Innocent Page 31

  "That's crap," said Brand.

  Judge Yee lifted a finger sternly. "Please, Brand," he said, and Jim apologized repeatedly.

  "That was completely stupid," he said several times.

  "What to do?" asked the judge.

  Eventually, Marta said, "I think we should examine the computer. We should let the experts from both sides come in and in each other's presence do whatever diagnostic tests they can without changing the data and tell us when the message was put on the computer and whether or not it appears legitimate."

  "Good," said Yee. He liked the plan. The Sterns would summon their two whiz kids on an emergency basis, while the prosecutors did the same with Professor Gorvetich. Brand and Marta stood up to make the calls. Marta reached their guys on her cell, but it turned out that Brand had Gorvetich's number back across the street, so he departed. In the meantime, Yee asked the bailiff to send the jurors home, and the lawyers agreed to head back to their offices to await the experts' conclusion. The computer would remain in the courtroom under the eye of the court security officers.

  On the way out, Stern gave Tommy one of his mysterious little smiles. Sandy was actually looking better, his face a little fuller and the rash clearly starting to fade. Just in time, Tommy thought. Just in fucking time for Sandy to smile for the cameras when he won.

  "Interesting case," Stern said.

  Out in the courtroom, Tommy and Rory and Ruta put the trial cart back together. Brand was fussy about the order in which he stored the exhibits, and the three of them kept trying to remind themselves what Jim wanted, each of them unwilling at the moment to see Brand go off, as he would, if it wasn't all as he liked.

  Milo Gorvetich arrived just as Tommy was about to return to the office across the street. Milo was a little guy, shorter than Tommy or Stern, with wild white hair and a goatee stained yellow from his pipe. It had been Brand's idea to hire him in the first place, because Brand had taken a programming class from Milo two decades ago. As the first member of the U football team ever to appear in Gorvetich's classroom, Brand had gotten enough attention from the professor to make some form of gentlemen's C. But Gorvetich was an old man now. He rambled and had lost his edge. Sandy's hotshot kids had run rings around him, and at this stage Tommy was no longer sure he fully trusted him. He told Milo what had occurred, and the old guy's eyes widened. Tommy feared he was going to be pretty much clueless.

  With the two women, Tommy crossed the street. He found Brand in his office, stewing, his feet on his desk while he chewed on a straw. Brand had many of the physical blessings that Tommy had envied in other trial lawyers for years. Big and solid and handsome, he had that aura of iron strength jurors loved in prosecutors especially. But Tommy exceeded Jim in one physical trait that was nearly essential to trying lawsuits--the ability to do well without sleep. Jim needed eight hours, and when he didn't get it, he got cranky like a little kid. He'd plainly had a long night here yesterday, working with the techs and trying to think his way through the defense's new suicide theory. The cellophane wrappings from the dinner he'd had out of the vending machine were mixed in the wastebasket beside his desk with the rose-colored filaments of the shrink-wrap they'd stripped off of Sabich's computer, before the seals were removed in the courtroom this morning.

  "So is this just too fucking convenient or what?" Brand asked. "The victim comes back from the dead to announce she framed the defendant. I mean, give me a fucking break. Really. This is just crap. Day one they say it's suicide. Day two she says, Yeah, and I did it to screw him."

  Tommy sat down in the wooden chair beside Brand's desk. There was a new picture of Jody and the girls, and Tommy studied it for a second.

  "Good-looking women," said Tommy.

  Brand smiled a little. Tommy told him Gorvetich had arrived.

  "What did he say?" Brand asked.

  "He said they should be able to look at the calendaring client and see right away when the object was created. I didn't quite understand, but I figured you would. 'Object' means the card?"

  "Right." Brand thought for a second as he chewed on his straw. "I think the calendar program stores the date the object was created as part of the object. I think he even said that to me on the phone."

  "But we've had that thing--Rusty's computer--under lock and key since last November, right?"

  "Pretty much. Early December, actually. It was over at the appellate court for a month with George Mason while we hassled about what we could look at. You remember."

