Presumed Innocent

by Scott Turow

  And so now, still gazing at the wall, I begin to speak, saying aloud things that I had promised myself would never be spoken.

  “I’ve thought a lot about the reasons,” I say. “Not that anyone can fully comprehend them. Whatever you call that insane mix of rage and lunacy that leads one human being to kill another—it’s not the kind of thing that’s easy to understand in any ultimate way. I doubt anybody—not the person who does it or anyone else—can really grasp the whole thing. But I’ve tried. I really have tried. I mean, one thing I should say to start, Barbara, is that I apologize to you. I think a lot of people would find that laughable. That I would say that. But I do.

  “And one more thing you’ve got to know. You have to believe it: she was never more important to me than you are. Never. I guess, to be unflinchingly honest, there must have been something there that I didn’t believe I could find anywhere else. That was my failing. I admit it. But as you’ve told me yourself, I was absolutely obsessed with her. It would take hours to explain why. She had that power; I had that weakness. But I know goddamn well that I wouldn’t have gotten over her for years, and probably never, as long as she was walking around. I mean, there is no such thing as justification here, or excuse. I’m not trying to pretend there is. But at least we should both acknowledge the circumstances.

  “I always figured it wasn’t going to do anybody much good to talk about it. And I assumed that was what you’d figured. What happened happened. But naturally I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about exactly how it occurred. I could hardly help that. I guess every prosecutor learns that we live closer than we want to believe to real evildoing. Fantasy is a lot more dangerous than people like to say. You get this idea, this careful elaborate plan, it becomes actually stimulating to think about it, it titillates and thrills you, you dwell on it, and you take the first step toward carrying it out, and that is thrilling and titillating, too, and you go on. And in the end, once you edge up to it that way, telling yourself all along that no real damage has been done, it takes just one extraordinary moment, when you revel in the excitement, in the feeling of flying free, for the whole thing actually to occur.”

  I finally look back. Barbara is on her feet now, standing behind her chair. Her look is quick and alarmed, as well it might be. No doubt she never wanted to hear this. But I go on.

  “As I said, I really never thought I’d have to talk about this, but I raise it now, because I think once and for all it ought to be said aloud. There’s no threat here. There’s not even the shadow of a threat, okay? God knows what somebody in your position might think, Barbara, but there is not a threat. I just want the cards on the table. I don’t want there to be wondering about what either of us knows or thinks. I don’t want that to be a factor in whatever it is we’re going to do. Because all in all, even though you’re probably amazed to hear me say all of this, and then say this, too, I expected, I guess the word is wanted, is want, to go on. There are a lot of reasons. Nat, first of all. Of course. And I also want to minimize the damage to our lives. But more than that, I do not want that mad act to have had no decent consequence. And basically, in trying to explain to myself how and why this woman was murdered—for what little rational impulses have to do with it, and for what little they are worth as explanations—I suppose I always thought that in part it was for us. For us. For the good of us. God knows a lot of it was simply for my benefit, to—if conscience can stand those words—get even. But I thought some of it was for us, too. And so I wanted to say that, to see if all of this means anything to you or makes any difference.”

  I am finished at last, and feel strangely satisfied. I have done as well with this as I ever could have imagined. Barbara, my wife, is crying, very hard, and silently. She is looking downward while the tears simply fall. She heaves and catches her breath.

  “Rusty, I don’t think there is anything worth saying, except I’m sorry. I hope you believe me someday. I really am so sorry.”

  “I understand,” I tell her. “I believe you now.”

  “And I was prepared to tell the truth. At any time. Right up to the end. If I was called as a witness, I would have told what happened.”

  “I understand that, too. But I didn’t want that. Frankly, Barbara, it wouldn’t have done a bit of good. It would have sounded like some desperate excuse. Like you were making a bizarre effort to save me. Nobody ever would have believed that you were the one who killed her.”

