Silent Witness

by Richard North Patterson

  “Where this girl went over the cliff, I thought.”

  Near the cliff were metal stakes driven into the ground, bound with yellow tape to mark off where Marcie Calder might have fallen. But Tony did not go there; leaving the car, he saw the grove of trees where he had parked with Alison Taylor.

  “Do you mind?” he asked Sue.

  “No.” She paused. “Do you want me to come with you?”

  “If you like.”

  When he began walking toward the grove, Sue was with him, a few steps behind. They were quiet.

  The park was sunny, the breeze from Lake Erie fresh. But beneath the bower of trees where he and Alison had made love, there was little sun, and the ground was dark and mossy. It struck him that the park was almost empty.

  Tony stood there for a moment, recovering that part of him that was a professional. “Who uses this?” he asked.

  Sue stood behind him. “Kids, families. We used to bring ours here.”

  “What about at night?”

  “Kids still, parking.” She paused; Tony could feel her imagining her husband, parked with a teenage girl younger than their own daughter. In a thin voice, she added, “For a while, after Alison, high school kids found other places. Then people forgot.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “From the local paper, other kids dealing drugs, sometimes a few homeless people.” Her tone was flat again. “Sam always told Jenny not to come here.”

  It would be wrong, Tony thought, to avoid looking at her. When he did, Sue simply shrugged. Her eyes were abstracted, almost lifeless; somehow she looked smaller than before. He did not ask about Sam.

  Together, they left the grove.

  Just as he had twenty-eight years before, hurrying home with Alison in the last hour of her life, Tony walked across the grassy park. As he moved from the trees that marked the Taylors’ property, he stopped, overtaken by emotion. He felt the beating of his own heart.

  The Taylor house needed repainting, he saw; the wooden shingles of the roof were warped and cracking, and the Gothic turrets looked dingy. His eyes followed a line from the back porch to their rear yard. He did not simply remember her face in the beam of the flashlight; for almost thirty years, this had been a recurring nightmare, awakening him at the moment that the light revealed her face.

  Behind him, Sue said, “You almost never see them outside.”

  Tony made himself turn to the house again. “Not exactly the House of Usher. But not what it was.”

  The thickets where Ernie Nixon had shown him the hiding places were, if anything, more overgrown. He did not bother to inspect them.

  “Someone was here that night, Sue. Someone could have been here four nights ago.” He turned to her. “Marcie Calder left his car, Sam says?”

  Sue’s face lost all expression. “Yes.”

  After a moment, Tony nodded. “I’d better take a look.”

  * * *

  There were two sections to the crime scene, Tony saw. The first, an area roughly forty feet square, was a section of the grassy bank extending to the edge of the cliff. Erosion made the cliff quite sheer; beneath its face—sixty feet of rock and clay and the occasional windswept bush—an area of beach had been cordoned by more stakes and yellow tape. Near the foot of the cliff, this time in white tape, the outline of Marcie Calder’s body resembled a child’s drawing.

  “In the dark,” Tony said, “she could have fallen easily.”

  “Wouldn’t she hear the lake?” Sue asked, and turned away. In the deep susurrus of the water, Tony wondered if Sue believed that her husband—a man Tony no longer knew—was capable of murder. He went to where she stood, arms folded, staring at the ground.

  “Have the police talked to you?” he asked.

  Sue did not look up. “They tried. Just before I called you, when they searched the house and impounded my car. The one he drove that night.”

  Tony shoved his hands in the pockets of his khakis. “Did he want me to come here, Sue? Or was it you?”

  “It was my idea, at first.” Her eyes met his. “Sam’s very proud, Tony. Still. He let you down about Alison, he said—how could he ask you to help him now? But after a while he knew how much he needed you.” She paused for a moment. “We both saw you on TV, defending the man who shot Senator Kilcannon. Sam couldn’t believe how good you were. But I could.”

  Tony watched her. There had been a change in her; at some time between then and now, as time and perhaps disappointment had done its work, her face had become hard to read.

  “What is he like, Sue?”

