Presumed Innocent

by Scott Turow

  “Actually, I just came in to pick up a report. You called Lipranzer.”

  “Oh yeah, oh yeah,” says Painless. “Right here somewhere. That fuckin Lipranzer. He wants you call right away with everything.” Painless works two-handed, transporting the stacks of paper across his desk as he seeks the new report. “So you won’t be chief deputy too much longer, huh? Della Guardia, I think, gonna kick Raymond Horgan in the ass. Huh?” He looks to me to respond. Painless is smiling, as is his custom when dealing with something that others find unpleasant.

  “We’ll see,” I say: then I decide to be a bit more aggressive. “Delay a pal of yours, Doctor?”

  “Nico’s hell of a guy, hell of a guy. Oh yeah. We work on all kinda big murder case together. He’s good, too, real good. Yeah, he get up there, he really kick those defense lawyers in the ass. This is this thing.” He tosses a file folder in my direction and bends toward the TV. “That fuckin Dave Parker. Now he only got dope in one nostril, really hittin the goddamn ball.”

  The association between Nico and Painless had eluded me before, but it’s a natural, the big-time homicide prosecutor and the police pathologist. They would need each other badly from time to time. I ask Painless if I can sit down for a minute.

  “Sure sit, sit.” He moves a stack of files and looks back to the television.

  “Lipranzer and I have been kicking over this theory lately. Well, let’s say idea. Maybe this was some weird bondage thing that got out of hand. Maybe Carolyn was living dangerously, and when her beau thought she had expired, he gave her a whack in the head to make it look like something else. Does that sound possible?”

  Painless in his white lab coat rests his elbows on the turrets of papers.

  “No fuckin way.”

  “No?”

  “No fuckin way. Coppers dumb,” says Painless the police department pathologist. “Somethin hard, they make easy. Somethin easy, they make hard. Read the fuckin report. I write a report, fuckin read it. Lipranzer wants me hurry up, hurry up. Then he don’t read the fuckin report.”

  “This report?”

  “Not that report.” He swipes at the new report when I hold it up. “My report. Autopsy. You see anything with bruises on wrists? Bruises on ankles? Bruises on knees? This lady is dead from gettin hit, not strangled. Read the fuckin report.”

  “She was tied up pretty good. You can see the rope burn on the neck in the pictures.”

  “Oh sure, oh sure. She was tied up real tight, real good. Looked like a fuckin bow and arrow when they brought her in. But you got one mark on the neck. Somebody jerkin that rope tighter and tighter, rope’s gonna move. Get a wide bruise. She got one skinny little mark on her neck.”

  “Meaning?” I ask.

  Painless smiles. He loves to hold the cards. He pushes his face close enough to the TV that the gray gleam of the screen is reflected on his brow. “First and third,” he says.

  “What does it mean that there’s a narrow mark?” I ask again.

  I wait. The TV announcer declaims over a line drive.

  “Do I need a subpoena?” I ask quietly. I try to smile, but my voice has some edge.

  “What?” asks Painless.

  “What do you make of the bruises on her neck?”

  “I make that rope was tightened there first. Okay?”

  I take a moment to gather this in. As Painless knows, I’m lost.

  “Time out,” I say. “I thought the working theory was that somebody hit her to subdue her. The blow was lethal, but our guy doesn’t realize that or care. He ties her up, and rapes her, with this bizarre slipknotting, so he’s strangling her at the same time. Have I got it right or have you changed your mind?”

  “Me change? Look at fuckin report. Don’t say nothin like that. I’m not sayin that. Looks like that, maybe. Maybe that’s what coppers think. Not me.”

  “Well, what do you think?”

  Painless smiles. Painless shrugs.

  I close my eyes an instant.

  “Look,” I say, “we’re ten days into a big-deal murder investigation and I hear right now for the first time that you think the rope went around her neck first. I would have appreciated knowing that a while ago.”

  “Ask. Lipranzer call me up. ‘Hurry up. Need a report.’ Okay, he got a report. Nobody ask me what I think.”

  “I just did.”

  Painless sits back in his chair. “Maybe I don’t think nothin,” he says.

