Scott Turow - Presumed innocent

That is the problem. Both Lip and I recognize it will be difficult to find Noel. There were probably four hundred of these cases that summer, and we don't even know his name. If Carolyn made much progress, the file does not seem to show it. The jacket date indicates she got the case about five months before her murder. Her notes reflect little investigation. "Noel" is written in an upper corner and underlined countless times. A little farther down the page she has written "Leon." The significance of this eluded me at first; then I realized that she had assumed that, like many aliases, the name chosen by the letter writer was the product of some meaningful association. Maybe the name was a rebus. Carolyn was going to suppose that she was looking for somebody named Leon. Finally, she has another name, "Kenneally," at the foot of the page, and his assignment. This is Lionel Kenneally, a good copper, now a commander. We worked the Night Saints cases together. He runs the watch in the 32nd Police District, whose cases are heard in the North Branch.

"I still don't understand why I never heard about this case," I tell Lip.

I can't imagine a procedural reason for not informing me-or for the case to have ended up in the hands of Carolyn, who did not work in our public corruption unit. I have spent more than a few moments with that puzzle, full as it is with sorrowful implications about my fading romance with Raymond Horgan, and his with me.

Lip shrugs. "What's Horgan tell you?"

"I haven't been able to corner him. It's twelve days to the election. They're on a twenty-four hour operation now."

"How about Kenneally. What'd he say?"

"He's been on leave."

"Well, you better talk to him. He ain't tellin shit to me. We ain't in each other's fan clubs."

The police department is full of people with whom Lipranzer does not get along, but I would have guessed Lip would take to Kenneally. He likes good cops. But there is something between them. He's hinted at it before. Lip starts to leave, then steps back in the office. I am already headed out to see Eugenia, but Lip takes me by the elbow to detain me. He closed the door I just opened.

"One thing," he says. He looks right at me. "We got her MUDs back."

"And?"

"Nothin great. Only we wanted to get MUDs on any number she called more than three times in the last six months."

"Yeah?"

"I noticed as I'm goin' through there, one of the numbers that comes up that way is yours."

"Here?" I ask.

An especially narrow look emerges from Lip's narrow, Slavic face.

"Home," he says. "Last October. Thereabouts."

I am about to tell him this could not possibly be right. Carolyn never tried to reach me at home. Then I realize what it is. I made those calls from Carolyn's place. Lying to my wife. Late again, kid. This trial's gonna be a bitch. I'll catch dinner down here.

Lip watches me calculate. His eyes are flat and gray.

"I'd just as soon you let it go," I say at last. "If Barbara sees a subpoena notice from the phone company, she'll blow a gut. Under the circumstances. If you don't mind, Lip, I'd appreciate it."

He nods, but I can see that it is still not right with him. If nothing else, we have always depended on each other to be above certain base kinds of stupidity, and Dan Lipranzer would be unfaithful to that compact if he did not take one more moment to cast his gray eyes on me harshly, so that I know I've let him down.

"In the end," I told Robinson, "we had to put Wendell McGaffen on the witness stand." His testimony was the only effective response to his father, and so we called the boy in rebuttal. Carolyn was splendid. She wore a dark blue suit and a beige blouse with a huge satin bow, and she stood beside Wendell, whose feet did not reach the floor from the hard oak chair in the witness box. You could not hear a thing in the courtroom.

And then what did your mother do, Wendell?

He asked for water.

When your mother took you in the basement, Wendell, what did she do?

It was bad, he said.

Was it this? Carolyn went to the vise, which had sat throughout, like an omen, at the edge of the prosecution table, grease-smeared and black, thicker in all its parts than any of Wendell's limbs.

Uh huh.

Did she hurt you?

Uh huh.

And did you cry?

Uh huh. Wendell drank some more water and then added, A lot. Tell how it happened, said Carolyn finally, softly, and Wendell did. She said to lie down. He said he screamed and cried. He cried, Mommy don't. He begged her.

But he finally laid himself down.

And she told him not to scream.

Wendell swung his feet as he talked. He gripped his doll. And as Carolyn and Mattingly had instructed him, he never looked over at his mother. On cross Stern did what little he could, asked Wendell how many times he'd met with Carolyn and whether he loved his mother, which caused Wendell to ask for more water. There was no disputing, really. Every person there knew the child was telling the truth, not because he was practiced or particularly emotional, but because somehow in every syllable Wendell spoke there was a tone, a knowledge, a bone-hard instinct that what he was describing was wrong. Wendell convinced with his moral courage.

I delivered the closing argument for the county. My state of personal disturbance was such that when I approached the podium I had no idea of what I was going to say, and for one moment I was full of panic, convinced that I would be speechless. Instead, I found the well of all my passionate turmoil and, I spoke fervently for this boy, who must have lived, I said, desperate and uncertain every moment, wanting, as we all wanted, love, and receiving instead, not just indifference or harshness, but torture.

Then we waited. Having a jury out is the closest thing in life to suspended animation. Even the simplest tasks, cleaning my desk, returning phone calls, reading prosecution reports, are beyond my attention, and I end up walking the halls, talking over the evidence and the arguments with anyone unlucky enough to ask me how the case went. About 4:00, Carolyn came by to say she was going to return something to Morton's and I volunteered to walk along. As we left the building, it began raining hard, a cold downpour driven almost sideways by the wind, which was full of winter. People dashed down the street, covering their heads. Carolyn returned her merchandise, a glass bowl whose source she did not identify, and then we headed back into the rain. She more or less shouted out as the wind came up, and I put an arm around her protectively, and she leaned against me beneath my umbrella. It was like something coming loose, and we went on that way for a few blocks, saying nothing, until I finally followed my impulse to speak.

Listen, I said. I started again. Listen.

In her heels, Carolyn was about six feet, an inch or so taller than me, so it was almost an embrace when she turned her face in my direction. In the natural light, you could see what Carolyn, with her devotion to lotions and gyms and spectacular fashions, tried to obscure-that it was an older face, past forty, the makeup clinging to the lines radiating from her eyes, a haggard roughness now part of the skin. But somehow that made her more real to me. This was my life and this was happening.

I've been wondering, I told her, about something you said. What you meant the other night when you told me, Not now.

She looked at me. She shook her head as if she did not know, but her face was full of caprice, her lips sealed to hold back her laughter.

The wind came up again then, and I drew her into the shelter of a recessed storefront. We were on Grayson Boulevard, where the shops face the stately elms of the Midway. I mean, I said, hopeless and pitiable and small, there seems to be something going on between us. I mean, am I crazy? To think that?