Silent Witness

by Richard North Patterson

  Staring at the photograph, Tony felt relief, then nausea as he imagined this man strangling Alison. Quietly, Saul continued, “It turns out the police have a statement from a woman, a mother who was in Taylor Park with her two kids that evening, around twilight. From a distance, the mom said, she saw a black man about this guy’s size, hanging out near the bushes by the Taylor property. Donald White could be the one.”

  Tony could not take his eyes off the picture. Staring back at him, Donald White’s frozen eyes seemed empty, soulless. “Have they said what he did to her?”

  Saul touched his arm. “Alison was raped, Tony. That’s all they’ve told me—and that, like you, White’s blood type matches whatever physical evidence they have. They can’t rule him out, either.” The lawyer’s gaze was level, sad. “If I knew what all he did to her, I’d tell you. But I don’t.”

  After a time, Tony looked up. “How did he die?”

  “Tried a holdup in Toledo—one of those convenience stores with a gas pump in front. The owner blew White’s head off with a shotgun. A squalid end to a bad life. Which, if he killed Alison, is also too bad for you.”

  Tony sat back. The bar smelled of fried food, stale beer, the grimy Steelton waterfront; part of him could not accept that it was here, so far from Alison Taylor’s world, that he was learning the answer to her death.

  “Do you think he did it?” Tony asked.

  Saul shrugged. “Maybe. Probably. It’s not a prosecutable case, but the man’s dead, so they can blame him if they want to without the inconvenience of a trial. He suits their purposes for the same reason he suits ours.”

  Tony watched his face. “But you wonder.”

  “It’s not my job to wonder.” Saul finished his shot and signaled for another. “If it were, I suppose I’d ask why White killed Alison, when the one thing he seemed very careful to do was not hurt his other victims.” Saul grimaced. “Beyond raping them, that is. So I suppose that’s a quibble not worth wondering about, especially when White never used a weapon to force submission, and it looks like this guy didn’t, either. And I doubt the Lake City cops will quibble much.”

  “What are they going to do? Apologize?”

  Saul gave a faint smile. “Not exactly. But, at my urging, Johnny Morelli is making a statement to the press this afternoon, disclosing the possibility that Alison Taylor was murdered by Donald White.” His face grew serious. “It’s an out for them, Tony. Their case against you is no better, and I think they now believe it will never be. And it will take some pressure off the cops. I mean, who do you think your fellow citizens would rather believe murdered Alison—Tony Lord, Harvard freshman and former high school hero, or Donald White, black serial rapist?”

  It was true, Tony knew. “Donald White,” he said slowly.

  Saul nodded. “For some people, the idea that it’s a black will be positively congenial. A lot of others will be relieved that it’s a stranger, and a dead one at that, and not this boy who lived among them. It means Lake City is the kind of place they thought it was, and that they’re safe again.”

  He should feel relieved, Tony knew. But what he felt was more bitterness. “It’s a little late, Saul. Maybe not for them, but for me. What’s so great about being forgiven for something I didn’t do, to a girl I cared about a whole lot more than those assholes ever will? Except for her parents.”

  Saul studied his drink, frowning. “Yes, I suppose I should mention the Taylors. They’re not willing to accept this—especially the father.”

  It interrupted Tony’s anger. Quietly, he asked, “Why not?”

  “Because John Taylor still believes what he thinks he saw that night. Maybe he always will.” Saul looked up at Tony. “Leave them be, is my advice. Let them give this up on their own.”

  Tony shook his head. “So where am I, Saul?”

  Saul folded his hands. “It depends on how you view it,” he said finally. “In a way, you’ve entered legal purgatory—you’ll never be charged, and I doubt you’ll ever be cleared. For some people, you’ll always be the boy who may have gotten away with murder.” Saul’s voice softened. “But you’re free, Tony. You have your life back. You’ve damned well earned it.”

  For a moment, Tony did not know what to think, or feel. “For what it’s worth to you,” Saul added gently, “I’ve never had a client I respected more. Whatever you do with your life from here, it’ll be something good.”

