Scott Turow - Innocent

LimitationsOrdinary HeroesUltimate PunishmentReversible ErrorsPersonal InjuriesThe Laws of Our FathersPleading GuiltyThe Burden of ProofPresumed InnocentOne L Copyright This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. Copyright (c) 2010 by Scott Turow All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Grand Central Publishing Hachette Book Group 237 Park Avenue New York, NY 10017 Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com www.twitter.com/grandcentralpub First eBook Edition: May 2010 Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc. ISBN: 978-0-446-56821-0 Contents

PROLOGUE: Nat, September 30, 2008 PART ONE: I. CHAPTER 1: Rusty, March 19, 2007, Eighteen Months Earlier CHAPTER 2: Tommy Molto, September 30, 2008 CHAPTER 3: Rusty, March 19, 2007 CHAPTER 4: Tommy Molto, October 3, 2008 CHAPTER 5: Rusty, March 19, 2007 CHAPTER 6: Tommy, October 13, 2008 CHAPTER 7: Rusty, March-April 2007 CHAPTER 8: Tommy, October 17, 2008 CHAPTER 9: Rusty, May 2007 CHAPTER 10: Tommy, October 23, 2008 II. CHAPTER 11: Rusty, September 2, 2008 CHAPTER 12: Tommy, October 27, 2008 CHAPTER 13: Anna, September 2, 2008 CHAPTER 14: Tommy, October 29, 2008 CHAPTER 15: Anna, September 2, 2008 CHAPTER 16: Rusty, September 2, 2008 CHAPTER 17: Nat, September 2, 2008 CHAPTER 18: Tommy, October 31, 2008 CHAPTER 19: Anna, September 24-25, 2008 CHAPTER 20: Tommy, October 31, 2008 CHAPTER 21: Nat, September 28, 2008 CHAPTER 22: Tommy, November 4, 2008 PART TWO: III. CHAPTER 23: Nat, June 22, 2009 CHAPTER 24: Tommy, June 22, 2009 CHAPTER 25: Nat, June 22, 2009 CHAPTER 26: Nat, June 22, 2009 CHAPTER 27: Tommy, June 22, 2009 CHAPTER 28: Nat, June 22, 2009 CHAPTER 29: Nat, June 22, 2009 CHAPTER 30: Tommy, June 23, 2009 CHAPTER 31: Nat, June 23, 2009 CHAPTER 32: Nat, June 23, 2009 CHAPTER 33: Tommy, June 23, 2009 CHAPTER 34: Nat, June 24, 2009 CHAPTER 35: Tommy, June 24, 2009 CHAPTER 36: Nat, June 24, 2009 CHAPTER 37: Tommy, June 25, 2009 CHAPTER 38: Nat, June 25, 2009 CHAPTER 39: Tommy, June 25, 2009 CHAPTER 40: Nat, June 26, 2009 IV. CHAPTER 41: Tommy, August 3, 2009 CHAPTER 42: Rusty, August 4, 2009 CHAPTER 43: Tommy, August 4-5, 2009 CHAPTER 44: Anna, August 5-6, 2009 CHAPTER 45: Rusty, August 25, 2009 For NinaPROLOGUENat, September 30, 2008A man is sitting on a bed. He is my father. The body of a woman is beneath the covers. She was my mother.

This is not really where the story starts. Or how it ends. But it is the moment my mind returns to, the way I always see them. According to what my father will soon tell me, he has been there, in that room, for nearly twenty-three hours, except for bathroom breaks. Yesterday, he awoke, as he does most weekdays, at half past six and could see the mortal change as soon as he glanced back at my mother, just as his feet had found his slippers. He rocked her shoulder, touched her lips.

He pumped the heel of his palm against her sternum a few times, but her skin was cool as clay. Her limbs were already moving in a piece, like a mannequin's. He will tell me he sat then, in a chair across from her. He never cried. He thought, he will say. He does not know how long, except that the sun had moved all the way across the room, when he finally stood again and began to tidy obsessively.

He will say he put the three or four books she was always reading back on the shelf. He hung up the clothes she had a habit of piling on the chaise in front of her dressing mirror, then made the bed around her, pulling the sheets tight, folding the spread down evenly, before laying her hands out like a doll's on the satin binding of the blanket. He threw out two of the flowers that had wilted in the vase on her night table and straightened the papers and magazines on her desk. He will tell me he called no one, not even the paramedics because he was certain she was dead, and sent only a one-line e-mail to his assistant to say he would not be at work. He did not answer the phone, although it rang several times. Almost an entire day will have passed before he realizes he must contact me.

But how can she be dead? I will ask. She was fine two nights ago when we were together. After a freighted second, I will tell my father, She didn't kill herself. No, he will agree at once. She wasn't in that kind of mood. It was her heart, he will say then.

It had to be her heart. And her blood pressure. Your grandfather died the same way. Are you going to call the police? The police, he will say after a time. Why would I call the police? Well, Christ, Dad. You're a judge.

Isn't that what you do when someone dies suddenly? I was crying by now. I didn't know when I had started. I was going to phone the funeral home, he will tell me, but I realized you might want to see her before I did that. Well, shit, well, yes, I want to see her. As it happens, the funeral home will tell us to call our family doctor, and he in turn will summon the coroner, who will send the police. It will become a long morning, and then a longer afternoon, with dozens of people moving in and out of the house.

The coroner will not arrive for nearly six hours. He will be alone with my mom's body for only a minute before asking my dad's permission to make an index of all the medications she took. An hour later, I will pass my parents' bathroom and see a cop standing slackjawed before the open medicine cabinet, a pen and pad in hand. Jesus, he will declare. Bipolar disorder, I will tell him when he finally notices me. She had to take a lot of pills.

In time, he will simply sweep the shelves clean and go off with a garbage bag containing all the bottles. In the meanwhile, every so often another police officer will arrive and ask my father about what happened. He tells the story again and again, always the same way. What was there to think about all that time? one cop will say. My dad can have a hard way with his blue eyes, something he probably learned from his own father, a man he despised. Officer, are you married? I am, Judge.

Then you know what there was to think about. Life, he will answer. Marriage. Her. The police will make him go through his account three or four more times--how he sat there and why. His response will never vary.

He will answer every question in his usual contained manner, the stolid man of law who looks out on life as an endless sea. He will tell them how he moved each item. He will tell them where he spent each hour. But he will not tell anybody about the girl. PART ONE I. " People versus John Harnason," I say, "fifteen minutes each side." The stately appellate courtroom, with its oxblood pillars rising two stories to a ceiling decorated with rococo gildings, is largely empty of spectators, save for Molly Singh, the Tribune's courthouse reporter, and several young deputy PAs, drawn by a difficult case and the fact that their boss, the acting prosecuting attorney, Tommy Molto, will be making a rare appearance up here to argue in behalf of the State. " People versus John Harnason," I say, "fifteen minutes each side." The stately appellate courtroom, with its oxblood pillars rising two stories to a ceiling decorated with rococo gildings, is largely empty of spectators, save for Molly Singh, the