Innocent kc-8

by Scott Turow

  I can feel my heart thumping. She is so lovely. She's in a gray suit, nicely tailored, whose feel I recall as clearly as if my hand were on it now.

  "I've met somebody," she says quietly once she looks up. "He actually lives in my building. I've seen him a hundred times and just started talking to him ten days ago."

  "Lawyer?" My voice too is very low.

  "No." She gives her head a determined shake, as if to suggest she'd never be that stupid. "He's in business. Investments. Divorced. A little older. I like him. I slept with him last night."

  I manage not to flinch.

  "I hated it," she says. "Hated myself. I mean, I tell myself there are people like you and me in everybody's life, people who can't stay forever but who matter immensely at the moment. I think if you've led an open and honest life, there will be those people. Don't you think that?"

  I have friends who believe all relationships really fall under this heading-good only for a while. But I nod solemnly.

  "I'm trying everything, Rusty."

  "We each need time," I say.

  She shakes her lovely hair about. It's been cut in the last two weeks, turned under a bit.

  "I'll always be waiting for you to say you want me back."

  "I'll always want you back," I answer. "But you'll never hear me say it." She smiles a trifle as she gathers in the deliberate absurdity of my last remark.

  "Why are you so determined?" she asks.

  "Because we reached the logical conclusion. There is no happy ending. Nothing happier. And I'm beginning to come to terms."

  "And what terms are those, Rusty?"

  "That I don't have the right to live twice. Nobody does. I made my choices. It would disrespect the life I've lived to throw all that over. And I have to show some gratitude to whatever force allowed me to skate across the thinnest ice and make it. I mean, I've told you over and over, Barbara cannot know. Cannot."

  Anna looks at me in a hard way, an expression I've seen occasionally and that will greet hundreds of witnesses on cross-examination in the next decades.

  "Do you love Barbara?"

  There's a question. Oddly, she has never asked until now.

  "How many hours do you have?" I ask.

  "A lifetime if you want it."

  I smile thinly. "I think I could have done better."

  "Then why not leave?"

  "I might." I have never said this aloud.

  "But not for someone younger? Not for a former clerk. Because you care about what people would say?"

  I do not answer. I have already explained. She continues to apply that cool, objective eye.

  "It's because you're running, isn't it," she says then. "You're picking the supreme court over me."

  I see it instantly: I must lie. "I am," I say.

  She emits a derisive little snort, then lifts her face again to continue her frigid assessment. She sees me now, all my weakness, all my vanity. I've lied, but she still has glimpsed the truth.

  Yet I have accomplished one thing.

  We are done.

  My relationship with Sandy Stern is intense and sui generis. He is the only lawyer who appears in the court of appeals from whose cases I inalterably recuse myself. Even my former clerks come before me five years after they've left. But Stern and I are not intimates. In fact, I did not speak to him for nearly two years after my trial, until gratitude overwhelmed other feelings I had about what had gone on in my case. By now, we have an appreciative rapport and eat lunch on occasion. But I hear none of his secrets. Yet his role in my life was so epochal that I could never pretend he is just another advocate. His defense of me was masterful, with every word spoken in court as significant as each note in Mozart. I owe him my life.

  We chat in his office about his kids and grandkids. His youngest, Kate, has three children. She divorced two years ago but has remarried. His son, Peter, moved off to San Francisco with his partner, another physician. Clearly the most content is Marta, his daughter who practices with him. She married Solomon, a management consultant, twelve years ago, with whom she has three kids and a full life.

  Sandy looks himself, if rounder, all of that obscured by perfect tailoring. One advantage of appearing middle-aged as a younger person is that at this stage you seem immune to time.

  "You look like you recovered well from your laryngitis," I tell him.

  "Not quite, Rusty. I had a bronchoscopy the day before you called me. I shall be having surgery for lung cancer later this week."

  I am devastated for both our sakes. His damn cigars. They are ever-present, and when deep in thought, Stern seldom remembers not to inhale. The smoke pours out of his nose like a dragon's.

  "Oh, Sandy."

