Judge Yee rules for my dad, who lays it on pretty thick, just as Molto feared, making sure the jury knows they will have the last word on his innocence or guilt.
"Very well," says Stern. He coughs and grips the table to struggle to his feet. Sandy has received Judge Yee's permission to question witnesses while seated whenever he likes. In one of those can-you-believe-it consequences that medicine may not comprehend for aeons, his brand of non-small-cell lung cancer is known to cause arthritis in one knee, which has left him hobbling. Beside him, Marta, his daughter and law partner, reflexively puts her left hand with its bright manicure on her father's elbow to lend a subtle boost. I have heard about Sandy Stern's magnetism in a courtroom since I was a boy. Like a lot of things in life, it's pretty much beyond anybody's ability to explain. He is short-barely five feet six, if that-and to be honest, pretty dumpy. You would walk past Sandy Stern on the street a thousand times. But when he stands up in court, it is as if someone lit a beacon. Even though he is worn out by cancer, there is a precision to every word and movement that makes it impossible to remove your eyes.
"Now tell us if you would, Rusty, a bit about your background." Stern runs my father down his resume. Son of an immigrant. College on a scholarship. Law school while working two jobs.
"And after law school?" Stern asks.
"I was hired as a deputy prosecuting attorney in Kindle County."
"That is the office Mr. Molto now heads?"
"Correct. Mr. Molto and I started there within a couple years of one another."
"Objection," Molto says quietly. He has not looked up from the legal pad on which he is writing, but the strain shows in his chin. He sees just what my dad and Stern are up to, trying to remind the jury that my father and Tommy have a history, something they probably already know from the papers that replay the details of the first trial daily. The jurors swear every morning they have steered clear of any journalistic accounts, but according to Marta and her dad, word almost always filters into the jury room.
Judge Yee says, "Enough that subject, I think."
Still facing his pad, Tommy nods curtly in satisfaction. I tolerate Tommy Molto, with his wilting face and hangdog manner, better than I expected to. It's his chief deputy, Jim Brand, who gets me cranked. He has this bad-ass thing going most of the time, except when it's worse and he comes on as too cool for the room.
Stern takes my dad through his progress in the very office that is now prosecuting him and his eventual arrival on the bench. In his account, the first indictment and trial are never mentioned, as the judge has ordered. This is the seamless chronicle of the courtroom, where history's speed bumps are leveled.
"Are you a married man, Rusty?"
"I was. I married Barbara more than thirty-eight years ago."
"Any children?"
"My son, Nat, is right there in the first row." Stern looks back with mock curiosity, as if he had not told me exactly where to sit. He is such a subtle courtroom actor that I find myself hoping now and then that his failing health is also for show, but I know better.
Around the courthouse, people will frequently draw me aside and ask in low tones how Stern is doing, assuming that somebody who has defended my father twice on murder charges must be a closer family friend than he really is. I tell everyone pretty much the same thing. Stern exhibits the courage of a cliff diver, but as for the true state of his health, I know very little. He is private about his condition. Marta is philosophical but equally closemouthed, even though the two of us have had a nearly instantaneous bond as the lawyer children of local legal eagles. Both Sterns are fiercely professional. Our relationship right now is about my father's troubles, not theirs.
But you don't need a medical degree to see that Sandy's condition is perilous. Last year, part of the left lobe of his lung was removed surgically, which seemed at the time to be a good sign that the disease had not spread. In the last four to five months though, he has endured at least two separate rounds of chemo and radiation. My high school pal Hal Marko, who is now a surgical resident, speculated that Stern must have had some kind of recurrence and added, in that incredibly cold-blooded tone I also hear from my law school friends, meant to show they have progressed from human being to professional, that Stern's median survival time should be less than a year. I have no idea if that's so, only that the treatments have left Stern a wreck. He has a persistent cough and shortness of breath, due not to his cancer, but as a side effect of the radiation. He claims to be regaining his appetite, but he ate virtually nothing for the period leading to the trial, and the man I grew up knowing as chubby during his slimmest periods is positively thin. He has not replaced his wardrobe, and his suits hang like kaftans. Whenever he struggles to his feet, he is in visible pain. To top it all off, the last drug he took, a second-line chemo agent, left him with a bright rash all over his body, including his face. From where the jury sits, it must look as if he has had a large fuchsia tattooed on one side. The inflammation crawls up his cheek and around his eye, reaching in a single islet up above his temple and pointing cruelly toward his bald head.
Judge Yee granted one continuance, but my dad and Sandy decided not to seek another, despite the way he looks. His mind remains strong, and if he husbands his strength, he can withstand the physical rigors of trial. But the meaning for Sandy of the decision to proceed seems obvious: Now or never.
"Now, Rusty, you have been called as the first witness for the defense in this case."
"I have."
"You understand that the Constitution of the United States protects you from being forced to testify in your own trial."
"I understand that."
"You have chosen to testify nonetheless."
"I have."
"And you were here throughout the time that the prosecution witnesses gave their testimony?"
"I was."
"And you heard all of them? Mr. Harnason? Dr. Strack, the toxicologist. Dr. Gorvetich, the computer expert? All fourteen of the persons whom the prosecutor called to the stand?"
"I heard each of them."
"And so, Rusty, you understand that you are here accused of murdering your wife, Barbara Bernstein Sabich?"
"I do."
"Did you do that, Rusty? Murder Mrs. Sabich?"
"No."
"Did you have any role of any kind in causing her death?"
"No."
The sheer oddity of a supreme court justice-elect indicted for murder a second time, and by the same prosecutor, no less, has garnered press around the globe. People stand in line outside the courtroom each day to get a seat, and two rows across the way are crowded with sketch artists and reporters. The accumulated attention of the world often seems to penetrate the courtroom, where there is a high-strung air brought on by so many people recalculating with every word. My father's 'No' lingers now, seemingly held aloft by the magnitude of the declaration. With all eyes on him, Stern looks around the large rococo courtroom and rears back slightly, as if he is only now discovering something that the better informed know he has always planned.