Brett’s gaze was direct now. “That my mother was never his favorite, Caroline. You were.”
“I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think it ever was.”
Brett shook her head. “Once, when we were hiking, I asked him about you. He looked so sad that I never asked again.” Brett hesitated. “Is that why you came back? For him?”
“The world is not about ‘him.’” Caroline paused, softening her tone. “Truth to tell, I came back for you.”
Brett looked surprised, then skeptical. “Why?”
“We are related, you know.” Caroline drew a breath. “I’m a lawyer, and I want to help you. My issues with my family aren’t yours.”
“I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to piss you off.”
Caroline waved a hand. “You didn’t. Really.” Her voice softened to curiosity. “Tell me, though, where your dad fit in all of this.”
Brett leaned back. “Dad and you were friends, weren’t you?”
“Yes. We were.”
Brett nodded. “Dad’s an enigma sometimes … he more or less left raising me to Mom.” Brett’s voice became sardonic. “It’s a case of the parent with the deepest emotions winning. With the way my mom is, it was no contest—and Dad didn’t want the aggravation she’d give him if he tried to make it one.” As if ashamed, Brett paused; Caroline felt once more the quicksilver of her emotions. “Really, I shouldn’t say that. Dad loves me, I know, and he can be so sweet. It’s just that he hates conflict, and I think Mom feels things so intensely that it scares him. Sometimes it seemed like Granddad—who, if anything, intimidates Mom—was more my father than he was.”
Caroline remembered Larry of the gentle eyes and slow, warm smile, who first had named her “Caro,” who still could talk to her when she and Betty could no longer talk at all. Remembered him holding the infant Brett, gazing from Caroline to the sleeping baby with the wonder of sudden fatherhood. Felt sadness and anger that he had receded to a corner of this girl’s life, supplanted by Betty’s and Caroline’s own father.
“Did you ever rebel?” Caroline asked.
A faint smile, and then Brett’s voice became ironic. “Did you see the satellite dish behind the house? That was my rebellion. I threatened him—if I couldn’t keep up with the outside world, like Beverly Hills 90210, I’d go away to boarding school.”
Children do not always live to please their parents, he had said as Caroline left for school, or parents to please themselves. Softly, Caroline queried, “He didn’t send you away to school?”
Neither of them, she realized, had defined “he”; there was no need.
“No,” Brett answered in the same tone. “He bought me the dish instead.”
“Not much, as rebellions go.”
“Don’t I know it. I even let them send me to Chase College, where my dad teaches, so I could go for a lot less. My mother implied there was trouble with money, and I couldn’t bring myself to ask Grandfather. So instead of being like Mom, going off to Smith, I stayed right in the neighborhood.” Brett paused, as if in remembered anger. “Of course, she said to me that James was a rebellion. Especially after they found out about the drug dealing.”
Caroline fell quiet, caught between her image of the crosscurrents of her estranged family and her own doubts about Brett’s innocence. And then, to her surprise, she saw tears running down Brett’s face.
Softly, Caroline asked, “What is it?”
“What you asked me before. About whether I’d have gone with him.” Brett paused, fighting to control her voice. “What I didn’t tell you was that now I lie awake wishing I had gone, no matter how many doubts I had. Just walked to the Jeep with him and started west that night.” Brett’s eyes shut, and then she finished: “Because we’d have gotten to California today, and James would be alive.”
Caroline did not reach her room until eleven.
In the car, Brett had fallen asleep. Caroline had driven steadily, glancing at the girl’s face against the headrest. Even had Brett awakened, Caroline could not have brought herself to ask about the knife.
Now she stared at the message in her hand—Walter Farris, from the White House. Next to her on the nightstand, the Manchester Patriot-Ledger was opened to an article quoting Caroline. Why, she asked herself, hadn’t she called Farris this morning?
A chill breeze blew about the window sash. Caroline stood, pushing down the window—only a crack now, enough coolness to help her sleep.