  Either this guy is a bigger douche bag than I even remember or something is way out of line. I deliberate for a moment, working backward.

  “Are you telling me you think she was raped and then tied up?”

  “Tied up last, yeah. I think that. Raped? Now I’m thinkin no.”

  “Now?”

  “Now,” says Painless. We stare at each other. “Read the report,” he says.

  “The autopsy?”

  “This report. This fuckin report.” He hits the folder I’m holding. So I read the report. It is from the forensic chemist’s office. Another substance in the vagina of Carolyn Polhemus has been identified. It is known as nonoxynol 9. From the concentrations, the chemist concludes that it derived from spermicidal jelly. That is why there were no viable spermatozoa.

  Painless is smiling hugely, and without generosity, when I look up again.

  “We’re saying this woman used contraception?” I ask.

  “Not sayin. She did. Contraceptive jelly. Two percent concentration. Cellulose gum base. Used with diaphragm.”

  “Diaphragm?” I am extremely slow. “You missed a diaphragm during an autopsy.”

  “Fuckin no!” Painless hits his desk. He laughs at me out loud. “You been in autopsy, Savage. Slice her right open. No diaphragm in that lady.”

  More time. Painless smiles and I watch him. I’ll bite.

  “Where’d it go?”

  “My guess?”

  “Please.”

  “Somebody took it.”

  “The cops?”

  “Coppers ain’t that dumb.”

  “Who?”

  “Look, Mr. Savage. Ain’t coppers. Ain’t me. Gotta be the guy.”

  “The killer?”

  “Fuckin-A right.”

  I pick up the report to read it again. When I do, I notice something else, and our conversation suddenly comes clear. I try to steady myself, but my temper is rising. I can feel the heat all the way to my ears. Perhaps Painless can see that, because after baiting me for ten minutes, he finally levels. He probably figures that sooner or later I would get it anyway.

  “You want to know what I think? I think it’s a setup. This man who kills her is her lover. He comes over. Has drinks. This lady has intercourse with man, okay? Real nice. But he’s angry guy. Picks up somethin, kills her, tries to make it look like rape. Ties her up. Pulls out diaphragm. That’s what I think.”

  “What does Tommy Molto think?” I ask him.

  Painless Kumagai, the sadistic little shit, has finally been cornered. He smiles insipidly and tries to laugh. ‘Laugh’ is actually not the right word. He wheezes. His mouth moves but he does not speak.

  I hand him the report back, which, I notice in passing, is dated five days ago. I point out his own handwritten note at the top. It says: “Molto 762-2225.”

  “Don’t you want to copy this down, make sure you can reach Molto when you need him?”

  Painless is gaining speed again. “Oh, Tommy.” He does better at seeming genial. “Good guy. Good guy.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “Oh, good, good.”

  “Tell him to give us a call sometime. Maybe I can find out what’s happening in my own fucking investigation.” I stand up. I point at Kumagai. I call him by the name I know he detests. “Painless, you tell Molto and Nico, too, that this is cheap. Cheap politics. And cheap police department bullshit. God better help them and you, that I can’t make a case for tampering.”

  I, snatch the report from Painless’s hand and leave without waiting for an answer. My
heart is hammering and my arms are weak with rage. Raymond, of course, is not in when I get back to the County Building, but I tell Loretta to have him reach me, it is urgent. I look for Mac, but she, too, is elsewhere. I sit in my office and brood. Oh, how fucking clever. Everything we asked for. And nothing more. Give the results—but not the opinion. Call when the forensic chemist reports, but don’t mention what it says. Let us run as long as possible in the wrong direction. And in the meantime, leak every goddamn thing you know to Molto. That’s the part that gets me worst. God, I think politics is dirty. And the police department is dirtier. The Medici did not live in a world fuller of intrigue. Every secret allegiance in the community comes to bear there. To the alderman and your bookie and your girlfriend. To in-laws, your no-account brother, the guy from the hardware store who has always cut you a deal on screws. To the rookie you have to look out for, the junkie whose base sincerity gets to you, or the snitch you’ve got to watch. To the licensing inspector who helped out your uncle, or to the lieutenant who you figure has got an in with Bolcarro and is going to make captain soon and maybe more. Your lodge brother, your neighbor, the guy on the beat who’s just a plain good sod. Every one of them needs a break. And you give it. In a big-city police department, at least in Kindle County, there is no such thing as playing by the book. The book got trashed many years ago. Instead, all two thousand guys in blue play it for their own team. Painless was simply playing it like everybody else. Maybe Nico told him he could make him coroner.

