Presumed Innocent

Rusty Sabich and his boss, Raymond Horgan, are going to Carolyn Polhemus’s funeral. Three days earlier, Carolyn, a fellow prosecutor, was raped and murdered in her apartment. Raymond wants to believe that the killer was a stranger, but he is unsure.

Raymond, the Kindle County prosecuting attorney (PA), puts Rusty, his chief deputy, in charge of the investigation into Carolyn’s death. Raymond faces his campaign for reelection against Nico Della Guardia, a former prosecutor and Rusty’s contemporary. Nico is using Carolyn’s murder in the political race, portraying Raymond as slow and ineffective. Rusty is loyal to Raymond, but sometimes he feels like Raymond is manipulating him, as he manipulates everyone else.

The funeral is surrounded by media and a large crowd. The mayor, Augustine Bolcarro, who won’t endorse Raymond in the election, wants to speak to Raymond.

Inside, Rusty sees Nico Della Guardia. Nico asks Rusty about his investigation, but Rusty changes the subject, calling Nico by his nickname, “Delay,” from their younger days. Rusty and Nico started at the prosecutor’s office together, and when Rusty became chief deputy, Nico became head of the Homicide Section of the office. Nine months ago, Rusty fired Nico for being too politically motivated. Now, Nico tells Rusty that if he’s elected, he will keep Rusty on, but Rusty knows he is lying. Rusty knows that Nico will instead install Tommy Molto, his second-in-command. Tommy is a prosecutor, but he hasn’t worked for three weeks, and everyone knows he joined Nico’s campaign. While talking to Nico, Rusty realizes that Nico may win the election solely on the force of his charisma.

Rusty and Raymond sit at the funeral. They look at the mayor, who is seated next to a young man in the first row. Raymond tells Rusty that the boy is Carolyn’s son, who lives with his father in New Jersey. Rusty is stunned and hurt that he didn’t know about the boy.

Raymond delivers his eulogy; despite Raymond’s flaws, Rusty thinks he is a commanding and charismatic presence. Rusty returns to the office to work on finding Carolyn’s killer.

When Rusty returns to his office, Dan Lipranzer, or Lip, is waiting for him. Rusty considers Lip his best friend. He tells Lip about Carolyn’s son. They look through Carolyn’s police file. It contains the report from police pathologist Dr. Kumagai—Rusty considers Kumagai a “hack.” The report says that Carolyn died from a blow to the head and was then bound and raped. Rusty can’t look at the photos. The report says that the sperm found in Carolyn were dead, meaning that the killer was sterile. The sperm shows that the killer had Type A blood. Rusty comments that it is his blood type.

Carolyn had overseen the office’s Rape Section. Rusty theorizes that someone Carolyn prosecuted took revenge. Lip tells Rusty that they haven’t found any fingerprints in the apartment, save for one bar glass that has three fingerprints. They will take three weeks to identify. Rusty makes a note to call the department and asks Lip to get the Message Unit Detail sheets, or MUDs (a list from the telephone company of all local calls from a number) for Carolyn’s phone. He says that they will find Rusty’s name on the list, and Lip isn’t surprised, but disapproving. Rusty also tells Lip that, contrary to what the police believe, Carolyn locked her windows. He theorizes that the killer did it for misdirection. Lip wonders if Carolyn had sex consensually that night, and Rusty regretfully reflects that Lip might be right.

After Lip leaves, Rusty looks through the crime scene photographs. He sees the photos of Carolyn’s body, her face distorted with pain from the rope binding her ankles, wrists, and neck. Her face is panicked; Rusty reflects on Carolyn’s power and strength in life. He resolves to solve the crime.

After his affair with Carolyn ended several months ago, Rusty saw a psychiatrist, Dr. Robinson. He talked through his attraction to Carolyn—he found her exciting, powerful, and sexy. She had worked her way up the ranks, catching the attention of powerful men who helped her advance. Carolyn was smart and tough, too, and Rusty fell in love with her.

The affair began the previous year, during the McGaffen case. A five-year-old boy, Wendell McGaffen, had gone to the hospital with wounds from severe abuse—Wendell’s mother had put Wendell’s head in a vise. The doctor called Carolyn, as head of the Rape Section. Carolyn obtained a search warrant, and they found a vise in the family home with Wendell’s skin still on it.

When Wendell’s case went to trial, Raymond put Rusty on the case with Carolyn. Rusty ignored his immediate attraction to Carolyn, not wanting to be like his unfaithful father. Working closely with her, however, he became enamored. When he wasn’t around her, his obsession with her seemed ridiculous, but when he was near her, he couldn’t resist her.

Now, when Rusty gets home from work, he checks on his sleeping son, Nat. He finds Barbara in their bedroom, working out. Their conversation is perfunctory—as usual, Barbara seems weary, and Rusty pretends not to notice.

Five years earlier, Barbara told him that she was accepted to a doctoral program in mathematics. Rusty hadn’t objected—she’d been in mathematics as an undergrad. Now, Barbara is working on her dissertation and spends all her time at home, which suits her personality—she is quiet, antisocial, and sometimes moody.

They watch the television coverage of Carolyn’s funeral. Barbara becomes angry, and Rusty, as usual, retreats from it. Barbara asks what Rusty will do if Nico is elected, because Rusty will lose his job. He is surprised when she says that he should’ve run for office, disappointed that he is not a politician.

Barbara wonders if his involvement in Carolyn’s investigation is a conflict of interest because of their affair. Rusty remembers when he admitted the affair to Barbara. She was angry, but Rusty had hoped that they would be able to get past it. However, with Carolyn’s death, the trouble returned. Barbara confesses that she doesn’t want to go through it all again.

