The Final Judgment

by Richard North Patterson

  The first few steps were strange; Caroline still felt wounded, and her stomach seemed a shapeless flap of skin. In time, she supposed, she would be herself again.

  As they walked through the corridor, Larry took her arm.

  The nurse at the reception desk smiled at them. “Going home?”

  Caroline nodded. “Going home.”

  The nurse brought out a form to sign. Passing the baby to Larry, Caroline could not look at either one of them.

  Wordless, she signed the papers.

  The nurse patted her hand. “Enjoy her,” she said.

  “Oh,” Caroline said, “I’m sure I will.” Turning, she saw that, now, Larry could not look at her.

  Outside the Vineyard Hospital, it was a clear, cool April day. Caroline stopped for a moment, blinking in the light.

  “My car’s over here,” Larry said.

  They walked there. Betty was waiting across the sound, in Woods Hole, Caroline knew; Larry would drive the baby to the ferry, and within two hours, the three of them would be together.

  But Larry did not know how to leave.

  “I don’t want to hear from you,” Caroline said. “I don’t want to know about any of you. Just, please, take good care of her.”

  Baby in his arms, Larry looked at her steadily. “We will,” he said. “I will.”

  There was a catch in Caroline’s throat. Softly, she asked, “What will you name her?”

  “I don’t know yet.” He tried to smile. “To me, she looks like Baby Allen.”

  Caroline gazed at the baby in his arms. At that instant, the little girl opened her eyes.

  “To me,” Caroline said, “she looks like my mother.”

  Slowly, Larry nodded. “Can I give you a ride?” he asked.

  “No. Thanks. I’ll call a cab.”

  With the baby in his arms, Larry came to Caroline and kissed her on the forehead. She could feel the child’s small body graze her arm.

  “Go, now,” she said.

  Without answering, Larry put the baby in the car and got inside. As they left, Caroline turned away.

  Out of kindness and anger and self-preservation, Caroline did what she thought a birth mother should do. She moved to California, entered law school. She never saw her daughter again.

  She had made her own life, and Brett had paid for it.

  Part VII

  The Final Judgment

  One

  For the first time in twenty-three years, Caroline approached the wooden door of her father’s rustic fishing camp, his retreat from the world.

  In the cool, still darkness, her childhood came back to her—the soughing of pine boughs in a fitful wind; camping beneath a star-filled sky; eating their catch by the light of a flame in the old stone fireplace. She still knew how the inside would look to her.

  Heart pounding, she knocked on the door.

  There was silence. And then, with an old man’s impatience, her father jerked the latch.

  “Caroline.”

  He seemed to blink a little, perhaps with surprise, perhaps to adjust his eyes to the light. He wore a robe and slippers; seeing her, he drew himself up, an attempt at dignity. He seemed unsure of whether to ask her in.

  “I was sleeping,” he said. “As you can see.”

  Caroline did not answer. Channing hesitated for a moment and then, with a look that mingled resolve and reticence, opened the door.

  The living room was not quite as she remembered it. The familiar things remained—the fly rods, the shelf of books on fishing and nature, the pastoral painting of a lake in England—and the sense of order was the same. What startled her was the only photograph, placed carefully on the bookshelf: Caroline at perhaps sixteen, head raised in laughter, hair forming a windblown wave. Caroline recalled the moment precisely: she had just caught a trout and thrown it back. But what she had not seen then was that, captured in that random instant, she looked uncannily like her mother. Uncannily like Brett.

  Caroline stared at it.

  Her father’s eyes followed her. “I had little else of you,” he said.

  Slowly, Caroline turned to him. “Only Brett,” she answered. “And the knife.”

  He looked pale, she thought. Then he moved his shoulders, steadying himself. “Yes,” he said at last. “I could never bring myself to throw it out.”

  For the briefest moment, he glanced to his side; on a wooden standing desk, Caroline saw a gray revolver. Her heart still thudded in her chest.

