Scott Turow - Identical

Georgia, of course, hadn’t gone to college either. Tim couldn’t guess if it was Lidia, always a strong personality, or the ring that spurred her bitterness.

“And Paul wore the other one, right?”

She looked through the door with a purely hateful expression for one moment and then turned away without a word, leaving Tim on the cold concrete. He more or less thought he was expected to go, but she’d left the front door open, and so he waited in the freezing air, hoping she might return-which she finally did. When she arrived, she snatched the storm door open and reached out to drop something in his palm. It was the ring. There was a large red stone in the center, with the numbers 19 and 79 raised from the embossed design on either side.

“See? You can have that for all I care. Paul gave it to me when he graduated. I wore it around my neck on a chain. Remember when girls used to do that? It wasn’t the ring I wanted, but it was a step in the right direction, I thought. Stupid me.”

“So he didn’t have the ring when Dita was killed?”

“Jesus, Tim. Are you listening? I had the ring. I was wearing it. I wore it most places and I sure as hell was going to wear it to the church picnic with all those other girls sniffing around Paul. As far as I know, Paul has never had that ring on his hand in his entire life. He didn’t like rings or jewelry. He thought that kind of stuff wasn’t for guys. I could barely get him to wear a watch.”

Tim looked down at the ring, then back at Georgia, whose face had darkened again. She heaved a great sigh and opened the storm door once more, but only briefly enough to snatch the ring back. With that, she wheeled and slammed the door behind her.

“No ring,” said Evon. They sat in her office. She had one shoe on a trash can as a footrest. “Didn’t she tell us Paul wore a ring?”

He told her Georgia’s version and she nodded. “She’s right. She said Paul bought a ring like Cass. But you’d have thought she would have told us what became of it.”

Tim looked askance at her. No woman he knew was going to volunteer that a fella had kept her on the string three more years with a class ring instead of a diamond. Evon got his point.

“Besides,” Tim said, “she probably didn’t understand the significance. As loose as that investigation was, I don’t think there was much in the papers about Dita’s bruise pattern or what it meant.”

“So Paul didn’t wear a ring, and Cass did,” Evon said by way of recapitulation.

“Right. So it appears.”

“And Paul’s fingerprints aren’t there, and Cass’s are.”

“Right.”

“I think the boss may want to think twice about opposing Paul’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit.”

“Maybe. There is one other thing.” He’d been sitting on what Dickerman had told him about Cass’s print card from Hillcrest not matching the lifts from the crime scene. Tim had given Mo his word not to repeat that, but by now Dickerman had had the time to reconcile the discrepancy and Tim had heard no more about it. Nonetheless, at the outset, he warned Evon that Mo sometimes viewed things in his own way.

“There’s a story about Mo, not sure it’s true, but somebody’s sister swears she saw it happen. You know the light-rail, how you buy a ticket, purple inbound, white outbound? So Mo is headed out to the airport and he gets on with his white ticket and sticks it in the little ticket holder on the back of the seat in front of him. And he sees everybody else has got a purple ticket, and he actually turns to the lady beside him and says, ‘Look at all these idiots on the wrong train.’”

Evon laughed hard. “That can’t be true,” she said.

“You get the point.” He explained what Mo had concluded from looking at the photocopy of Cass’s prints at Hillcrest.

“That can’t be true either,” she said. “How could it? He said in court that Paul doesn’t match any of the lifts from the scene. So what is he saying now? Neither of them were there?”

Tim shrugged. He had absolutely no answer.

“We never got Cass’s fingerprints, did we?”

“Never came close. That’s another weird thing. Supposedly even the neighbors don’t see hide nor hair of Cass, but Georgia told me he came right to her door to read her out for making that commercial.”

“So he’s not on vacation?”

“Apparently not.”

Eventually, Tim asked how she was doing in her personal life, and she answered with a bitter little smile.

“I spent most of last night researching how to get an order of protection.”

He groaned.

“It’ll be a long time before I go down this road again, Tim. I can’t stand the disappointment.” She smiled ruefully and asked him, “What does Shakespeare have to say about that?”

He didn’t answer but started rummaging in the inner and outer pockets of his sport coat. Finally, he found what he was looking for folded in fourths in his wallet and held it out.

“Are you kidding?” she asked.

“Read it. That’s from Comedy of Errors .”

It was another scrap of ruled paper with a quotation written out in block letters, about being a drop of water in the ocean, looking for another drop.

“Now what does this mean?” she asked, after she’d read it over several times. When she handed the scrap back, Tim studied it again.

“I’m not so sure,” said Tim. “Except everybody finds all this confusing at times. And disappointing. But there’s an ocean out there. You shouldn’t stop. Not at your age. If Maria had died when I was fifty, I’d have thought, ‘I’m too young to be alone.’”

“But not now? You know what they say, Tim. A man your age who can still drive can get the former Miss Universe.” He laughed about that, even though it was a tender spot. He couldn’t see much at night any more and tried to avoid driving after dark. Pretty soon, his sight wouldn’t be adequate for daylight, either. That meant he’d have to go to Seattle. One of his daughters or the other begged him at least once a week to make the move. But he wasn’t ready for that. Not yet. He wasn’t ready to leave his house, and his things, and the life he’d had with Maria.

“Not now. No appetite for it. I have my folks to love. Daughters and the grandkids, and the ones I still hold in my heart, Maria and Kate. They’re all precious to me, each of them, they taught me who I am. But at this age, you’re just holding on to that, enjoying it. But fifty? I’d say, ‘I can do this again, learn more, change more, love more.’ I really would.”

She looked up at him from her desk, still not sold. When he reached the door, he turned back.

“You can’t tell anybody that stuff about Dickerman. That’s simply on the QT.”

“They call it the DL these days, Tim,” she said, smiling. “And that’s too goofy to repeat to anybody. Did you ever talk to Dickerman after he analyzed Paul’s prints?”

“Tried, but I haven’t caught up with him.” Mo had been on the West Coast lecturing at several police academies, and then, believe it or not, in Hollywood, where he was a consultant for a TV show. Now that forensic science was hot stuff on television, you could barely hit the clicker without seeing Mo poking his heavy black-framed glasses back up on his nose on one true-crime show or another.

“Circle back when you can,” Evon said. “Just so we can cross that one off the list.”

He wished her a good weekend, which was meant in jest. She’d be here both days doing compliance stuff for the YourHouse deal, which would finally close on Monday.

The final proceedings in Gianis v. Kronon had drawn a herd of spectators and the well of the courtroom was also crowded. Horgan had been accompanied by two associates, and Hal’s big law firm had sent three lawyers to sit by Mel. There was an assistant attorney general, an Indian woman who headed the appellate division, along with two troopers from the state police, one of whom was carrying a steel box, which presumably contained some of the blood. Two deputy PAs had come in from Greenwood County, and Sandy Stern had shown up, too, to represent Cass. The only person not present who might have been expected was Paul Gianis, who, as he had last week, was skipping the session, in accord with his position that the lawsuit was over. His absence also prevented him from being forced to give a DNA specimen on the spot, if the judge ruled he was required to do that.