Innocent

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 what 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."

Neither Tommy nor Brand knew that part, and Harnason explained his first encounters with Rusty long ago. Tommy could still remember the queer busts Ray Horgan used to stage right before elections, out in the public forest and in the Center City Library men's room and at various bars, herding the arrestees onto school buses in front of the cameras. Times change, Tommy thought. He still wasn't sure how he felt about gays marrying or raising kids, but God didn't put an entire community on earth unless they were part of His plan. Live and let live, was what he felt now. But back in the day, he knew he would have handled Harnason's case the same way Rusty did.

Confused about whether Sabich actually remembered him, Harnason on impulse had decided to pay him a visit after the oral argument, just a hello and happy birthday and thanks for the bail ruling. Tommy took a second to wonder what part Harnason's visit had played in Sabich's dissent in the case.

"Mel chewed me out for that," Harnason said. "The last thing I wanted was for Sabich to get off the case. But there was something strange when I saw him."

"Meaning?" Tommy asked.

"A connection. Sort of-" Harnason took a great deal of time, and his soft face, with islands of pink color, moved several times around the words he was thinking of. "Peas in a pod," he said.

Tommy got it. Lawyers. Fuck-arounds. And murderers. Tommy couldn't help it. He was starting to like Harnason.

Brand was beside Tommy, making notes on a yellow pad now and then but mostly watching Harnason closely, clearly trying to make up his own mind. Harnason was speaking most of the time with his head down, his sparse gray hair and his bald spot all you saw of his face, as if the memory of all of this weighed about eighty pounds. Tommy realized the problem. Harnason appreciated what Sabich had done for him. He didn't enjoy peeing on the guy.

"Sabich had said something vague, they heard my arguments, something, it sounded a little hopeful, but it wore on me," said Harnason, "the not knowing, waiting for the decision. Sometimes you can't take any more. So I figured, Well, he talked once, maybe he'll tell me at least what's going to happen. So I followed him a couple of times. I waited for him to go out to lunch and I followed him."

The first time, Rusty went to the Grand Atheneum. It was interesting that it was not the Hotel Gresham, where Marco Cantu got paid for doing nothing. Apparently Rusty had been on a bed tour, probably because he'd seen too much of Marco while he was boinking his sweet young thing over there. But Harnason didn't know about Marco or the STD test. So his story was checking out so far.

"Was Sabich with anybody?"

"I assume." Harnason smiled. "Not that I saw her. I watched him head straight to the elevator. He was gone a long while. Longer than I could wait. It started pouring. So I beat it and followed him again the next week. Same deal, except a different hotel. But straight to the elevator and upstairs forever." Harnason had forgotten the name of the hotel, but from the location it had to be the Renaissance. "I was outside over three hours. But there he comes. A little skip in his walk. Soon as I saw that, I knew for sure he'd been getting it on."

"Anybody with him this time?"

"Negative. But the look on his face when he saw me-You know, that pie-eyed, 'oh shit' kind of look. Instead of pissed off. I mean, maybe that's why he talked. He tried to blow me off. But I asked him, just as a mercy, really, Tell me. Am I going back or not? And he did. Get ready for bad news. You're at the end of the road. I just blubbered like a little girl."

"And all this while you're standing there on the street? You and the chief judge, and the chief judge tells you your case is going to be affirmed?" The whole thing was crazy. Lunchtime on Market Street, a hundred people must have seen them, and Rusty is blabbing ex parte? A defense lawyer-Sandy Stern was who Rusty would get if he wasn't dead-would fillet Harnason. But the standard rebuttal made sense. If Harnason was going to make something up, it would have come without bumps and blemishes like that. Often they spit out stories like this, too strange not to be true. "And you told Mel about that?"

Harnason looked at Mel, who beckoned with his hand. Harnason said he'd called him that day.

The four men sat there in silence, while Tommy played it all out. Tooley was right. They were going to scuttle Rusty Sabich's ship with this. The best part was it wouldn't be Tommy's case. The way Harnason told the story, Sabich had not committed a crime. Tommy would just pass the information to the Courts Commission. They in turn would pay Rusty a visit, and he'd probably end up resigning quietly, take his pension, and go into practice rather than endure a public hearing where the stuff about the chick in the hotel was likely to come out.

Tommy looked over at Jim to see if he had anything else. Brand asked Harnason if he'd repeated the whole conversation with the chief judge.

"That was the important part as far as I was concerned," Harnason said quietly, smiling a trifle at his own expense. "There was a little more back-and-forth."

"Well, let's hear it."

Harnason took his time. It seemed like he was trying to understand the part coming next himself.

"Well, you know I'm carrying on, and he says to me, basically, Come on, cut it out, you killed him, didn't you?"

"Did you?" Brand asked.

Mel interrupted-he didn't want Harnason confessing-but Tommy said there could be no holdbacks. Brand asked again if Harnason killed Ricky.

"Yeah." Harnason thought about that and nodded. "Yeah, I did. And that's what I told Sabich, I did. But, I said, you got away with murder yourself, and he looks at me and he says, The difference is I didn't do it."

Molto cut in. "That's what he told you? You were talking about twenty years ago?"

"Absolutely. He said he didn't do it. And he was looking me in the eye, too."

"You believed him?"