  Tommy remembered. He'd thought the court of appeals judges were going to cross the street and picket the County Building. When you started looking into their business, judges were about as entitled as sultans.

  "Okay, but if the card is real--"

  Brand interrupted. "It's not real."

  "Okay," said Tommy. "Okay. But just playing along for a second--"

  "It's not real," Brand said again. His nostrils were flared like a bull's. He could not abide the fact that the boss was even willing to consider the possibility. But that said it all. Either the card was going to turn out to be a plant, in which case Sabich was slabbed, or it would be legitimate and they would have little choice but to dismiss the case. It was that simple.

  Tommy and Brand sat another minute with nothing to say. Malvern, Tommy's assistant, had seen him come in and knocked to tell him Dominga was on the phone. She'd probably heard the news about a "dramatic development" in the Sabich case.

  "Let me know when Gorvetich reports back," Tommy said as he stood.

  Brand's phone was ringing, and he nodded as he picked up. Tommy didn't get to the door.

  "Gorvetich," Brand said behind him. He had a finger raised when Molto looked back.

  Tommy watched Jim listen. His dark eyes weren't moving, and his face was set in a solemn frown. Tommy was not sure Brand was breathing. "Okay," said Brand. Then he repeated, "I understand," several times. At the end, Jimmy slammed down the handset and sat there with his eyes shut.

  "What?" Molto asked.

  "They've finished an initial examination."

  "And?"

  "And the object was created the day before Barbara Sabich died." Jim took a second to think. "It's real," said Brand. He kicked the trash can beside his desk, and the contents went flying. "It's fucking real."

  CHAPTER 36

  Nat, June 24, 2009

  After Judge Yee dismisses the lawyers from his chambers, Marta and my dad and Sandy and I return to the LeSueur Building and end up together in Stern's large office. For weeks the dead man walking, Sandy is now trying to contain his exuberance, for my dad's sake. But there is something in him that would make you say he is his old self. His phone keeps lighting up with calls from reporters, and he tells them that the defense will have no comment for the present. Finally, he buzzes his secretary and tells her to put no one else through.

  "They're all asking the same question," says Sandy. "If we think Molto will dismiss."

  "Will he?" I ask.

  "One never knows with Tommy. Brand might tie him to his chair rather than let that occur."

  "Molto isn't going to give up," Marta says. "When push comes to shove, they'll gin up some screwy theory about how Rusty planted this on the computer."

  "Rusty has not had his hands on the computer since prior to his indictment," says Stern.

  He looks at my father, who is hunched in an armchair, listening but with little to say. For an hour and a half, he has seemed the most shocked and withdrawn of all of us. In psych class years ago, I visited a mental hospital and saw several people who had been lobotomized in the 1950s. With part of their brains gone, their eyes sank back into their heads by several inches. My dad looks a little like that now.

  "Any such theory will be an embarrassment to them," Stern says.

  "I'm just saying," says Marta. "And the reporters are assuming it's Barbara?"

  "Who else?" asks Sandy.

  For the last ninety minutes, I have been asking myself that question. I gave up thinking I ful
ly understood my parents--either one of them--a long time ago. Who they were to each other, or in the parts of their lives that never touched mine, is something I won't ever completely comprehend. It's a little like trying to figure out who actors really are beyond the roles they play on-screen. How much is typecasting? How much is pretend? Anna insists it's pretty much the same with her mom.

  But the brutal fact when I ask myself if I can really believe that my mother killed herself and set my father up to take the fall for her death--the fact is that some deeply internal apparatus registers that prospect as entirely credible. My mother's rages were lethal and took her to a place where she was largely unrecognizable.

  And it all fits. That's why it's only my dad's prints on the bottle of phenelzine. That's why she sent him out for wine and cheese. That's why the searches for phenelzine weren't shredded on his computer.

  "But why poison herself with something that could have been mistaken for natural causes?" asks my father. It's his first real contribution to the conversations.

