"I need to pee," he told Brand.
In the men's room, Rusty Sabich was already at one of the urinals. There was no privacy panel between the ice white fixtures, and Tommy fixed his eyes on the tiles in front of him. He could hear the trouble Rusty had, the slow stream and the piddling beginning. In that department, Tommy was still a youngster. The advantage somehow emboldened him.
"That was low, Rusty." He repeated Brand's line about whales.
Rusty made no answer. Molto felt Sabich's shoulders shift as he hitched himself back into his trousers before his zipper scraped on ascent. The water ran in the sink a second later. When Tommy turned, Rusty was still there, drying his hands on a brown paper towel, his slackening face set inscrutably and his fair eyes unmoving.
"It was low, Tommy. And it was unlike Sandy, frankly. But the guy is sick. I'm sorry. I had no idea he was going down that road. If he had spoken to me first, I would have said no. I swear."
The apology, the acknowledgment that Stern was out of line, actually made Tommy feel worse. What bothered him the most was what he was going to see in the faces of his deputies and the judges. He would need to issue a statement as soon as the trial was over, probably make the file public. And say, I broke the rules, it was a small infraction, but I paid the price, and I've never forgotten the lesson. Sabich watched him wrestle through all of that. Trials are like this, Tommy thought. You open arteries on both sides. Physicians said it was better to be the doctor than the patient, and it was better to be the prosecutor than the defendant. But that didn't mean nobody else got hurt. He should have learned his lesson the first time he tangled with this guy. Going after Rusty meant trying to crawl through barbed wire.
"Tommy," said Rusty, "did you ever consider the possibility I'm not as bad a guy as you think, and you're not as bad a guy as I think?"
"That just amounts to a way of saying you're a sweetheart."
"I'm not a sweetheart. But I'm not a murderer. Barbara killed herself, Tommy."
"So you say. Did Carolyn rape and strangle herself, too?"
"I didn't do that, either. You'll have to take it up with the guy who did."
"It's just a pity, Rusty, the way these women keep dying around you."
"I'm not a killer, Tommy. You know that. In your heart of hearts you know that."
Tommy started to dry his own hands. "So what are you, Rusty?"
Sabich snorted a little, laughing for just a second at his own expense. "I'm a fool, Tommy. I've made a lot of mistakes, and it will be a long time before I can tell you which of them was the worst. Vanity. Lust. Pride to think I could change what couldn't be changed. I'm not telling you I didn't go looking for this. But she killed herself."
"And framed you for it?"
He shrugged. "I haven't figured that out yet. Maybe. Probably not."
"So what should I do, Rusty. Send the jury a thank-you note and tell them to go home?"
Sabich eyed Tommy a second. "Us girls?" he asked.
"Whatever."
Rusty went back to look under the stalls to be sure there were no unseen occupants, then returned to Molto.
"How about we end the whole thing? You and I both know there is absolutely no way to tell where this bastard is going. It's a runaway train now. I'll plead to obstruction for messing with the computer. Other charges are dismissed."
Sabich was in his unflinching hard-guy mode. But he wasn't kidding. Tommy's heart was skipping around in response.
"You walk on murder?"
"Which I didn't commit. Take what you can get, Tommy."
"How much time?"
"A year."
"Two," said Tommy. He negotiated out of instinct.
Sabich shrugged again. "Two."
"I'll talk to Brand."
Tommy stared at Sabich another second, trying to figure out what had just happened, but he stopped at the door. It was an odd moment, yet they ended up shaking hands.
"You ready?" Tommy asked when he sat next to Brand in the same chair in the back of the jury box. The courtroom was not quite empty yet. Stern's people were out in the hall, but the court personnel were still walking in and out. In a minuscule whisper, he told Brand what Sabich had offered. Jim just stared, his dark eyes hard as flints.
"Say what?"
Tommy repeated the deal.
"He can't do that," said Brand.
"He can if we let him."
Brand was almost never flustered. He lost track of himself in anger. But he rarely seemed stuck for words, yet he could not get hold of this one.
"He walks on murder?"
"He just told me something that's completely true. This trial is a runaway. Nobody knows what happens next."
"He walks on two murders?"
"He's got a good chance of doing that anyway. Better, frankly, than we have of convicting him of anything else."
"You're not going to do this, Boss. You can't. The guy's a double fucking murderer."
"Let's go across the street. The coast is probably clear by now."
It was a hot day outside. The sun was strong this week, and as usual in this part of the country, it was turning to summer abruptly, as if somebody had thrown a switch. It had been a bad spring, with unprecedented amounts of rain. Great thing about global warming. You didn't know where you were living from one day to the next. For a month, Kindle County had been the Amazon.
When they got to the office, they took five minutes for messages. Tommy must have had ten calls from reporters. He would need to spend some time with Jan DeGrazia, the press deputy, later this afternoon, just to hear her advice. Finally, he went next door to Brand's smaller office.
They sat on either side of the room. There was a football, signed by some ancient star, which was regarded as a permanent part of the chief deputy's furnishings. It had been here as long as Tommy could recall, going back to John White, who had been chief deputy when he-and Rusty-had arrived as new prosecutors. Very often the ball was tossed around during discussions. Brand whose hands fit the thing as if they were part of the cover, was usually the first to go for it, and even if no one else was in the mood to play, he would spin it in a perfect spiral toward the ceiling and grab it in descent without ever moving. Seeing it on Brand's desk, Tommy flipped it softly at Jim as Molto sat down. For the only time he could remember, Brand dropped it. He swore when he picked it up.
"You know this only makes sense one way," Brand said. "Rusty pleading?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean he'd only plead to obstruction if he killed his wife."
"What if he didn't kill his wife, but messed with the computer?"
"He only messed with the computer if he killed her," Brand answered.
That was the traditional logic of the law. The law said that if a man ran away or covered up or lied, it proved he was guilty. But to Tom, that never made sense. Why should somebody falsely accused follow the rules? Why wouldn't somebody who saw the legal machinery clank and grind and screw itself stupid say, "I'm not trusting this broken contraption"? Lying to dispel a false accusation was probably better justified than lying in the face of a truthful one. That was how Tommy saw it. And always had.
When he explained his view to Jim, Brand actually seemed to consider it. It was rare to see Brand as pensive as he was now. But there was a lot at stake, and neither one of them had ever anticipated being at this moment.
Brand picked up the football from between his feet and tossed it to himself a couple of times. He was coming to something. Tommy could tell.
"I think we should take the deal," he said.
Tommy didn't answer. He was a little frightened when Brand said it, even though he knew he was right.
"I think we should take the deal," Brand repeated. "And I'll tell you why."
"Why?"
"Because you deserve it."
"I do?"
"You do. Sandy took a great big dump on your head today. And it's only a preview. If Rusty walks on this case, you're going to hear a boatload of the same crap about what you admitted back in the day, so they can explain away the DNA in the first case. They'll say, 'That's only because Molto screwed with the evidence back then.'"