"There's some here," said Ruthie, "all the rules we got and they just have to make more." That surely was Gillian's experience. Prison officials were often in a cla.s.s by themselves when it came to rigidity. And among them there were, inevitably, a few outright s.a.d.i.s.ts, who were gratified to see people in cages. But at Alderson, Gillian also found many guards like Ruthie, good-natured souls who were there because it was the best job they could find, or because they were happiest with people who had no right to look down on them.

By the time they'd reached the infirmary, Ruthie had offered to walk Gillian back out as soon as Arthur was situated with Erdai, a.s.suring them that the Lieutenant would never know the difference. Gillian was admittedly curious about what Erdai would say, but her days of evaluating witnesses, matching their stories against her memory of other evidence, had been brought to a forced end. For her, the safest thing was to leave.

Arthur had grown agitated again about what was before him and disappeared without much in the way of farewell through the infirmary entrance. Ruthie returned in several minutes to lead Gillian back through the warren of corridors and bars toward the front.

In the main building, a trusty wheeling a stainless steel cart turned full around as Gillian pa.s.sed. She felt his gaze, but a.s.sumed he was ogling. Instead she heard her name.

"Ain't you Judge Sullivan?"

Ruthie came to alert beside her, but Gillian answered, "I used to be."

"This here is Jones," Ruthie said. "He's all right. Most of the time."

Ruthie was playing and Jones smiled, but his attention remained on Gillian.

"You gimme sixty," he said. "Agg Battery." It had occurred to her there would still be plenty of inmates in here whom she had sentenced, but her concerns had rested so much on her own reactions that she'd largely forgotten the risk of being around these men. And she sensed no danger now. Jones was tall, with a beard, but he was getting past the age where he was likely to be a problem to anyone.

"Shot someone?" she asked.

"Dude what was with me. We were doin a job in a liquor store. Clerk went for a gun and I shot my partner instead. Ain't that a b.i.t.c.h? And the state charged me for that, that and the armed robbery. I don't mind the armed robbery rap, but how come I'm doin time for shootin someone I didn't have any mind to shoot?"

"Because you meant to shoot the clerk," said Gillian.

"Naw, I didn't. I was jest jumpy."

"You could have killed somebody."

"Yeah, but I didn't. See that's the part I still don't un'erstand."

He understood. He just wanted to talk about it. It still kept him up nights to realize that so much of his life had been determined in an instant.

"That's nothing but old times now, Jones," Ruthie told him.

"Yeah," said Jones, "I'm gone get old doing that time." But he was laughing as he said it.

"How's your partner?" Gillian asked.

"Okay. His stomach ain't been right since, is the only thing. You give him just thirty. He gettin out in oh-three."

"He didn't have the gun."

Beaten back, Jones returned to his cart. He appeared reconciled, but in a day or two he'd be convinced once again that the whole deal was wrong.

Ruthie kept talking about him all the way to the guardhouse, informing Gillian about Jones's troubles with his family. Ruthie's idea of a secret must have been something she told only a quarter of the people on earth. But she was sweet. She helped Gillian pull her bag out of the locker where she'd been ordered to deposit it and, like a good host, walked Gillian right to the front gate on the other side of the guardhouse, and waved her hand to another Lieutenant behind the main desk to buzz Gillian out.

Gillian pulled open the heavy grating and looked out of the prison gloom into a spectacular late-spring day. It was yard time and even as she remained on the threshold, she could hear the tumult of the men, whooping and gabbing some distance away. At Alderson, railroad tracks ab.u.t.ted the facility. Most of the trains were a hundred cars long, bearing a shiny cargo of coal, but the D.C.-to-Chicago Amtrak also clattered by, close enough to see all the pa.s.sengers clearly. Gillian could never look away. Instead, with unbearable envy, she studied the travelers, who were free to move on to places they wanted to go. The Normals, she called them in her own mind.

She turned back to Ruthie.

"I forgot something. I didn't put the time on the sign-out sheet."

"We'll get that," said Ruthie.

"I want to do it myself." She didn't. She simply wanted to re-enter and wave and have the door open again. When the lock shot back this time, it felt as if the mechanism had been wired into her heart. A Normal.