  “Before now?” Looking at Tony, she smiled without humor. “Not like you, Tony. Sam achieved his goals too soon.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Oh, I think you understand. He stayed in Lake City; he married me—it was like he could preserve Sam Robb at seventeen, the way he felt then. But he couldn’t.” The smile became a frown without changing very much. “Sam’s a vice principal, not the principal. He needs someone to help him make good judgments—he knows that, and he hates it. In his eyes, he’s become a small man in a small town: good old Sam, quick with a joke, the vice principal for life. So there’s this terrible restlessness.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m different. We have two good kids, some friends we like, and what I do seems worthwhile to me. If Sam were happy, I could be happy.” She shook her head. “It’s so funny to me—I remember seeing you with Stacey, on some awards show I think it was, and smiling to myself because you had married a movie star, and she was gorgeous. But it wasn’t until my own husband turned to me and said, ‘Look at who Tony’s with now,’ that, just for a moment, I wished I could be her. Because I saw Sam jealous of you, and not happy with his life.”

  “But what do I have to do with anything?”

  “For Sam? A lot, I think, sometimes.” Pausing, Sue seemed to muse aloud. “This may sound funny, as far away from here as you’ve been, and for so long now. But if you’d stayed, and been the basketball coach or something, I wonder if Sam would be a little less disappointed with himself.”

  Sue, he was certain, already knew how pointless this was. Softly, he answered, “He was never going to be like me, Sue. After Alison, the only question was who I was going to be.”

  Sue tilted her head. “Are you happy with who you are?”

  “Mostly. There are still parts of me—because of Alison’s murder, I’m sure—that I wish I could tear out by the roots. Sometimes I find myself waiting for the other shoe to drop, some terrible thing to happen to Stacey or to Christopher, or even to me.” For a moment, he paused. “But it hasn’t, yet. And the rest of me, more days than not, is happier than I ever believed I could be.”

  Sue was quiet. And then she touched his face, the gesture of a friend, gladdened that the life of her friend was as he wished. In that moment, Tony realized that being with Sue was still, despite everything, mercifully easy—that, even now, she understood things about him that the two people he loved most never could. What he wanted, for both their sakes, was to hold her one more time.

  Perhaps Sue wanted this too, Tony thought. But he was here as a lawyer, and must start to find his way. “I hope I can help you,” he said. “And Sam.”

  “You already have,” she answered softly. As she removed her hand, Sue’s fingers grazed his cheek. “We’d better go, Tony. Sam’s waiting. The last four days, it’s all he’s had to do.”

  TWO

  From the basement couch, Sam Robb gazed up.

  His quick glance at Sue, his look away, struck Tony as instinctive shame. But his rueful smile at Tony was like that of a man caught cheating at golf. Perhaps, Tony thought, Sam was still working out what had happened to him. He appeared no more ready for Tony than Tony was for him: Tony’s first thought, sickening and inevitable, was to wonder if he was gazing at a murderer.

  “Hello, Sam.”

  Awkwardly, Sam stood, and the two men embraced. “Tony Lord,” Sam murmured. “Sweet Jesus Christ.”
r />   “Oh,” Tony found himself saying, “I’m not quite that good.”

  Sam gave a short laugh, harsh in its suddenness. He leaned back, clasping Tony by the shoulders. His face was puffy, Tony saw, the white-blond hair streaked with silver. But his eyes had a sudden bright glitter; it was like seeing the seventeen-year-old Sam peering at him from behind a mask. “Sue thinks you’re that good,” he answered, and then his voice softened. “I sure need you to be.”

  Sue had turned from her husband. “I’ll be upstairs,” she said to Tony. “If you need a sandwich or something…”

  “Thanks, babe,” Sam told her.

  Her eyes flickered; in a room with Sam, Tony thought, there was something stricken about her. She went upstairs without acknowledging her husband.

  Sam exhaled, running a hand through his hair. Above the top of his sweatpants, Tony saw a small, but noticeable, belly; his chin was soft, his face creased. The effect was somewhat raffish, but not unattractive. He looked like a once youthful actor who, ten years past his prime, had not so much aged as dissipated; the boyishness kept showing through. For an instant, Tony could imagine him with a teenage girl, and felt an instinctive flash of revulsion.