  "They tell me it is good they can operate. There are worse scenarios with this sort of thing. They will remove a lobe, then wait and watch."

  I ask about his wife, and he describes Helen, whom he married as a widower, as herself, brave and funny. As always, she has been just what he needs.

  "But," he says, enjoying the joke, "enough about me." I wonder if I was truly doomed, if my hours were dwindling, I would choose to ascend the bench. It is a tribute to what Stern has done that he feels these remain his best moments.

  I tell him my story in bare strokes, relating the minimum he needs to know: that I was seeing someone, was followed by Harnason, who caught me unaware and left me unsettled-angry, intimidated, guilty. The story draws Stern's complex Latin expression, all his features briefly mobilized while he embraces the elusive categories of life.

  The two weeks I have waited to see Sandy have not done much to clarify my thinking about my predicament with Harnason. I want Stern's advice concerning what the law and ethics require me to do. Must I tell the truth to my fellow judges or the police? And what will happen to me as a result? Listening, Stern reaches out reflexively for his cigar and stops. Instead, he rubs his temples as he thinks. He takes quite some time.

  "A case like this, Rusty, a man like that-" Stern does not complete the sentence, but his manner suggests that he has fully grasped Harnason's strangeness. "He bankrolled his flight very cleverly, and I suspect he has made equally careful plans to hide himself. I doubt he will be seen again.

  "If he is apprehended, then of course-" Sandy's hand drifts off. "It would be problematic. One might hope the fellow would keep your confidence out of gratitude, but it would be unwise to expect that. As a criminal matter, however, it seems to me a very difficult prosecution-a twice convicted felon, whom you initially sent to the pentitentiary? Not much of a witness. And that assumes Molto could gin up some imagined crime. But if Harnason is the only witness the state has-and it's difficult to see how there could be another-it will be a meager case.

  "As a disciplinary matter for the Courts Commission, that is another thing. Unlike the criminal inquiry, you will be required to testify eventually, and no matter how confused you found yourself, we both know your conduct ran afoul of several canons of judicial conduct. But as long as the prospect of criminal prosecution is not ephemeral-and it surely is not with Tommy Molto sitting in the PA's chair-you need say nothing to your colleagues. I rarely make a record of my exchanges with clients, but in this case, I will do a memo to the file, in case you ever want to substantiate that you received this advice from me."

  He speaks offhandedly, but of course he is referring to the likelihood he will be dead by the time any occasion arises for me to explain my silence.

  In the elevator down, I try to absorb Stern's assessment, which is largely the same as my own. Understanding the realities, I am likely to get away with all of it. Harnason is gone for good. Barbara and Nat will remain unknowing about Anna. I will ascend to the supreme court and will forget in time a brief era of incredible folly. I will obtain what I've wanted, if not fully deserved, and, having risked it all, may enjoy my life more than I might have otherwise. The train of reason seems inexorable but is of little comfort. A sickness swims through my center.

  I emerge from the gauntlet o
f revolving doors into a radiant day, with the first full heat of summer. The street is thronged with lunchgoers and shoppers, who walk with their wraps across their arms. Out in the street, roadworkers are repairing winter-made potholes, heating tar whose fulsome aroma seems oddly intoxicating. The trees in the park across the way wear new green, finally in full leaf, and the steely smell of the river is on the wind. Life seems pure. My way is set. And thus there is no hiding from the truth, which nearly brings me to my knees.

  I love Anna. What can I possibly do?

  CHAPTER 10

  Tommy, October 23, 2008

  Tommy Molto did not like the jail. It was three stories high, but dim as a dungeon, even in daytime, because in 1906 they prevented escapes by building windows that were only six inches wide. There was also something unsettling about the sound, the anguished din arising from three thousand captured souls. And none of that was to talk about the odor. No matter how strict the sanitation, so many men in quarters this close, with a coverless stainless-steel toilet between every two of them, filled the entire structure with a swampy, fetid smell. It wasn't the Four Seasons. Nor was it meant to be. But you would think after thirty years of visiting the place to talk to witnesses, to try to roll defendants, Tommy would be used to it. But his gut still clutched. Some of it came down to the ugly reality of what he did. Tommy tended to think of his job as being about right and wrong and just deserts. The fact that his work culminated in a stark captivity that he himself always doubted he could survive remained even now an unwelcome reality.

