Silent Witness

by Richard North Patterson

  “Ernie’s fear is right,” she told them. “For Marcie Calder sits down on his couch and, in that soft, clear way she has, tells him that she’s pregnant.

  “Ernie Nixon is heartsick.

  “He begs her to tell the Calders or, at least, to let him take her to a clinic for pregnancy counseling. Once more, she refuses—this, her child, is a life.

  “She looks pale, lost, overwhelmed by the burden that she carries. But all that she allows Ernie Nixon to do for her is make her a tuna sandwich. For she must tell the person she has chosen to rely on—who, she explains to Ernie, she will meet in a few minutes—that he is the father of her unborn child.

  “Whatever her fears, dying is not among them. She eats the tuna sandwich, Marcie says, because she’s eating for two.

  “Within two hours,” Stella said softly, “Marcie Calder will be dead.”

  Sam Robb’s jaw worked. “How can Marz know that?” he whispered.

  With equal quiet, Tony answered, “Stay calm, dammit.”

  “As she drives away,” Stella Marz continued, “Marcie Calder does not know to be afraid. All she knows is that her lover has agreed to meet her.

  “Alone, she parks at an abandoned gas station. Another car is there, a gray Volvo sedan. Marcie gets out, and then the man inside the Volvo opens the passenger door.

  “Eagerly, Marcie gets inside the car and turns to him, this man she loves.” Pausing, Stella Marz turned to Sam. “Sam Robb. The assistant principal of Lake City High School. Marcie’s track coach, and the father of her child.”

  In the silence, Sam gazed back at Stella Marz. His expression was all that Tony could ask, so wounded and ashamed that, if it was not genuine, Sam Robb possessed gifts beyond his lawyer’s reckoning. For a moment, Stella’s eyes held the coolness of real dislike, and then she faced the jury again.

  “Marcie’s life is in his hands now. No one—not her parents, or Janice, or Ernie Nixon—knows where she is. Except for Sam Robb, Marcie Calder is alone.

  “In the darkness, he drives her to Taylor Park.

  “Marcie undresses for him. And then, in his wife’s gray Volvo, Sam Robb sodomizes Marcie Calder.”

  At the corner of his eye, Tony saw Sue Robb blanch. She reached for her daughter’s hand.

  Speaking with cold distaste, Stella Marz switched abruptly to the past tense. “And when this most intimate act was done, Sam Robb had used her body—at least in any way that could be remotely described as loving—for the last time.

  “I cannot tell you what Marcie Calder thought in the last moments of her life, as she lay dazed and dying in her lover’s arms, this man that she had admired, his child still alive inside her. Was this girl, barely more than a child herself, thinking of her own child? We will never know.

  “We know only what the medical evidence will show you—that Sam Robb, to prevent her thoughts from being spoken aloud, led her from Sue Robb’s Volvo to a grassy field above Lake Erie.

  “That he picked up a heavy rock.

  “That he struck Marcie Calder three hard blows, shattering her skull.

  “That he threw her off the cliff and watched her fall one hundred feet. For in her pain, the agony of Sam Robb’s betrayal, that was the only mercy left to her.”

  Tony saw the tears on Nancy Calder’s face, her stoic husband staring at his feet. On the other side of the courtroom, Sue Robb’s eyes shut, and her children were stricken cameos. Beside him, he felt Sam shudder.

  Stella Marz was relentless now. “Anthony Lord is a gifted lawyer, and he will tell you about doubt. But Mr. Lord can never change what I believe the facts will show.

  “Fact: Sam Robb told the police that he and Marcie Calder were merely friends, alone at night in Taylor Park to discuss her innocent teenage crush.

  “Fact: Sam Robb stood to lose his wife, his family, his reputation, and his livelihood if Marcie Calder said a word to anyone.

  “Fact: Marcie Calder’s blood was on the steering wheel of Sue Robb’s car.

  “Fact: Sam Robb is the father of Marcie Calder’s child.

  “There will be no doubt about these facts.

  “There will be no doubt that Sam Robb lied about them.

  “And—when all the evidence is in and all the lawyers’ arguments are done with—I am confident that you will have no reasonable doubt that Sam Robb is the murderer of this sixteen-year-old girl with whose care he was charged, and of the life-to-be he had left inside her.”

  Pausing, Stella Marz looked at each juror in turn. “Thank you,” she said simply, and sat.

  Pale, Sam gazed at Tony with hope and desperation.

