I never heard about that happening, but it was possible with my mom. Overall, she probably would have preferred to have a computer strapped to her hip. Molto has proved those courtroom sayings about not gilding the lily. The last series of questions feels like it's helped my dad, and Molto, who is not especially poker-faced, seems to know it, frowning at himself as he strolls around. It's not hard to see why Tommy has been successful as a trial lawyer. He's sincere. Maybe misguided. But he comes across like somebody with nothing up his sleeve.
"To be clear, Judge, do you agree that your wife did not die accidentally?"
Because my dad has instructed Sandy to be frank with me about the evidence, I've known in advance about almost everything I've heard in court. My dad hasn't wanted me taken by surprise. And I've rolled it over, talked to Anna about it when she would listen, even made some notes now and then. But to think about your father killing your mother is even worse than thinking about your parents having sex. A part of your brain is just like, "No way, dude." So I've never seen as clearly how these things cascade backward in time. If my mom didn't die accidentally, then she also probably wasn't taking the phenelzine daily. And if she wasn't taking the phenelzine daily, she had no reason to renew the scrip. It means--or seems to mean--it was my dad who wanted the pills. And there's only one conceivable reason for that.
"Mr. Molto, again, I am not a pathologist or a toxicologist. I have my theories, you have your theories. All I know for sure is that your theory is wrong. I didn't kill her."
"So you still say it could have been an accident?"
"The experts say it could have been."
"So if your wife was possibly taking one pill every day, that would mean, wouldn't it, that she handled that pill bottle on four different occasions, right?"
"That's what it would mean."
"And yet, Judge, your wife left no fingerprints on that bottle, is that correct?"
"That's what Dr. Dickerman said."
"Now, Judge, there was a total of twenty-one pill bottles taken from your wife's medicine cabinet and inventoried by Officer Krilic."
"So he testified."
"And according to Dr. Dickerman, your wife's fingerprints appear on seventeen of those bottles. And on two others, there are smudged prints that cannot be positively identified, although he found points of comparisons on each that match your wife's. All true?"
"I remember the testimony the same way."
"Judge, how many times have you been involved as a prosecutor, a trial judge, and an appellate court judge in cases in which fingerprints were offered in evidence?"
"Certainly hundreds. Probably more."
"And so is it fair to say, sir, that over the course of the years, you have learned a great deal about fingerprints?"
"We can quibble about how much, but yes, I've learned a lot."
"For thirty-five years now you've been called upon in one capacity or another to make judgments about the quality or failings of fingerprint evidence. Right?"
"True enough."
"Could we call you an expert?"
"I'm not an expert like Dr. Dickerman."
"No one is," says Molto.
"Just ask him," says my father. This could come across as a cheap shot but the jurors saw Dickerman up there and several of them laugh out loud. In fact, the laughter grows in the courtroom. Even Judge Yee manages a quick chuckle. Molto too has enjoyed the remark. He shakes a finger at my dad in admiration.
"But you know, Judge, that some persons characteristically leave fingerprints on a receptive surface like these pill bottles, don't you?"
"I know, Mr. Molto, that it basically comes down to how much your hands sweat. Some people sweat more than others. But the amount that somebody sweats varies."
"Well, can you agree that somebody who printed on nineteen--or even seventeen other bottles--can you agree that it would be unusual for that person to handle this bottle of phenelzine four times"--and now Molto again holds up the actual bottle, in the plastic envelope sealed with evidence tape--"and leave no fingerprints?"
"I can't say that for sure, Mr. Molto. And frankly I don't recall hearing Dr. Dickerman say it, either."
On the stand, Dickerman had clearly given Jim Brand, who questioned him, less than Brand hoped for on this point. Back at the office, Stern and my dad had said that happened with Dickerman regularly. He took it as proof of his eminence that he was unpredictable.
"By the way, is Dr. Dickerman a friend of yours?" Molto asks.
"I would say yes. Just as he's a friend of yours. We've both known him for a long time."
Trying to insinuate that Dickerman might have been tilting his testimony toward my dad, Molto has come up on the short end of the exchange.
