between Ray Horgan, the incumbent, and Tommy's lifelong friend Nico Della Guardia, the murder investigation was charged from the start. Ray assigned it to Rusty, his chief deputy, who never mentioned that he'd had a secret fling with Carolyn that had ended badly months before. Then Rusty dogged the case and conveniently failed to collect a variety of proof--phone records, fingerprint analyses--that pointed straight at him.
Sabich's guilt had seemed so plain when they charged him after Nico won the election. But the case fell apart at trial. Evidence disappeared, and the police pathologist, who'd identified Rusty's blood type in the semen specimen recovered from Carolyn, had forgotten the victim had her tubes tied and couldn't explain on the stand why she'd used a common spermicide as well. Rusty's lawyer, Sandy Stern, lit up each crack in the prosecution facade and attributed every failure--the missing evidence, the possible contamination of the specimen--to Tommy, to a self-conscious effort to frame Sabich. And it worked. Rusty walked, Nico was recalled by the voters, and to add insult to injury, Sabich was appointed acting PA.
Over the years since, Tommy had tried to make an even assessment of the possibility that Rusty was not guilty. As a matter of reason, it could have been true. And that was his public posture. Tommy never talked to anyone about the case without saying, Who knows? The system worked. The judge went free. Move on. Tommy didn't understand how time began or what had happened to Jimmy Hoffa or why the Trappers lost year after year. And he had no idea who killed Carolyn Polhemus.
But his heart did not really follow the path of reason. There it was scorched on the walls the way people blackened their initials with a torch on the interior of a cave: Sabich did it. A year-long investigation eventually proved that Tommy had committed almost none of the breaches he'd been slyly accused of in the courtroom. Not that Tommy hadn't made mistakes. He'd leaked confidential information to Nico during the campaign, but every deputy PA talked out of school. Yet Tommy hadn't hidden evidence or suborned perjury. Tommy was innocent, and because he knew he was innocent, it seemed a matter of equal logic that Sabich was guilty. But he shared the truth only with himself, not even Dominga, who almost never asked him about work.
"I can't go near this," he told Brand. "Too much history."
Brand hitched a shoulder. He was a big guy, walked on at the U, and ended up an all-conference outside linebacker. That was twenty years ago. He had a huge head and not much hair left on it. And he was shaking it slowly.
"You can't get off a case whenever a defendant comes bobbing by on the merry-go-round for a second time. You want me to go through the files and see how many indictments you've signed already on guys who beat their first beef?"
"Any of them about to be elected to the state supreme court? Rusty casts a big shadow, Jimmy."
"I'm just saying," said Brand.
"Let's get the autopsy results. But until then, nothing else. No nosy coppers trying to sniff Rusty's behind. And no involvement by this office. No grand jury subpoenas or anything unless and until something substantial turns on the post. Which ain't gonna happen. We can all think whatever we wanna think about Rusty Sabich. But he's a smart guy. Really smart. Let the Nearing coppers go play in their sandbox until we hear from the coroner. That's all."
Brand didn't like it, Tommy could tell. But he'd been a marine and understood the chain of command. He departed with the faint damning that always went with it when he declared, "Whatever you say, Boss."
Alone, Tommy spent a second thinking about Barbara Sabich. She had been a babe as a young woman, with tight dark curls and a killer bod and a tough look that said that no guy could really have her. Tommy had barely seen her in the last couple of decades. She did not share the same responsibilities as her husband and had probably avoided Molto. During Sabich's trial years ago, she sat in court every day, sizzling Tommy with a furious look whenever he glanced her way. What makes you so sure? he sometimes wanted to ask her. The answer was gone to the grave with her now. As he had since his days as an altar boy, Tommy moved himself to a brief prayer for the dead. Commit, dear