Innocent

CHAPTER 27

Tommy, June 22, 2009

In the umber light of the prosecuting attorney's office, where there seemed to be only two times of day, dusk and darkness, several members of Tommy's staff awaited him, eager to be the first to shake the boss's hand. As the brass elevator doors parted, Jim Brand exited initially, wheeling the trial cart. The open-topped buggy of stainless-steel wire, which looked like an elongated grocery basket, was employed to haul the trial files and Rusty's home computer across the street to court each day. The two women in court with the PAs each day, the detective, Rory Gissling, and their paralegal, Ruta Wisz, trailed a step behind Jim. As soon as they were all buzzed inside the office's steel-reinforced door, a round of applause broke out from a gauntlet of employees, many of whom had been in the courtroom pews to take in the cross-examination. Accepting handshakes and fist knocks, Tommy proceeded behind the cart down the dim hall toward the PA's corner office. It was a little like a scene in one of those old movies about Rome, where the conquerors entered a walled city behind a carriage bearing the remains of the former ruler.

The deputies hooted jokes comparing Rusty to butchered meat.

"He was turning like a chicken on a spit, Boss."

"Welcome to Benihana. Chef Tommy will slice and dice."

Even Judge Yee had caught Tommy's eye for a second when they recessed and nodded in respect. Truth told, Tommy was a bit at sea with all the acclaim. He had recognized long ago that he was the kind of man who did not really feel good when he succeeded. It was another of his embarrassing little secrets, tempered in the last few years by the realization that there were a lot more people like him than you might think. But when things went really well for Tommy Molto, he often felt guilty, convinced deep down he did not fully deserve it. Even Dominga's love was something he sometimes felt he was unworthy of. It was all too typical that even while he knew he was inflicting serious wounds on Sabich, Tommy had felt some worry begin to nag at him.

Yet with all that said, there was no taking away the fact he had been really good up there. He knew better than to give himself too much credit. You could prepare and prepare, but cross-examination was a tightrope act, and sometimes you ended up sure-footed and sometimes you fell on your head, and a lot of it was simply in the stars. Until Rusty tried to score by saying he didn't see Barbara eat the foods that had obviously killed her, Tommy had never completely realized how absurd it was to think she'd died by accident. That had been a great moment for him, and there were a few others-and he'd committed some miscues, too, opened the door too wide a couple of times, which always happened. But on balance, the rationale of the prosecution had seemed like a trumpet blast in the courtroom.

Even the mob of reporters outside the courthouse finally seemed impressed. Tommy had few total fans in the press. He tended to stiffen up in front of cameras, and the relentless personality that served him well in the courtroom didn't go down well with journalists, who hated being treated as the adversaries they often were. And these days, with that crowd, Tommy was playing with one hand behind his back anyway. As soon as Yee was appointed, Stern had filed a sealed motion about the DNA results from the first trial. Ruling in chambers, outside the open public record, Yee not only sequestered the DNA results, as Tommy had long predicted, but required the prosecution to identify anybody aware of them and placed each person under court order not to discuss the test until the verdict. It amounted to the judge announcing there would be contempt proceedings if the test results leaked. In the meantime, the papers-no doubt with Stern's encouragement-spun out the revenge theory every day, going through the first trial in detail, emphasizing the way the case had fallen apart and frequently mentioning that afterward, Tommy had been investigated for a year before returning to work. Tommy, who had long since stopped expecting fairness from the American press, could venture no response, except that the record would be clear by the time the case was over. But after his performance today, especially when the DNA results became public, Tommy knew that no lawyer or journalist would say anything except that Jim Brand and he had brought a case they had to prosecute.

Several deputies continued to accost them as they proceeded down the hall. When they reached Tommy's office, though, he stood in his door like a reluctant host. He allowed only his trial team to join him. He accepted a few more handshakes, then clapped several times to encourage everyone to return to work. The people in this office knew better than to declare victory at the midpoint in a trial, and the fact that so many of them wanted to celebrate the cross actually betrayed their own doubts about the case, the fact that it all sounded better than they might have expected. Many of the most experienced lawyers knew there was still a good chance they would not be in here drinking champagne after the verdict.