  These words bring fresh tears, and then, finally, control. It has been said and she is, in a measure, relieved. Barbara wipes each eye with the back of her hands. She breathes deeply. She speaks, looking down at the table.

  “Do you know what it feels like to be crazy, Rusty? Really crazy? To not be able to get any hold of who you are? You never feel safe. I feel like every step I take, the ground is soft. That I’m going to fall through it. And I can’t go on that way. I don’t think that I can be a normal person again if I’m living with you. I know how horrible that is. But it’s horrible for me, too. No matter what I thought, nobody goes back to the way things used to be after something like this. All I can say, Rusty, is that nothing turned out the way I expected. I never understood the reality of any of it until the trial. Until I sat there. Until I saw what was happening to you, and finally felt how much I didn’t want that to be happening. But that’s part of what I can’t get over. I have no life here, except being sorry. And afraid. And, of course—‘ashamed’ is not the word. ‘Guilty’?” She shakes her head slowly, looking down at the table. “There isn’t a word.”

  “We could try to share that, you know. The blame,” I say. Somehow, in spite of myself, this remark has a whimsical quality. Barbara gasps a bit. She bites her lip suddenly. She looks the other way for a second, and, in a momentary exhalation, cries. Then she shakes her head again.

  “I don’t think that’s right,” she says. “The trial came out the way it should have, Rusty.”

  That’s all she says. I might have hoped for more, but it’s enough. She starts to leave the room, but stops and lets me hold her for a moment, actually a long moment as she lingers with me, but finally she breaks away. I hear her go upstairs. I know Barbara. She will lie on our bed and weep a while longer. And then she is going to get back on her feet. And begin packing to leave.

  39

  One day, right after Thanksgiving, when I’ve come to town for Christmas shopping, I see Nico Della Guardia walking down Kindle Boulevard. He holds his raincoat drawn closed around the collar and he has a worried brow. He seems to be looking up and down the street. He is coming in my direction, but I am quite certain he has not seen me yet. I think of ducking into a building, not because I am afraid of his response, or mine, but simply because I think it might be easier for both of us to avoid this meeting. By then, however, he has caught sight of me and he is heading deliberately my way. He does not smile, but he offers his hand first, and I take it. For that instant only, I am rifled by a shot of terrible emotion—hot pain and grief—but it quickly passes and I stand there, looking affably at the man who, in any practical sense, tried to take my life from me. One person, a man in a felt hat, apparently aware of the momentousness of this meeting, turns to stare as he continues on his way, but otherwise the pedestrian traffic merely divides about us.

  Nico asks me how I am. He has the earnest tone people lately have tended to adopt, so I know that he has heard. I tell him anyway.

  “Barbara and I split up,” I say.

  “I heard that,” he says. “I’m sorry. I really am. Divorce is a bitch. Well, you know. You had me crying on your shoulder. And I didn’t have the kid. Maybe you guys can work it out.”

  “I doubt that. Nat’s with me for the time being, but only until Barbara gets settled in Detroit.”

  “Too bad,” he says. “Really. Too bad.” Old Nico, I think, still repeating everything.

  I turn to let him go on his way. I offer my hand first this time. And when he takes it, he steps closer and squeezes up his face so that I know
that what he is about to say is something he finds painful.

  “I didn’t set you up,” he says. “I know what people think. But I didn’t have anybody screw with the evidence. Not Tommy. Not Kumagai.” I almost wince at the thought of Painless. He has resigned now from the police department. He had no refuge. He could only claim collusion or incompetence, and so he chose the lesser—and I believe more apt—of the two evils. He did not botch the semen specimen, of course, but I’ve come to believe that no one would have been indicted if he’d looked back at his autopsy notes. Nobody could have put it all together. Maybe Tommy’s also to blame for pushing too hard to bring a marginal case. I suppose he thought my hide would still his grief—or envy—whatever state it was that Carolyn had left him in which so riled his passions.