  "Well, I believe," says Sandy--he stops for his little sawing cough--"it's far more incriminating that way. And of course, that implicates the Harnason case, which was in front of you and which Barbara knew a great deal about."

  "It's incriminating," my father answers, "only if it's discovered."

  "Enter Tommy Molto," answers Stern. "Given the history, would Tommy really allow an untimely death of another female who is close to you to pass without a thorough investigation? Barbara surely took Tommy as your pledged enemy."

  My father shakes his head once. Unlike his lawyers, he is not completely sold.

  "Why not sign her name?" he asks.

  "It's just as obvious, isn't it?"

  "And if she's going to frame me, why bother bailing me out that way?"

  Sandy looks at me at that point, not to see how I'm reacting, but as a demonstration.

  "Putting you in the dock again, Rusty, was a fine repayment for your infidelity. But leaving you in prison for the rest of your life went too far, especially when one considers Nat."

  My father thinks it through. His mind is clearly moving more slowly than usual.

  "It's a trick," my father says then. "If it's Barbara, then there's a trick. It's going to be like invisible ink. As soon as we rely on this, there will be something we don't see."

  "Well, Matteus and Ryzard," says Sandy, who alone refuses to refer to the two computer experts as Hans and Franz, "should recognize that."

  "They won't be better than her," my father answers definitively.

  My dad soothed my mom by paying her limitless compliments. Her cooking. Her appearance. I think he meant all of it, even though he probably resented the fact that the praise was required. But one thing he always said with complete sincerity was, 'Barbara Bernstein is the smartest human being I know.' He is confident now that she will prove to have outthought everybody in the room. I would find that touching if it didn't imply that in the end, my mom's intentions were ultimately nowhere as benign as Stern just suggested. She didn't mean merely to scare him, my dad is saying. She is fucking with him big-time from the grave.

  About ten minutes later, Sandy's secretary announces that Hans is on the phone. The experts have finished examining the computer. Even Gorvetich agrees that the card appears legitimate. It was composed the afternoon before my mom died, apparently just minutes before Anna and I arrived for dinner. Stern informs the judge's chambers, and all the lawyers are ordered to court so that the three computer scientists can report to Judge Yee. We head down to the garage and pile into Sandy's Cadillac for the short trip back.

  "Bad hair day for Tommy," says Marta. "I'd like to have been there to see the look on their face when Gorvetich told him the card is real."

  Everyone in Stern's office had simply assumed that would be the verdict. We all knew my dad never had the time or the technical skill to pull off anything like that.

  The courtroom seems like a ghost town when we get there. The place has been jammed for weeks, with not an inch to spare on the spectator pews, but apparently neither the reporters nor the court buffs who roam the halls looking for free entertainment have gotten word about proceedings now. Marta and Sandy go off to meet for a second with Hans and Franz, but they're interrupted when Judge Yee returns to the bench.

  Professor Gorvetich is about five feet four, with a froth of white hair arising from various spots on his scalp, a bedraggled goatee, and a belly too big to fit inside his cheap sport coat. He has shown up wearing sneakers, for which I guess you can't blame him given the short notice. Hans and Franz are casual, too. Matteus is older and taller, but they are both thin and fit and stylish, with their shirts out of their designer jeans and their hair spiked. The lawyers have agreed that Gorvetich should speak to the judge--it's his client's ox getting gored. He stands next to the computer down in the center of the courtroom.

  The card, he says, is a standard graphics file that opens in association with a reminder that was meant to pop up on New Year's Day 2009. The dating explains why none of the experts detected the card when all the various forensics exams on the computer were run by the prosecution and the defense in early December.