  “You followed the shore,” she said in a low voice. “Just as you described for me.”

  With silent dignity, Channing Masters raised his head and looked into Caroline’s eyes. His own gaze did not waver.

  In that moment, Caroline felt the crushing weight of what she had recoiled from accepting. Sickness rose to her throat. She could not finish. His expression, raw and wounded as he looked at her, was the mirror of her own horror.

  “You lost my mother.” Her voice was slow, unsteady. “And then you lost me. To other men, you thought. You couldn’t let another man take Brett—”

  “Damn you, Caroline.” Her father’s face hardened. “It’s all about that summer for you, isn’t it—an evil and possessive man doing in young Lochinvar. I didn’t mean for your David to do what he did, though I was willing to accept the consequences as if I had. But don’t confuse your trauma with this one, or that boy with this one. James Case was narcissistic, manipulative, bent on involving Brett with drugs—”

  “So you decided to save her. Just as you saved me.”

  “Don’t judge me,” her father snapped. “Just where were you, Caroline, when Brett was growing up? Following your own ambitions in California, ignoring your daughter and your family. You were even less to Brett than Nicole was to you.” Channing made himself stand straighter. “That night, I didn’t know what I would do. I knew only that this involvement with James must end, and that no one else could end it—not Betty, and surely not Larry. And so I took the knife and gun, and when I saw them, I saw what I must do.”

  His eyes were distant, as if that first sighting were more vivid than this moment. His voice filled with sadness and anger. “I saw her drinking with him, smoking marijuana, throwing herself away. This beautiful girl, doing gutter things with her body, while this gutter boy invited her to share his gutter life—”

  “My God.” A tremor ran through her words. “Do you know what you’ve done to her? You are truly insane.”

  Channing’s face became closed, implacable. “The doctor gives me a year to live, Caroline. Perhaps two.” He paused. “There’s a certain freedom in that, I find. A certain clarity of thought and purpose. And a distinct lack of sentiment.

  “My life—this life we had—is almost at an end. All that remains of it is Brett. Watching from those bushes, I saw that, with what little life was left to me, I might save the rest of hers.”

  Caroline felt something in his manner change her. He was calm now, almost detached; she would force herself to be no less. A stillness of heart and mind came over her.

  Softly, Caroline said, “Then tell me what happened. Because, it seems, saving Brett has fallen to me at last.”

  The night was dark, shadowed; listening to his sparing words, recalling Brett’s passionate ones, Caroline could see it clearly now.

  Kneeling behind the bushes, her father watched them. Two silhouettes in the moonlight: the man’s head between her legs, the silver-black outline of the woman, softly crying out.

  Was that how it had been, he wondered—Nicole and Paul; Caroline and her lover? Part of him wished to look away. But he could not stop watching. The night felt cold to him; the old man’s joints ached.

  In the moonlight, Brett mounted James.

  She moved with a rhythmic frenzy. Beneath her, the man’s body became still.

  Brett stared down at him. Clumsily, she disengaged her pelvis. And then, to her grandfather’s revulsion, knelt to kiss James on the face.

  Perhaps it was seeing her at that mom
ent—slavish and lost—that decided him.

  Slowly, he took the revolver from his belt.

  The air was cool on his face. His fingers felt arthritic, stublike in the leather gloves. The sharp pain in his knees brought tears to his eyes.

  Awkwardly, Brett stood, naked against the blackness of the lake.

  She paused for a moment. Then, impulsively, she ran toward the water. Channing heard the first splash, her feet and ankles in the shallows, then the awkward slap as she hit the surface of the lake.

  Painfully, Channing stood.

  He was frightened for her; she seemed too impaired to swim. And then he saw the next, long strokes, as they fell into the rhythm he had taught her, taking her to the platform where they once had sunned themselves.

  She had left the two of them alone.

  Slowly, Channing put the revolver in his belt.

  From the water, the sound of Brett’s swimming stopped. There was a splash, the skim of water on her skin as she climbed onto the platform. Even with the lake as a backdrop, Channing could barely see her now—a slightly deeper shadow amidst a moonlit square of boards and nails.