"A perfect ten," said Rory Gissling when Tommy returned from a quick call to Dominga. Tommy had gotten just one second on the phone with his wife. Talking and sometimes downright sassy, Tomaso was frequently a trial to his mother these days.

"Y'know," answered Tommy, but added nothing else for quite some time.

The four of them were around Tommy's big desk. Jim and he had dumped their coats and propped their feet up on the public property.

Rory said, "I think Yee should have let you get into the girl."

"Yee isn't going to let us get to the girl," said Tommy. "And I think I've figured out why."

"Because he doesn't want to get reversed," said Brand, employing the steady refrain whenever they talked about Judge Yee.

"It's because he knows we don't need it. You'll have twelve people in the jury room. Between all of them, they'll have lived, say, at least five hundred years. And what's the first thing anybody says when you hear about a middle-aged guy dumping his college sweetheart?"

Rory laughed. She took the point. "He must have something going on the side."

"That's exactly what half the people in that room are going to say. And frankly, whatever the bunch of them make up is probably a ton better than anything we can prove."

Brand took his feet down and leaned forward. "So what are you worried about?"

Brand was the only person here who knew Tommy well enough to see it. Tommy took a second to search himself, but he still couldn't quite identify the answer.

"Sandy Stern is a counterpuncher," he said. "That's one thing." Stern had always understood that a trial is a war of expectations, where no one could always control the courtroom mood. Sandy knew he could survive the prosecutors having a good day, even a good week, as long as he could come back. In fact, it was clear now why Stern had put his client on first. Because he was going to rebuild Rusty's credibility from here. Tommy even suspected Stern had wanted Rusty to look bad at moments, so the jurors would end up somewhat shamed by their doubts when some of them were allayed. Tommy had long ago stopped trying to match chess moves with Stern in the courtroom. He would never prevail at Sandy's game. He played his own. Straight ahead every day. "You watch," Tommy said. "Stern always lives to fight another day."

"We'll handle it," said Brand.

"We will," said Tommy. "But you know, two weeks from now what the jury's going to remember about today is that they heard Rusty say he didn't do it. And that he didn't look bad. He was calm most of the time. He didn't get real evasive."

"He fought too much," said Rory. Ruta, the paralegal, was watching, but she was sure to add nothing. She was a chunky blonde, twenty-nine years old, about to start law school, and thrilled just to be in the PA's office to hear these conversations.

"He fought a little too much," said Tommy. "But he did a good job. A really good job given everything he has to answer for. But-" Tommy stopped. He suddenly knew what had been bothering him. He had pounded Sabich, but there had been a stubborn center to the man. There was not a minute when he looked as if he had killed anybody. Not that he would. Tommy had never spent a lot of time trying to figure out exactly what was wrong with Rusty, but it was something deep and complex, something Jekyll and Hyde. But he had his act down cold. No shifting eyes. Nothing apologetic. Reason was on the prosecutors' side. But the emotional content in the courtroom had been more complex. True, there was an insanely long list of things Rusty had to pass off as coincidental-Harnason, the fingerprints, picking up the phenelzine, going for the wine and cheese, the Web searches about the drug. But against his will, Tommy had experienced a second or two of intense frustration with the placid way Rusty explained it all. Sabich probably deserved his own chapter in the DSM to define his psychopathology, but after thirty years as a prosecutor, there was a lie detector in Tommy's gut that he trusted better than even the best operator interpreting the box's fluttering styluses. And somebody on that jury, maybe most of them, must have seen the same thing Tommy saw. Even if Rusty was the only person in room who fully believed it, he had somehow convinced himself he wasn't guilty.

"How did you like him blaming the wife for Googling phenelzine on his computer?" Brand asked. "That's nuts. Like she's taken this drug for twelve years and doesn't know everything about it."

"He had to go there," Rory said.

Tommy agreed. "He had to. Otherwise how can he explain just skipping off to the store and buying everything in the place that had a chance of killing her? You read those sites, you have to say, 'No, no, honey, we're gonna have tortilla chips and guacamole.' At least you would talk to her about it."