Caroline reviewed Brett’s expressions, her voice, the way she had said things. Caroline the lawyer knew that no one could read guilt or innocence on the face of a stranger. Another Caroline, whose existence the lawyer scorned, pleaded with her to believe that Brett was truthful—that the Brett she had spent today with could not have sliced her lover’s throat to the windpipe, no matter how intoxicated. But there was no way, Jackson Watts had told her, that anyone else had been there.
Tomorrow, she would call Walter Farris. And then, to satisfy both parts of her, she would telephone Jackson Watts and ask if she could see the crime scene, the lot her father once had meant for her.
Eight
What Caroline heard first was the new reserve in Farris’s tone.
“I should have called you,” Caroline said. “It’s just that things have happened so quickly. As you can imagine, it’s extremely trying for Brett, and for the family.”
“I understand that, Caroline. But what wasn’t clear, precisely, is whether you’re acting as your niece’s lawyer here.”
Caroline paused a moment. “More as an aunt…”
“Because this meeting with the Attorney General’s Office troubles me. Whatever your intention, it could create the appearance that our appointee to the federal bench is trying to use her prospective influence on behalf of a relative. And, even worse, to affect the course of a homicide investigation.”
Caroline felt on edge now. “Please know, Walter, that it hardly feels like that from here. As for being a lawyer, I’ll continue to practice law until the Senate confirms me. That’s standard procedure.”
“Of course it is.” His voice aspired to patience. “But what isn’t is to represent a member of your family in a brand-new, potentially high-profile murder case. Even without this nomination, it’s hardly wise—you can’t help but be emotionally involved, which is what no counsel should be. If your niece needs a lawyer, the best thing you can do is help her find one.”
It was, Caroline knew, exactly what she herself would say. “If Brett should be indicted, that’s certainly my intention. We’re all hoping that she won’t be.”
“And even if she isn’t,” Farris retorted, “your confirmation hearing may involve questions none of us wants.” His voice became crisp. “We live in a brave new world, Caroline. Republicans control the Senate now, and—although we have great latitude in our appointments—feminist defense lawyers are not the flavor of the year. All we need is someone like Jesse Helms using this ‘appearance of impropriety’ as an excuse to scuttle you. What I’m saying, to be plain, is that the President has only so much political capital to spend on this. So anything you do up there, other than hold this girl’s hand, you do on your own.”
“Of course,” Caroline said with a calm she did not feel. “And I’ll be prudent. As I told the President, this nomination means more to me than I can easily express. As does his confidence.” She paused. “And yours.”
“I know it does.” As if ready to hang up now, Farris tried to sound reassuring. “And this isn’t a big story yet. All we want is that it not become one.” He paused for emphasis. “All right?”
In the silence of her room, Caroline nodded. “All right.”
For a half hour, Caroline lay on the bed and thought.
A faint morning sun came through her window. The town beneath it, familiar from childhood, seemed more alien than yesterday. Yet when she picked up the phone again, it somehow felt inevitable.
“Jackson Watts,” he answered crisply.
“It’s Caroline
,” she said without preface. “You didn’t happen to tell the Patriot-Ledger that I came to see you, did you?”
“No, I didn’t. But then that’s easy for me. My rule is not to talk to the press, period, unless there’s some compelling reason. There isn’t here.”
Though his tone was not angry, Caroline felt chastised. “Sorry,” she said.
“That’s all right.” A moment’s pause. “Is that why you called?”
“Not exactly—”
“Because I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”
It was Caroline’s turn for surprise. “About Brett?”
“No.” His voice was low, almost reluctant. “About everything but Brett.”
Caroline sat back on the bed, stretching her legs in front of her. Softly, she asked, “Is that wise?”
“I don’t plan to violate any code of ethics, if that’s what you mean.” Another pause. “When you left my office, Caroline, it felt incomplete. You were suddenly here, and then gone. With little said that wasn’t about Brett.” His voice changed. “To be reminded of you like that, and be no wiser for it…”
Caroline touched her eyes. Then she said, “When. And where?”