"Well, let's be clear, Judge. There are only two bottles in your wife's medicine cabinet on which we can say without doubt that her fingerprints don't appear. True?"
"Apparently."
"And one is the bottle of sleepers you picked up the day before she died, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"And that bottle is full, right?"
"Right."
"So leaving the unopened sleeping pills aside, the only bottle in your dead wife's medicine cabinet on which the experts can say definitively that her fingerprints are not present, Judge--the only container is the bottle of phenelzine, correct?"
"There are no identifiable prints of Barbara's on the bottle of phenelzine, and as you point out, on three others."
"Move to strike," says Molto, which means he thinks my dad didn't answer the question.
Judge Yee asks to have the question and answer read back.
"Answer may stand," says Yee, "but, Judge, only one opened bottle where expert can say for sure, no sign of your wife fingerprints. Yes?"
"That's fair enough, Your Honor."
"Okay." Yee nods for Molto to go on.
"But on the bottle of phenelzine--on that bottle the only prints which appear, Judge, are yours? Right?"
"My prints are on that bottle and on seven others, including the sleeping pills that were unopened."
"Move to strike," Molto says again.
"Sustained," Yee says somewhat darkly. He gave my dad a chance not to screw around and he didn't take it.
"So far as we can tell from the fingerprints, you are the only person who handled the phenelzine."
Already chastened by the judge, my dad answers more carefully.
"Considering only the fingerprints, that is true, Mr. Molto."
"Very well," says Tommy. He seems to realize only after he has spoken that he sounded as though he were imitating Stern. One of the jurors, a middle-aged black guy, picks up on that and smiles. He seems to love what Tommy is doing. Molto is back at the prosecution table, paging through his yellow legal pad, a sign that he is again changing subjects.
"Good time for a break?" the judge asks.
Molto nods. The judge knocks his gavel and calls a five-minute time-out. The spectators rise and buzz at once. My dad has been a big deal in Kindle County for decades now, especially in the kind of crowd that wants to come and watch a trial. Call it what you like, bloodlust or lurid curiosity, but many of them are here to see the mighty fall, to reconfirm that power corrupts and that overall, you're better off without it. I'm not sure there is anybody but me left out here in these seats who is still hoping my dad is innocent.
CHAPTER 26
Nat, June 22, 2009
While a witness is on the stand, no one is allowed to talk to him about his testimony, including his lawyers. Stern and Marta nod at my dad from the prosecution table, and Sandy makes a little fist to tell him to hang in, but neither approaches him. I feel bad about this. It comes too close to the reality of what's been going on to have him shunned by everybody in the room, so I go up just to ask if he needs another glass of water. He answers with another indifferent shrug.
"You okay?" I ask.
"Bloodied but still standing. He's kicking the shit out of me."
I'm not s
upposed to respond to that, and how could I, anyway? I say the same stupid thing he used to shout to me from the stands when my Little League team was down 12 to nothing in the second inning.
"Long way to go," I say.
"Whatever." He smiles a little. He has become so dourly fatalistic in the last several months, it often frightens me. Whoever my dad was, he will never be the same, even if Zeus hurled a thunderbolt that freed him right now. He won't ever fully plug himself back into life. He places his hand on my shoulder for a second and announces, "I'm going to pee."
Our conversation is largely typical of the recent past. I have not exactly stopped talking to my dad. I just say next to nothing to him of any consequence, even compared with the stilted conversations we had before. I'm sure he's noticed, but it's not as if the law really leaves us any choice. I'm a witness in the case and cannot talk to him about the evidence or the way the trial is going, and at this point, he really doesn't seem to think about anything else, not that I would, either. The silence serves me well. I don't know if my dad is guilty or not. There is a big part of me that will never accept it if he is. But I have known with a rock-hard intuition that my mother's death had some connection to my father's affair. Anna, who does not care for protracted discussions of this topic because she does not like getting between me and my father, asked me more than once what reason I have for thinking that. The short answer is I knew my mom. Anyway, at base I believe my dad really wants to know one thing from me, which is what I think of him and, more to the point, whether I still love him. Sometimes I feel I should hand him a Post-It note that says, "I'll let you know when I figure it out."