  But what stayed with Tony was sadness, the sense of promise lost. The room around them was dark, cramped; a sliver of daylight came through a small window at ground level. On the mantel of a brick-veneer fireplace Tony saw a couple of gold trophies from the Lake City Country Club; a picture of Sam and a slim, dark-haired boy who looked more like Sue; and another trophy Tony recognized at once. SAM ROBB, the brass lettering said, ATHLETE OF THE YEAR—1968. Suddenly Tony felt claustrophobic.

  Sam was watching him, Tony realized. “I told Sue you’d never come back,” he said softly. “But then she always had a better sense of you, I guess.”

  “You’re in trouble, Sam.”

  “So were you, once.” Sam’s gaze was steady, penetrating. “You’re still not over it, are you?”

  “That never quite happens, I’m afraid.”

  Suddenly Sam looked down. Softly, he said, “I didn’t kill her, Tony. That’s why I went to the cops.”

  The fierceness of Tony’s desire to believe this took him by surprise. With equal quiet, he asked, “What happened to you, Sam?”

  Sam turned to the window. For a moment, he was quiet. “We were all right, Sue and I. Not great, maybe, but all right. We were good parents. We did the right things—went to their activities, saved our money, sent them to college. They were the center of our lives. Then they were gone, and here I still was, not going anywhere.…” Pausing, Sam faced Tony again. “That’s why I didn’t want you here. To see that.”

  In its raw simplicity, the statement startled Tony—that Sam had come to know this and could say it to him so soon. Almost gently, Tony said, “Tell me about Marcie Calder.”

  Sam glanced upstairs; to Tony, the presence of Sue, the delicate balance between wife and husband, was suddenly, palpable.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” Sam murmured.

  * * *

  The house, which once had been Sam’s parents’, was a few blocks from the high school. For most of the walk they were quiet; remembering each street, the wood-frame houses or brick bungalows of kids he once had known, Tony felt connected with a time, long before Alison had died, when this place and its sameness were comforting, the only world he cared about. He stopped in front of the white house, now covered with aluminum siding, where Mary Jane Kulas had lived.

  “Know what happened to her?” Sam asked. “She’s a nurse. And a grandmother.”

  “Jesus.”

  “That’s not the half of it. She must weigh three hundred pounds.…”

  It was odd, Tony thought; listening, he felt like a ghost. I swear I saw Tony Lord, he imagined someone saying, the kid who killed Alison Taylor, big as life, hanging out with Sam Robb. Probably comparing notes …

  Sam had stopped talking. “This is weird for you,” he finally asked, “isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  They stood face-to-face on the sidewalk. Softly, Sam said, “I haven’t left the house since Monday. Couldn’t face anyone.” He paused, tears in his eyes. “That’s when I knew how big an apology I owed you, Tony, all those years ago.”

  * * *

  They sat in the wooden stands, gazing at an empty football field. There was no one around.

  “What about Coach Jackson?” Tony asked.

  “Oh, he died, man. Popped an aorta, about five years after you left.” Sam propped his chin in his hands, looking straight ahead. “You knew he was fucking my mother, I guess. Everyone knew.”

  Silence, Tony thought, was answer enough.

  “Well,” Sam said after a time, “at least she wasn’t in high school.”

  The naked self-contempt jarred Tony; perhaps he had been hoping for Sam’s expression of sadness, some regret that a girl he had known was dead. But it was not the first time that Tony had seen this; the self-absorption of those facing murder charges was so total, their fear so complete, that they often forgot the victim. And seldom more so, Tony reminded himself, than when they were guilty.

  Sam was watching him again. “There was something I’ve always wondered, though. About Sue. You were fucking her, weren’t you?”

  Surprised, Tony made his face blank, a lawyer’s reflex. “You give me too much credit. And Sue too little.”

  Slowly, Sam nodded. “Yeah. She’d never do that to me, would she.”

  Once more, the words had a self-lacerating quality. “I guess you were ‘fucking’ Marcie Calder, then.”

  Sam sat straighter, inhaling. He did not answer.

  “Let’s get something straight,” Tony said evenly. “I’m your lawyer now—not an old friend, someone you’ve met again at a high school reunion and want to impress. As a lawyer, my role is not to judge you but to give you the best advice and, if necessary, the best defense.