  Tony gazed at him, this rumpled, ironic man who, when no one else could, had saved his future. Suddenly there were tears in his eyes; it was not Saul Ravin’s fault that some things could not be fixed. “Do you think I’d make a lawyer, Saul?”

  Seeing his face, Saul took away the photograph of Donald White and placed the shot glass in Tony’s hand. Softly, he said, “Let me buy you a drink, Tony. We can talk it over.”

  NINETEEN

  Tony found Sam Robb in the hammock in his backyard, listening to a ball game on a transistor radio. Sam looked up at him, hands behind his head, quiet for a time.

  “So,” he said, “you’re off to Harvard tomorrow.”

  “Yeah. I thought I’d say goodbye.”

  Sam sat up, watching Tony’s face. “You make that sound pretty final.”

  Tony shrugged. “My folks are moving to Chicago—Dad asked the company for a transfer. So they won’t be living here anymore.”

  Sam stared at the grass, hands in his pockets. He emitted a low silent breath. “I let you down,” he said at last. “I could never say it right, how I felt. Instead I fucked up and lost the best friend I ever had.”

  Tony shook his head. “It’s not you, Sam. It’s everything else.”

  Sam’s eyes met his. “But you’ve been cleared, man. It’s over.”

  “Not for me.”

  Sam turned to the yard, silent, alone in his thoughts. Tony followed his eyes; together, they gazed at the apple trees that had once served as their goalposts, on the day when they had first become friends. “Remember making up that play?” Sam asked.

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll always remember that. And all the rest of it too.” Sam turned to him again, his face puzzled, as though wondering how that time, and that feeling, had slipped through his hands. “I used to think we’d be friends all our lives, Tony. Maybe even watch our kids play football together.”

  For a moment, Tony was quiet. “Not here,” he answered. “Not ever.”

  In the background, the southern-tinged voice of a broadcaster was calling out balls and strikes. Sam turned to the sound. “You know this guy Nolan Ryan,” he said, “rookie pitcher for the Mets? They say he’s got a real fastball.”

  This did not call for an answer, Tony knew. He felt Sam stretching out the moments, unable to face what had changed. But the deepest sadness for Tony was that, now, he could not feel what Sam did.

  There were tears, he saw, in Sam’s eyes.

  His friend shrugged at his own weakness, and then stepped forward, as though to hug him. Then he stopped himself and stuck out his hand. “Good luck,” he said softly. “I’ll always think about you.”

  Shaking his friend’s hand, Tony felt the passing of a time in his life—sweet and tragic and confusing—of which Sam Robb would forever be a part. “So will I,” he answered softly, and left without another word. Only then did he realize that neither of them had mentioned Sue.

  * * *

  “Does he know?” Tony asked.

  They sat at the end of the Lake City pier, at sunset. From the west, a last failing light cast shadows on the lake, turning the water gray blue.

  “No,” Sue answered. “At least not from anything I’ve said.” She paused, not looking at him. “Sometimes I think he maybe guesses, from how I’ve been. But he’s already talking about marriage.”

  Tony found that he, too, could not look at Sue. “And you?”

  “I don’t know. I have a lot to think about.”

  Quiet, Tony touched her hand.

  “I know you have to leave,” she said after
a time. “It’s just that I can’t imagine it. You were so real to me that night, and now you’ll be like this dream I had.”

  At first, there was nothing he could say. Gently, he turned her face to his. “You’ll always be real to me, Sue. If you ever needed me for anything, I’d come.”

  Silent, she rested her face against his chest. “I know,” she said softly. “I know.”

  When he dropped Sue at her house and drove away, Tony could see her in the rearview mirror, a shadow in the driveway, watching him leave. All at once, he knew that this was his true goodbye to Lake City.

  Tony immersed himself in Harvard, went out for crew, visited his roommate at Thanksgiving. By Christmas, his parents had moved; he never returned to Lake City. When Sam called, and then Sue, he did not know what to say.

  The nightmare, haunting in its sameness, never left him.

