Scott Turow - Presumed innocent

"You know," he says quietly, "there was one thing I promised myself I was gonna ask you today."

"What's that, Raymond?" I ask as I step inside.

"Who killed her? I mean, who do you think?"

I say nothing. I remain impassive. Then, as the elevator doors begin to close, I nod to Raymond Horgan in a gentlemanly way.

One day in October I am working in the yard and I feel an odd stirring. I am fixing the fence-removing the posts, sinking new ones in cement, nailing on the beeftail. For a moment I consider the tool with which I am working. A Whatchamacallit. It is an inheritance of sorts from my father-in-law. After his death, Barbara's mother brought all his yard and home equipment over here. The Whatchamacallit is a piece of black iron, a kind of cross between a hammer's claw and a crowbar. You can use it for anything. On the night of April 1, it was used to kill Carolyn Polhemus. Right after the trial I noticed that there was still a crust of blood and one blond hair clinging to the edge of one of the two teeth. I stared at the Whatchamacallit for a long time, then I took it to the basement and washed it in the laundry tub. Barbara came downstairs as I was doing it.

She stopped dead on the stairway when she saw me, but I tried to appear jovial. I reached for the hot water and began to whistle.

I have picked it up a dozen times since then. I want to observe no fetishes, no taboos. And after a moment for reflection, I decide it is not the Whatchamacallit singing to me like a ghost. Instead, as I consider the grass, the roses and their thorns, the vegetable bed that I helped Barbara put in this spring, there is the sense of something in this house, this land that is irretrievably used up and old. I am finally ready for some considered changes. I find Barbara in the dining room, where she is grading papers. They are stacked across the table like my mother's magazines and notecards from her era as a radio personality. I sit down on the other side.

"We should think about moving back into the city," I tell her.

I expect, of course, that this concession will bring from Barbara a radiance of victory. She has advocated the move for many years. Instead, Barbara puts down her pen and holds her forehead. She says, "Oh, God."

I wait. I know something awful is going to happen. I am not scared.

"I didn't want to talk about this yet, Rusty."

"What?"

"The future," she says, and adds, "I didn't think that it would be fair to you. So soon."

"All right," I say. "You've nodded in the direction of good taste. Why don't you tell me what's on your mind?"

"Rusty, don't be like that."

"I'm like that. I'd like to hear."

She folds her hands.

"I've taken a job for the January term at Wayne State."

Wayne State is not in Kindle County. Wayne State is not within four hundred miles of here. Wayne State, as I recall, is in a city I have visited once, which is called Detroit.

"Detroit, right?"

"Right," she says.

"You're leaving me?"

"I wouldn't put it like. that. I'm taking a job. Rusty, I hate to do this to you now. But I feel I have to. They had hired me for the September term. I was going to tell you in April, but then all that craziness began-" She shivers her head with her eyes closed. "Anyway, they were nice enough to give me an extension. I've changed my mind half a dozen times. But I've decided it's for the best."

"Where's Nat going to be?"

"With me, of course," she answers, her look suddenly fierce and aquiline.

On this point, she means to say, there must not be even a thought that she might yield. It occurs to me, as a sort of reflex, that I could probably go to court and try to prevent that. But just now I have had enough of litigation. In its odd way, the thought inspires a smile, rueful and brief, a reaction which brings a vaguely hopeful look to Barbara.

"What do you mean you're not leaving me, you're taking a job?" I ask. "Am I invited to Detroit?"

"Would you come?"

"I might. This isn't a bad time for me to start over. There are a few unpleasant things following me around here."

Barbara immediately tries to correct me. She has thought all of this through-perhaps to salve her conscience, probably because there are always these geometries in her head.

"You're a hero," Barbara says. "They wrote about you in The New York Times and The Washington Post. I've been expecting you to tell me any day that you're going to run for office."

I laugh out loud, but this is a sad remark. More than anything Barbara has said, it proves how far we have already drifted. We have again ceased communication. I have not told her enough for her to understand my own thorough-going revulsion with what has gone on in the interest of politics.

"Would it offend you if I moved somewhere closer than here so that I can see my son? Granting that we're not about to live in the same house."

She looks at me.

"No," she says.

I consider the wall for a moment. My God, I think. What happens in a life. And then I think once more of how this all began and pine, as I have so often lately. Oh, Carolyn, I think. What did I want with you? What did I do? But it is not as if I am entirely without an account.

I am nearly forty now. I can no longer pretend that the world is unknown to me, or that I like most of what I've seen. I am my father's son. That is my inheritance-the grimness of outlook bred of knowing that there is more cruelty in life than simple wits can comprehend. I do not claim that my own sufferings have been legion. But I have seen so much. I saw my father's hobbled soul, maimed by one of history's great crimes; I saw the torment and the need, the random and passionate anger that brings such varied and horrible misbehavior to our own streets. As a prosecutor I meant to combat it, to declare myself a sworn enemy of the crippled spirit that commits each, trespass with force and arms. But of course, it overcame me. Who can observe that panorama of negative capacity and maintain any sense of optimism? It would be easier if the world were not so full of casual misfortune. Golan Scharf, a neighbor, has a son born blind. Mac and her husband, in a moment of revelry, turn a corner and plunge into the river. And even if luck, and luck alone, spares us the worst, life nonetheless wears so many of us down. Young men of talent dull it and drink it all away. Young women of spirit bear children, broaden in the hips, and shrink in hope as middle years close in upon them. Every life, like every snowflake, seemed to me then unique in the shape of its miseries, and in the rarity and mildness of its pleasures. The fights go out, grow dim. And a soul can stand only so much darkness. I reached for Carolyn. With all deliberation and intent. I cannot pretend it was an accident, or serendipity. It was what I wanted. It was what I wanted to do. I reached for Carolyn.

And so now, still gazing at the wall, I begin to speak, saying aloud things that I had promised myself would never be spoken.

"I've thought a lot about the reasons," I say. "Not that anyone can fully comprehend them. Whatever you call that insane mix of rage and lunacy that leads one human being to kill another-it's not the kind of thing that's easy to understand in any ultimate way. I doubt anybody-not the person who does it or anyone else-can really grasp the whole thing. But I've tried. I really have tried. I mean, one thing I should say to start, Barbara, is that I apologize to you. I think a lot of people would find that laughable. That I would say that. But I do."

"And one more thing you've got to know. You have to believe it: she was never more important to me than you are. Never. I guess, to be unflinchingly honest, there must have been something there that I didn't believe I could find anywhere else. That was my failing. I admit it. But as you've told me yourself, I was absolutely obsessed with her. It would take hours to explain why. She had that power; I had that weakness. But I know goddamn well that I wouldn't have gotten over her for years, and probably never, as long as she was walking around. I mean, there is no such thing as justification here, or excuse. I'm not trying to pretend there is. But at least we should both acknowledge the circumstances."