“Is that a yes?”
“It’s a yes.”
“I’ll be driving up to my fishing camp tonight. I’m staying for the weekend.” He sounded relieved, almost boyish. “So, tomorrow? Maybe I’ll take you fishing.”
“Fine.” Caroline hesitated, then added, “There was something else, Jackson.”
“What?”
“The crime scene. I’d like to see it. Today, if possible.” Her voice was soft. “After all, my father owns it.”
Before going to the lake, Caroline made one more phone call.
It was early afternoon when she reached the trailhead. A state trooper was parked there, and the yellow tape across it had already been cut.
“He’s here,” the trooper told her. “By the lake.”
Caroline drove to the end of the trail and parked by his truck.
She sat in her car, looking around her. Then got out and, facing the dense stand of pines that blocked all sign of Heron Lake, took in the dense pungency of wood, needles, decaying leaves.
The smell, Caroline realized, was implanted in her senses. She could not remember being here since the last spring night with Jackson, twenty-three years ago. Her father had bought this land for her; she was to build a cabin, perhaps a home, own a piece of her past forever. She had left that past behind; because of this, in the unfathomable chain of consequence, Brett Allen had brought her lover here, to die.
Slowly, Caroline stepped into the woods.
Dense trees blocked the sun, filtering sunlight as though in a cathedral. Still it was not hard to find the path of Brett’s flight—a random zigzag, marked by strips of yellow tape on branches. Caroline took one in her fingers, saw on a leaf the faint streak of purple. It was blood, she was certain, left as Brett ran from the body of James Case.
The woods felt close and cold. Caroline walked more quickly now. Near the edge of the trees the shafts of sunlight-broadened, blue swatches of water appeared among the leaves. She took one deep breath.
Emerging from the woods, Caroline saw him.
He stood by the water, gazing across a mile of lake toward the fishing camp his own father had built in the thirties. He was quite still; what struck Caroline most was how erect he held himself.
She stopped at the edge of the glade. Coolly, she said, “Hello, Father.”
He turned to her. Without waiting for his answer, she knelt.
For a strange moment, thinking of Jackson and their first inhibited loving, she recalled the stray guilt-stricken thought—haunting and irrational—that her father might watch them. And then she focused on her task.
The grass seemed matted, Caroline saw. From this she could guess the location of their lovemaking and, perhaps, the body. But it had rained since the night of the murder, and there was no way to be certain.
She felt her father standing over her. “Well?” he asked.
“Jackson’s quite impressive.” She looked up from the grass into his penetrating black eyes. “He claims there’s no sign that anyone else was here.”
Channing’s eyes narrowed. “No trail of blood?”
“None. Except for Brett’s.”
Stiffly, he knelt across from Caroline, staring down at the grass. “Of course, they’re assuming that he was soaked in blood.”
“ ‘He’?”
“The murderer.” Channing reached out one hand, as if cradling an imaginary head. “Suppose he knelt at the top of Case’s head and then—”
With silent efficiency, Channing drew his free hand slowly across the grass, holding an invisible knife, to cut the throat that was no longer there.
“That’s it,” he said softly. “He was here. The spurt of blood never touched him.”
Caroline felt a chill. Quietly, she said, “Jackson also suggests there were no leaves trampled, no other path of escape.”
“Why would there be? Does Brett claim to have heard anything?”
“She didn’t mention it.”
“All right.” Channing’s voice was brusque, impatient. “Then he didn’t leave through the woods.”
He rose, unsteady for a moment, grimacing with distaste for his old age. Curtly, he motioned for Caroline to follow.
Single file, they walked to the edge of the lake, silent. Except when it concerned Brett, Caroline realized, they would say nothing.
He stopped, staring down at a patch of silt in front of him. “This is what I was looking at.”