  His senior year had everything to do with who Tony Lord became. But in the years that followed, he rarely spoke of it at all, until he told everything to Stacey Tarrant, the singer and actress, his second wife, a few months before they were married.

  PART TWO

  MARCIE CALDER

  THE PRESENT

  ONE

  Two days before her seventeenth birthday, Marcie Calder killed herself; died in a fall; or was murdered.

  A half hour from landing in Steelton, Anthony Lord reviewed what little he knew. From the pictures in the newspaper, Marcie appeared dark and slight and pretty. She was the oldest daughter of a family with three girls; a solid B student at Lake City High School; an observant Catholic who was a member of Tony’s old parish, Saint Raphael’s. The Steelton Press described her as shy; her best friend, Janice D’Abruzzi, interviewed after the funeral, said that she had not dated anyone special. The newspaper accounts of the grief counseling that followed, a chance for her fellow students to face what had happened, told Tony less about Marcie than about the feverish contagion of teenage sadness, the grim resolve of the town to cope with the inexplicable. Not since the murder of Alison Taylor, Principal Burton said, had Lake City suffered such a tragedy. The thing he most remembered about Marcie struck Tony Lord as rather sad: that she was the fastest girl on the track team and, when competing, ran with a joy and abandon that was beautiful to watch.

  Four days prior to her death, in her last competition as a runner, Marcie had done poorly. Afterward, her teammates recalled, she was listless, unresponsive. On the following morning, the police had found her on the beach below Taylor Park, a ribbon of blood on her head and cheek. From the condition of the body, it was plain that she had died sometime during the night. No one knew how.

  There were several theories. The drop to the beach from the cliff above was more than ninety feet; from the mud on her blue jeans, and the marks on the cliff itself, it appeared that Marcie had fallen. But a rock on the beach yielded samples of Marcie’s blood and hair. The man who had taken her to the park that night—the last person to admit seeing her alive—was not available for comment. Her track coach, Sam Robb, the assistant principal of Lake City High School.

  For a final moment, Tony studied the newspaper photograph of Marcie Calder and, next to it, that of Alison Taylor. He could never look at Alison’s picture, Tony realized, without feeling the same rush of grief and loss, as fresh as yesterday.

  He put the paper in his leather briefcase and wondered how, after twenty-eight years, Sam Robb’s wife would seem to him.

  * * *

  He would have recognized her, Tony thought, even on a beach in Capri.

  He was first off the plane. She seemed not quite ready for him; after a moment, she mustered a tentative smile, the shadow of her old dimples. When he put down his briefcase and opened his arms, she ran forward to meet him.

  For a time, Tony simply held her, close and tight, senses filling despite everything with the surprise and wonder of Sue Cash in his arms again—the fresh, clean smell of her, the strange familiarity of how she felt to him. “Oh, Tony,” she murmured. “It really is you.”

  “Yes. I decided not to send someone.”

  She leaned back, looking at him, her expression a complex mix of sadness, emotion at seeing him, relief that he was here. Even with lines in her face, her skin was smooth and fresh; the vibrant dark eyes were the same, the dark curls shorter now but still much as before. She was, if anything, more slender.

  Tony backed up a foot, inspecting her. The tightness in his throat was yet another surprise. “This is probably the wrong thing to say,” he told her at last. “But you look like you to me.”

  Once more, she tried to smile. “It’s never the wrong thing to say. Just a little bit of Clairol and a lot of time at the gym. A few years ago, I’d look back and see my bottom, and wonder who was following me around.” Suddenly her eyes shone with tears. “I’m surprised I look like anything at all.…”

  Tony drew her close again. When she raised her face, the tears were gone, though her voice was tremulous. “You look good too, Tony. Better than you can ever know.”

  * * *

  They did not, at first, talk about Marcie Calder.