  Stiffly, Channing stepped from behind the bushes.

  The boy lay on the blanket, arms flung to the sides, like a soldier who had died where he had fallen. Channing’s feet were silent in the grass.

  Kneeling on the blanket, Channing winced. The only sounds were the hollow crack of cartilage and bone, then the susurrus, barely heard, of James’s breathing.

  Channing looked into his face.

  James’s skin was smooth, his lips, slightly parted, were regular and full. As he slept, his look of arrogance slept as well.

  But when he awoke, Channing knew, he would envelop Brett in his selfishness and need.

  In an act of will, Channing took from its sheath the knife that Caroline had given him.

  For a moment, Channing paused, knife held over the boy’s sleeping face. In the back of his mind, Channing heard the crickets, felt Brett a hundred feet away.

  He breathed in once, closing his eyes. And then, knife angled above James’s bare neck, he felt the trembling hesitation of his hand….

  Now.

  He slashed downward. Numb with age, halt with indecision, his hand betrayed him.

  James’s eyes flew open. A thin ribbon of blood appeared in a shallow wound.

  My God, my God.

  “No,” James gasped.

  Channing’s gloves clasped his throat. Beneath him, James’s naked body struggled to free itself from sleep and shock and horror. Channing’s heart raced.

  His second stroke was swift and sure.

  With sickening suddenness, Channing felt the warm spurt of blood on his face and shirt, saw James’s eyes, staring up at his in terror and recognition.

  Another spurt of blood half blinded him. With a spastic twitch, James reached for Channing’s arm.

  Channing drove the knife into his heart.

  The arm fell back. The first terrible gurgling issued from James’s throat.

  Channing recoiled in horror.

  “James…”

  Brett, calling across the water, Reeling, Channing stood.

  On the blanket below him, James writhed in shock and agony. The sound was of someone drowning.

  “James…”

  Behind him, Channing heard the splash of Brett’s panicky dive.

  Throat filled with bile and revulsion, Channing stumbled into the darkness before Brett could see who he was, the thing that he had done.

  Two

  “Brett,” Caroline said quietly. “Yes, there was that, wasn’t there.”

  In the half-light of his old lamp, Channing’s face seemed bloodless; his voice was ashen now. “I knew it would be terrible for her, as that moment was for me. But it was done. I never thought that she’d be blamed for it. The fingerprints, the mouth-to-mouth, the blood spatter. Taking the knife and wallet. How could I have imagined all those things?” He paused. “I couldn’t even imagine how it would be to kill a man like that.”

  Caroline fought back pity and repugnance. “Could you imagine,” she asked coldly, “how it is to be charged with a murder you didn’t commit?”

  Channing turned from the look on Caroline’s face. “I didn’t want her to know. And, yes, I did not want to have our family—me—associated with this boy’s death.” He paused, voice quiet with shame. “I thought, knowing she was innocent, that they never would indict her. And when they did, that it would never stand. As to that, at least, I was right.”

  Caroline shook her head, numb. “What perversity made you call me?”

  Channing seemed to reach within himself. “Because I knew you’d feel responsible for her. After all, you’d chosen to have her, then to leave her. And because, even from a distance, I could see how gifted you were.” He turned to her again. “I know how this will sound to you—the way saying it sounds to me. But through all the misery of the last four days, I found a certain pleasure in watching you.” His voice grew softer yet. “You’re a remarkable lawyer, Caroline. But then I always knew you would be.”

  Caroline felt the words in the pit of her stomach. “Then you must have thought I’d find you out. Perhaps hoped I would.”

  He shook his head, and then a rueful pride crept into his voice. “I knew that it was possible. But I never thought you’d recall that knife; I thought I was the only one who remembered your gift, like yesterday.” There was life in his eyes now. “I believed that you had put everything about those years, and our life together, out of your mind. That all you wished to remember was the last summer.”

