Scott Turow - Presumed innocent

Stern's eyes are large and clear and somberly brown.

"Do you judge me so harshly, Rusty?"

"No. I share the Stern outlook. No one is above temptation.

Sandy smiles at that, somewhat sadly.

"Just so," he tells me.

"But tolerance doesn't require an absence of standards. I know I sound like a world-class ingrate, but I have to tell you-I don't approve."

"I did not act for my own benefit, Rusty." He looks at me in that familiar way, lowering his chin so he can observe me from beneath his drawn brow. "It was a situation in which I-in which we-found ourselves. I did not create it. My own recollection of some of the matters you refer to was refreshed as we proceeded. I dwelt on Molto initially because he was so much easier a target than Della Guardia. It was necessary to develop this theme of past rivalries, somehow. When certain other matters came to mind, it was convenient to continue in the fashion that you have described. But I did not mean to coerce the judge. It was for that reason that I made Molto our straw culprit, so that Judge Lyttle would not feel impelled to do something rash. Was I aware that this might create certain subterranean pressures on Larren as well?" Stern gestures-he nearly smiles. Again there is that mysterious Latin look, used this time as the most reluctant, if philosophical, form of acquiescence. "As you put it, I assessed a point of vulnerability. But I think overall, in your analysis, you credit me with an intricacy of mind that no human being-certainly not I-possesses. I made certain judgments, instantaneously. This was not a charted course. It remained a matter of intuition and estimation throughout."

"I'll always wonder, you know. About the outcome."

"That would be inappropriate, Rusty. I understand your concern now. But I would hesitate before I accepted your view of the judge's ultimate ruling. His handling of this case was, I believe, evenhanded on the whole. Certainly, if he was seeking a convenient way to terminate the proceedings, he could have prohibited the prosecution from offering their fingerprint testimony, in the absence of the glass. Even Della Guardia, disappointed as he was, conceded that Larren's decision today was within the realm of the judge's legitimate discretion. Do you think Nico would have made that handsome gesture of dismissing the case if he believed Larren's assessment was unfounded? Judge Lyttle entered a proper decision, and had he not, I am confident you would have been acquitted. Isn't that what the jurors told the press?"

That is indeed what the papers reported. Three jurors told the media on the courthouse steps that they would not have voted to convict. But Sandy and I both know that the seat-of-the-pants impressions of three laymen who have learned that the judge on the case called it a loser are worth very little-and are hardly determinative of what nine other people would have done, in any event.

Stern continues.

"As I say, I made judgments. If, in retrospect, either one of us regards them as questionable, then that should be a burden on my conscience, not yours. Your role is to accept your good fortune on its face, without further reflection. This is the legal significance of an acquittal. This matter is now entirely disposed of. I urge you to move forward. You will overcome this shadow on your career. You are a gifted lawyer, Rusty. I always regarded you as one of the finest of Horgan's prosecutors, probably the best. I was quite disappointed that Raymond did not have the sense to step aside last year and attempt to make the appropriate political arrangements so that you could have succeeded him."

With that I smile. Now I know that the worst is really over. I have not heard that old saw in many months.

"I believe you are going to be all right, Rusty. I sense that." For my part, I sense that Stern is about to say something regrettable; even, perhaps, that I have profited from this experience. I spare him the chance. I pick up my briefcase, which had been left here. Stern sees me to the door. We stand at the threshold, shaking hands, promising to speak, knowing that, whatever else, in the future we will have very little to say to one another.

Only the poets can truly write of liberty, that sweet, exhilarant thing. In my life, I have not known an ecstasy as dulcet or complete as the occasional instants of shivering delight when I again realize this peril is behind me. Over. Done. Whatever the collateral consequences, whatever the smirking, the unvoiced accusations, the contumely or scorn with which others might treat me, to my face or, more certainly, behind my back-whatever they say, the terror is over; the sleepless early-morning hours I spent trying to catapult myself ahead in time, envisioning a life of mindless toil during the day, and nights working like half the other inmates on my endless train of habeas corpus petitions and, finally, the wary fearful hours of half-sleep on some prison bunk, awaiting whatever perverse terror the night would bring-that horror is past me. And with a sense of earned relief. Every sin of my life seems truly expiated. My society has judged; no punishment is due. Every sticky cliche is right: an enormous weight has been lifted; I feel as if I could By, like a million bucks, ten feet tall. I feel free.

And then, of course, the shadow moves, and I think what I have been through, with enormous anger and bitterness and a swooping descent into depression. As a prosecutor I lost cases, more, naturally, than I would have liked, and had my chance to observe the acquitted defendant in the instant of victory. Most wept; the guiltier they were, the harder they cried. I always thought it was relief, and guilt. But it is, I tell you, this disbelief that this ordeal, this-think of the word-trial has been endured for no apparent point but your disgrace, and your uncompensable damage.

The return to life is slow: an island on which a soft wind moves. The first two days the phone does not stop. How people who did not speak to me for the past four months can imagine that I could accept their glib congratulations astounds me. But they call. And I am calculating enough to know they may be needed again; I accept their good wishes with some aplomb. But I spend most of my time alone. I am overwhelmed by the desire to be out in the waning summer and the stirring fall. One day I hold Nat out of school and we go fishing from a canoe. The day passes and we say almost nothing; but I am content to be with my boy and I feel he knows it. Other days I walk in the forest for hours. Very slowly, I begin to see things and therefore notice what I did not see before. My life for four months has been an oblivion, a hopeless storm of feeling so wild that there was nothing outside it. Every face that presented itself to my imagination did so with cyclonic impact in my interior reaches, which now, gradually, are growing still, and which, I finally realize, will in time again require movement.

For the present, I remain at home. My neighbors say that I should write a book, but I am not ready yet for any enterprise. It becomes clear quickly that Barbara finds my presence disconcerting. Her irritation with me, held so long in check, now returns in a peculiar fashion. She clearly feels unable to speak her mind. There are no overt complaints, no instants of shrill sarcasm. As a result she seems even more confined within herself than ever. I find her staring at me with an intense look, troubled, angry, I think. "What?" I ask. Her chin dimples in disapproval. She sighs. She turns away.

"Are you ever going back to work?" she asks me one day. "I can't get anything done with you around here."

"I'm not bothering you."

"You're a distraction."

"By sitting in the living room? By working in the garden?" I admit that I am trying to provoke her.