I work in my chambers for no more than half an hour when Anna sticks her head in again.
"I think you're late." She's right. I have my birthday dinner.
"Crap," I answer. "I'm an airhead."
She has the flash drive she prepares each night with draft opinions I will review at home, and she helps me into my suit coat, settling it in on my shoulder.
"Happy birthday again, Judge," she says, and lays one finger on the middle button. "I hope whatever you wish for comes true." She gives me an utterly naked look and rises in her stocking feet to her toes. It's one of those moments so corny and obvious that it seems it could not quite happen, but her lips are set on mine, if only for a second. As ever, I do nothing to resist. I light up from root to stem but say no word, not even good-bye, as I go out the door.
CHAPTER 4
Tommy Molto, October 3, 2008
Jim Brand knocked on Tommy's door but remained on the threshold, waiting for the PA to motion him in. During Tommy's first brief term as PA in 2006, he had felt a lack of regard. After more than thirty years in this office, he had such a defined reputation as a stolid warrior, here from eight a.m. to ten p.m. each day, it seemed hard for other deputy PAs to treat him with the deference due the office's ultimate authority. As chief deputy, Brand had changed that. His respect and affection for Molto were obvious, and it was natural for him to make the kinds of small formal gestures-knocking on the door-that by now had led most of the deputies to greet Tommy as "Boss."
"Okay," says Brand. "So we got a little update on Rusty Sabich. An initial path report on the wife."
"And?"
"And it's interesting. Ready?"
That actually was a question worth asking. Was Tommy ready? Going around again with Rusty Sabich could kill him. In terms of common understanding these days, the kind that floated around the courthouse like the fluoride in the tap water from the river Kindle, the Sabich case had been a rush to judgment by Nico. Tommy was along for the ride, but not responsible for the ultimate decisions, which were inept but not made with true malice. This interpretation suited everybody. After being recalled as prosecuting attorney, Nico had moved to Florida, where he had made several gazillion dollars in the tobacco litigation. He owned an island in the Keys, to which he invited Tommy, and now Dominga, at least twice a year.
As for Tommy and Sabich, both had crawled to shore in the aftermath of a personal disaster and resumed their lives. It was actually Rusty, then acting PA, who'd given Tommy his job back, a silent acknowledgment that all that frame-up stuff was horse-hockey. When the two were together these days, as occurred frequently, they managed a strained cordiality, not only as a matter of professional necessity but perhaps because they had overcome the same cataclysm together. They were like two brothers who would never get along but were scarred and shaped by the same upbringing.
"Cause of death heart failure, as the result of arrhythmia and a possible hypertensive reaction," said Brand.
"That's interesting?"
"Well, that's what Sabich said. That she had a skippy heart and high blood pressure. He told the cops that. How does somebody just guess?"
"Come on, Jim. There was probably a family history."
"That's what he said. That her old man died that way. But maybe her aorta blew out. Maybe she had a stroke. But no-he says, boom, 'heart failure.'"
"Let me see," said Molto. He extended his hand for the report and in the process decided it was a good idea to close the door. From the threshold, he looked out beyond the anteroom, where his two secretaries worked, to the dark corridors. He had to do something about these offices; that was another thing Tommy thought each day. The PA had been housed in the dismal County Building, where the light had the quality of old shellac, throughout Tommy's three-decade career here and for at least a quarter century before that. The place was a hazard, with the wires in plastic casings running across the floors like sausages escaped from the butcher's and the rattling window units that were still the only means of air-conditioning.
After returning to his chair, he read the autopsy notes. It was right there: "Hypertensive heart failure." She had a high bp, a family with hearts as fragile as a racehorse's ankles, and had died in her sleep, probably with a fever as the result of a sudden flu. The coroner had recommended a conclusion of death by natural causes, consistent with her known medical history. Tommy just kept shaking his head.
"This woman," said Brand, "was a hundred and nine pounds and five foot three. She worked out every day. She looked half her age."
"Jimmy, I got ten bucks that says she worked out every day because nobody in her family lived past sixty-five. You can't beat the genes. What's the blood chemistry?"
"Well, they did an immunoassay. Routine tox screen."
"Anything show up?"
"A lot showed up. This lady had a medicine cabinet the size of a steamer trunk. But no positives on anything she didn't have a prescription for. Sleeping pill, which she took every night, lots of crap for manic-depression."
Molto gave his chief deputy a look. "Which crap can cause heart failure, right?"
"Not in clinical doses. I mean, not usually. It's hard to measure the levels on that stuff postmortem."
"You got a consistent medical history. And if she didn't die of natural causes-which is maybe one chance in fifty-it's because she accidentally took an overdose of her meds."
Brand rumpled up his lips. He had nothing to say, but he wasn't satisfied.
"What's with the guy sitting there for twenty-four hours?" asked Brand. A good prosecutor, like a good cop, could sometimes make a case out of one fact. Maybe Brand was right. But he had no evidence.
"We have nothing to investigate," Tommy told him. "With a guy who's going to be sitting on the state supreme court in a little more than three months and potentially voting yea or nay on every conviction this office gets. If Rusty Sabich wants to make our lives miserable, he'll have ten years to do it."
Even as he argued with his chief deputy, it was slowly coming to Tommy what was going on here. Rusty Sabich was nobody to Brand. It was who he was to Tommy that was driving this. In order to get his job back when Rusty was acting PA two decades ago, Tommy had to admit that he had violated office protocols for the handling of evidence in connection with Sabich's trial. Molto's punishment was minimal, giving up any claim for back pay over the year he had been suspended during the post-trial investigation.
But as time passed, Tommy's admission of wrongdoing had become a dead weight. More than half the judges of the Kindle County Superior Court these days were former deputy PAs who had worked with Tommy. They knew who he was-solid, experienced and predictable, if dull-and had been happy to appoint him the office's temporary leader when the elected PA, Moses Appleby, had resigned with an inoperable brain tumor only ten days after taking the oath of office. But the Democratic-Farmers-Labor Party Central Committee, where every dirty secret was always known, was unwilling to slate Tommy for this job-or even a judgeship, the position Tommy actually coveted because it offered more long-term security for a man with a young family. Voters did not understand nuance, and the entire ticket might be compromised when an election opponent unearthed Tommy's admission and started acting as if he had confessed to a felony. Maybe if he had the somber star power of somebody like Rusty, he could overcome that. But all in all he had been happy to leave that dark note in his biography largely unknown by all but a few insiders. No doubt Brand was right. Proving Sabich was actually a bad guy could rinse away the stain. Even if everybody knew everything, no one would care then if Tommy had overstepped.