"But he blamed her for shredding the e-mail messages, too," said Brand.

Rory was shaking her head. "That was actually the one decent point he made," she said. "Why does he shred the e-mail but not the cached stuff for his Web browser?"

"Because he fucking forgot," said Brand. "Because he was getting ready to kill his wife, and that makes even somebody like him a little nervous and scattered. That's the same crappy argument you hear in every case. 'If I'm such a smart crook, why did I get caught?' I mean, he did. Besides, maybe he ran out of time."

"Before what?" asked Rory.

"Before she hit her expiration date. He's a sick fuck," said Brand. "He obviously decided he's gonna let the mama see her baby one last time before he sends her to the great beyond. I mean, that's a sick fuck's idea of kindness."

Listening to the byplay, Tommy sank a little further into himself. There was something about Brand calling Rusty a 'sick fuck' that troubled him. It was not as if calling Rusty names were unwarranted-what else could you say about a guy who elaborately planned the murder of a second woman after getting away with killing a first? But the truth was that in that entire courtroom, there was nobody who knew Rusty Sabich as roundly as Tommy himself. Not the judge's lawyer-not even Rusty's kid. Tommy had met Rusty thirty-five years ago when Tommy was still a law student and he'd worked on the Matuzek case, the bribery trial of a county commissioner where Rusty was the third trial chair for Ray Horgan. Since then, Tommy had observed the man from every angle-labored in the office next door to him, tried cases beside him, been supervised and bossed by him, watched Rusty as a defendant across the courtroom and then as a judge on the bench. In the early days, especially before Nat was born, they had actually been close. When Tommy was hired, Rusty and Tommy's high school bud Nico Della Guardia often hung on the weekends, and Tommy frequently joined them. They went to Trappers games, got slammed together more than once. The three of them sat around smoking three Cubans Nico had gotten hold of when Rusty came back into the office the day after Nathaniel was born. In time, Tommy had learned to like Rusty less. As Sabich advanced in the office, usually at Nico's expense, he had become aloof and impressed with himself. And after Carolyn's trial, when Tommy had returned here after being investigated for a year, he had seen Rusty's face as nothing but an ill-fitting mask that feigned unconvincing welcome whenever the two men met.

But still. Still. Tommy did not often bother asking himself why or how, in this job. You saw people go wrong: beloved priests who'd helped bring God into the lives of thousands of people, who ended up videotaping their tricks with naked six-year-olds; multizillionaires who owned football teams and shopping centers, and who'd cheat somebody out of fifteen grand because they always had to have an edge; pols elected as long-recognized reformers, who were barely sworn into office before they had their hands out for bribes. Tommy didn't try to understand why some people needed to defy themselves. That was above his pay grade. His duty was to follow the evidence, present it to twelve good people, and move on to the next case. But after three and a half decades, he knew one thing about Rusty Sabich: He was not a sick fuck. Wound tight? And how. Capable of obsessing on a woman like Carolyn so she became the only truth he knew or cared about? That could happen, too. He could have raged and choked her and then covered up. But the one thing Tommy always demanded of himself as he sat in the high-backed leather chair in which the PAs had been putting their butts for the last two decades was honesty. And confronting Rusty in the courtroom had ended up forcing Tommy to face off with questions he'd been pushing aside for close to a year. And this was what had most disturbed him: A crime as calculated as this one, planned for months and executed over the course of a week, didn't seem within the compass of the man Tommy had known so long.

Tommy realized nobody was meaner to him than Tomassino Molto III. He liked to make himself suffer, and he was doing that now. It was his Catholic martyr thing. In a minute, in an hour, he'd have his legs under him again. But there was no further point in battling. It was one of those thoughts you didn't want to have that you had anyway-like thinking about the instant you would die or what life would be like if something happened to Tomaso. Now, while Brand and Rory bantered, Tommy dwelled for a minute on an idea that had not visited him in months. It was against the odds, against the evidence and the course of pure reason, but he asked himself anyway. What if Rusty was innocent?