  “Mr. Lord?” Judge Karoly inquired.

  Tony stood, making his decision. “I have nothing at this time, Your Honor. The defense reserves its opening until the prosecution puts on its proof. Which—with all respect to Ms. Marz—an opening statement is not.”

  From the bench, Leo Karoly looked surprised. “Very well,” he said. “The court will take its morning recess.”

  In the slow stirring of bodies, Sam stood, face suffused with anger and astonishment. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  Tony touched his shoulder. “Not here.”

  * * *

  They sat in a cramped witness room—Saul, Tony, and Sam—at a wooden table with hard wooden chairs. Perhaps, Tony thought, it was a mercy that they were not in the corridor with Sue instead. Next to him, Saul leaned back, a spectator.

  “She fucking killed us.” Sam’s voice rose. “I’m not an idiot, Tony—I’ve been reading up on trial tactics. Something like sixty percent of jurors make their minds up on opening statements. Without one, we may have lost already. This is my ass we’re talking about here.”

  “True. Which is why I’m holding back.” Sympathetic to Sam’s anxiety, Tony kept himself calm. “She overplayed it, I think. But I can’t tell the jury that now, and I can’t be sure what our best defense is until Stella’s evidence is in. For example, what if she’s found some way to account for Ernie’s time? And if she hasn’t, why warn her about what I’m up to?”

  “What does that matter if they already think I’m guilty?” Sam’s face and voice were taut. “Dammit, you could have at least said something.”

  Tony sipped his coffee, trying to stay calm. With his own nerves on edge, the last thing he needed was second-guessing from an amateur lawyer, his client. “ ‘Something’ would have been what Stella already made sound so pathetic: reasonable doubt.…”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” With an innocent expression, Saul turned to Sam. “What about ‘he buggered her, but he didn’t kill her’? That might have had some appeal.”

  Sam reddened, staring at Saul. “The point,” Tony interjected, “is that I can do better, and will. With a little luck, I’ll stick Stella’s opening in her ear.” Reaching out, he covered Sam’s hand with his own. “Your job now is to look very calm, and very sad. You’ve got at least two weeks of pretty bad stuff to sit through.” Pausing, Tony finished softly. “It’s like the Riverwood game. Just keep your nerve, and trust me.”

  Looking into Sam’s eyes, Tony read worry, affection, doubt, and, at the last, the same resentment of Tony’s guidance, his own dependence, that Tony had first seen thirty years before. After a moment, Sam nodded brusquely. “All right, Tony. I just hope it’s not that close.”

  THREE

  When Stella Marz called Marcie’s doctor as her first witness, Tony knew that she intended to follow the sequence of her opening statement, tracing the last hours of Marcie Calder’s life, then using the police and medical experts to tie Sam Robb to her death. For the jury, this would fuse tragedy with the sheer interest of a forensic detective story.

  “Smart,” Tony murmured to Saul, and turned his attention to Dr. Nora Cox.

  She was a youngish-looking woman of about Tony’s age, with a full mouth, bright blue-green eyes, and unruly brown hair. To Tony, Cox had the scrubbed, healthy look of a woman who liked the outdoors, and beneath her brisk manner was an air of war
mth and concern. Stella Marz stood back and to the side, drawing attention to her witness instead of herself. “How long were you Marcie Calder’s doctor?” she asked.

  “Twelve years, Ms. Marz. Since the beginning of my practice.” Cox paused, adding softly, “When Marcie was four.”

  “How often did you see her?”

  “Around town, pretty frequently—Lake City’s not that big. As a patient, her mother scheduled her every six months or so.” Cox’s voice fell. “Until the last few weeks of her life, that is.”

  Stella tilted her head. “You saw her more frequently?”

  Cox nodded slowly. “Twice. On Marcie’s own initiative.”

  Beside him, Tony felt Sam stir. “What was the first visit about?” Stella asked.

  Briefly, Cox glanced at Marcie’s parents. “Marcie wanted to ask me about birth control.”

  Watching, Nancy Calder looked wounded; her husband’s gaze was unfocused. “Did Marcie tell you why?” Stella asked.

  Cox folded her hands. “Marcie had begun having sex.”

  “When you say ‘had begun,’ Dr. Cox, did she tell you how recently—?”

  “Objection,” Tony said without rising. “Hearsay. The doctor herself has no idea when Marcie Calder first had intercourse.”