At his feet were boot prints; near them two sets of shoe prints—different sizes, more widely spaced. “The shoe prints are the police, I would guess, running to the water to look for a killer.” His voice was quiet. “The boot print might be the killer. Slipping into the water long before.”
Still Caroline did not look at him. “Moving along the shore?”
“Yes. Or even to a canoe.”
It jolted Caroline from an imagined world, where she almost believed his story, to the reality where she felt grounded. “A canoe? Impossible.”
Channing frowned. “We used to canoe from the fishing camp to here.” He pointed to the diving platform, his voice rough. “We had picnics there, remember?”
There was a wound beneath the words, Caroline knew. Softly, she said, “I remember perfectly. And if someone else had canoed past us, we would have seen and heard him. As Brett would have.”
“Would she? Intoxicated? And at night?”
Caroline shook her head. “I’m sorry, Father. But this makes no sense—a premeditated murder, by a man who paddles silently through the water, confident that a drowsy victim will offer up his throat while his girlfriend goes for a swim. Please don’t ask me to sell that to anyone.”
He fell silent. Caroline turned from him, gazing along the shoreline as it curled away from them. “No, I like the escape route along the water somewhat better—if only because we don’t need to show Jackson any footprints. But how did he get here?”
Grudgingly, her father faced her. “The same way he left, Caroline. Or are you only interested in quarreling with me.”
It stung her. “That,” she said, “is stupefyingly egocentric. What I’m trying to do is find a defense for Brett. Preferably one that works.”
Channing’s eyes glinted. “Then do try,” he snapped.
Caroline looked at him steadily. “That’s why I asked you here,” she said, and turned from him to face the woods.
After a moment, she walked toward a patch of dirt near the shore, separated from the glade by a thin line of trees and brush. Reaching the spot, she stopped; even after the rain, the mud was packed hard. She felt her father behind her.
“In theory,” she said, “ ‘he’ could have waited here—no branches to break, perhaps too hard for footprints. At least it’s something one could use to cross-examine their crime lab people.”
He was silent
for a time. “Then you’re back to that, are you? The defense lawyer, trying to fabricate a plausible story for a guilty client.”
“Back? I was never there, except perhaps in your own mind.” She lowered her voice. “It seems quite plain to everyone but you that I shouldn’t handle Brett’s case, if there is one. Including, interestingly, my friends in the White House.”
“What do you mean?”
Hands thrust in her pockets, Caroline gazed at the lake. In its glassy mirror, clouds skimmed through lapping wavelets, stirred by wind on the surface of the water.
“The White House counsel called today,” she said at last. “They’d read a story in the Patriot-Ledger.”
“Yes.” His tone was indifferent now. “I saw it.”
“The point is that someone told this reporter about my visit to Jackson.” She paused. “It’s become a problem for me, Father. That is, if I care to ever become a federal judge.”
Channing folded his arms. “I had some ambitions once. At least the State Supreme Court, perhaps more. But after your mother died, I forgot them. Because of you.”
Caroline heard him. Softly, she asked, “Because of me? Or her?”
Channing seemed to blanch. With equal softness, he inquired, “What do you think, Caroline?”
She turned from the look on his face. “In either case,” she said coldly, “this is hardly the same thing.”
Channing stared at her now. “Isn’t it?”
“Not to me. I can’t stand more publicity.”
“Really.” His voice held faint contempt.
She faced him again. Narrow-eyed, he gazed across the water, as if impervious to her concern.
You told them, she realized, to make me choose. She stood there, caught between doubt and accusation.
Quietly, he said, “What is it?”
Caroline paused, irresolute. But when she decided to speak, the question that came to her was different. “Do you remember the knife I gave you?”
His face froze. “What of it?”
“It’s not where you kept it.”
His eyes widened and then went cold; in that moment, Caroline knew that he understood the question perfectly. But when he spoke, his voice was soft again.
The Final Judgment Page 11