  "Why are we talking to this bird now?" Tommy asked Brand as they waited in the gate room. It was nine p.m. Tommy had been at home when Brand reached him. Tomaso has just gone down, and Dominga was in the kitchen, cleaning up. The house still smelled of spice and diapers. These were the precious hours in Tommy's day, feeling the rhythm of his family, the sweet order arriving out of the relative chaos of the rest of his life. But Brand wouldn't have asked the boss to come out unless it was something that really couldn't wait, and he'd gone and put his suit back on. He was the PA. Wherever he went, he had to look the part, and as it turned out, both the warden and the captain of the COs had skedaddled in from home once they heard he was coming, so they could shake hands and pass some gas together. It was only a second ago they had departed, leaving Tommy to get a briefing at last from his chief deputy.

  "Because Mel Tooley said it would be worth the trip. Really, really worth the trip. He's got something the PA has to hear in person. And nine p.m. with no reporters within a mile, that's the best time."

  "Jimmy, I got a wife and a kid."

  "I got a wife and two kids," Brand answered. He was smiling, though. He thought it was cute, the way Tommy sometimes acted as though he'd invented having a family. Brand had more faith in Mel Tooley than most people because Mel shared office space with one of Brand's older brothers.

  "So background me," Tommy said. "This guy, the poisoner, what's his name again? Harnason?" Eighteen months ago, the head of the appellate section in the office, Grin Brieson, had begged Tommy to argue the case. He recalled that much and, naturally, that he had won despite Sabich's dissent. But the other details were gone in the wash of time.

  "Right. He's been in the breeze for a year and a half now."

  "I remember," said Tommy. "Sabich gave him bail." Last month, N. J. Koll had been running commercials calling Rusty out, ballyhooing the fact that the PAs had opposed bond for Harnason. Once Barbara croaked, N.J. had to take the high road and pull his stuff off the air, a relief to Molto. Tommy didn't like having his office in the middle of an election fight, especially that one.

  "They grabbed Harnason yesterday in Coalville, burg three hundred miles south, on the other side of the state line, population twenty grand. That was Harnason's new homestead. He hung out a shingle as a lawyer, practicing under the name of Thorsen Skoglund."

  "Asshole," said Molto. Tommy took a second to remember Thorsen, long gone now, an honorable man.

  "So he's practicing law and on the side, get this, he's working as a children's party clown. You just can't make this stuff up. He was bringing in more as a clown than a lawyer, which may tell you something, but it was all going pretty good until his drinking problem got the better of him and he caught a DUI. The print comparison came back from the FBI about two hours after he had bonded out. Harnason apparently thought it was still the old days when it would have taken weeks. He was at home packing when the local sheriff came for him with a SWAT team."

  Mel Tooley had waived extradition and the sheriff in Coalville had driven Harnason back to the Tri-Cities himself. Not a lot of bail-jumping murder fugitives were picked up in Coalville. The sheriff would be talking about Harnason the rest of his life. So far, Harnason had not been to court, and the press had no idea he was in custody again, but the story would probably get out. All in all, that would be good news for Rusty. When Koll's ads went up again, he wouldn't be able to wave his arms around about the madman Sabich had set free, who was still on the loose.

  By now, Tommy and Brand had been buzzed through the two sets of massive iron bars, a sort of air lock between captivity and freedom, and were escorted by a corrections officer named Sullivan back to the interview rooms. Sullivan knocked on a white door and Tooley came out into the narrow corridor. Mel, usually a bulbous fashion plate, was in civvies. He'd been gardening, apparently, when Harnason had hit town about five p.m. There was dirt under Mel's polished fingernails and on his jeans. It took Tommy a second to realize that in the rush, Tooley had forgotten his toup. The truth was he looked better without it, but Tommy decided to spare Mel that opinion.