On a bench beneath a tree, halfway to the parking lot, Gillian rested. She watched the people come and go, Normals all of them. Like her. Eventually, she pulled from her bag the book she'd been reading. It was Thucydides. Duffy, who loved the cla.s.sics, had pressed it on her, and to her surprise she had been finding great reprieve in history, in learning again the lessons of the distant past and the account of forgotten human folly. Her comfort, she suspected, arose from knowing she would someday be forgotten as well, that her sins would wash away in the great tide of time in which all but one or two people who'd trod the world beside her"a scientist, an artist"would be pulverized with her into nothing more memorable than sand. And today she was free to begin moving there. It was over, she told herself in that moment. If she could let it be, it was over.

It was more than an hour and a half before Arthur returned. Gillian had actually been considering walking a few blocks into town for a cool drink, when he finally emerged from the guardhouse.

"Sorry it was so long. I wanted to see Rommy before I left."

She told him she didn't mind. It had been a much better day than she'd expected. "How did it go with Erdai?"

"Great," he said. "Couldn't have gone better." Something was wrong with Arthur, however. He seemed strangely unfocused. He looked into the air for a second, almost like an animal, trying to make out a scent on the breeze. He said no more and she finally asked how he felt about what Erdai had told him.

"Oh, I believed him. Absolutely. That's why I had to see Rommy. I wanted to tell him about this myself. I had to argue with the Captain, but they finally brought him down for a few minutes." Arthur smiled suddenly. "Basically, he couldn't understand why I was surprised. Like it was completely normal. 'Tole you I didn't have nothin to do with it.' He's excited about getting out of here. But it wasn't news to him that he's innocent. The one who'll never let me hear the end of this is Pamela. Rommy's innocent," Arthur said and stared down at the gravel around the base of the tree, then he said it again. "Rommy's innocent."

"May I ask? Did Erno alibi Gandolph? Or does he say he knows who the killer was?"

"Oh, he knows," said Arthur. "It was him. Erdai. It's a h.e.l.l of a story. But it all fits. Every detail. And it has to be true anyway. Why would a dying man bother lying? I mean, he killed all those people himself. Erdai did." Driven down by the weight of what he had just said, Arthur fell on the bench beside her.

Gillian waited. She was not sure she wanted to know more. No matter how isolated from the past or anesthetized she wanted to make her faculties of judgment, the story instantly struck her as implausible. It was too much to put down to coincidence that a dying inmate in the same inst.i.tution with Gandolph was stepping forward to take credit for the crime.

Judging from his strange manner, she'd thought at first that Arthur, despite his statement to the contrary, actually shared her doubts. But she suspected now that his reaction was the reverse of skepticism. Years ago, her first boss in the P.A.'s Office, Raymond Horgan, who was now Arthur's senior partner, had told her that before his election, when Ray had been in private practice, he used to keep a slip of paper in his desk drawer. It was calligraphied with what he referred to as the defense lawyer's prayer: 'G.o.d save me from an innocent client.'

Convinced by Erdai, Arthur, she saw, suddenly stood on the highest cliff of his career. Rommy Gandolph's life, his innocent life, was in Arthur's hands. Justice, indeed, the whole principle of law"that it would make fairer the few elements of existence within human control"now depended on him. He was the main variable: his work, his wits, his ability to wage and win civil society's most momentous battle. The lost look swimming in Arthur's coffee-dark eyes was terror.

PART TWO.

Proceedings.

Chapter 14.

June 12, 2001.

The Chief Deputy.

"MURIEL WYNN, Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney for Kindle County, sat at her desk moving papers. In this job, she had discovered an orderly side to her character, which had eluded her in her earlier years. Her bedroom closet and her shopping lists were still governed by chaos, but she had always been her best at work. Her desk, nearly eight feet long, was arranged with the precision of a military base. The ramparts of papers"prosecution packages, internal memos, legal mail"sat with evened edges, equidistant from one another. Correspondence relating to next year's campaign for P.A., which would soon begin in earnest, was safely segregated on the upper quadrant, to be gathered at the end of the day and considered at home, on her own time.