On Monday morning, Rusty gets his messages from his assistant, Eugenia. Tommy Molto still hasn’t come to work, leaving personnel uncertain. Rusty spends the day handling Raymond’s duties while he campaigns. Rusty knows that Carolyn’s case could be used against Raymond’s campaign to make him look weak and ineffective. A journalist he speaks to implies that Nico might be running his own investigation.

Rusty goes to Carolyn’s office. He looks through her case files and realizes one is missing: a “B file,” which means that it concerns bribery of law enforcement. Rusty usually assigns these cases, but he doesn’t remember assigning one to Carolyn and can’t find the file.

The chief administrative deputy, Lydia MacDougall, or Mac, doesn’t know why Carolyn would have a B-file, but she suggests that Rusty ask Raymond. Rusty mentions Tommy Molto, who no one has heard from in three weeks. He and Mac decide that, considering Carolyn’s death, they need to find him, even if he has defected to Nico’s campaign.

Rusty goes to Raymond’s campaign meeting and says hello to Judge Larren Lyttle. The judge isn’t officially involved in Raymond’s campaign, but he is Raymond’s former law partner. As they walk back to the office, Rusty tells Raymond about Nico possibly running his own investigation. Raymond reminds Rusty to prioritize the investigation—if they don’t solve it, Nico will win the election.

In Raymond’s office, Rusty brings up the missing B file. Raymond gets ready to leave for his next appointment, but first he opens a drawer and hands the B-file to Rusty.

During his sessions with Dr. Robinson, Rusty described how his work with Carolyn on the McGaffen case became intertwined with his infatuation. Carolyn and Wendell established a close connection, showing Rusty something new and admirable about her character. Their sexual relationship, however, didn’t begin right away: Toward the end of the trial, working late one night, something passed between them. Rusty addressed it directly, but Carolyn put him off for the moment.

Rusty visits Carolyn’s son, Marty Polhemus, an art student at the local university. Marty tells Rusty that Carolyn was his father’s student in high school English. Her father was abusive, and Carolyn married the teacher, Kenneth, to escape. After she left Kenneth, Marty contacted her and developed a relationship. Marty tells Rusty that Carolyn “had a lot of boyfriends” and “liked having secrets” (69); he’d never really gotten to know her. To make Marty feel better, Rusty tells him about his mother leaving; his father would’ve left town without saying goodbye if Rusty hadn’t stopped by. Marty admits that he plans to flunk out of school—he only went there to be closer to Carolyn.

Lip complains to Rusty that Raymond should’ve downplayed Carolyn’s case with the press; at the police department, they are calling it Mission Impossible. Lip tells Rusty that he interviewed Mrs. Krapotnik, Carolyn’s neighbor, who claims to have seen something.

On their way to Rusty’s office, they drive through Rusty’s childhood neighborhood. Rusty sees his father’s bakery, now run by his father’s cousin, and remembers working there as a child. Rusty’s father terrified him. He emigrated to the US in 1946 after Nazis occupied his village and killed the adults. He was in Nazi labor camps and the Allied camps and was one of the first Displaced Persons “allowed to enter the United States” (76).

Rusty is jerked out of his memories by a car horn. Lip asks if Rusty ever called about getting the fingerprint report rushed. Rusty forgot and promises to do it that day. When they get to Rusty’s office, Rusty opens the B-file Raymond gave him. Inside is a letter in which someone anonymously tells a story of loaning his friend “Noel” $1,500 to bribe someone to get his charges dismissed. His friend gave the money to someone, and the case was dismissed the next day.

The bribery system described in the letter sounds established and long-standing. The case in question was one of many—the result of a police sweep of a local park in which men were arrested for public indecency. They decide to investigate all the other cases from that sweep to identify “Noel.” Rusty realizes that Raymond took the file from Carolyn’s office so that Nico couldn’t discover the information.

Rusty isn’t sure why he never heard about this case. In Carolyn’s notes, she mentions a police officer, Lionel Kenneally, and Lip suggests that Rusty talk to him. Before Lip leaves, he reports that Rusty’s phone number had come up on Carolyn’s outgoing calls on her MUDs from October. Rusty realizes that the calls must have been him, calling home to lie to Barbara, and feels guilty. He asks Lip to “let it go” (83), and though Lip agrees, Rusty can tell he doesn’t like it.

When Rusty visited Dr. Robinson, he discussed the McGaffen trial. While waiting for the jury to return a verdict, Rusty and Carolyn walked in the rain. Carolyn admitted that something was happening between them, and with the trial is over, they could have a relationship. They went back to Carolyn’s apartment and had sex, and Rusty remembers feeling lost.

Rusty calls the forensics lab about the fingerprinted glass. The lab can compare the fingerprints to anyone who has been fingerprinted in their system, including felons and county employees. Rusty tells them to focus on the felons’ records.

Next, Rusty goes to the pathologist’s office to talk to Dr. Kumagai. Rusty doesn’t trust Kumagai, but he asks if Carolyn’s death could be the accidental result of consensual sexual bondage. Kumagai believes that she had consensual sex using a diaphragm and was murdered after—the killer tried to cover it up as rape by removing her diaphragm.

Rusty accuses Kumagai of giving the same information to Tommy Molto, who he believes is running Nico’s investigation into Carolyn’s death. He realizes that although Kumagai gave him the basic information in his police report, he’d left out his opinions and conclusions. He’d only given those to Tommy, allowing Rusty’s investigation to stray in the wrong direction. Rusty realizes that Kumagai must’ve been promised something, perhaps being made coroner.