Innocent

  "I still don't understand what he was doing up there if he was ready to throw it all away. Did he think he didn't stand a chance without testifying?"

  "Your father never shared his reasoning with me. He heard my advice and made his decision. But it did not seem tactical."

  "What was it, then?"

  Stern assumes one of his complicated expressions, as if to suggest that language cannot fully capture what he feels.

  "Lonely, if I had to choose one word."

  Naturally, I'm puzzled.

  "I have known your father well for thirty years, and I would call our relationship intimate. But only in a professional sense. He says very little about himself. Always."

  "Welcome to the club."

  "I mean only to acknowledge that I am relying on my own estimates, rather than anything he has told me. But we have interesting evenings, your father and I. I would say his chances of survival are better than mine." Stern's smile is rueful, and his hand creeps along a few inches for the missing cigar. One of the thoughts my dad and I have shared is that there really is no need to ask about Sandy's prospects of recovery. We'll know there's no hope the first time he lights up. "But I feel myself far more involved in this world than he is."

  I nod. "He sometimes seems like he thinks he's out of body and just watching all of this happen to somebody else."

  "Just so," answers Stern. "And very much the point. He had very little concern whether his testimony would help or hurt his case. He wanted to tell what actually happened. The piece of it he knew."

  My reaction to Stern surprises even me. "He'll never tell anybody everything."

  Stern smiles again, wistful, wise. One thing is clear: Sandy Stern is enjoying this conversation. He has obviously spent nearly as many nights as I have up late and preoccupied by my father's many riddles.

  "But he wanted to tell you, Nat, as much as he could."

  "Me?"

  "Oh, I have no doubt he testified almost exclusively so he could enhance your confidence in him."

  "I don't lack confidence." This is, at some level, a lie. The logic of my father's case is actually against him, even with me. But it is so contrary to my being to think of my father as a murderer that I can never cross that river of belief. If I had not already spent so many frigging years talking to shrinks, I'd probably be talking to one now, but nobody can really help you answer the kinds of questions I'm dealing with. Even if my father were guilty, it wouldn't mean he gave me an instant's less love and attention. But most of the other lessons in life I've taken from him would come to nothing. It would mean I'd been raised by someone in disguise, that I had loved a costume, not him.

  "He thinks you do."

  I shrug. "There's some bad stuff."

  "Of course," answers Stern. We are quiet together.

  "Do you think he's guilty, Mr. Stern?" He has told me repeatedly to call him Sandy, but after a year at the supreme court, where every lawyer was Mr. or Ms. and the bosses all had the same first name--Justice--I can't bring myself to do it. Instead, I watch Stern labor with my question. I know it's neither fair nor proper to put this to a lawyer trying to captain a defense. I expect Sandy to sidestep. But we have gotten far outside the legal chalk lines by now. Sandy is a father talking to a good friend's child.

  "In this line of endeavor, one learns never to assume too much. But I was thoroughly convinced that your father was innocent in the first case. The recent DNA results were a terrible shock to me, I admit that, but just so, there are still several compelling hypotheses of his innocence then."

  "Such as?"

  "Frankly, Nat, the specimen was subject to enormous question in your father's first trial, and there are no better answers today."

  Anna has said the same thing to me, that the whole thing was totally sketchy.

  "But even if the specimen was genuine," says Stern, "it would prove merely that your father was the lover of the woman who was killed. You will forgive me for being forthright about that, but the evidence at trial was quite clear that your father was not the only man who fell in that category at the time of the murder. A very credible surmise is that someone else saw your father with her that night and killed her in a jealous rage after he left."

  Anna had admitted to a fascination like a Trekkie's with my dad's first case, which she's been interested in since she was a kid. She recently went back and read Stern's copy of the transcript, mostly because I couldn't stand to do it myself. After that, she offered exactly the same theory as Stern. The notion has seemed utterly plausible all along, but it's even more persuasive coming from Sandy.

