Scott Turow - The Burden of Proof

He slept again that night in the bed he had shared with Clara-solid dreamless sleep, if brief. He was up by six and, reverting to old habits, was at his desk by seven. He went through piles of mail that had gone unread foi weeks.

He felt calm at the core, purposeful. But in the office something was amiss. It took him at least an hour to notice.

The safe was gone.

"'lnHIS isn't funny," Marta said whe, n he reached her I 'in New York on Friday. "You ve got to get it /back. I don't know how much of this is privileged, .1. but even if you told the whole story, no one will ever believe he just took the thing without your help. You're going to end up in jail."

Stern, at the end of the line, made a grave sound. Marta's analysis was much the same as his.

"This scares me," she said. "I think you should get a real lawyer."

"You are a real lawyer," said Stern.

"I mean someone who knows what they're doing. With experience."

What kind of experience might that be? asked Stern. There were no defense attorneys expert, so far as he knew, in explaining the disappearance of critical evidence.

"Tell him he's a big fucking asshole," offered Marta near the end of the call.

"If I can get him on the phone," answered Stern. Dixon avoided Stern until Monday, but when he came on the line, after Stern had made repeated demands of Elise, he was as innocent as a coquette. "I'd file an insurance claim," Dixon suggested. "Notify the cops. There's important stuff in there." With Stern broiling in silence, Stern's brotherin-law pressed on with this shameless routine. "You're not blaming me, are you?"

Stern spoke into the telephone in a mood of absolute violence.

"Dixon, if you insist on convicting yourself with ludiCrous antics, so be it. But it is my livelihood and my reputation at stake. The safe must be returned promptly." He pounded down the phone.

The next morning, he came to the office hopeful. But the safe was not there. The Berber carpet where it had rested for weeks was now permag. ently dimpled with the impress of the four heavy feet.

At moments during the week, he actually indulged the thought that Dixon might not be involved. He had been in New York late that night, Dixon insisted. He had gone to his meeting. How could he have swiped a safe?

What about the maintenance people, he asked, the late-night cleaneruppers? They all had keys. Maybe one of them had noticed the safe after it was moved and decided to carry the thing off, hoping it contained real valuables. The notion, although preposterous, was urged by Dixon relentlessly.

Trying to resolve every last doubt, Stern, despite his warnings to himself, offhandedly mentioned the safe to Silvia, in the midst of their daily conversation on Wednesday.

"Oh, that," she said with sudden exasperation. "You would never believe what went on here." She proceeded to describe a scene last week involving Dixon and Rory, theft driver.

Silvia, recovering from jet lag, had apparently been roused from a sound sleep by the two figures who stood at the closet arguing. The driver, with a heavy German accent, had spoken to Dixon severely, warning him that he was out of breath and should leave the lifting to him, while Silvia sat up in bed, clutching the sheet to her chest, addressing both men, who, she said, ignored her. Dixon was swearing, fuming, carrying on in a violent temper about Stern. He had gone off to the airport to rent a private jet. "Sender, whatever is going on between you two?" Stern, who always had an easy time putting Silvia off, did so again. A business disagreement, he told her. Upon reflection, he said it would be best if she made no mention to Dixon of his call. His sister hung on the line, troubled and confounded, caught between the North Pole and the South, the two men who dominated her life. Resting the phone, Stern again regretted havingacted impulsively. For one thing, he recognized only now that his conversation with his sister was probably not privileged. He sat scolding himself, while he contemplated the law's obliviousness to family affection. In the worst case, Stern would face ugly choices when he was called before the grand jury: implicating Dixon and abusing Silvia's confidence or, on the other hand, disregarding the oath.

What a trial Dixon could have, Stern thought suddenly.

First, his daughter's husband would incriminate Dixon; then the government would call Stern himself. Under the compulsion of a court order to respond, he would describe Dixon's ape-walk with the safe and its disappearance shortly after. Then, for the coup de grace, the prosecutors would try to find an exception to the marital privilege in order to force Silvia to testify about the safe, too. How Stan Sennett would enjoy it. The entire Stern family versus Dixon Hart-nell. Looking down at the phone, Stern shuddered. It would breach the faith of a lifetime to testify against a eliera, any client, let alone Dixon, whatever he was.

Stern had come of age in the state courts. There in the dim hallways lit with schoolhouse fixtures, with the old wainscoring beating the intaglio of hundreds of teenagers' inirials, with the crotchety political retainers, who displayed an almost pathetic craving for any form of gratuity, he felt at ease. That was a scene of royal characters: Zeb Mayal, the bail bondsman and ward committeeman who, late into the 1960s, still sat in open view at a desk in one branch courtroom issuing instructions to everyone present, including many of the judges called to preside; Wally McTavish, the deputy p.a. who would crossexamine the defendants in death-penalty cases by sneaking close to them and whispering, "Bzzz" and of course the rogues, the thieves-Louie De Vivo, for one, who planted a time bomb in his own car in an effort to distract the judge at his sentencing. Oh God, he loved them, loved them. A staid man, a man of little courage when it came to his own behavior, Stern felt an aesthete's appreciation for the knavishness, the guile, the selfish cleverness of so many of these people who made it possible to embrace human misbehavior for its own miserable creativity.

The federal courts, whi6h were now in a fashion his home, were a more solemn place. This was the foram preferred by the lawyers with fancy law school degrees and prominent clients, and admittedly, it was a more ideal place to practice law. The judges had the time and the inclination to consider the briefs filed before them. Here, unlike the state courts, it was a rarity for lawyers to engage in fistfights in the halls. The clerks and marshals were genial and, in proud contradistinction to their colleagues in the county courthouse, incorruptible. But Stern never left behind the feeling that he was an intruder. He had won his place of prominence across town, watching his backside, avoiding, whenever possible, the questionable dealings in the corridors, proving over time that skill and cleverness could prevail, even in that brass-knuckles arena, and he still felt that he belonged there, where the real lawyers of his definition were-in the Kindle County Courthouse, with its grimy corridors. and pathetic rococo columns.

These thoughts of one more fugitive border crossed came to Stern in the idle moments before the commencement of the afternoon session in Moira Winchell's courtroom. Remo Cavarelli, cowed and silent, sat beside Stern, biting anxiously at his sloppy mustache and upper lip, Notwithstanding Remo's agitation, the indulgent somnolescent air of the early afternoon had fallen over the courtroom. Judge Win-cheil, like her colleagues, allowed an hour and a half for lunch-time enough for wine with the meal, a screw on the sneak, a run for the athletic. Then, without warning, a door flew open and Judge Winchell stalked from her chambers and assumed the bench, as Stern and Appleton and Remo and the few elderly spectators came to their feet.