Silent Witness

by Richard North Patterson

  She bobbed her head, struggling for self-control. “I was seventeen and on the track team, like Marcie was. He told me I was special.…”

  “And you had sexual relations?”

  “Yes.” She paused. “Once in his office, the other time in a motel.”

  “Why are you coming forward now, after six years?”

  The woman seemed to gather herself. “If I’d had the courage to do this then, Marcie Calder would still be alive. Sam Robb should never be allowed to touch another girl.…”

  As the camera closed in, the woman bit her lip, fighting for composure. Tony felt an emptiness in the pit of his stomach.

  “This is Tamara Lee,” the newswoman’s voice said, “for Headline News.”

  Numb, Tony walked to the telephone. “Sorry, Stace. I need to call Sam right away.”

  * * *

  As he stared out at Lake Erie from the pier, Sam’s face looked haunted. “She’s lying, Tony. She wants to ruin me.”

  How many times, Tony wondered, had he heard this from a client. “Now it’s two girls,” he shot back. “And what reason does this one have to lie?”

  Sam drew a breath. The response seemed heavy and burdened, as though Sam’s persona had been stripped away by this last, public humiliation, and all that remained was some primal self who resisted his fate by instinct. “Six years ago,” he said wearily, “I threw her off the track team. For having marijuana in her locker.”

  Pensive, Tony watched the evening sun slip toward the water, spreading faint light in the deep blue-gray. “Then someone else must know that, right?”

  Sam slowly shook his head. “I let her say she would quit. It was one thing not to want her on the team, spreading this shit around, and another to screw up her life with an expulsion.” He gave Tony a sour smile. “I should have tossed her out. But I remember thinking that at her age I kept a fifth of whiskey in my trunk.”

  The answer gave Tony pause: this was either an inspired lie, invented within an hour, or Sam had acted with more compassion than Jack Burton, in his bogus piety, had granted the seventeen-year-old Tony Lord. “This charge could devastate you,” Tony said at last. “It’ll give the school board a pattern of ‘moral irresponsibility,’ if not a reason to say that you’re emotionally unbalanced. And Stella Marz may try to use Jenny to show that you lied to the cops and that you’re obsessed with teenage girls. The question is why, after six years, she’d still hate you enough to make this up.”

  Sam turned on him abruptly. “Jenny Travis isn’t stable. Push her hard enough and she’ll fold.”

  The change startled Tony; Sam’s eyes flared with anger, and there was a cruel practicality in his tone. “I didn’t ask if I could break her, dammit. I asked you why she’d lie.…”

  “Look, Tony—Jenny Travis had a reputation for fucking a lot of guys, even then. Later, there were stories about her and another girl on the track team.” Sam’s lips tightened. “When someone doesn’t know which end is up, who knows why they do things.”

  Watching the desperation in Sam’s eyes, Tony thought of Sue, suffering in stoic anguish through the school board meeting. “How’s Sue taking this?” he finally asked.

  “How do you think?” The mention of Sue changed Sam’s vehemence to despair. “I told her what I’m telling you—that Jenny Travis is a liar. If I can’t make Sue believe me somehow, I’ve lost her.” He paused, shaking his head. “I can’t imagine that, pal. Just can’t imagine it…”

  “All right.” Tony’s voice was as reluctant as he felt. “I’ll try to talk to Jenny Travis. But understand that it’s a risk. If the conversation goes south, she can testify to that as well: the bullying lawyer, trying to intimidate her for the sake of his guilty client. And then I’ll have made things that much worse for both of us.”

  * * *

  The private investigator Saul had located, Sal Russo, was efficient. Within twenty-four hours, Tony knew that Jenny Travis was an aerobics instructor in Riverwood; had shared an apartment with a woman named Ellen Fox for the past two years; had no criminal record or involvement in civil suits since graduating from Lake City High School; was twenty-three; had never been married; and had a clean credit record. As far as Sal could tell, neither she nor Ellen Fox, a day-care staffer, had a boyfriend.