  "So now, Nat, while I should be in doubt, my heart remains on your father's side. Certainly, I have never been impressed with the evidence in this case. The State, so far as I am concerned, cannot even prove beyond a reasonable doubt that your mother died of poisoning. If Judge Yee was unpolluted by the DNA results, I think there is a fair chance he would have granted our motion for acquittal at the end of the prosecution case. Nor do many of the other details add up to what Molto and Brand think."

  "Tommy did a good job of weaving it all together."

  "But that weaving metaphor is employed frequently in circumstantial cases, and it can fit for both sides. Pull one thread and the whole cloth falls apart. And we shall be tugging at it quite a bit."

  "Can I ask how?"

  He smiles again, a man who's always enjoyed his secrets.

  "More," he says, "after you have testified."

  "Will you be able to answer that stuff about his computer? It was pretty damaging."

  "It's well you've raised that." He lifts a finger. "Marta will discuss this further with you, but we have been hoping you might help a bit on that score."

  "Me?"

  "We were thinking about asking you a little about computers. Are you knowledgeable?"

  "I'm okay. I'm not like Anna or a lot of other people I know."

  "And your father? Is he sophisticated?"

  "If you call turning the computer on sophisticated. He's somewhere between a useless dweeb and a total ignoramus."

  Stern laughs out loud. "So you don't imagine that he downloaded shredding software and removed e-mail messages?"

  I giggle at the notion. Admittedly, I want to believe my dad is innocent. But I know with the kind of preternatural faith I have in things like gravity, he could not have done something like that on his own.

  "We have been thinking that we should do some demonstrations with your father's computer, just to show the jurors how unlikely the prosecution's theory is. You might be the right witness for various reasons."

  "Whatever," I answer.

  Stern looks at his watch, a golden Cartier that seems to reflect all of Stern's elegant precision. Marta is waiting.

  At the door, I say, "Thanks for talking, Mr. Stern."

  "Sandy," he answers.

  CHAPTER 29

  Nat, June 22, 2009

  When I leave my meeting with Marta, my dad is waiting for me, the sleeves rolled on his white shirt and his rep tie wrenched down from his collar. He has said he is not sleeping much, and after the long day on the stand he looks totally blasted. The flesh around his eyes seems to have gone pruny, and he's lost a lot of color. It's about the worst emotional combination imaginable, I guess, feeling both hopeless and scared.

  "Tough afternoon," I say.

  He shrugs. These days, my dad frequently takes on the bleary look of a bag man.

  "There will be something tomorrow, Nat," he says. I wait for more, but he is silent and simply frowns. "I can't talk about it yet. I'm sorry." He stands there uselessly, knowing the rules leave him with no more to say or do but somehow unable to accept that fact. I'm sure that's where his brain has been stuck for months, looking for the keystrokes that will undo the entire situation.

  "Do you need anything, Dad? Anything from home?"

  He takes a second to focus on my question. "I'd really love another tie," he says as if he were asking for an ice cream, something he's bee
n craving at the bottom of his brain. "I've been wearing the same two ties for three weeks now. Would you mind going? Bring me four or five, if you would, Nat. I'd really like the violet one your mom bought me for Christmas the year before last." I remember my mom saying that it would improve his usual low-rent style.

  One of the few useful services I have performed for my father, given everything else, is to shuttle back and forth to the house to get personal possessions he needs. About a month before the trial began, my father moved into a residency hotel in Center City for the duration of the proceedings. He didn't want to waste time commuting before and after the long days in court. More to the point, he was sick of the creeps with cameras who jumped out of the bushes every time he went in and out his front door.

  The Miramar, where he is staying, is nowhere near any body of water, despite its name, and is one of those places that chose to change its signs and client mix instead of remodeling. The colonial furnishings in the lobby look as if they were there when George Washington spent the night, and the wallpaper in two different corners of his room hangs down like the tongue of a slobbering dog. None of that seems to matter to my father, who returns to the efficiency only to sleep when Stern and he have finished preparing for the next day. Now and then he'll make lame jokes about getting accustomed to smaller spaces.

