dignity the everyday life of his office would never really reflect.

  As a result, Tommy often felt as if he were in jail. He had to intercom or phone everybody. For more than thirty years, he had cruised the hallways, popping in and out of offices to gossip about cases and the kids at home. And right now, he was sick of waiting. First thing this morning Brand had gone to a meeting at the crime lab, where they were going to brief him on the DNA results on the two-decade-old sperm fraction from the first Sabich trial. Tommy had left his office six times by now to see if Brand was back.

  In the moment, the fact that these results would force Tommy's hand one way or the other, leave him caught between bad news and worse, seemed to matter less. Nor did he really care about the notion Brand was suddenly promoting, that after they convicted Rusty Sabich, Tommy could run for PA next year. The truth was that if that happened and a judgeship opened up, Tommy would probably toss the mantle to Brand. But anytime Brand speculated that way out loud, Tommy hushed him. Politics would never be his passion. What Tommy Molto really cared about was the same thing he had cared about for decades as a prosecutor. Justice. About whether something was right or whether it was wrong.

  So if twenty years ago they'd gone on an innocent guy, he'd be the first to tell Rusty he was sorry. And if it was the other way, if it was Rusty who did Carolyn, then-then what? But he knew instantly. It would be like his marriage. It would be like finding Dominga and falling in love with her. And having Tomaso. The one lingering blot on his career would be lifted. But most important, Tommy himself would know. The guilt that still nagged at him from that time, for having stupidly talked out of school to Nico, would be dissolved. He would have been right, in his own eyes more than anyone else's. He would be fifty-nine years old. And thoroughly reborn. Only God could remake a life so completely. Tommy knew that. He took an instant to offer prayerful thanks in advance.

  Then he heard Brand bang into his office next door and Tommy stepped in immediately. Jim still had his briefcase in his hand and his overcoat half off and was surprised to see Tommy on his threshold. Master in the servant's quarters. He stared a minute. Then he smiled. He said what Tommy had always known someone would say eventually.

  Brand said, "It's him."

  PART TWO

  III.

  CHAPTER 23

  Nat, June 22, 2009

  State your name, please, and spell your last name for the record." From his seat at the walnut defense table, Sandy Stern clears his throat. It is a reflex these days both before and after he speaks, a phlegmy little rattle that never sounds quite normal.

  "Rozat K. Sabich. S, A, B, I, C, H."

  "Are you known by any other name?"

  "Rusty."

  On the witness stand, my father in his pressed blue suit maintains perfect posture and an unruffled demeanor. In his place, I would be a mess, but in the last few months my dad has taken on the distant air of a mystic. For the most part, he seems to have stopped believing in cause and effect. Things happen. Period.

  "And may we call you Rusty?" Stern asks, lifting the back of his hand gallantly, as if he might be imposing. After my father agrees, Stern asks him to tell the jury how he is employed.

  "I was elected to the state supreme court last November, but I have not yet taken the oath of office."

  "And why, sir, is that?"

  "Because I was indicted on these charges, and felt it was fairer to all concerned to await the outcome of this trial. In the interval, I remain the chief judge of the State Court of Appeals for the Third Appellate District here in Kindle County, although I have taken administrative leave."

  Stern brings out that both the supreme and appellate courts are what lawyers call courts of review, meaning ba
sically that they hear appeals.

  "And tell us, please, what it means to be a judge on a court of review."

  My dad details the duties. Across the courtroom, Tommy Molto stands to object as my dad begins to explain that the appeal in a criminal case ordinarily does not give the judges any right to overrule a jury's factual decision.

  Judge Basil Yee visibly weighs the issue, wagging his gray head from one side to the other. From downstate Ware, Judge Yee was specially assigned by the state supreme court to preside over this case after all the judges in the Kindle County Superior Court, whose decisions my father has routinely reviewed for well more than a decade, recused themselves together. He is a Taiwanese immigrant who came to Ware, a town of no more than ten thousand, at age eleven, when his parents took over the local Chinese restaurant. Judge Yee writes flawless English but still speaks it as a second tongue, with a strong accent that includes high Asian pitches, and at times he ignores some of the connective tissue of language-articles, prepositions, state-of-being verbs. His regular court reporter did not accompany him upstate and the annoying way Jenny Tilden is constantly interrupting to tell the judge to spell what he has just said has made him a man of even fewer words

  Judge Yee rules for my dad, who lays it on pretty thick, just as Molto feared, making sure the jury knows they will have the last word on his innocence or guilt.

  "Very well," says Stern. He coughs and grips the table to struggle to his feet. Sandy has received Judge Yee's permission to question witnesses while seated whenever he likes. In one of those can-you-believe-it consequences that medicine may not comprehend for aeons, his brand of non-small-cell lung cancer is known to cause arthritis in one knee, which has left him hobbling. Beside him, Marta, his daughter and law partner, reflexively puts her left hand with its bright manicure on her father's elbow to lend a subtle boost. I have heard about Sandy Stern's magnetism in a courtroom since I was a boy. Like a lot of things in life, it's pretty much beyond anybody's ability to explain. He is short-barely five feet six, if that-and to be honest, pretty dumpy. You would walk past Sandy Stern on the street a thousand times. But when he stands up in court, it is as if someone lit a beacon. Even though he is worn out by cancer, there is a precision to every word and movement that makes it impossible to remove your eyes.