  Tooley did the usual bowing and scraping because the almighty PA had come out at night.

  "I love you, too, Mel," said Tommy. "What's the scoop?"

  "Okay, this is strictly hypothetical," said Mel, lowering his voice. In the jail, you never knew what side anybody was playing on. Some of the COs worked for the gangs, some were on a reporter's pad. Tooley crept close enough that you would think he was cozying up for a kiss. "But if you were to ask Mr. Harnason why he decided to make a run for it, he would tell you he had advance word of the appellate court's decision."

  "How?"

  "That's the good part," said Mel. "The chief judge told him."

  Tommy felt as though he'd been hit in the head with a board. He couldn't imagine this. Rusty had a very hard stick up his ass as a judge.

  "Sabich?" Tommy asked.

  "Yep."

  "Why?"

  "It's a pretty strange conversation. You'll want to hear it yourself. There's some juice here. I mean," said Mel, "at a minimum you're going to bounce him off the supreme court with this. At a minimum. You may even make him an aider and abettor on the bond jump. And criminal contempt. For violating the rules of his own court."

  Mel was like everyone else who thought Tommy would give up a nut to get Rusty again. The PA laughed out loud instead.

  "With Harnason as the only witness? A one-on-one between a convicted murderer and the chief judge of the court of appeals? And me as the prosecutor?" Worse, the way this tale would dovetail with Koll's commercials, everyone would ridicule Tommy as N.J.'s gullible stooge.

  Mel had meaty cheeks on which the acne scars caught the shadows.

  "There's another witness," Tooley said quietly. "He told somebody about the conversation at the time."

  "Who?"

  Mel smiled in his lopsided way. He had never been able to raise the right side of his face.

  "I'll have to assert the attorney-client privilege at the moment."

  There's a dream team, Tommy thought. A scumbag murderer and a scumbag lawyer. Tooley was probably dirty on this whole thing and had helped Harnason light out for the wilderness. But Mel was Mel. He'd make sure Harnason forgot about that part, and Tooley would clean up fine on the stand. He knew how to fool a jury. He'd been doing it for close to forty years.

  "We gotta hear this from your guy," Tommy told him. "No front-side deal. We like wh
at he's saying, we can talk. Call it a proffer. Hypothetical. Whatever the frig you wanna call it, so we can't use it against him."

  After a second with his client, Tooley waved Brand and Molto into the attorney room. It was no more than eight-by-ten, whitewashed, although black streaks appeared irregularly up the wall. Molto preferred not to think about how the heel marks got there. As for the prisoner, John Harnason did not look particularly well. He'd shaved his mustache and let his hair go gray when he skipped, and he'd picked up weight. He sat in his optic orange jumpsuit, his hands manacled and his legs in irons, both sets of restraints chained to a steel loop embedded in the floor. The pale shadow of the watch they had taken from him when he was captured was still visible amid the strawberry blond thatch on his forearm, and he looked around anxiously, pivoting his head the full 180 every few seconds. He'd been in the county jail only a few hours but was already habitually on the lookout for whatever might be coming from behind. Screw all that stuff with waterboarding and foreign rendition, Tommy thought. They should just dump al-Qaeda in the Kindle County Jail overnight. You'd know where Osama was in the morning.

  Tommy decided to question Harnason himself. He started by asking when he'd begun planning to run.

  "I just couldn't face going back, once I knew I was going to lose the appeal. Before that, I was really thinking we would win. That's what Mel thought."

  Tooley did not quite dare raise his eyes to Tommy's. Winning appeals was a rarity for a defense lawyer. Tooley had been setting up his client for another ten grand for a cert petition to the state supreme court.

  "And how did you know you were going back?"

  "I thought Mel told you," said Harnason.

  "Well, you tell us," said Tommy.

  Harnason took some time to study his pudgy folded hands.

  "You know, I've known the man forever. Sabich. Professionally. If that's what you call this." Harnason ran his hand between Molto and him. Tommy shrugged: close enough. "And after he gave me bond, I just started to wonder about him. I thought, Maybe he feels bad. About sending me away to start. He should, Lord knows."