  As he sat in the small office cubicle, waiting for Jenny Travis, Tony watched the last five minutes of Jenny’s aerobics class. She called out orders like a drill sergeant, upbeat but no-nonsense, to the militant beat of rap music; her sweaty and determined charges, various in their shapes and capacities, mimed her calisthenics on a sliding scale running from the sensual to the foolish. On some better day, Tony might have reflected on his own faltering efforts at basketball—the aging ex–high school star outrun by younger lawyers, all of them pale from overwork and as self-serious as he about their competition—and smiled at the human comedy. But these thoughts were too benign to suit his duties to Sam.

  The class ended. The students chatted among themselves like kids released from school. Jenny spoke to most of them, squeezing shoulders and offering encouragement; her manner was almost too intense, as if she were preparing her troops for some future assault on life. When a few hugged her back, Tony wondered if they were offering support in her newfound notoriety. Then Jenny Travis came through the door, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her wrist. Then she saw him, and her eyes widened in alarm.

  “You’re Tony Lord,” she said. “I’ve seen you on television.”

  Her voice had an astringent quality, brittle and a little afraid, and she did not try to feign goodwill. This seemed to fit the rest of her: the short pageboy haircut, the clear blue eyes, the complete absence of makeup to embellish skin so pale that, combined with her drab brown hair, it made her look drained of color. She was almost too slender, and beneath her brisk movements and challenging gaze, Tony felt something defensive.

  He met her stare. “I thought it would make sense to look at where this thing might go. Before it goes there.”

  It came out as more threatening than he wished, less reluctant than he felt. “Marcie Calder’s dead,” Jenny retorted. “So she’s already gone there.”

  “True. So this won’t go away—you’ve already been overrun by the media, and now they’re talking about another school board hearing.”

  Jenny’s narrow-eyed look conveyed worry, distaste for who she conceived Tony to be, contempt for his moral opacity. “And you already know that Sam Robb had sex with another student. Maybe you knew that before the school board meeting.”

  She spoke as though her truthfulness should be as clear to him as it was to her. “I only know what you told Channel Seven,” Tony answered, “and I didn’t hear that much.…”

  “Well, what does he say?”

  “That it isn’t true, and that he’s willing to face a hearing.”

  Jenny grimaced. “He really is a liar. And a murderer.” She leaned forward. “Do you know why I know that Sam Robb murdered Marcie Calder?”

  It startled Tony. “No.”

  “Because he blackmailed me, for sex. A man who likes to force a woman is capable of taking it all the way.”

  Pausing, Tony reined in his emotions; to frighten her could be fatal. In a different voice, lower and softer, he said, “I’d like to know what happened.”

  She gave him a look of doubt, followed by a what-the-hell shrug. “If I’m going to have to tell it over and over again, I might as well tell it to you. After all, I’ve been living with it for the last six years.”

  That would make Sam barely forty, Tony realized, and Sam’s own Jenny, his daughter, roughly the same age as this woman. “Was Jenny Robb in school with you?”

  Jenny Travis stared at him. “Classmates,” she said.

  “Did you know her at all?”

  “Everyone knew her—she was senior class president. But we were in a different group.”

  Tony caught a hint of dislike, perhaps hostility. But there was no way to probe this without tal
king to Jenny Robb. Tony found it hard to imagine the recklessness, if this woman’s accusations were true, of a school administrator who would have sex with a daughter’s classmate.

  “When you say that Sam ‘forced’ you…”

  Jenny crossed her legs. Behind her, another class was forming, a handful of women in tights. Tony became acutely aware of silence: the silence of the women on the other side of the glass, the silence of the woman in front of him.

  “He caught me with drugs in my locker,” she said at last.

  * * *

  Jenny Travis closed the door behind her.

  Coach Robb sat at his desk, studying her with a heavy-lidded gaze. Then he took two joints from his drawer and put them on the desk.

  Jenny felt her heart race. It was better not to speak.

  “You could be expelled,” he said. “It’s my duty to report you.”

  Mute, she nodded.

  Sam grimaced in dismay, a man faced with a distasteful task. Softly, he said, “Sit down, Jenny.”

  She did that, miserable, staring at the joints.

