Scott Turow - The Burden of Proof

Never park, Remo told him, where it was easy to cut you off. Stern absorbed these lessons in silence, noting that Remo accepted none of his reassurances about the safety of the job.

They walked to the rear of the house, Remo appreciatively examining the grounds. A number of large blue spruce rose throughout the sloping lawn, and the air was freshened somehow by the clear water of the lake.

Behind the patio, the gardeners this year had laid out a bright patch of small summer flowers, most so exotic that Stern did not know their names. He looked down to the lake. The boathouse was below and, beside it, a waterfront cottage that Dixon had winterized and filled with athletic equipment. Last year, he had also added a lap pool, and the long finger of still, blue water glimmered. Beside a large screened porch, Remo now looked the great house up and down. Following Remo's eye, Stern saw that it was the power and phone lines, not the architecture, Remo was assessing. He questioned Stern again about the burglar alarm. Remo had a hand on the metal junction box, and he reached to his back pocket for a tool. He worked there awhile, then waved a number of wires that he had pulled free.

"Is that all?" asked Stern;across the yard.

"That's it."

Remo entered through the screen porch. He had a slap hammer with him, inserted like the other tools in various pockets and covered by the tails of a long velour shirt. For his day on Lake Fowler, Remo had worn blue jeans and cowboy boots. Stern thought he looked very much like a burglar, thickset, with bulky arms and bowed legs.

Remo had driven the lock through the barrel of the doorknob by the time Stern had followed him onto the porch. The back door was secured by a chain. Remo asked if he should pull it free or break the glass.

Whichever was more authentic, Stern answered. It was important that it look like a burglary, not for Dixon's sake-he would know what had happened-but for everyone else's. After the break-in was discovered, the police would comb the house but find nothing missing. Only Dixon, eventually, would recognize what was gone and he was in no position to file a police report admitting that the safe had ever been here. Stern regretted upsetting his sister-he might let her know somehow that he was involved-but Dixon's consternation he would savor. Done in on his own turf. Dixon would be livid, unhinged with rage. Standing in the shade of the porch, Stern actually chuckled.

Remo, preoccupied, raised one heavy boot, bracing himself against the wall of the porch, and gave the door a tremendous kick. It flew open with an explosion of plaster dust and the breaking of glass. "Shit," said Remo. The back window had shattered from the impact as the door sprang. back. The first plan, thought Stern in spite of himself gone awry.

Like much of the house, the hallways were stone; the taps on Remo's heels resounded. He looked about freely as Stern showed him to the staircase. The home had been built in the 1870s, with period elegance-twelve-foot ceilings and tiered moldings. In the dining room a circular mosaic of Venetian tiles was laid in the stone floor. The stillness of the unoccupied house set a shiver in the bottom of Stern's, spine. He thought about using the toilet, but he wanted to get in and out quickly. This was a bad idea, he thought suddenly. Terrible.

Something was sure to go wrong.

Remo leaned into a front parlor to admire the French antiques andl the pictures on the walls, English watercolors mounted in heavy frames.

"Beautiful, beautiful," said Remo. The wealth of the house, perfectly composed here in its unoccupied state, impressed even Stern.

Upstairs, they moved into the enormous master suite. Dixon years ago had combined three or four rooms to get what he wanted, a bedroom area on the palatiaI scale of Beverly Hills. There were two baths, his and hers. Dixon's, through which they walked, a cavern of travertine, held a Jacuzzi the size of a small swimming pool, and a one-bay wooden sauna attached to the shower. The bedroom itself was not particularly Iarge, but it was lesttoned with various gizmos-intercoms, a telescope, an old market ticker, a large projection TV which pivoted on a remote control over the bed. A deck out the French doors provided a commanding view of the lake. On the side of the bed where Dixon slept, the antique night table was stacked with busineSS magazines and a number of thrillers. An ashtray held the butts Of three cigarettes. Stern felt oddly thrilled by the chance to spy.

"Here," Remo called. He had entered the walk-in closet on Dixon's side of the room and cleared away his suits.

"That it?"

The safe was right there, dull gray, the color of seawater under clouds, turned on its back, so that the silver numerical dial was face up. A set of free weights was beside it, the plates haphazardly stacked; a bar, with three dishes on each side; had been rolled to the wall..

"Just so," said Stern.

"Getback," said Remo. Stern moved into the room. "Oh, my fucking God." Remo swung the safe out the door and set it down promptly. 'That's a fuckin ton." to mb his back. "We He stood up straight shotdrift brOught help."

Both men stared at the safe.

"Thing's open," said Remo. With the safe set on its bottom again, its small door indeed hung open a dark fin gerbreadth.

Dixon, evidently, had checked the contents, perhaps to be certain that Stern had left them undisturbed.

Or could it be that whatever the government was seeking had been removed? With this thought, that the safe had been emptied, Stern knelt immediately and pulled the door wider.

The light was poor, but he could see that there was a wad of papers inside, folded, doubled and tripled over.

There, on his hands and knees, even before he made out the sound, Stern could feel the vibration of the garage door opening.

"Oh, my LOrd." He rose awkwardly and ran a few steps to the doorway to listen. He faced Remo. "Someone is here." Outside, he had heard the gravel crunching, but by the time he reached the bedroom window he could see only the rear fender of a Mercedes as it pulled into the farthest bay of the four-car garage.

"Oh, for Godsake," said Stern. He had not fully imagined how humiliating this was going to be. It.was a shocking breach of decorum-inexcusable, inexplicable-breaking into someone's home.

"Hide," said Stern.

"Hide?" asked Remo. "What for?" An eyebrow low- ered. "You mean this ain' really your sister's?"

"Of course it is. But I prefer not to be apprehended in this silly exercise."

"I been caught," said Remo. "Lots. I don't never hide. Guys get shot like that. Just siddown. Be quiet. Maybe they ain't comin upstairs."

Following his own advice, Remo found one of the eighteenth-century French chairs beside Silvia's writing desk. He crossed his legs and smiled patiently at Stern. He reached to his pocket for a cigarette, then thought better of that.

Remo was right, Stern thought. His own reactions were juvenile.

Particularly if it was the houseman or the driver, there would be real danger in some effort to avoid him. But Stern's skin still' crawled.

Dixon would never let him live this down. He would ridicule, threaten-whatever advantage he could wring from having caught Stern in fiagrante burglary would be utilized repeatedly. Stern crept into the carpeted corridor, stepping forward with breathtaking precision, like a pantomime character. In some unconscious japcry of this task, he had dressed all in black, in slacks and a cotton golf shirt, and he hung back now in the shadows.

He could hear the steps rapping out in the stone hallways downstairs, an even slapping rather than the sharp clack of a woman's high heels. Would Dixon be violent? His temper with Stern was ordinarily restrained, but this was a much different setting. If someone popped out of the shadows in Stern's home, what would his reaction be? Probably to run.