"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?
CHAPTER 28
Nat, June 22, 2009
We return as we have done each night to the fancy-schmancy offices of Stern amp; Stern. Sandy is one of those up-from-nothing guys who likes to be surrounded by the evidence of his success, and Marta, whose casualness seems like a deliberate contrast to her father, jokes behind his back that it all reminds her of an upscale steakhouse-lots of dark wood and low light through the stained-glass lamps, pleated leather furniture and crystal decanters on the conference room tables. There is also a tony quiet here compared with the atmosphere in most other law offices I've visited, as if Sandy is above routine disturbances. Here the phones blink rather than ring, and the computer keyboards are muted.
But a different silence has prevailed since we packed up to leave court. Stern is rigorous about discussing nothing within earshot of anyone who might be an unsuspected ally of Molto's or a relative of a juror's, and as result I have learned that when we are in the courthouse, elevator talk is confined to current events, preferably uncontroversial ones, like sports. But tonight we rode down without a word being spoken, not even the usual harmless drivel. Although it's only a few blocks back to the LeSueur Building, Sandy must drive these days, and he asked me to join him and my dad in his Cadillac, because he wants to discuss my testimony for the defense, which is expected to start late in the day tomorrow. Sometimes on the way out of the courthouse, Sandy will make a remark to the immense press horde that awaits the lawyers on both sides each evening, but we struggled through tonight with Sandy limping along, muttering, 'No comment.'