  Nico in the meantime continues, sincere as ever. “I really didn’t,” he says. “I know what you think. But I have to tell you that. I didn’t do that.”

  “I know you didn’t, Delay,” I say. And then I tell him what I think is the truth. “You did your job the way you thought you were supposed to. You just relied on the wrong people.”

  He watches me.

  “Well, it’s probably not going to be my job much longer. You’ve heard about this recall thing?” he asks. He is looking up and down the street again. “Of course you have. Everybody has. Well, what’s the difference? They all tell me my career is over.”

  He is not looking for sympathy. He just wants me to know that the waves of calamity have spread and washed over him as well. Carolyn has pulled all of us down in her black wake. I find myself encouraging him.

  “You can’t tell, Delay. You never know how things’ll turn out.”

  He shakes his head.

  “No, no,” he says. “No, you’re the hero, I’m the goat. It’s great.” Nico smiles, in a sudden way, so that you know he finds his own thoughts weird, inappropriate. “A year ago, you could have beat me in the election, and you could do it today. Isn’t that great?” Nico Della Guardia laughs out loud, pinched by his own ironies, the peculiar readings from his own terms of reference. He spreads his arms here in the middle of Kindle Boulevard. “Nothing,” he says, “has changed.”

  40

  In the front room of the home in which I have lived for better than eight years there is complete disorder. Open boxes, half packed, are everywhere, and items removed from shelves and drawers are strewn in all directions. The furniture is gone. I never cared much for the sofa or the love seat, and Barbara wanted them for her condo outside Detroit. I’ll move January 2 to an apartment in the city. Not a bad place. The realtor said I was lucky to get it. The house is up for rent. I’ve decided that each step should be slow.

  Now that Nat has left, the job of packing seems to take forever. I move from room to room. Every item reminds me of something. Each corner seems to contain its quotient of pain and melancholy. When I reach my limit, I start working somewhere else. I think often of my father and that scene I recalled for Marty Polhemus, in which I found my old man, the week after my mother’s death, packing up the apartment he had abandoned a few years before. He worked in a sleeveless undervest, and he had a brazen manner as he pitched the remains of his adult life into crates and boxes. He kicked the cartons from his path as he moved about the rooms.

  I heard from Marty just last week. He sent a Christmas card. “Glad to hear everything worked out for you.” I laughed aloud when I read his message. Lord, that kid really has the knack. I threw the card away. But the toll of loneliness is greater than I imagined. A couple of hours ago, I went rummaging through the boxes of trash in the living room, looking for the envelope. I need the address to write him back.

  I never wrote my father. After he left for Arizona, I did not see him again. I called on occasion, but only because Barbara dialed the number and put the receiver in my hand. He was so deliberately uncommunicative, so chary with the details of his life, that it was never worth the effort. I knew he was living with a woman by then, that he worked three days a week in a local bakery. He found Arizona hot.

  The woman, Wanda, called to tell me he was dead. That was more than eight years ago now, but the shock of it, in a way, is with me every day. He was strong and fit; I had taken it for granted that he would live to be a hundred, that there would always be this far-off target for my bitterness. He had already been cremated. Wanda only found my number as she was cleaning out the trailer and she insisted I come West to settle the rest of his affairs. Barbara was eight months pregnant then and we both regarded this trip West as my father’s final imposition. Wanda, it turned out, was from New York City, in her late fifties, tall, not bad-looking. She did not hesitate to speak ill of the dead. Actually, she told me when I arrived, she had moved out on him six months before. They called her from the bakery, where he collapsed with the coronary, because they knew no one else. ‘I don’t know why I do these things. Really, I have to tell you,’ she said, after a couple of drinks, ‘he was mostly a prick.’

  She did not think it was funny when I suggested her phrase was what should be carved on the stone.

  She left me alone to pick through the trailer. On his bed were red socks. In the chifforobe, I found another six or seven dozen pairs of men’s hose. Red and yellow. Striped. Dotted. Argyles. In his last years, my father had finally found an indulgence.