Harnason considered that. "I think I did."

This back-and-forth dizzied Tommy for a second. But he didn't miss the point in the present. Harnason was savvy enough to know what Tommy wanted to hear, yet he wasn't going to say it. The man was one of those weird cons, one with principles. There was not the remotest chance he wasn't speaking the truth.

"Anything else?" asked Brand.

Harnason tried to scratch his ear and realized the manacles wouldn't let him reach that far. "I asked him who he was with in the hotel."

"Did he answer that?"

"Just turned his back on me. That was the end of the conversation."

Brand said, "He didn't deny that part? He just turned away?"

"Right."

"Any more? Anything else between you and the chief judge?"

"That's pretty much it."

"Not pretty much," said Brand. "Everything. You remember anything else?"

Harnason looked up to recall. He made a face.

"Well, one other thing was a little weird. When I told him I killed Ricky, he asked me what it was like to poison somebody."

Tommy could tell from the way Tooley jolted, he hadn't heard that before. Brand was too cool even to quiver, but sitting next to him, Tommy could already sense the uptick in Jimmy's pulse.

"He asked you what it was like to poison somebody?" Brand repeated.

"Right. How did I feel? Day after day? What was it like?"

"And why did he want to know that?" asked Brand.

"I guess he was curious. We were already pretty far off the reservation. That's when I said to him, You know what it's like to kill somebody, and he said he hadn't done it."

Brand went through it with Harnason a few more times, trying to get the conversation in sequence, pressing Harnason to be more precise. Then the two prosecutors departed, telling Tooley they'd evaluate and be back in touch. They were careful to say nothing else to each other until they were a block from the jail. It was a strange neighborhood here, the buildings marked by gang signs and the bangers themselves often lingering near the jail, as if it gave them some kind of peace of mind to be near their homeboys inside. The toughs on the street might enjoy rousting the PA if they recognized him, and Brand and Tommy walked quickly back to the parking structure beside the County Building. As they passed, there was a heavyset woman at a bus stop, listening to a little boom box and practicing her Jazzercise moves, right out there in the open at eleven at night, as if she were at home naked in front of the mirror.

"Okay," said Brand, "you know what I'm thinking."

"I know what you're thinking."

"I'm thinking," said Brand, "that's why the chief judge ponied up the info on the appeal. Because he's got a hot thing on the side and he's already considering maybe cooling the old lady. Because a candidate for the supreme court doesn't want an ugly divorce in the middle of the campaign, especially not if it involves putting his hotdog in the wrong bun. And he wants to do a little field research, figure out if he can actually do the deed."

Tommy wagged his head back and forth. It sounded like Law amp; Order. A little too tidy.

"It'd be a better theory, Jimmy, if we had any evidence that Barbara died from some kind of overdose, instead of heart failure."

"Maybe we just haven't found it yet," said Brand.

Tommy gave Jim a look. That was the biggest mistake a prosecutor could make, hoping for proof that didn't exist. Cops and witnesses could hear that the wrong way and make your dreams come true. Tommy could see their breath in the evening air. He wasn't ready for fall yet and had forgotten a topcoat. But it wasn't just the cold that bothered him. He was still reeling from the part where Harnason said Rusty told him he didn't kill Carolyn. Tommy admittedly had his own stake, but it was a problem for Brand's theory. Either Sabich was a killer or he wasn't. It was both women or none; that was what experience would tell you.

"The part about the first murder still throws me," Tommy said.

"Sabich was lying," answered Brand. "Just because he got dirty with the guy on one thing doesn't mean he'd give himself up as a killer. Besides, there's a way to deal with that and be sure."

He was talking again about the DNA.

"Not yet," Tommy said. It was still too soon. "So remind me again. How was it this weirdo almost got away with it?"

"Which weirdo, Boss? Our cup runneth over."

"Harnason. He poisoned the boyfriend with arsenic, right?"

"Right. But it's not a common poison these days. It's hard to get, and it doesn't show up on a routine tox screen."

Tommy stopped walking. Brand had gone only one more step.

"You think?" Brand asked.

"Sabich was one of the judges on the case, right? He knows all of this. About what is and isn't on a routine tox screen?"

"Definitely part of the record."

Careful, Tommy told himself. Careful. This was the Temple of Doom. He knew it, and he was still blundering right down the path.

"Full mass spectrometer on Barbara's blood?" asked Brand.

"Talk to the toxicologist."

"Full mass," said Brand. "We have to do that. We have to. Strange behavior after the death. A little thing on the side. Questions about poisoning somebody. We're just doing our job, Boss. We have to do that."

It sounded right. But Tommy was still unsettled by all of it, the jail, and Harnason, who was just one of those weird guys, and the troubling idea that he was actually hard on Sabich's trail.

He and Jim talked about how to get the full mass quietly, then parted for the night. Tommy walked down the third floor of the parking structure toward his car. The garage at this hour was a dangerous place, worse than the streets. One of the judges had been mugged here several years ago, but there was still no security. The shadows were deep where the vehicles were parked during the daytime, and Tommy stayed in the center of the floor. But the Halloween atmosphere set off something in him, an idea that floated up and in which he could feel for the first time the thrill as well as the peril.

What if, Tommy suddenly thought. What if Rusty really did it?