Scott Turow - The Laws of our Fathers

I didn't answer, fearful of what I was getting myself into.

'Will you think about this? Please? But there isn't a lot of time.' 'I understand. I have to get my head around this one.' We looked at each other.

'I mean,' I said, 'you guys. I mean, Eddgar and you.' I swallowed. 'And Nile. I mean, you're all in trouble now. Right? Real trouble?'

'Seth-' She stopped. 'If Cleveland-' She stopped again. 'Right,' she said. 'Real trouble.' She looked into my eyes with purpose. I noticed only now that she had gripped me by both shoulders. There were many young men in June Eddgar's life. I knew that then. She might as well have said it. I had no idea what difference it made; nothing was going to happen between us. But some bond was forged nonetheless, if only because a fragment of me was briefly waked to the reality that other women besides Sonny existed. June padded out, barefoot, her shift clinging to her as she departed, having made a moment when, improbably, desire seemed to be the only real thing in the world.

Sonny

Friday morning, before we start, I detain the lawyers to talk about our schedule. The prosecution case will probably take another couple of days. We concluded yesterday with Molto doing a tiresome redirect of Lovinia, reading her snippets of her statements which she claimed not to remember. Following that, Rudy examined Maybelle Downey, an older woman who had witnessed June's shooting from a tenement across from the projects and who confirmed the same outward events Lovinia described. Now Tommy gives me the order of his remaining witnesses. Al Kratzus, the community service officer who told Nile his mother had been murdered will be first today; after him, Hardcore; by Monday we'll reach Eddgar. Following him, the People will rest. The PA's strategy, apparently, is to buttress Hardcore's credibility by showing that his account coincides with that of witnesses – white people – whose version is largely beyond doubt.

'The defense case, if there is to be one, will start by Wednesday?' I'm informing Hobie, who receives the news impassively. 'And what are your plans, Mr Tuttle? In terms of time? Not committing the defendant to offer evidence, of course, just projecting for my benefit.'

'Two days.'

' So we'll argue at the end of next week perhaps, or the following Monday?'

The three lawyers before the podium all nod. I will have to decide soon after – a disturbing prospect. The case remains murky. Why did this murder happen? I think suddenly. Frowning, I wave the lawyers away from the bench. Molto repeats the same gesture to Singh, who goes off to summon the next witness.

Aloysius Kratzus, a corpulent, white-haired, thick-necked police veteran fiddles a bit as he sits on the stand. Kratzus has the mark of a guy who went to Community Relations willingly, one of those coppers who started out to be a hero and ended up as a bureaucrat. No one gets shot in Community Relations. No one works graveyard. You dispense bad news, you visit schools, you read press releases over the phone, you front for the Force at funerals and ribbon cuttings. It's either a dead end or a comfortable retirement, depending on how you view things. Al Kratzus seems to like it just fine.

Rudy goes through Kratzus's rank and background and eventually reaches the morning of September 7. He had just come on, Kratzus says, 8 a.m., when he received a call. On his desk, you can envision the coffee and pastry in the white bag from the doughnut shop.

‘I spoke with Detective Lieutenant Montague.'

'And, Sergeant, was Lieutenant Montague making any orders or requests of you?'

'Montague said he was at a crime scene. White female, approx-mate age sixty to sixty-five, dead of multiple gunshot wounds. She was found outside a vehicle which was registered to her ex-husband. Montague was going with another dick to talk with the husband. In the meantime, there's a health-insurance card in her purse, shows a Nile Eddgar as next of kin. Somebody says he's a PO. Montague expects press will get this in a beat or two and he wants me to get over pronto to this Nile, so we tell him before he turns on the radio or TV and hears it that way.'

The entire answer is hearsay. Hobie has stroked his beard throughout, waiting for anything objectionable, and has apparently decided to let it pass.

'And did you oblige the lieutenant?' Rudy asks, in his funny, high-blown way. Rudy had three years of English public school before landing here. His father is one of those Indians with advanced degrees, never able to put them to use in any country. The family, Marietta says, has a liquor store on the East Bank.

'He give me the address and, along with Officer Vic Addison, I proceeded there. It was here in the city.' 'The city' means DuSable. Al Kratzus is one of those neighborhood guys, like my Uncle Moosh, who remember when this was still three little burgs, not, as the world now sees it, a single megalopolis. In those days, there were still intense rivalries among the Tri-Cities. At eighty, Moosh still discusses the fierce games that were once played in the bitter weather of late December between the public high-school football champs from Kewahnee, Moreland, and DuSable, and a single representative from the Catholic leagues.

Tommy is waving at his colleague. Rudy bends so Molto can whisper his suggestion.

'Yes,' says Rudy out loud. 'And in asking you to take on this assignment, sir, did Montague give any indication at that time that Nile Eddgar was a suspect?'

Hobie objects, but he pursued the issue of when and why Montague began to regard Nile as a suspect. I overrule.

'We're service, you know?' says Kratzus. 'In CR, we're not on the case. Our job is the public. If somebody's a suspect, Montague would assign one of his people.'

'Did you in fact see Nile Eddgar?'

'We did. Addison and I went to his apartment.' Kratzus sighs, minorly disgusted with the state of his memory later in life, and checks his pocket for the report, then fishes a stout finger there again to locate his readers. '2343 Duhaney.' 'And what time was it?'

'It was after 8 a.m., closer to 8:30. I was afraid at that hour we mighta missed him, but he was there. We had to pound awhile, but he come to the door. I identified my office. Somewhere in there we had to ask him to turn down the music actually, then I asked was he a relation to June Eddgar, he says he's the son, and I told him I was very sad -' Kratzus's hand does two forward flips. Etcetera, he means. 'And I give him the news. All what Montague told me. Just that one-liner, you know, that she'd been shot dead down at Grace Street.'

'And did he have any reaction that you were able to observe?'

'Pretty doggone strange,' says Kratzus.

'Oh, object!' Hobie loudly declares and shimmies his entire upper body in disapproval.

I strike the answer and direct Kratzus to tell the court precisely what the defendant said and did. He takes in my instruction slowly. There are plenty of police officers, bureaucrats, departmental politicos who get through thirty years on the Force with barely half a dozen court appearances. Kratzus seems like one of them.

'He give us a look. First off, it's a look. Kind of, you know, "Wait a minute." Not so much he doesn't believe it as it doesn't make sense.'

'Your Honor,' says Hobie.

'Mr Turtle, I'm going to accord the testimony the weight I feel it deserves.'

Kratzus has turned himself around in the witness chair to face me, too stiff and bulky to do so with ease, but eager to address me almost conversationally. His powder-blue coat bunches up thickly and the unbarbered fuzz of hairs on the back of his neck shows up, the filaments refracting the courtroom lights. He goes on explaining to me, notwithstanding the objection.

'I do this a lot, Judge. All kind of circumstances. Little old ladies dyin in bed. Suicides. Car wrecks. And people respond different. I'm the first to tell you that. But this was strange.'