  Sue drove the Ford Taurus away from the airport toward Lake City, through housing developments and shopping malls that Tony, squinting in the sun of a bright spring morning, recalled as flat green fields. What Tony wanted most to know—how she was, what her life with Sam had been until now—were things he did not ask. But eliciting more routine facts seemed to help them both. Their two kids, Sam junior and Jennifer, were both out of college. Young Sam, never the athlete his father had hoped for, was studying for an MBA at Kansas University; Jenny taught preschool in Florida. Sue had finished her degree in library science; she worked part time at the Lake City Public Library, helping with the children’s section. Sue’s tone seemed almost normal; it was as though, if she kept talking, her humiliation would not surface. She did not mention Sam.

  “How’s the town?” Tony asked. “Still the same?”

  “To look at it, except the empty lots are filled with houses now. But things have changed beneath the surface—we have drugs at high school; Protestants don’t hate Catholics anymore; and about every other family is divorced or has both parents working. The kids don’t have to go parking now; they can make love after school, in the privacy of their parents’ home.…” She stopped abruptly; Tony did not have to guess at her thoughts. Softly, she added, “It’s still small, Tony. At a time like this, you feel how small it is.”

  For a moment, the present slipped away, and Tony was back in a crowded high school gym.

  “Killer, killer…”

  “The Taylors,” he asked. “Are they still alive?”

  “Yes.” Sue gazed fixedly at the road. “I don’t know how you remember them. But to me they look like bitter old people, serving out their lives.” She paused for a moment. “Katherine Taylor told my mother, only four or five years ago, that there has never been a day since Alison died that they don’t remember. When I think of Marcie Calder’s parents, I think of that.”

  Tony felt his heart go out to her. At length, he asked, “How is he, Sue?”

  Her fingers seemed to tighten on the steering wheel. “Scared,” she said. “You know what that’s like.”

  Something in Tony resisted the comparison. “All I know is what it was like for me.”

  Sue was quiet for a moment. “He could be charged with murder,” she said in flat voice. “Or, if he’s lucky, all that we’ll have to worry about is the end of his career as a teacher. Unless he can explain to the school board what he was doing in Taylor Park, at night, with a girl on his track team.”

  What had Sam told her? Tony wondered. “If he takes my advice as a lawyer,” he answered, “Sam won’t say anything to the school board. Not until we see what the county prosecutor does about her death.”

  Sue did not answer. The roads became narrow; at the edge of a field, Tony saw the first familiar landmark—the white spire of Saint Barnabas Episcopal, where Alison’s funeral had been held. Then they
passed a white wooden sign, not unlike the one Tony remembered: “Welcome to Lake City, Home of the Lakers. Population 15,537.”

  The next few miles were strange. It had been so long that, for an instant, this seemed like entering a place Tony had seen only in pictures. What hit him first was nostalgia and then remembered trauma—feelings from before and after Alison’s death—followed by the sudden superstitious certainty that he should not have returned. Quietly, he said, “I never thought I’d come back here.”

  “I know.”

  They took a curve in the narrow road, past an elementary school and some wood-frame houses, and then Tony saw something that had not been there before—a large wrought-iron gate to the entrance of a development of brick ranch houses. The contractor had left just enough maple trees to justify the iron lettering above the gate: “Maple Park Estates.”

  In spite of himself, Tony turned. And then he felt Sue watching him.

  “Remember?” she asked.

  What he felt, Tony realized, was a rush of pain and sweetness, surprise at the power of memory, the immediacy of his youth. “Remember?” he said softly. “It was the sweetest thing that had ever happened to me.”

  Sue smiled a little. “If I’d known that, Tony, I’d have made you do it twice.”

  As they drove on, silent, Tony felt his unease return, the moment slip away. More than being in Lake City, this came from thinking of Sam Robb again—whoever he might have become.

  Reaching the town square, Tony saw the police station. “I have a favor to ask you,” he said after a time. “As a lawyer, I suppose. Before I see Sam.”

  “What is it?”

  Tony turned to her. “Could you take me to Taylor Park?”

  * * *

  When they turned into the park, Tony tried to see it with detachment, as a crime scene. But for a moment, he could not move.

  Quietly, Sue asked, “What is it you wanted to see?”