  My phone rings. Mac. I go through the connecting door.

  “Well,” I tell her, “we finally know what Tommy Molto is up to.”

  11

  As I am leaving for the evening, I see lights on in Raymond’s office. It is nearly 9 p.m. and my first thought is that someone is visiting who should not be. My encounter with Kumagai three days ago has left me edgy and suspicious, and I am actually somewhat surprised when I see Raymond at his desk, staring at what seems to be a computer run, and looking uncharacteristically at ease behind the wastrel fog of his pipe. At this point in the campaign this is a rare sight. Raymond is a hardworking lawyer and there have always been late nights when he was here with the stacks of prosecution reports, or indictments, or at least an upcoming speech; but with his job up for sale, most of his evenings lately are spent on the stump. When he’s here, Larren and the other moguls of his campaign are with him, plotting. This moment is sufficiently unusual to be taken as private, and so I let two knuckles graze the old oak door as I am passing in.

  “Tea leaves?” I ask.

  “Sort of,” he says, “but a lot more accurate. Unfortunately.” He adopts a public tone: “The Channel 3–Tribune poll shows challenger Nico Della Guardia leading incumbent Raymond Horgan, with eight days remaining in the campaign.”

  My reaction is succinct: “Bullshit.”

  “Read it and weep.” He shoves the computer run in my direction.

  I can’t make anything of the grid of figures.

  “The bottom line,” says Raymond.

  “‘U’ is undecided?” I ask. “Forty-three, thirty-nine. Eighteen percent undecided. You’re still in it.”

  “I’m the incumbent. Once the public realizes that Delay’s got a chance, they’ll head his way. The new face is a showstopper in a primary.” Raymond’s political wisdom is usually Delphic, particularly since it represents not only his insights but Mike’s and Larren’s as well. Nonetheless, I try to remain upbeat.

  “You’ve had a bad couple of weeks. Nico’s played Carolyn’s murder real well. You’ll come back. You’ve just gotta let him have it. What’s the margin of error on this thing, anyway?”

  “Well, fortunately or unfortunately for me, it’s 4 percent.” Mike Duke, he tells me, is over at the TV station trying to convince them that their story should pitch the poll as reflecting a neck-and-neck race. Larren, dispatched to do the same job with the newspaper, has already gotten an agreement from the editors there, contingent on Channel 3’s position. “The paper’s not contradicting the TV station on the interpretation of a joint poll,” Raymond explains. He puffs his pipe. “And my bet is that’s the way it’ll run. They’ll throw me the bone. But what’s the point? The numbers are the numbers. Everybody in town will smell the odor of dead meat.”

  “What do your own numbers look like?”

  “They’re crap,” Raymond tells me. The campaign hasn’t had the money to do a decent job. This poll is the work of a national outfit. Everybody—Larren, Mike, Raymond himself—had the impression that the situation wasn’t quite this bad, but nobody can dispute it.

  “You’re probably right on Carolyn,” he says. “It hurt. But it’s the whole loss of momentum.” Raymond Horgan puts down his pipe and looks straight at me. “We’re gonna lose, Rusty. You heard it here first.”