  For a moment, Caroline could not speak. But when she did, her voice was chill. “Wasn’t part of the pleasure to match wits with me, Father? To re-enact the murder for me and wait to see if I was apt enough to respond to your instruction?”

  Channing flushed. “How can you think that? What I told you was for Brett’s sake. She was my responsibility….”

  “For Brett’s sake.” Caroline’s voice cracked with anger. “I don’t know how to describe what you’ve put her through.”

  Channing stared at her. Then he turned and went to his bedroom.

  Even before he returned, Caroline braced herself.

  Inside the clear plastic bag he held was a bloodstained shirt and pants. Taped to it was a letter.

  In Caroline’s silence, he handed her the bag. “Read it,” he said.

  Caroline stared through the plastic. The spurts of blood, dried thickly on the blue work shirt, were as she knew they must be.

  “Read it,” he repeated roughly.

  Caroline laid down the bag. Fumbling, she opened the envelope.

  The letter was addressed to her.

  Swallowing, she made herself read. The voice, she thought, could be no one else’s.

  The prose was flat, unemotional. In persuasive detail, with little feeling, it explained how he had killed James Case. The letter gave his reasons, but asked no sympathy. Its only excuses were for Brett.

  Silent, Caroline looked up at him.

  “The original is in my safe-deposit box,” he said. “In case I was suddenly taken.”

  “And if you weren’t…?” She let the question die there.

  Her father stood taller. “Then I was prepared to go to Jackson—to go, in fact, if you failed at this hearing. But it seemed you were on the verge of discrediting that wretched Megan.”

  “And look at how you let Brett suffer, waiting.”

  “Three weeks isn’t that long to live with something.” Channing’s face was stoic now. “I know. I’ve lived with that last summer for twenty-three years.”

  Caroline stared at him. “Lived with what…?”

  Her father paused. And then, with quiet simplicity, he said, “Your David is dead, Caroline.”

  Caroline felt herself step backward, heart pounding like an anvil in her chest. “How can you know that?”

  “He was lost on the sound that night.” Her father paused, forcing himself to
look at her. “They found the catboat near Tarpaulin Cove, broken to pieces on the rocks.”

  Caroline folded her arms, bent her head. She rocked on her heels, back and forth, to keep herself from writhing. “You knew.” Her voice was choked. “All along, you knew….”

  Channing touched his forehead. “For three days, Caroline, I hoped—even prayed—that he had somehow gotten through it. I never meant for that to happen.” Slowly, he shook his head, as if reliving the moment of knowledge. “And then the Coast Guard called.

  “The boat was registered to me, you see. They didn’t associate it with David. So I simply told them the boat had slipped its moorings….”

  “Why?”

  “To keep you from knowing.” Channing’s face was etched with pain. Softly, he finished, “I didn’t want to lose you, Caroline.”

  Helpless, Caroline turned from him. It was as if she could not breathe.

  “You know everything now.” Her father’s voice was lifeless. “I’ll come to Jackson tomorrow. Please go.”

  In front of her, Caroline saw the books, the picture of a laughing girl, the gun. Through an act of will, she faced her father again.

  His face was a ghost of what it once had been. Only his eyes, suddenly moist, remained alive to her.

  “Caroline…,” he tried, and for that moment she remembered all there was between them: the hikes, long days on the lake, the death of her mother, talks across the dinner table, their plans for her future, the lawyer she would be. The loss of David. The ways in which, for all the years since and against her will, he still defined who Caroline Masters was.

  Whatever he had meant to say, it seemed that he could not.

  “You came home again, Caroline. At last, and for whatever reason.” His voice became thick. “Now, please, leave me here.”

  Caroline steeled herself. For a last moment, she looked into his face. And then, unable to answer, nodded.

  Blindly, she walked past him, into the night.

  She stopped there, a few feet from his door, and then the effort of composure overtook her.

  Caroline held her head up. In deep breaths, she inhaled the pine-scented air.