  The truth is that right now he is living only in his head, and his head is crowded almost exclusively with the details of the case. When he is not in the courtroom, he likes doing legal and factual research in Stern's office. It's baffling, since he seems to have no hope about the outcome, but I guess it's his only way to cope. It would be better if there were some friends to distract him, but my dad has found himself remarkably alone. These kind of charges, especially for a second time, don't fetch party invitations, and he is too much of a loner to have ever had much of a social life anyway, especially because my mom was pretty much phobic about leaving home. Even his former colleagues are rarely in touch. He was a fairly remote figure on the court, and his only really good friend there, George Mason, is, like me, a witness who has to keep his distance right now. The idea that riled me months ago, of my dad dating, would probably make some sense right now, even if it was just to have company for dinner or a movie; but he seems totally uninterested in anything outside his case and prefers to spend his few free moments by himself.

  He does not even seem to enjoy spending time with Anna and me. We've tried a couple of evenings, but it's all been somehow stilted. Despite how much he loved Anna as a clerk, he does not seem comfortable speaking in front of her in this time of distress, and the three of us often descend to silence. Now and then, when Anna is working late or out of town, I'll have a quick dinner with him, which is permissible as long as we steer clear of the case. He reminds me a lot of my law school friend Mike Pepi, whose wife left him for her boss at River National and who talks obsessively about his divorce. After a half-hour rant about LeeAnn and the lawyers, Pepi will abruptly say, 'Let's discuss something else,' and then go back to the subject immediately, seeming to find a segue in subjects as unlikely as quilting exhibits or the latest astronomical status of Pluto.

  My dad's pretty much the same way. He would probably like to dissect every Q&A from court, but since he really can't talk to me about that stuff, he rambles about his own state of mind. Again and again, he has said that this experience is nothing like the first time twenty-plus years ago. Then, he says, he really couldn't believe it and constantly wished his life could be the same as it was before. Now he takes a tectonic shift for granted. He refers offhandedly to going to prison. But even if he is acquitted, the DNA results from the first trial will be released to the press after the jury returns its verdict. Sophisticates may grasp the arguments about specimen contamination or the victim's other lovers, but the nuances won't find their way into the headlines. If my dad walks away again, he will be shirked by virtually everyone who recognizes his name.

  Now, outside Marta's office, I hug my dad, something I do every night before I leave, and tell him I'll have the ties for him in the morning. The little blue Prius Anna bought herself last year is at the curb.

  "Would you mind a trip to Nearing?" I ask after I've kissed her. "He wants some ties."

  Would you want to wear a tie that came from the hand of a woman you killed? Or is my father sinister and subtle enough to foresee that I'd ask myself that very question? It's this kind of cloud chamber, where the questions ricochet in all directions leaving their skinny vapor trails, in which I've lived for months. For the last hour, I've thought a lot about Stern's remark that my father took the stand to enhance my confidence in him. I know my dad is desperate not to lose me. As parents, he and my mom were always so eager for my love that it seemed to pain all of us. But to disconnect from me now, especially, would bring my dad to an end too much like that of his own father, who died alone in one of those tin can trailers out west.

  "How did he do?" Anna asks after we have been driving quite some time. She is accustomed to my lengthy silences, especially after court.

  "God," I answer, and just worry my head as we stutter through the Center City traffic toward the Nearing Bridge. On the street, some messenger is traveling along on a unicycle and a full-body rabbit's suit, the ears bobbing as he pedals. I guess that's what they mean when they say, All the world's a stage. "Did you read anything?" I ask.

  "Frain," she answers. "He's already posted." Michael Frain writes a national column, with oddball observations on culture and events, called "The Survivor's Guide." He is married to a federal judge here, and to keep from traveling, he gravitates toward local stories that can entertain people coast to coast. He's been writing a lot about my father's case and seems to think my dad literally got away with murder.

