"Only that I was struck by a remark he made when we had dinner the week after. It was a little celebration. I believe you were invited."
Tommy remembered. After a month of working round the clock for the trial, he did not want another night away from his family. He explained now that his wife was newly pregnant at the time of the dinner. Tommy accepted Gorvetich's congratulations, before the old professor went back to his story.
"It was the end of the evening. We were out on the walk in front of the Matchbook, and we were both well in our cups, and I made a remark to Jim about how unsettling it must be to be part of a system that sometimes comes to such an unsatisfying outcome. Jim laughed and said that as time went on, he was finding more and more perverse humor in this case, seeing somebody who had contrived to commit the perfect
murder end up punished for a crime in which he had no role."
"What did that mean?" Tommy asked.
"I don't know. I asked at the time, but Jim brushed it off. I thought you might understand."
"Hardly," said Tommy.
"I've rolled it over in my mind. When Sabich pled guilty, I took it for granted he had a collaborator in tampering with his PC. It would have been an exceptional technical feat for a man who demonstrated such limited knowledge of his computer to do that himself. Remember, he hadn't even realized that his Web searches would be cached in the browser."
"Right," said Tommy.
"I've wondered if Jim had concluded that the accomplice wasn't an accomplice at all, but somebody who acted entirely on his own without any direction from Sabich."
Tommy shrugged. He had no idea what this was about. They had tried to consider every possibility the day they'd discovered that the card wasn't on the image. Half expecting the defense to accuse them of something, they had reviewed the chain of evidence carefully to be sure it was secure. Back in December when Yee ordered the PC returned, Gorvetich and Orestes Mauro, an evidence tech from the PA's office, covered the screen, the keyboard, the power button on the tower, and even the mouse in evidence tape, which they'd initialed before shrink-wrapping all the components. The day Nat Sabich testified, the shrink-wrap had been sliced off in the PA's office with the consent of the defense, but the tape seals were removed only in the courtroom in the presence of Sabich's two hotshot experts, who verified that none of them showed the word "Violated" that appeared in blue if the tape was ever disturbed.
So the only possibility was that the tampering had taken place while the machine was in George Mason's chambers. Gorvetich had looked at Mason's log and was of the opinion that no one had access to the computer long enough to make all the changes, especially the registry deletions, which he said would be time-consuming even for him. The only plausible explanation seemed to be that Sabich and some techie they were yet to discover had snuck into the building after hours. But apparently another explanation had occurred to Brand in the ensuing weeks.
"Brand was probably spitballing," said Molto.
"Perhaps so," said Gorvetich. "Or I misunderstood. We'd had quite a bit to drink."
"Probably that. I'll have to ask him."
"Or let it go," said Gorvetich.
The old man seemed woolly-headed and self-involved at all times, but there was a shrewd light in his eyes for a second. Tommy did not quite understand what he was thinking, but Milo's granddaughters had wandered to the other side of the play area and he departed quickly. That was just as well, since Tommy heard the cry he recognized as Tomaso's at the same instant. When Tom looked up, he saw that his son had ascended the ladder. The two-year-old now stood at the top, utterly terrified by what he had achieved.
CHAPTER 42
Rusty, August 4, 2009
Prison holds no fear for him.' We said that all the time decades ago when I was a deputy PA. We were usually talking about hardened crooks-con men, gangbangers, professional thieves-who committed crimes as a way of life and were undeterred by the prospect of confinement, either because they never considered the future or because a stop in the penitentiary had long been accepted as part of what passed for a career plan.
The saying circulates in my head all the time, because it is a nearly constant preoccupation to tell myself that prison is not so bad. I survived yesterday. I will survive today, then go on to tomorrow. The things you think would matter-the dread of other inmates and the fabled dangers of the shower-occupy their share of psychic space, but they count far less than what seemed to be trivial matters on the outside. You have no way to know how much you enjoy the company of other human beings or the warmth of natural daylight until you live without them. Nor can you fully comprehend the preciousness of liberty until matters of daily whim-when to get up, where to go, what to wear-are rigidly prescribed by someone else. Ironically, stupendously, the worst part of being in the joint is the most obvious-you cannot leave.
Because my safety in the general population is regarded as a high-risk proposition, I am held in what is called administrative detention, which is better known as seg. I routinely debate whether I would be better off taking my chances in genpop, which would at least allow me to work eight hours a day. The inmates here are mostly young, Latin and black gang members who were picked up on drug offenses and do not have a long record of violence. Whether any of them would care to do me harm is a matter of pure speculation. I have already heard through the COs, who are the institution's Internet, that there are two men here whose convictions I affirmed, and by pure addition and subtraction, I can figure that there are probably a few more whose fathers or grandfathers I prosecuted decades ago. Overall, I accept the view of the assistant warden, who encouraged me to volunteer for seg, that I am too famous not to be a symbol to some depressed and furious young man, a trophy fish whom he'd enjoy feeling on his hook.
So I am held in an eight-by-eight cell with cement walls, a short steel-reinforced door through which my meals are delivered, and a single bulb. There is also a six-inchby-twenty-four-inch window, which barely admits any light. In here, I am free to spend my time as I like. I read a book every day or two. Stern suggested I may be able to find a market for my memoirs when I am released, and I write a little every day, but I'll probably burn the pages as soon as I am out. The newspaper comes by mail, two days late, with the occasional articles relating to the state prisons scissored out. I have started to study Spanish-I practice with a couple of the COs willing to answer back. And, like a man of leisure at the end of the nineteenth century, I attend to my correspondence. I write a letter to Nat every day and hear often from several figures from my former life whose loyalty I value immensely, particularly George Mason and Ray Horgan and one of my neighbors. There are also a good two dozen nut-jobs, mostly female, who have written to me in the last month to proclaim their faith in my innocence and to share their own tales of injustice, usually involving a corrupt judge who presided over their divorce.
When the four prisoners who are being held in administrative detention are released together in the yard for our one hour of exercise, I have an instant impulse to embrace each of them, which does not take long to stifle. Rocky Toranto is a transvestite, HIV-positive, who would not stop turning tricks in genpop. The other two who eye me as I trot around the yard and do my jumping jacks and push-ups are criminally insane. Manuel Rodegas has a face like a bug that was crushed. He is about five feet three, and his head seems to grow straight out of his shoulders. His conversation, while occasionally lucid, veers into gibberish much of the time. Harold Kumbeela is everyone's bad dream, six feet six, three hundred pounds, who crippled one man and nearly killed another while he was housed downstairs. He is far too violent to have been assigned to the state work farm and is here only because of a paid arrangement with Homeland Security, which rents half a dozen cells for immigration detainees who are awaiting deportation, which in Harold's case cannot come too soon. Unfortunately for me, Harold has learned that I was a judge and regularly seeks my advice about his case. Telling him I know nothing about immigration law was a feint that bought me only a couple of weeks. 'Yeah, bra,' he told me a few days ago, 'but maybe, dude, you could be studying up, you know. Do a bra a favor, you know?' I have asked the COs to keep an eye on Harold, which they do anyway.