Scott Turow: The Burden of Proof

He was large and broad, and like a farmer or someone who worked outdoors, he appeared to have maintained most of the physical strength of youth. He wore a light brown suit, a rumpled, synthetic garment, and a rayon shirt that hung loosely; when he turned around for a second, Stern could see an edge of shirttail trailing out beneath his jacket. He had a large rosy face and very little hair, a few thick gray clumps drawn across his scalp.

He dropped his chin toward Stern in a knowing fashion.

"Sandy," he said.

"Lieutenant," Stern answered. He had no memory of this man, except having seen him before. Some case. Some time. He was not thinking well at the moment.

"When you get a chance," the lieutenant said. Some confusion rose up between Stern and his son..

"You talk to him. I'll call," said Peter. "You know, Marta and Kate.

It's better from me."

With a sudden lucid turn, the kind of epiphanal instant he might have expected at a time of high distress, Stern recognized a traditional family drama taking place. As his children had marched toward adulthood, Peter had assumed a peculiar leadership in the family-he was the one to whom his sisters and mother often turned. He had forged intensive, secret bonds with each of them-Stern did not know how, because the same alliances were never formed with him.

This terrible duty, Stern realized, should be has, but the paths of weakness were well worn.

"Please say I shall speak to them soon."

"Sure." A certain reflective light had come over Peter; he leaned against the wall for an instant, absorbing it all, worn out by his own high emotions. "Life," he observed, "is full of surprises."

In Stern's den, the lieutenant was receiving a report from his officers.

Nogalski had come strolling up as Stern emerged from the hallway. The lieutenant wanted to know what the policemen had been doing. Nogalski spoke. The others knew they had no place to answer.

"I was asking a few questions, Lieutenant."

"Think you've asked enough?" Nogalski took a beat on that.

They did not get along, the detective and the lieutenant-you could see that. "Maybe you could lend a hand outside.

There's a real bunch of gawkers."

When the other officers were gone, the lieutenant gestured for Stern. He knocked at the door with the back of his hand so that it closed part way.

"Well, you got.a shitpot of troubles here, don't you, Sandy? I'm sorry to see you again, under the circumstances." The lieutenant's name was Radczyk, Stern remembered suddenly. Ray, he thought. "You holdin' up?" he asked.

"For the time being. My son is having some difficulty, The prospect of an autopsy for some reason upsets him." The cop, shifting around the room, seemed to shrug. "We find a note someplace, we could do without it, I guess. I could probably fix it up with Russell's office." He was referring to the coroner. "They can always measure the C.O. in the blood." The old policeman looked at Stern directly then, aware probably that he was being too graphic. "I owe, you know," he said.

Stern nodded. He had no idea what Radczyk was talking about.

The policeman sat down.

"The fellas go over all the usual with you?" He nodded again. Whatever that was. "They were very thorough," said Stern. The lieutenant understood at once.

"Nogalski's okay. He pushes, he's okay. Rough around the edges." The lieutenant looked out the door. He was the type someone must have called a big oaf when he was younger, Before he had a badge and a gun.

"It's a tough thing. I feel terrible for you. Just come home and found her, right?"

The lieutenant was doing it all again. He was just much better at it than Nogalski.

"She sick?" the lieutenant asked.

"Her health was excellent. The usual middle-age complaints.

One of her knees was quite arthritic. She could not garden as much as she liked. Nothing else." From the study window, Stern could see the neighbors parting to let the ambulance pass. It rolled slowly through the crowd. The beacon, Stern noticed, was not turning. No point to that. He watched until the vehicle carrying Clara had disappeared in the fullness of the apple tree, just coming to leaf, at the far corner of the lot, then he brought himself back to the conversation. The left knee, Stern thought.

"You don't know of any reason?"

"Lieutenant, it should be evident that I failed to observe something I should have." He expected to get through this, but he did not. His voice quaked and he closed his eyes.

The thought of actually breaking down before this policeman revolted him, but something in him was bleeding away. He was going to say that he had much to regret right now. But he was sure he could not muster that with any dignity. He said, "I am sorry, I cannot help you."

Radczyk was studying him, trying to decide, in all likelihood, if Stern was telling the truth.

A policeman leaned into the room through the half-open door.

"Lieutenant, Nogalski asked me to tell you they found something. Up in the bedroom. He didn't want to touch it till you seen it."

"What is that?" asked Stern.

The cop looked at Stern, unsure if he should answer. "The note," the officer said at last.

It was them on Stern's highboy, jotted on. a single sheet of her stationery, laid out beside a pile of handkerchiefs which the housekeeper had ironed. Like the grocery list or a reminder to get the cleaning. Unassuming. Harmless. Stern picked up the sheet, overcome by this evidence of her' presence. The lieutenant stood at his shoulder. But them was very little to see. Just one line. No date. No salutation. Only four words.

"Can you forgive me?"

ON the dark early morning the day of the funeral, a dream seized Stern from sleep. He was wandering in a large house.

Clara was there, but she was in a Closet and 8, would not come out. She clung shyly to one Of the hanging garments, a woman in her riffles whose knees knocked in a pose of childish bashfulness. His mother called him, and his older brother, Jacobo, voices from other rooms. When he moved to answer them, Clara told him they were dead, and his body rushed with panic.

From the bed, he contemplated the illuminated digits on the clock radio. 4:58. He would not sleep again, too frightened by the thronging images of his dream. There had been such a peculiar look on Clara's face when she told him Jacobo was dead, such a sly, calculating gleam."

About him the house, fully occupied, seemed to have taken on an inert, slumbering weight. His older daughter, Marta-twenty-eight, a Legal Aid lawyer in New York-had flown back the first night and slept now down the hall, in the room which had been hers as a child. His younger daughter, Kate, and her husband, John, 'who lived in a distant suburb, had also spent the night, rather than fight the unpredictable morning traffic over the river bridges. Silvia, Stern's sister, was in the guest room, come from her country house to minister to her brother and to organize the house of grief. Only the two men, Peter and, of course, Dixon-forever the lone wolf were missing.

Last night, the task of mourning in its grimmest ceremonial aspects had begun. The formal period of visitation' would follow the funeral, but Stern, always ambivalent about religious formalities, had opened the house to various heartsore friends who seemed to need to comfort him-neighbors, two young lawyers from Stern's office, his circle from the courthouse and the synagogue; Clara was an only child, but two separate pairs of her cousins had arrived from Cleveland. Stern received them all with as much grace as he could manage. At these times, one responded according to the most deeply trained impulses. To Stern's mother, gone for decades but still in his dreams, matters of social form had been sacred.

But after the house had emptied and the family had trailed off to sleep, Stern had closed himself up in the bathroom off the bedroom he had shared with Clara, racked for the second time that evening by a wrenching, breathless bout of tears. He sat on the toilet, from which the filled skirting that Clara had placed there decades before still hung, with a towel forced to his mouth, howling actually, uncontrolled, hoping no one would hear him. 'What did I do?" he asked repeatedly in a tiny stillborn voice as a rising storm of grief blew through him. Oh, Clara, Clara, what did I do?