Brand went through it with Harnason a few more times, trying to get the conversation in sequence, pressing Harnason to be more precise. Then the two prosecutors departed, telling Tooley they'd evaluate and be back in touch. They were careful to say nothing else to each other until they were a block from the jail. It was a strange neighborhood here, the buildings marked by gang signs and the bangers themselves often lingering near the jail, as if it gave them some kind of peace of mind to be near their homeboys inside. The toughs on the street might enjoy rousting the PA if they recognized him, and Brand and Tommy walked quickly back to the parking structure beside the County Building. As they passed, there was a heavyset woman at a bus stop, listening to a little boom box and practicing her Jazzercise moves, right out there in the open at eleven at night, as if she were at home naked in front of the mirror.
"Okay," said Brand, "you know what I'm thinking."
"I know what you're thinking."
"I'm thinking," said Brand, "that's why the chief judge ponied up the info on the appeal. Because he's got a hot thing on the side and he's already considering maybe cooling the old lady. Because a candidate for the supreme court doesn't want an ugly divorce in the middle of the campaign, especially not if it involves putting his hotdog in the wrong bun. And he wants to do a little field research, figure out if he can actually do the deed."
Tommy wagged his head back and forth. It sounded like Law amp; Order. A little too tidy.
"It'd be a better theory, Jimmy, if we had any evidence that Barbara died from some kind of overdose, instead of heart failure."
"Maybe we just haven't found it yet," said Brand.
Tommy gave Jim a look. That was the biggest mistake a prosecutor could make, hoping for proof that didn't exist. Cops and witnesses could hear that the wrong way and make your dreams come true. Tommy could see their breath in the evening air. He wasn't ready for fall yet and had forgotten a topcoat. But it wasn't just the cold that bothered him. He was still reeling from the part where Harnason said Rusty told him he didn't kill Carolyn. Tommy admittedly had his own stake, but it was a problem for Brand's theory. Either Sabich was a killer or he wasn't. It was both women or none; that was what experience would tell you.
"The part about the first murder still throws me," Tommy said.
"Sabich was lying," answered Brand. "Just because he got dirty with the guy on one thing doesn't mean he'd give himself up as a killer. Besides, there's a way to deal with that and be sure."
He was talking again about the DNA.
"Not yet," Tommy said. It was still too soon. "So remind me again. How was it this weirdo almost got away with it?"
"Which weirdo, Boss? Our cup runneth over."
"Harnason. He poisoned the boyfriend with arsenic, right?"
"Right. But it's not a common poison these days. It's hard to get, and it doesn't show up on a routine tox screen."
Tommy stopped walking. Brand had gone only one more step.
"You think?" Brand asked.
"Sabich was one of the judges on the case, right? He knows all of this. About what is and isn't on a routine tox screen?"
"Definitely part of the record."
Careful, Tommy told himself. Careful. This was the Temple of Doom. He knew it, and he was still blundering right down the path.
"Full mass spectrometer on Barbara's blood?" asked Brand.
"Talk to the toxicologist."
"Full mass," said Brand. "We have to do that. We have to. Strange behavior after the death. A little thing on the side. Questions about poisoning somebody. We're just doing our job, Boss. We have to do that."
It sounded right. But Tommy was still unsettled by all of it, the jail, and Harnason, who was just one of those weird guys, and the troubling idea that he was actually hard on Sabich's trail.
He and Jim talked about how to get the full mass quietly, then parted for the night. Tommy walked down the third floor of the parking structure toward his car. The garage at this hour was a dangerous place, worse than the streets. One of the judges had been mugged here several years ago, but there was still no security. The shadows were deep where the vehicles were parked during the daytime, and Tommy stayed in the center of the floor. But the Halloween atmosphere set off something in him, an idea that floated up and in which he could feel for the first time the thrill as well as the peril.
What if, Tommy suddenly thought. What if Rusty really did it?
II.
CHAPTER 11
Rusty, September 2, 2008
The inside line in my chambers rings, and when I hear her voice, just the first word, it is nearly enough to bring me to my knees. It has been a good six months since the last time I saw her, when she came by to have lunch with my assistant, and well more than a year since we brought things to a close.
"Oh," she says. "I didn't really expect you. I thought you'd be out campaigning."
"Are you disappointed?" I ask. She laughs as she always does, in full grasp of life's delights.
"It's Anna," she says.
"I know," I say. I'll always know, but there is no point in making this any harder for either of us.
"I need to see you. Today, if possible."
"Something important?"
"To me? Yes."
"Are you okay?"
"I think so."
"Sounds a little mysterious."
"This will be better in person."
"Where do you want to meet?"
"I don't know. Someplace quiet. The bar at the Dulcimer? City View? Whatever they call it."
I replace the phone with the fragments of the conversation bouncing around inside me. Anna has never really ended for me. The ache. The longing. A year ago July, not long after I had visited Sandy Stern, I became convinced for several days that I was ready to forsake everything and beg Anna to take me back. I visited Dana Mann, an old friend, who is the king of high-end divorce in this town. I didn't intend to tell him about Anna, just that I was thinking about bringing my marriage to an end and had some questions about how quietly I could do that, assuming Barbara agreed. But Dana's strength as a lawyer is for the weak joints in the masonry, and with five or so questions he had the outline of the entire story.
'I don't think you came here for political advice,' he said. 'But if you want this to stay off the front pages during the campaign, you'd be better advised to do nothing.'
'I've been unhappy for a long time. Until I got involved with this woman, I didn't realize quite how desperate I am. But now I'm not sure if I can do nothing. I was better off before, just for that reason.'
' "The precise character of despair is that it does not realize it is despair," ' said Dana.
'Who is that?'
'Kierkegaard.' Dana laughed off my look of total disbelief. I've known Dana since law school, and he wasn't quoting philosophers then. 'I represented a professor at the U last year who taught me that. Same kind of situation.'
'What did he do?'
'He left. She was his grad student.'
"How badly did it cost him?'
'It cost him. The U rapped his knuckles pretty hard. He'd gotten her grants. He had to take a year's leave without pay.'
'Is he happy anyway?'
'So far. I think so. They just had a baby.'
'Our age?' I was incredulous. Somehow, Dana's story was enough to prove it was all impossible. I could never try to cheat nature that way. Or brook the thought of what a divorce could do to Barbara, how savagely she might suffer. I told Dana before I left that I did not expect to come back.
Yet there are still nights, while Barbara sleeps, when I am consumed by pining and regret. I never had the heart to delete from my home computer the parade of e-mails Anna sent me back then. Most were one-line messages about where we would meet next. Instead, I've gathered them all into a subfolder I titled Court Affairs, which once every month or so, I open in the still house like a treasure chest. I do not read the actual messages. That would be too painful, and the contents were too brief to mean much. Instead, I simply study her name echoing down the page, the dates, the headings. 'Today,' most were called, or 'Tomorrow.' I linger with memory and wish for a different life.