  The doorbell rings. I feel the faintest surge of anticipation. I look forward to a moment’s conversation with the postal carrier or the man from UPS.

  “Lip,” I say through the storm door. He enters and stomps the snow off his feet.

  “Nice and homey,” Lip says, surveying the disaster in the living room. As he stands on the doormat, he hands me a small package, not much wider than the satin bow on top.

  “Christmas present,” he says.

  “That’s awfully nice,” I say. We’ve never done this before.

  “I figured you could use a pick-me-up. Nat get off okay?”

  I nod. I took him to the airport yesterday. They allowed him to be seated first. I wanted to go with him onto the plane, but Nat would not permit it. From the doorway, I watched him go down the jetway in his dark blue NFL parka, alone and already lost in dreams. He is his father’s son. He did not turn to wave. I want, I thought quite distinctly, I want the life I had.

  Lip and I spend a moment looking at each other. I still have not taken his coat. God, it is awkward, and it is like this with everyone, people on the street or people I know well. So much has happened to me that I never counted on. And how are people to respond? Somehow it does not fit into any recognized conversational pattern to say, It’s tough about your wife, but at least they didn’t get you for that murder.

  I finally offer him a beer.

  “If you’re drinkin,” he answers, and follows me to the kitchen. Here, too, half the housewares are in boxes.

  As I’m taking a glass out of the cabinet, Lipranzer points to the package he brought, which I’ve set down on the table.

  “I wanna see you open that. I been savin it a while.”

  He has done a careful job with the paper.

  “I never saw a gift wrapped before,” I say, “with hospital corners.”

  Crumpled inside a small white box is a manila envelope ribboned with red-and-white evidence tape. I tear through that and find the glass that turned up missing during the trial, the tumbler from Carolyn’s bar. I put it all down on the table and take a step away. This is one guess where I would never have been close.

  Lip fishes in his pocket and comes out with his lighter. He holds a corner of the evidence envelope in the flame until he’s sure it’s burning, then flips in into the sink. The glass he hands to me. The blue ninhydrin powder is still all over it, the three partial prints etched there, a kind of surrealistic delft. I hold the glass up to the window light for a moment, trying for reasons I cannot discern to figure which of the tiny networks of lines are the marks of my right thumb and my third right middle finger, the former telltale signs. I am still looking at the glas
s when I start talking to Lipranzer.

  “There’s a genuine question here, whether I should be touched,” I say, and now finally catch his eye, “or real pissed off.”

  “How’s that?”

  “It’s a felony in this state to secrete evidence of a crime. You hung your ass out a good long way on this one, Lipper.”

  “No one around who’ll ever know.” Lip pours the beer that I’ve just opened. “Besides, I didn’t do a goddamn thing. It was them that fucked up. Remember they got Schmidt to come grab all the evidence? The glass wasn’t there. I’d took the thing down to Dickerman. Next day I get a call from the lab, the test is done, I can come pick up my glass. When I get down there somebody’s signed the receipt ‘Returned to Evidence.’ You know, the idea is that I’ll put it back in. Only I don’t got any way to put it anywhere, since it’s not my goddamn case anymore. So I tossed it in a drawer. Figured sooner or later somebody’s gotta ask me. Nobody did. In the meantime, Molto’s like every other half-ass deputy. Signs off on all the receipts without matchin em against the evidence. Three months later he’s got himself a bucket of shit. But that’s his problem.” Lip lifts his glass and drains most of it. “None of them ever had the most screwed-up idea where the thing went. They tell stories about the way Nico tore his office apart. He had them pick up the tacked-down carpet, I hear.”

  We laugh, both of us, knowing Nico. When he gets very excited you can see his scalp redden where the hair has thinned. His freckles seem to stand out more as well. After the laughter is done, we wait through a little hollow moment of silence.