Reversible Errors by Scott Turow Read Free Book Online Page B

was true she'd fallen asleep up there, not just a momentary drowse, but laid her face down on the bench and was so far gone that after the bailiff woke her, she could see the ribbing of her leather blotter impressed on her cheek, when she looked in a mirror. They made fun of her inebriate mumbling and the ugly name-calling that escaped from her. They lamented the squandered brilliance that had put her on the bench at the age of thirty-two, only to drink away the gifts that had led to a Harvard Law School degree. They clucked about her failure to heed the warnings she'd been given repeatedly to sober up. And all the time she kept her secret. Gillian Sullivan was not a drunk, as legend had it, or even a pill popper, which was the suspicion of the court staffers who insisted that they never smelled liquor on her breath. No, Gillian Sullivan, former Deputy Prosecuting Attorney and then Judge of the Superior Court, was a smackhead, a stone doper, a heroin addict.
    She did not shoot-she never shot up. As someone who treasured her appearance, even in her most desperate state, she would not deface herself. Instead she smoked heroin-chased the dragon, in the lingo, looted. With a pipe, a tube of aluminum foil, she sucked up the fumes as the powder in the heat turned first to brown goo, then pungent delirium. It was slower, minutes rather than seconds until the fabulous flush of pleasure began to take over, but she had been deliberate in everything throughout her life, and this, a sort of executive addiction, fit her image of herself, neater and less detectable -no pox of track marks, none of the telltale nosebleeds from snorting.
    It had started with a guy. Isn't that how it always starts? Toby Elias was a gallant, handsome, twisted creature, an assistant in the Attorney General's Office, whom Gillian had some thought of marrying. One night he'd returned home with a hit of heroin lifted from a case he tried. It was 'the taste' one doper had offered another as the prelude to a sale, introduced in evidence, and never returned after the verdict. 'Why not?' he asked. Toby always managed to make perversity stylish. His ironic unwillingness to follow the rules meant for everyone else had beguiled her. They chipped-snorted -the first night, and reduced the quantity each night thereafter. It was an unearthly peace, but nothing that required repetition.
    A month later, Toby stepped in front of an 18-wheeler. She never knew if it was an accident. He was not killed. He was a body in a bed for months, and then a dripping wreck in a wheelchair. And she had deserted him. She wasn't married to the man. She couldn't give him her life when he hadn't promised his.
    Yet it was a sad turning point, she knew that now. Toby had never recovered and neither had she. Three or four months after that, she'd pinched a taste on her own for the first time. During a trial in front of her, she allowed the defense chemist to open the sealed evidence bag to weigh how much heroin had been seized. The rush seemed more delicious now. She forged opportunities, ordered tests performed when none had been requested, encouraged the prosecutors to lock their exhibits in her chambers overnight rather than tote them back to the P . A .'s Office. Eventually, the tampering was discovered, but a courtroom deputy was suspected and banished to an outlying precinct. After that, she had to score on the street. And she needed money.
    By then she was taken for a drunk. As a warning, she'd been transferred from the Felony Trial Division to Common Pleas, tort court, where she heard personal-injury cases. There somebody knew. One of those dopers she'd sentenced had recognized her, a pretty white lady lurking in the bombed-looking blocks less than a mile from the courthouse. He'd told the cop he snitched to. From there, word traveled to the Presiding Judge in Common Pleas, a villain named Brendan Tuo- hey, and his henchman, Rollo Kosic. Kosic visited her with the news, but offered no