  “For those purposes, it doesn’t matter if you slept with her—it shouldn’t to me, and it can’t to you, however we might feel as friends. But this is one time I’ll fire a client for lying to me. Because it damn well matters if you try to use me, and if you do, all you’ll get is the stupid advice you’ll deserve.”

  Sam turned to him, flushed. “Look…”

  “Screw around with me now,” Tony said in his most unimpressed voice, “and you’ll lose your career, and maybe the rest of your life. The only way I can help you is to get the truth. Whatever that is.”

  Sam drew a deep breath. “Oh, you’ll get the truth, Tony. Just like you’ve always given it to me. So don’t you lie to me now. You care. Your own girlfriend was murdered when you were seventeen, and you care a lot. Not about sex, maybe. But about whether your old friend Sam is a murderer.”

  Tony felt himself tense. “All right, Sam … I want you to be innocent. Not just because of Alison, but because of Sue. And you.” He paused a moment, and muted his tone. “If you’re guilty, tell me now and I’ll find you another lawyer. Because I won’t be the one you need. I know that, going in.”

  Leaning forward, Sam’s eyes locked Tony’s. “I’ve done a lot of things, pal. Things you won’t respect. But I am not a murderer.” He paused, finishing softly: “Please, I need you to believe that.”

  Sam’s voice was husky with suppressed emotion, the sound of truth. Through his own desire to believe, Tony found himself wondering which part of the statement was true—all of it, or only the last. Finally, he answered, “Then I do.”

  Sam’s bulky frame seemed to relax. After a time, he asked, “So what do you want to know, Tony?”

  “Everything. To start, what Marcie Calder was like.”

  Sam gave him a long look before answering. “To tell you the truth, Tony, she reminded me of Alison.”

  * * *

  It was the way she carried herself, Sam explained—graceful, a little aloof, as if living in a secret. Marcie was not as smart, and surely not as privileged; yet there was this sense of privacy, of a girl who held
herself back. Her greatest freedom seemed to be in motion.

  She was tall and slender, Sam said; she had pale skin, straight black hair, which fell across her cheekbones. But her reticence seemed more like shyness than some deeper commitment to privacy; where Alison was practical—a realist, as Sam remembered her—this girl struck him as a romantic. It fell to Sam, her coach, to impose some discipline on her talent.

  But she had talent and, Sam admitted, he liked to watch her, the careful way she listened to him, how she believed in him with her eyes. Next to those eyes, Marcie’s legs were the best part of her; she was almost flat-chested, but she had the legs of a ballerina, strong enough to run not just the hundred-yard dash but also the two-twenty. Sam’s assignment to the girls’ track team had been an afterthought of the principal—an insult, Sam believed, because it suggested that he considered Sam’s time unimportant—and Sam saw himself as the faded athlete, shepherding young girls on the field where once he had excelled, which now had become the treadmill of a stalled life. But Marcie had transformed this: not only did she admire him, but he could make her special. When she first asked to stay after practice, to work with him in that vital burst from the starter’s block, he had been happy to do so. An hour later, she was much better; for the first time, watching from behind as she bent over the cinder track, Sam admired the sinew of her thighs, the tightness of her bottom. There was something sensual about the way she froze there, waiting for his command to start.

  The first meet of the new season, Marcie won both races.

  Even then, she was not talkative. But Sam could see it in her eyes. They shone, he said to Tony; he had helped her discover something even more important than the love of running—she, Marcie Calder, was the best. When she ran up to hug him, the pressure of her body, closer than Sam expected, made him feel aroused.

  The girls went to their locker room; Sam to his office, next to the principal’s. The secretaries were gone; the principal was attending a convention. Sam began reviewing the attendance report.

  He heard footsteps in the front office, quiet and soft. There had been a problem with student theft; as he started to get up, Marcie Calder appeared in his doorway. She was still in her track suit; the surprise of this made Sam’s heart skip. He took in her long legs and then her eyes, grave and very still, the light sprinkling of freckles on the bridge of her nose. Even before she said anything, he felt that strange electricity that any man knows—the sense that something never spoken no longer needs to be.