  I look at the worn face of Raymond Horgan, my old idol, my leader. His hands are folded. He is in repose. Twelve and a half years after he got started talking about revolutionizing the idea of law enforcement, and a year too late for the best interests of us both, Raymond Horgan has finally pulled the plug. It is now all someone else’s problem. And to the little incubus that argues that principles and issues are involved, there is, after twelve years, an exhausted man’s reply. Ideas and principles are not foremost here. Not when you do not have the jails to hold the crooks you catch, or enough courtrooms to try them; not when the judge who hears the case is too often some hack who went to night law school because his brother already had filled the one slot available in their father’s insurance agency, and who achieved his appointment by virtue of thirty years’ loyal precinct work. In the administration of Nico Della Guardia there will be the same imperatives, no matter what he’s saying on his TV spots: too many crimes and no sensible way to deal with them, too few lawyers, too many calls for political favors, too much misery, and too much evil that will keep on happening no matter what the ideals and principles of the prosecuting attorney. He can have his turn. Raymond’s ease at the abyss becomes my own.

  “What the fuck,” I say.

  “Right,” says Raymond after he gets done laughing. He goes to the conference table in a corner of the office and pulls out the pint bottle that’s always in the pencil drawer. He pours two in the little folded cups from the water cooler and I come over and join him.

  “You know, when I started here I didn’t drink,” I say. “I mean, I don’t have a bottle problem, I’m not complaining, but twelve years ago, I just never drank. Not beer, not wine, not rum-and-Coca-Cola. And now I sit here and knock back Scotches neat.” I do just that; my esophagus contracts and tears come to my eyes. Raymond pours another. “Ain’t time a bitch.”

  “You’re getting middle-aged, Rusty. All this fucking looking back. One thing about getting divorced, it stopped that crap for me. You know, I leave this job, I’m not going to spend four months crying in my beer and talking about all the good times.”

  “You’ll be sitting in one of those glass cages on the fortieth floor of the IBM building, with hot-and-cold-running secretaries and a bunch of megabuck partners asking you if thirty hours a week is too much time for the privilege of having your name on the door.”

  “Bullshit,” says Raymond.

  “Sure,” I answer. In wistful moments in the last few years I have heard Raymond conjure just such a fantasy for himself—a few years to build a bankroll, then get on the bench himself, probably at the appellate level on his way to the state supreme court.

  “Well, maybe,” says Raymond, and we share a laugh. “Will you go?” he asks.

  “I doubt I’ll have much choice. Delay’s going to make Tommy Molto his chief deputy. That’s clearer than ever.”

  Raymond moves his heavy shoulders. “You can never tell with Della Guardia.”

  “It’s about time for me to head on, anyway,” I say.

  “Can we get you on the bench, Rusty?”

  This is a golden moment for me: here at last is loyalty’s reward. Do I want to be a judge? Does a bus have
wheels? Do the Yankees play baseball in the Bronx? I sip my whiskey, with sudden judiciousness.

  “I would sure think about it,” I answer. “I’d have to consider practice. I’d have to figure out the money. But I’d sure think about it.”

  “We’ll see how things turn out, then. Those guys’ll owe me something. They’ll want me to go out smiling. Party loyalty. All that shit. I should have the swag to look after a few people.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  Raymond gives himself another.

  “How are things going with my favorite unsolved murder case?”

  “Badly,” I say. “In general. We know a little more about what seems to have happened. That is, if you can believe the pathologist. Did Mac tell you about Molto?”

  “I heard,” he says, “I heard. What is this crap?”

  “Looks like Dubinsky had it right: Nico’s got Tommy out there shadowing our investigation.”

  “Shadowing,” asks Raymond, “or subverting?”

  “Probably a little of both. I’d guess, for the most part, Molto’s just picking up information. You know, calling up old buddies in the department, getting them to bootleg reports. Maybe they’ve slowed some of the lab work down, but how would you prove it? I’m still not positive what the hell they’re up to. Maybe they really think I’m a clown, and they’re trying to solve the murder on their own. You know: come up with the whopper before Election Day.”

  “Nah,” says Raymond, “that’s just what they’ll say. I blast them between the eyes for fucking around with our investigation and they come back with Molto, acting head of my Homicide Section, saying he was worried we would screw things up. Nah,” Raymond says again, “I’ll tell you why Nico has Tommy out there digging up information. It’s surveillance. Very clever. He watches how we’re doing and knows exactly how hard he can hit the issue, with very little risk. Every time he sees us stumble, he can turn the knob a little higher on his volume control.”