A pop-up message appeared with a ding on Muriel's computer screen: "12:02 p.m.: Det. Lieut. Starczek here for hearing." She greeted Larry in the large open area outside her office, where six a.s.sistants jumped between desks, and visitors waited on the other side of an old mahogany rail. Across the way, sharing the same secretarial pool, was the P.A.'s Office, which her boss for the last decade, Ned Halsey, was ready to surrender to her as soon as the voters said yes next year.

For court, Larry had worn a tie and a linen sport coat, both rather stylish. He'd always liked clothes, although they no longer fit him as well. He was big and soft now, and his remaining hair, silky and whitening, had been carefully piled in place. But he had maintained the compelling bearing that comes from knowing who you are. At the sight of her, he smiled broadly and she felt his amus.e.m.e.nt"it was funny, pleasantly ticklish, that life moves on so unfathomably, that you go your ways and survive.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey," Larry answered.

She asked if he minded stopping for lunch. "I thought we could get something on the way to the Federal Building and talk about this stupid hearing."

"Cool," answered Larry.

Hearing him infected by his sons' vocabulary, she grinned and asked how the boys were.

"Are they mine? I thought they were the sp.a.w.n of Satan." He had pictures in his wallet. Michael was twenty, a junior at Michigan. His younger boy, Darrell, was a high-school hero like his father and brother, although he played soccer rather than football. He looked to be a sure thing for a Division One scholarship, Larry said. "Only I may kill him before then. Talk about att.i.tude. My folks, of course, they're still kicking, and they watch him and me and it's like old family movies. They think it's a laugh a minute."

Muriel took him into her office for a second to show off the photos of Theo, Talmadge's first grandson. Even at three, you could see he would take after Talmadge, large and broad. He was such a sweet guy, this little boy, the dearest soul in her life.

"None of your own, right, you and Talmadge?" asked Larry. It was probably the single question she most hated answering, but Larry clearly meant no more by it than confirming his memory.

"Never worked out," she answered and pointed him to the door.

In the elevator down, Larry asked her to explain today's hearing.

"Raven moved to depose a guy named Erno Erdai, who you supposedly knew," she said.

"I did."

"Well, Arthur wants to do the dep in the presence of a judge, so the judge can make credibility findings now, because Erno won't be around later, if the case proceeds. He's dying of cancer."

"Dying? Jesus, things went to h.e.l.l for Erno in the last few years, I'd say. You know the story?"

As head of Violent Crimes, she'd reviewed Erdai's case at the time of the shooting four years ago. Ex-cadet, TN executive, and solid citizen goes nutzo at a cop bar. Mel Tooley had represented Erno and had tried like h.e.l.l for probation, even getting the victim's lawyer, Jackson Aires, to say he had no objection. But she couldn't pa.s.s a guy on pen time because he lived in the suburbs. They locked up twenty black men a week in this town for shooting somebody. Erno had to go.

"How is old Arthur, by the way?" Larry asked.

"Still litigates like a man trying to save himself from drowning. He's okay."

"I always liked bringing cases to Arthur. You know, he was a plowhorse, not a racehorse, but he followed through."

"Well, that's what he's doing. Following through. He was pretty creased when the Court of Appeals dragooned him for this case, but he keeps pushing new b.u.t.tons. This week he says Erdai's a critical witness."

"Yeah, 'critical,' " said Larry. "Critical of who?"

"You got it." She smiled. "You got some splainin' to do, Lucy. The motion claims Erdai tried to alert you to exculpatory evidence which you concealed."

"I hate when I do that," said Larry, then promptly denounced the whole notion as bulls.h.i.t. "Erno wrote me a couple of letters from the joint, same as he did half the Force, looking for help once he got in there. What the h.e.l.l was I supposed to do, send him a sympathy card? I guess Erno joined the other team inside. He's got an angle, right?"

"He must. I asked to talk to him a week ago, and he refused. The staff at Rudyard has no clue what he's up to."

A few doors down from the courthouse, Muriel stopped by Bao Din.

"You still eat Chinese?" she asked.

"Sure. But nothing real spicy."