  The fact that the message was intended for the holiday season speaks volumes to me, since it was always a weird time in my house. My mom was raised Jewish and lit Hanukkah candles with me every year, but that was largely in self-defense. My mom did not like religious holidays in general and for whatever reason, she loathed Christmas especially. For my dad, on the other hand, Christmas was one of the few bright spots in the year when he was a kid, and he continued to look forward to it. Maybe the worst part from my mom's perspective was that the Serbs celebrate Christmas January 7, which meant that for her, the season seemed to drag on forever. She particularly hated the traditional Christmas dinners to which we were regularly invited by my dad's crazy Serbian cousins because they always served pork roast, the occasions often fell on school nights for me, and everybody got drunk on plum brandy. It was usually February before my dad and her were speaking again.

  "We examined the registry files on the computer and paid particular attention to the .pst file, which contains the calendar objects," says Gorvetich. "The creation date for an object is contained in the object itself. The .pst file itself also shows a date that reflects the last time the calendar program was used in any way, even if it was no more than opening it. The object in question shows a creation date of September 28, 2008, at 5:37 p.m.

  "So at this stage, I can tell the Court that this has every appearance of a legitimate object. Unfortunately, because the file was opened in court this morning, which I would have discouraged, the .pst file now bears today's date. But we have all checked our notes, and when the computer was examined and imaged by both sides last fall, the .pst date was October 30, 2008, several days before the computer was seized. As I noted when I testified, there is debris in the registry from the use of shredding software, but that debris was identified when the computer image was examined by both sides last December."

  Tommy Molto stands up. "Judge, can I ask something?"

  Yee lifts his hand.

  "What if somebody got hold of the computer after October and rolled the clock back and then added this card?" Molto asked.

  Brand clearly knows this isn't possible and is reaching after his boss. Hans and Franz are shaking their heads, too. Gorvetich says as much.

  "The program doesn't work like that. In order to create proper calendaring, the clock can't be rolled back within the program."

  Judge Yee is tapping his pencil against the blotter in front of him on the bench.

  "Mr. Molto," he says finally, "what you gonna do?"

  Tommy stands up. "Your Honor, if we may, we're going to think about it overnight."

  "Okay," says the judge. "Nine a.m. for status. Jury on standby." He bangs his gavel.

  I come to my feet and wait to head out with my father. Although he is probably going to go free tomorrow, my dad, the eternal e
nigma, is still not smiling.

  CHAPTER 37

  Tommy, June 25, 2009

  Estoy embarazada.' As he walked toward the office on Thursday morning from the parking structure, the words and the shy pride with which his wife had spoken them were still cascading through Tommy. 'Estoy embarazada,' Dominga had said when Tommy had picked up the phone yesterday after he'd left Brand's office. Her periods had always been flaky, and Tommy and she had been trying for a while, believing Tomaso shouldn't be an only child. But it hadn't seemed to be taking. Which was fine. Tommy had been blessed beyond imagining already. But now she was embarazada, six weeks along, with life again within her.

  So this was how Tommy had always known there was a God. You could call it a coincidence that his wife would find out she was pregnant at the very moment he learned his long pursuit of Rusty Sabich had failed again. But did that really make sense, that things just fall out like that, with joy enough to offset any sorrow?

  He had gone home early yesterday, in relative peace, and celebrated by sharing the company of his wife and son until they went to sleep, then he awoke at three a.m. to ponder. Sitting in the dark in their house, which was probably going to be too small now, he was swarmed by the doubts he had pushed aside when the prospect of the new baby remained remote. Should a man his age really be having another child--a girl, Tommy hoped for his wife's sake--who was likely to bury her father in her teens, or her twenties at the latest? Tommy did not know. He loved Dominga, he had fallen desperately in love, and all the rest of this followed, inevitably, even if the life he ended up living bore scant resemblance to anything he had expected for the nearly sixty years before. You follow your heart toward goodness and accept what comes.

  With Rusty, too, he had done the right thing. Given nearly a day to reflect, Tommy realized that ending the case now was going to suit everybody. The PAs had been duped, by the victim, no less. No one could ever point any fingers at them. Rusty would walk away, but what he'd gone through was a consequence not of any bad faith by Tommy, but of the fucked-up mess Rusty had made in his own fucked-up house. If you really thought about it, Sabich was the one who should be apologizing. Not that he would.