Scott Turow - Presumed innocent

Carolyn stood up naked from the bed. Standing barefoot, she looked limber and strong. She put on her robe. I realized then she was upset.

Why are you unhappy? I asked. Were you ready to become chief deputy?

She did not answer that.

"The last time I slept with Carolyn she pushed me off her in the midst of

our lovemaking and turned away from me."

At first I did not understand what it was she wanted. But she bumped her behind against me until I realized that was what I was being offered, a marble peach.

No, I said.

Try it. She looked over her shoulder. Please.

I came up close behind her.

Just easy, she said. Just a little.

I went in too fast.

Not that much, she said.

She said, Oh.

I pressed in, remained, pumped. She arched, clearly in some pain. And I found, suddenly, that I was thrilled.

Her head lolled back. Her eyes held tears. Then she opened them and looked back at me directly. Her face was radiant.

Does Barbara? she whispered, does Barbara do this for you?

In the 32nd District the normal turmoil of a police station is concealed. About seven years ago now, while we were in the midst of our investigation, one of the Night Saints entered the station with a sawed-off in his wind-breaker. It was nuzzled against his chest like a baby protected from a chilly breeze, and as a result, he merely had to lower the zipper slightly before placing the muzzle beneath the chin of the unfortunate desk officer, a twenty-eight year-old guy named Jack Lansing, who had continued writing some report. The young man with the shotgun, who was never identified, is reported to have smiled and then blown off Jack Lansing's face.

Since then the cops of this station house have dealt with the public from behind six inches of bulletproof glass, carrying on conversations through a radio system which sounds as if the signal must have been bounced first off the moon. There are public areas where the complainants, the victims, the police groupies loiter, but once you pass beyond the four-inch thick metal door, with its electronic bolt, there is almost sterility. Prisoners are in a block downstairs, and are never permitted, for any purpose, above that level. Upstairs, so much of the usual turbulence has been removed that it feels a little like an insurance agency. The working cops' desks are in an open area that could pass for any other large office, the guys with rank in partitioned areas along the back wall. In one of the larger offices, I find Lionel Kenneally. We have not seen much of each other since the Night Saints cases ended.

"Fucking Savage," he says, "fucking Savage." He puts out his cigarette and claps me on the back.

Lionel Kenneally is everything a sensible person does not like about police. He is tough-talking, opinionated, downright mean, an unabashed racist. I have yet to see the situation in which I'd bet even an hour's wages on his scruples. But I like him, in part because he is a pure form, unalloyed and unapologetic, a coppers' cop, dedicated to the shadowy loyalties and mysteries of life out on the street. He can make out the riffs and scams of the inner city like a dog picking up a scent by lifting his muzzle to the breeze. During the Night Saints investigation, Lionel was the guy I went to when I needed someone found. He never faltered-he'd pull them out of shooting galleries or go into the Grace Street projects at four in the morning, the only hour that a police officer can safely move about there. I saw him at it once or twice, six foot three or thereabouts, pounding on a door so hard you could see it buckle in its frame.

Who that?

Open up, Tyrone. It's your fairy godmother.

We reminisce; he tells me about Maurice Dudley. I have already heard the story, but I do not interrupt. Maurice, a 250-pound brick, a killer, a cur, is deep in Bible studies down at Rudyard. He is going to be ordained.

"Harukan-the Night Saints' leader-is so pissed, they say, he don't even talk to him. Can you imagine?"

"Who said there's no such thing as rehabilitation?" This strikes both of us as unbearably funny. Maybe we're each thinking of the woman on whose arm Maurice, with a kitchen knife, once wrote his name. Or the coppers from this station house who swore, in the inflated lore of cop and courthouse stories, that he had misspelled it.

"Are you passing through or what?" Kenneally asks me finally.

"I'm not really sure," I say. "I'm trying to figure something out."

"On what now? Carolyn?"

I nod.

"What's the story there?" Kenneally asks. "Latest thing I'm hearing from downtown is they're sayin it's not really rape. I give Lionel two minutes' worth on the state for our evidence."

"So you're figurin what?" he asks. "The guy she's having cocktails with is the one who done her?"

"That seems obvious. But I keep wondering. Didn't we have a Peeping Tom, maybe ten years ago, who'd watch couples and then go in later and take a piece of the lady himself at gunpoint?"

"Christ," says Kenneally. "You really are lost. You're lookin for a law enforcement typo-a cop, a P.A., a private dick-somebody who knew what he wanted to make it look like when he cooled her. That's what I'd figure. She had any boyfriend who was with her that night, and left her alive, you'd have heard from him by now. He'd want to help."

"If he doesn't have a wife to explain things to."

Kenneally considers that. I get something like a shrug. I might be right.

"When's the last time you saw her?" I ask.

"Four months or so. She come out here."

"Doing what?"

"Same shit you're doin: investigatin somethin and tryin not to let on what."

I laugh. A coppers' cop. Kenneally gets up. He goes to a pile of transfer cases in the corner.

"She got some rookie to look through all this crap for her, so she didn't chip her nails or run her nylons."

"Let me guess," I say: "booking sheets on cases from nine summers ago."

"Right you are," he says.

"Did she have a name she was looking for?"

Kenneally considers this. "I think she did, and I'll be fucked if I remember. Something was wrong with it, too."

"Leon?" I ask.

Lionel snaps his fingers. "La Noo," he says. L-N-U: Last Name Unknown.

"That's what was wrong. She was playin in the dark."

"What'd she come up with?"

"Spit."

"You sure?"

"Fuck yes. Not that she'd much notice. She was most of the time tryin to keep track of everybody who was watchin her ass. Which was everybody in the house, as she well knows. She was havin a good time bein back here, let's say."

"Back?"

"She worked the North Branch when she was a P.O. She didn't know what the fuck she was doin then, either. A real social-worker type. I never could figure Horgan hiring her as a P.A."

I had forgotten that. I probably knew it, but I did not remember. Carolyn worked the North Branch as a probation officer. I think about the secretary that Noel's boyfriend mentioned. He didn't say white or black, fat or skinny. But he did say Girl. Would anybody hang "Girl" on Carolyn, even nine years ago?

"You didn't like her much."

"She was a cunt," says Kenneally, to the point. "You know," he says, "out for herself. She was sleepin her way to the top, right from the git-go. Anybody coulda seen that."

I look around a moment. Our conversation seems to have come to an end. I ask one more time if he's sure she did not find anything.

"Not a fuckin thing. You can talk with the kid that helped her if you want."

"If you wouldn't mind, Lionel."

"What the fuck do I care?" He reaches for the intercom and summons a cop named Guerash. "Why you still botherin with this thing?" he asks me, while we wait. "It'll be somebody else's problem pretty soon, don't you think?"

"You mean Delay?"