The restaurant was old style with a bamboo curtain in the front entry and Formica tables, and the larded smells of fried peanut oil and yeasty foreign spices. Muriel harbored permanent suspicions about what pa.s.sed for meat in the kitchen and stuck to vegetable plates. As a regular, and a person of influence, she was greeted warmly by Lloyd Wu, the proprietor, to whom she introduced Larry.

Given the allegations in the motion, she'd had no choice about asking Larry to attend the hearing, although they hadn't spent more than ten minutes together on any occasion in close to a decade. When he was around the office on a case, he would stop in sometimes. They'd take each other's pulse in a few moments, talk about his kids, the Force, and the office. They laughed a lot. After he left, she usually felt she had made an error horsing around with him. Not because of Larry himself"Larry the Elder was less of a hard case than the man she'd met seventeen years ago in law school. But he was a past she had self-consciously set aside, an attachment of the young, lost Muriel, a woman who was meaner, flightier, and unhappier than the current model.

But she needed Larry today. d.i.c.ks never forgot the evidence in a case. Carol Keeney, an appellate supervisor who'd been handling the matter for the last few years as it plodded toward execution, had found no mention of Erdai in the file, but Larry quickly reminded Muriel of the begats. Erno led to Collins. Collins led to Squirrel. She hadn't realized Erdai was the original source. Eyes closed, she waited for the digits to fall, but nothing came up. She leaned over the table.

"Old times' sake, Larry. Just us girls. Is there anything we have to worry about? I mean, just a fantasy of what they're aiming at?"

"You mean something Erno knows?"

"As opposed to what?"

"You're not a virgin, Muriel," said Larry, treading close to a line that was seldom acknowledged. There was street truth and court truth, and a good officer, like Larry, knew how to make one conform to the other without playing fast and loose. She let his remark go. "What kind of exculpatory evidence was this I supposedly hid?" Larry asked.

"Arthur never said and we never found out. I sent Carol over when the motion was up and she irritated the judge somehow and he granted it."

Larry groaned.

"You know how this goes, Larry. Harlow's the kind who thinks appointed counsel deserves every break, especially in a capital case. And he probably likes Arthur. His firm does a lot of federal work."

"Oh, great," said Larry. "I love federal court. It's like the Union League Club. Everybody talking very quietly and smiling at one another because they're not the poor peasants."

Muriel laughed again. She'd forgotten how amusing and accurate Larry could be. As Chief Deputy P.A. and heir apparent, she was well treated on the rare occasions when she entered the state's courtrooms these days. The Superior Court judges were elected, which meant sooner or later most of them would be on the same ticket with her. Federal court, however, was another universe, where the judges were appointed for life. Muriel had been over here only a handful of times in her career and felt about the federal system largely as Larry did.

"I think Harlow is just letting Raven take his best shot, Lar. It'll be okay in the end."

Larry nodded, looking soothed. Back in law school, he'd been the first human being ever to place faith in her legal abilities. To him, her word on the law was always gospel.

"You mean, I'm not gonna be bunking with Erno?" he asked. "I've been hoping for a way to get outta this racket."

"You'll never quit the job."

"h.e.l.l you say. I put in my papers, Muriel. I'm double five's in November and I'm out Jan One, Two-O-O-Two. People are always going to kill each other. And I know everything about that I need to. Besides, they'll name a new Detective Commander next year, who'll be either me, which is ridiculous, or somebody else, which is even stupider. Time's up. And you know, this thing I did re-habbing? I got six guys working for me now. Fifty-four is old for two jobs."

"Six guys?"

"We turned over eight houses last year."

"Yikes, Larry. You're rich."

"Not like you and Talmadge, but it's been pretty good. I'm a lot better off than anybody in my family ever expected. And the stock market, too. The net worth is a big number but everything's leveraged. Still." He smiled, as if he were somewhat amazed to be slinging the lingo, then asked how her life was.

"Good," she answered and left it at that. She ran the uniquely female race that began at daylight with the persistent anxiety that there would never be time to attend to everything, a fear, unlike many others, which was firmly rooted in fact. Nothing ever felt as if it were done perfectly"not her work or her marriage, even her step-mothering. But she had plenty in her life"great work, money, that wonderful little boy. She concentrated on those things and had moved past the disappointments.

"What about your marriage?" he asked.