  He leaned forward, looking at her across the desk with those clear blue eyes that were the youngest part of a still young but softening face. “You have such potential,” he said. “As an athlete and as a person. Why are you throwing it away?”

  Jenny shrugged, struggling for an answer, trying to determine from his manner if her fate was still open. All that she could manage was to say, “I don’t know.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to figure it out, all across the board.” He paused, folding his hands. “You test well, Jenny, but your grades are average. In track you don’t run to your potential. And now this…” He paused, staring at his desk. “Maybe I should talk to your parents. That’s what I’d want if you were my Jenny.”

  It was the first hint that he might do something short of expulsion. But the idea dismayed Jenny—she could see her tight-lipped mother, her choleric father bellowing with rage. The point of smoking dope was to get her away from all that, into the world of fantasy and sinuous music she concealed in her head. “Please,” she said. “They’d just yell at me. They wouldn’t understand.”

  He looked up at her. “I don’t understand, Jenny Travis.”

  There was a new intimacy to this, Jenny felt: Coach Robb talking to her like a person. She had always thought there was something attractive about him, but beneath the easy jokes, the cocksure manner of the once great Lake City athlete, he seemed remote. She had no sense of knowing him, and now would have to try. “Sometimes I want to escape,” she said. “It’s like I don’t fit, and I don’t know why.”

  He seemed to consider this, gazing at his desk with veiled eyes. As she watched him, part of Jenny was grateful; the other part, whose existence was a surprise to her, thought suddenly that his interest was a pose, beneath which he had no respect for her at all. And then he looked up with those clear blue eyes, seeming to see through her. “You could be somebody wonderful, Jenny. But you won’t find that someone by smoking joints.”

  They were still talking, Jenny thought. Hope and fear and confusion brought tears to her eyes. “Please,” she said. “You don’t know what they’d be like.…”

  Coach Robb gave a shrug of helplessness. In a reluctant voice, he said, “Maybe I can counsel with you.” Pausing, he placed his hand over his eyes. “I’m going to need to think about it.…”

  She kept herself still, silent, afraid to do anything that might affect the balance, apprehensive that, even at six o’clock, someone else could walk in the office and see the joints on his desk. He seemed to struggle with himself. “I shouldn’t say this,” he said softly, “but the fact that it’s you makes it that much harder. People can’t think I have favorites. But you’ve always been a favorite of mine.”

  Something had changed between them, Jenny suddenly knew. She felt herself swallow. “You can’t keep running away,” he told her. “Boys and drugs and all the rest. You know that, don’t you?”

  Jenny nodded. She would have nodded at anything he said.

  Silent, he put the two joints back in the drawer. “All right,” he said slowly. “I’ll help you.”

  Jenny felt her own tremulous smile. “Thank you…”

  As she stood, so did Coach Robb.

  They looked at each other, Jenny in confusion, and then he opened up his arms. Hesitant, she went to him.

  He felt strong, not slight like the boys who had made her feel nothing. “It’s all right.” He held her tight now. “We’ll get through it.…”

  When she drew back, looking at his face with gratitude, he shook his head with a funny half-smile. “Ah, Jenny…”

  There was no mistaking the thickness in his voice. She felt the pit of her stomach clutch, and then he kissed her.

  She did not resist this, or encourage it, but seemed to exist outside herself, caught in disbelief, fear, wonder. His tongue slipped into her mouth.

  Jenny let him do this, imagining her parents’ faces, afraid of pulling back from him, frozen by the two joints in his drawer. Then he leaned his forehead against hers. “Is this all right?” he asked.

  She did not say yes or no. Kissing her forehead, Sam released her, walking to his door. As he did so, she realized that he had asked her to come to his office after practice, at a time when no one was here.

  Still facing the desk, Jenny heard the click of his door lock.

  Even before he leaned his body against the back of her, hands circling her waist, Jenny knew that he would touch her breasts.

  Her eyes shut. He found her nipples through the thin cotton of her T-shirt, sending warnings to her brain, shivers to the core of her. His breath warmed the back of her neck.