  "Bad?"

  "'Like a bombing raid on a small village.'"

  "I'm not sure it was that awful. My dad got some licks in here and there. And Sandy has something up his sleeve they didn't want to talk about before I go on the stand again." Nonetheless, the words resound. 'A bombing raid.' I think about what I heard this afternoon. It seemed worse moment by moment, watching him getting pecked at like Prometheus tied to that rock. But after talking to Sandy, it feels as if my dad had a really rough plane ride, on which he somehow landed safely, more scared than injured.

  "Do you remember whether my mom drank the wine that night?" I ask Anna as I am rethinking my father's testimony. Long ago, I violated the rules about not discussing the case with Anna. I have to talk to someone, and there is no realistic chance she will get called to the stand herself.

  Debby Diaz located Anna two days after the detective had come to see me, but I had warned her, and she knows how to play the game far better than I do. She had Diaz meet her at her office, and one of the senior partners sat in as her lawyer. When Diaz asked about who did what the night before my mom died, Anna said she had been too nervous about showing up as my girlfriend for the first time to remember anything clearly. She kept adding, 'I'm not sure,' and, 'It might have been the other way,' and, 'I really don't recall,' whenever she answered a question. Diaz gave up about halfway through the interview. The prosecutors put Anna's name on their witness list anyway, just like everyone else the cops talked to during their investigation, including my dad's dry cleaner. It's an old trick so they can conceal who they will actually call. As a result, she's obliged to stay out of the courtroom, but always eager to hear what took place.

  Now, in reply to my question about the wine, Anna reminds me that when we sat down to dinner, my mother insisted my dad open the nice bottle Anna had brought and that he poured some for each of us. Neither of us, though, seems to recall clearly whether my mom lifted that glass or the one she'd been served in the kitchen.

  "What about the appetizers. Did she eat any?"

  "God, Nat. I don't know. I mean, the veggies and dip, probably. I remember your father offering her the whole tray, but I sort of thought he finally took it out with you guys while you were cooking. Who knows?" She
wriggles up her nose at the uncertainty of all of it. "How are you feeling, anyway, after all of that?"

  I flap my hands around uselessly. I'm always amazed how flattened and listless I feel when I leave my dad. Being around him requires everything I've got.

  "You know," I say. "I heard it all laid out, and it's not like I can tell myself these guys, Molto and Brand, have just lost the thread, because it makes sense, what they're saying. But I still don't believe it," I tell her.

  "You shouldn't." Always my dad's number one fan, Anna has been stalwart in his defense. "It's impossible."

  "'Impossible'? Well, it's not like it would violate the rules of the physical world." Anna's green eyes slide my way. I never make points with her when I play philosopher.

  "That's not your father."

  I weigh that for a second. "I realize you worked for him, but up close and personal, my dad has actually got the cork in pretty tight." Anna and I have moments like this routinely, when I ventilate my doubts and she helps me see around them. "You know, once when I was a kid--I must have been twelve, because we'd moved back from Detroit and my dad was still sitting as a trial judge--me and him were driving somewhere. There was this big-publicity case he was presiding over. The wife of a local minister at one of these megachurches had murdered her husband. It turned out the minister was gay. She had no clue, and then she found out and she killed him by slicing off his you-know-what while he was asleep. He ended up bleeding to death."

  "I guess that made the point," says Anna, and laughs a little. Girls always find that kind of thing more amusing than guys.

  "Or unmade it," I answer. "Anyway, there was not much for the defense lawyers to do except claim she was insane. They called lots of witnesses to say this was completely unlike her. And I asked my dad what he thought. That was always sweet, because I knew he'd never answer those questions for anybody else, and I said, 'Do you believe she was insane?' and he just looked at me and said, 'Nat, you can never tell what can happen in this life, what people can do.' And don't ask me why, but I knew for sure he was talking about what had happened to him a couple years before."