Understanding my dad has always been a chore. He seems to like being the man of mystery with me, a routine I've cared for less and less as I've gotten older. I know him, naturally, in the unsparing way kids know their parents, which is sort of the same way somebody knows a hurricane when they're standing at the eye. I know all his aggravating habits--the way he can just drift off in the middle of a conversation, as if what's crossed his mind is far more important than anybody in the room; or how he sits silent when people talk about anything a little bit personal, even if it's like how much their feet itch in wool socks; or the self-important air he's always assumed with me, as if being my father is a responsibility equal to carrying the signals for all of America's nukes. But the trial, the charges, the affair, have all gone to emphasize the fact that I don't really know my father on his own terms.
While I try to piece through that, I teeter between extremes. Sometimes I'm terrified the endless anxiety, which has left my father a kind of burned-out zombie, is going to kill him and that I will lose my second parent within a year. At other instants I'm so righteously honked off, I feel he's getting everything he deserves. But mostly, of course, I'm just angry about the many moments when I'm not sure one foot will go in front of the other, or that the cars going down the street will remain glued to the earth, because so much has changed so suddenly that I don't know what to believe in.
"Just a couple more subjects, Judge," says Molto when they resume.
"Whatever you like, Mr. Molto." My dad does a little better job of sounding like he's okay with that.
"All right, Judge. Now tell me this. Were you happy in your marriage to Mrs. Sabich?"
"It was like many marriages, Mr. Molto. We had our ups and downs."
"And at the time your wife died, Judge, were you up or were you down?"
"We were getting along, Mr. Molto, but I was not especially happy."
"And by getting along, you mean you weren't having marital spats?"
"I wouldn't say none, Mr. Molto, but there certainly hadn't been any big blowups that week."
"But you told us you were unhappy. Any particular reason for that, Judge?"
My dad takes quite a bit of time. I know he is weighing the fact that I am seated thirty feet away.
"It was an accumulation of things, Mr. Molto."
"Such as?"
"Well, one thing, Mr. Molto, was that my wife really hated my campaigning. She felt exposed by it in a way I thought was not entirely realistic."
"She was acting crazy?"
"In a colloquial sense."
"And you were sick of it?"
"I was."
"And was that one of the things that drove you to consult Dana Mann three weeks before your wife died?"
"I suppose."
"Is it true, Judge, you were thinking of ending your marriage?"
"Yes."
"Not for the first time, was it?"
"No."
"You'd seen Mr. Mann in July 2007?"
There is a delicate dance here on both sides. My father's conversations with Mann are shielded under the attorney-client privilege. As long as my dad steers clear of any discussion of what he told Dana, Molto can't ask, since forcing my dad or Stern to assert the privilege in front of the jury would risk a mistrial. But my dad, too, needs to be careful. If he were to lie about what he said to Mann, or even deliberately create a misleading impression on that score, the law might oblige Dana to come to court to correct him. It was pretty clear when Dana testified during the prosecution case that he is basically terrified of Molto and Jim Brand and the whole situation, even though he wasn't up there more than five minutes. He acknowledged a couple meetings with my dad and identified the bills he sent last September and in July the year before, and the cashier's checks my father returned in payment.
"And in fact, Judge, your conversation with Mr. Mann in the summer of 2007--that occurred not too long after you'd asked Mr. Harnason what it was like to poison someone, right?"
"Within a couple of months, give or take."
"And what happened then, Judge? Why did you not carry through on ending your marriage?"
"I was pondering my options, Mr. Molto. I got Mr. Mann's advice and decided not to seek a divorce."
The implication of all the evidence the jury won't hear, the stuff that Sandy and Marta have shown me--the STD tests and the witnesses' statements about my dad lurking around various hotels--is that instead of getting divorced, he recovered his sanity and ended the affair and stayed with my mom. I've never quite gotten around to asking my dad if I have it right. The one conversation we had on that subject is about all I can take. The weird part is that I never believed my parents had a wonderful marriage or that they were especially happy with each other, and I'd thought at least once a year that one of them was going to call it quits. But this--my dad doing some thirty-year-old on the sly in the middle of the afternoon? Sick.
