The two read receipts that arrived today are from those e-mails that went unopened last year. At first, I take this as a kind of perverse stalking, an effort to remind me where the two of us were not all that long ago. But with another hour's thought I realize he may not even know the messages are coming to me. When you open an e-mail on which the sender's requested a receipt, a little pop-up appears, warning you that the notification will be sent. The pop-up also contains a little box to check that reads, 'Don't show this message again for this sender.' He probably chose that option long ago. By the end of the day, I decide there may be a positive spin here: Rusty is finally doing what he should have done sixteen months before and deleting all my messages. It's a sign he's moving on, that he is happy to let Nat and me be.
The next morning by ten, there are three more. Far worse, I realize that deleting the messages wouldn't trigger the receipts. The point is to show the e-mail was read. It is a disturbing, even sickening, image, of Rusty in his chambers, reliving these details. Feeling there is little choice but to have it out with him, I pick up the phone and dial his inside line. It rings through and is answered instead by his assistant, Pat.
"Anna!" she cries out when I say hello. "How are you? You don't come around enough."
After a minute of pleasantries, I tell her I have a question for the judge about one of our cases and ask to speak to him.
"Oh, he's been on the bench all morning, honey. He went up more than an hour ago. They have arguments back to back. I won't see him until half past twelve."
I have the self-possession to say to Pat that I will call Wilton, my coclerk, for the information I need, but when I put the phone down, I am too panicked and disoriented even to take my hand off the receiver. I tell myself I have gotten this wrong, that there must be another explanation. On my screen, I examine the read receipts again, but all three were sent from Rusty's account less than half an hour ago, when Pat says he was on the bench and nowhere near his PC.
And then it comes, the dreadful realization. The catastrophe that was always in the offing has happened now: It's someone else. Somebody is systematically reviewing the record of my meetings with Rusty. The hotels. The dates. For a breathless second, I fear the very worst and wonder if it's Nat. But he was himself last night, gentle and utterly adoring, and he is too guileless to keep this kind of discovery to himself. Given his nature, he would just be gone.
But my relief lasts no more than a second. Then I know the answer with an absolute certainty that turns my heart to stone. There's one person with the savvy to invade Rusty's e-mail account, and the time to be making this painstaking inspection.
She knows.
Barbara knows.
CHAPTER 20
Tommy, October 31, 2008
After their meeting with Dickerman in McGrath Hall, Tommy and Brand did not speak a word until they were in the Mercedes.
"We need his computer at home," Brand said then. "It's the only real chance we have to find the girl. I want to issue a search warrant today. And we need to interview the son pronto to see what he has to say about what was cooking between Mom and Dad."
"That's page one, Jimmy. He'll lose the election."
"So what? Just doing our jobs," said Brand.
"No, damn it," said Tommy. He stopped to gather himself. Brand had done great work here; he'd been right when Tommy was wrong. There was no reason to get angry at him for charging ahead. "I know you think this is a really bad, pathological, fucked-up guy, a serial killer who's sitting on his throne at the right hand of God, and I get it, but think. Think. You blow Rusty off the court and you're just feeding the theory of defense."
"The vengeful prosecutor crap? I told you how to deal with that."
He was referring to the DNA, testing the sperm fraction from the first trial.
"That's what we do next," said Tommy.
"I thought you don't want to get a court order."
"We don't need a court order," Tommy said.
Brand looked at the boss narrowly, then pushed the auto's start button and began easing the Mercedes into the traffic. On the street near police headquarters, six kids were being herded back to grade school after lunch by a couple of moms. Everybody was in costume. Two of the little boys were in suits and ties, wearing masks of Barack Obama.
Tommy had first thought of what he was about to explain to Brand a decade ago. In those days, he had moved back in with his mom to take care of her in the last years of her life. Her noises-the coughing from the emphysema, most often-would wake him on the cot he slept on in the dining room. Once she was settled, Tommy would think about everything that had gone wrong in his life, probably as a way to convince himself he'd be able to withstand this loss, too. He'd ponder the thousand slights and undeserved injuries he'd borne, and so he would think now and then about the Sabich trial. He knew that DNA testing would answer to everybody's satisfaction whether Rusty had been tooled or literally gotten away with murder. And he'd tempt himself with the thought of how it could be done. But in the daylight, he would warn himself off. Curiosity killed the cat. Adam, Eve, apples. Some stuff you were not meant to find out. But now he could know. Finally. He rolled out the plan again in his head one last time, then detailed it for Brand.
This state, like most states, had a law mandating the assembly of a DNA database. Genetic materials collected in any case where evidence was offered of a sexual offense were supposed to be added and profiled. Rusty had been accused only of murder, not rape, but the state's theory allowed that Carolyn might have been violated as part of the crime. The state police, without a court order or any other form of permission, could withdraw the blood standards and sperm fraction from Rusty's first trial from the police pathologist's massive refrigerator and test them tomorrow. Of course, in the real world the cops had too much trouble keeping up with the evidence being gathered today to bother going back to cases dismissed two decades ago. But the fact that the law was there and applied without time limit meant that Rusty had no legitimate expectation of privacy in the old samples. He could hoot and holler at trial if the results implicated him, but he'd get nowhere. To give them some cover, Brand could tell the evidence techs to forward all specimens from before 1988 to the state police, explaining that they wanted the oldest first to prevent further degradation.
Brand loved it. "We can do it now," he said. "Tomorrow. We can have results in a few days." He thought it through. "That's great," he said. "And if he shows up dirty, we can go for the full download, right? Search warrant for his computer? Interviews? Right? We can roll by the end of the week. We have to, right? Nobody will ever be able to say boo? That's great," said Brand. "That's great!" He threw his heavy arm around Molto and gave him a shake as he drove.
"You got it wrong, Jimmy," Tommy said quietly. "That'll be the bad news."
The chief deputy drew back. This was what Tommy had been up thinking about for several nights in the past week.
"Jimmy, we got bad news and worse news here. If," said Tommy, "if we don't match, we're screwed. Screwed. Case closed. Right?"
Brand looked at Molto without overt expression but seemed to know he was playing from behind.
"It's too thin, Jimmy. Not with the history. I just want you to understand before we go running down to the lab that it's make or break."