  The rest evolved from moment to moment, a dance she already knew, yet somehow stood outside of. The confident hands unsnapping the top of her jeans, fingers finding her wetness, his lack of hurry, the fact that she could have stopped him and yet dared not, even when he bent her over. As he entered her from behind, her hair, falling across her face, grazed his desk. She felt his thrusts, then his shudder, and wondered if the risk was part of his excitement.

  Softly, calmly, Sam Robb murmured, “This can’t be the last time, Jenny,” and she realized that he owned her.

  * * *

  Wondering if the account was true, Tony was shaken by its similarity, at least in certain particulars, to Sam’s own story of his “seduction” by Marcie Calder. So that it was a moment before he asked, “Back then, did you ever tell anyone about this?”

  Jenny folded her arms. “No.”

  Tony hesitated. Even were he to discourage Jenny Travis, Stella could subpoena her, perhaps compel her to testify against her will. But unless he tried, her testimony—if allowed—could be lethal. And despite himself, Tony needed to hear everything. “There was one more time with him?” he asked.

  “Yes. At the Motel 6, about a mile from here.”

  At least it wasn’t in a car, Tony thought with bleak irony. “What happened?”

  “I went down on him. He held my head there until he was finished.”

  Her body was rigid, and her uninflected voice spoke of hatred under tight control. “What you’re telling me,” Tony said with care, “isn’t pretty. But there’s some distance between exploitation—even abuse—and murder.”

  The first color showed in her cheeks. “I gave him what he asked for. What if I hadn’t?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She stood, turning to the glass windows, watching the forms of other women. At length, she stood straighter, turning to face him again. “He wanted me twice,” she said. “The second time, he rolled me on my stomach across the bed. When I tried to get out from under him, he just went ahead and did it. He hurt me.” Her voice filled with contempt. “And then, when it was over, he apologized. ‘I’m not like that,’ I remember him saying.”

  Her eyes bored into Tony’s now, demanding to know how he could represent this man. Evenly, Tony asked, “Did what, Jenny?”


  She gave him a quick querying look, then angrily shook her head. “Not that,” she said. “He just made me feel cheap and dirty and exploited. Maybe, in your life, that’s nothing.”

  Tony was aware of his own jumbled emotions—fear of who Sam might truly be; the unwelcome question of what married life had been for Sue; the intuition that, in Jenny Travis, the unwillingness to differentiate between Tony and his client went deeper than anger at Sam, or dislike for lawyers. There was something as yet unspoken, and now Tony could guess what it was: in that moment, he felt deep compassion for Jenny Travis, anger that he, as Sam Robb’s lawyer, must risk telling her what Stella had not—that the legal process, once entered, would slip beyond her control.

  “In my life,” he answered, “it’s hardly nothing. But I’m representing a client. And in fairness to him, I have to point out how damaging your account can be, let alone how serious it is to suggest that you believe him capable of murder. Even on the basis of sexual coercion.” Tony kept his voice level; perhaps she could be made to see that coming forward was of limited value. “Because of that, I’m very sure that I could keep your testimony out of any murder trial—it’s far more prejudicial to Sam than it is probative of murder.

  “That only leaves a school board hearing. But Sam’s already under suspension. If it helps, I think I can assure you that he’s never coming back to Lake City High School.”

  Stubbornly, Jenny Travis shook her head. “You’re sounding like a lawyer. But I was a victim, and so was Marcie Calder. I was quiet for six long years, and all it did was hurt me. I’m doing this for girls like Marcie, and I’m also doing it for me.”

  There was no stopping her, Tony knew, without explaining the rest. Stifling his reluctance, Tony went on. “Then in fairness to Sam, and to you, I should tell you what any lawyer will be forced to ask. You did quit the track team, right?”

  She gave a curt nod. “After the motel, sure. I couldn’t even look at him.”

  “There are no witnesses to confirm your story, or to persuade me—as Sam’s lawyer—that it’s so. Granted that’s always the problem with what you say Sam Robb did to you. But there’s no one else to say, Jenny, that Sam didn’t let you quit out of kindness, as he claims, instead of expelling you for drugs. Or that anything else you just told me is true. It’s a classic ‘he said / she said’ conflict, and those aren’t easy to resolve.”