"Now, you saw Mr. Mann again in the first week of September in 2008."
"I did."
"And was poisoning your wife among the options on your mind this time, just as it had been when you spoke to Mr. Harnason around the time of your first visit with Mann?"
I see Marta poke her father's arm, but Stern does not stir. I guess it's obvious the question is ridiculously argumentative and thus not worth an objection. In preparing me emotionally to see my father up there, Marta has explained that as a judge, my dad will look better fending for himself in court, without his lawyer trying too hard to protect him. And that's what my dad does now. He makes a small face and tells Tommy, "Of course not."
"Were you more determined to end your marriage this time when you saw Mr. Mann in September 2008?"
"I don't know, Mr. Molto. I was confused. Barbara and I had been together a long time."
"But you admit you'd already received advice from Mr. Mann in July 2007?"
"Yes."
"And so, Judge, it's a fair conclusion that you went back because you were ready to proceed on the advice and bring the marriage to an end."
Molto is going along as precisely as an ice-skater, avoiding the actual question of what my dad asked Dana.
"I suppose, Mr. Molto, for a brief period, I was more intent on terminating my marriage. I cooled off after that and reassessed."
"It wasn't the fact that you were at the height of your election campaig
n for the supreme court that made you hesitate, was it?"
"I certainly wouldn't have filed for divorce before November 4."
"Would have looked bad, wouldn't it?"
"I was much more concerned about the fact that I would have made news by filing then, whereas it would have been immaterial to anybody but my family after the election."
"But you concede, Judge, don't you, that some voters wouldn't be pleased to learn you were ending your marriage?"
"I imagine that's true."
"While they could be expected to be sympathetic if you suddenly found yourself a widower?"
My dad doesn't answer. He just shrugs and tosses up a hand.
"Did you tell your wife, Judge, that you were thinking of ending the marriage?"
"I didn't, no."
"Because--?"
"Because I was undecided. Because my mood changed again after I saw Mr. Mann. And because my wife was volatile. She could become very, very angry. There was no value in discussing it before I had made a final decision."
"You didn't look forward to talking about this with her, then, Judge?"
"Not at all. It would have been extremely unpleasant."
"So we can say, Judge, can't we, that the fact that your wife died when she did seemed to save you from confronting her or the voters?"
My dad makes the same face, part wince, part frown, as if this is all too stupid, trying to seem indifferent to the trap he's wandered into.
"You could say that if you wanted to, Mr. Molto."
"All in all, Judge, it was a very convenient time for Mrs. Sabich to die, wasn't it?"
"Objection," Stern says with vigor.
"Enough now," Judge Yee says quietly. "Time for other subject."
"Very well," Tommy says again, more deliberately than last time, and wanders back to his notes. He is preening just a little. Molto knows he is still knocking it out of the park. "Let's talk some more about your computer."
The night my father learned he was going to be indicted--November 4, 2008, a date I'm not likely to forget, the day his legal career was supposed to have reached its absolute zenith--the Kindle County Unified Police Force searched our house in Nearing. The police took both computers out of the house and, clearly looking for traces of phenelzine, seized all of my dad's clothing plus every implement from the kitchen--every plate, every glass, every open bottle or container in the refrigerator or the cabinets--and all my father's tools. Even after that, they weren't done. During the initial search, they had discovered some concrete patching my dad had done a few months before in the basement--my parents were always fighting seepage--and the cops returned and opened up the walls with jackhammers. Then they came back with another warrant and tore up the backyard, because one of the neighbors said he was sure my father had been out there digging around the time my mom died. He had been, too, planting that rhododendron for her the day the four of us had dinner. Furthermore, the prosecutors were not only jerks about ransacking the house, they also refused to release anything they seized, meaning my father basically had no wardrobe, no personal PC, and not so much as a pot to boil water in the kitchen for months.