  Judge Karoly turned to Stella, eyebrows raised in inquiry. Unruffled, the prosecutor answered, “I’ll ask it another way,” and turned to Nora Cox. “During this visit, Dr. Cox, did you examine Marcie Calder?”

  “Yes. Specifically, I gave her a pelvic examination.”

  “And what did that examination reveal?”

  The glance Nora Cox gave Sam Robb, seemingly reflexive, was filled with disapproval and dislike. “Marcie’s hymen showed signs of tearing, and her labia and vaginal wall were somewhat abraded. In my experience, those are consistent with initial—and quite recent—sexual intercourse. Which is what Marcie told me when I asked her.”

  The harm was done, Tony knew at once. Like Stella, Nora Cox was a clever woman: Tony’s only recourse, a motion to strike the last sentence of her answer, would simply underscore her point. Quickly, Stella asked, “And what did Marcie say?”

  “That she’d lost her virginity the day before.” The doctor’s voice grew softer. “Her partner’s condom had broken, and Marcie was quite anxious. She thought her last period had ended two weeks before that.”

  With some reluctance, Tony stood for the first time. “With respect, Your Honor, none of this seems relevant. To save everyone time and perhaps discomfort, the defense will stipulate that Marcie Calder was pregnant when she died.”

  Stella Marz gave him a quick, sardonic glance, then turned a bland face to Karoly. “We appreciate Mr. Lord’s offer. But we believe that Marcie Calder’s sexual experience—or lack of it—is relevant to the prosecution case.”

  She knows, Tony thought. “I’m giving the prosecution some latitude,” Karoly said. “Proceed, Ms. Marz.”

  Sitting, Tony saw Saul’s glint of amusement. “What’s going on?” Sam asked him.

  Tony leaned closer. “Ernie,” he murmured. “She’s figured it out.…”

  “When Marcie told you about having sex,” Stella asked Cox, “what was your response?”

  Once more, the doctor glanced at Marcie’s parents. Quietly, she answered, “I asked Marcie if she’d told her mother.”

  “What did she say?”

  “That she hadn’t.” Cox folded her hands, and her brief downward glance reflected sadness and a certain shame. “One of the dilemmas I face, as a doctor, is that I learn things about minor children that I feel someone else should know. In this case, it was Marcie’s parents.”

  “Was there a specific reason you felt that way?”

  “In general, I think teenage girls ought not to be on their own when it comes to sex. And my impression was that Nancy Calder’s a concerned and conscientious mother.” Pausing, Cox spoke more sharply. “But there was something more. When I asked who the boy was, Marcie’s answer threw me. It wasn’t a boy, she said.”

  Silent, Stella let that linger, inviting the jury to share in her distaste for Sam. “Keep looking at her,” Tony whispered to Sam. “The jury’s watching you.”

  The prosecutor still faced Cox. “Did you advise Marcie to confide in her mother?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what was her answer?”

  “That she couldn’t.”

  “Did she say why?”

  In silent apology, Nora Cox glanced at Nancy Calder, then at her husband. Turning back to Stella, she answered, “Marcie said her father would get it out of her mother. That her father was obsessed with controlling her and that he would be furious if he knew she wasn’t a virgin.”

  The Calders would not look at each other. For the first time, Tony wondered if they could survive this: too often, he had seen the death of a child destroy a marriage, even when there was no one to blame. From her expression, Nora Cox knew this as well.

  “There was another reason,” Cox added softly. “Marcie had promised this man she would never say anything to expose him. Or so she told me.”

  “That’s hearsay,” Sam murmured in a strained voice.

  Tony did not change expression, nor did he take his eyes off Cox and Marz. Under his breath, too quiet for anyone else to hear, Tony answered, “Shut up.”

  “Did Marcie tell you, Dr. Cox, why secrecy was so important?”

  Nora Cox seemed to inhale. In a chastened voice, she answered, “Only that he was married.”

  Watching, Tony felt each new piece that Cox provided draw the jury in. The store owner scowled; the beautician—a blond, chatty type whom Tony had watched strike up several friendships during jury selection—gazed at the Calders with open sympathy. Across the courtroom, Sue’s eyes looked dead.

  “What did you do then?” Marz asked Cox.

  Cox drew a breath. “I fitted her for a diaphragm and said I hoped she’d tell her mother.”

  “What was her reply?”

  Cox studied her hands. “To ask—no, beg—me not to tell her parents.”

  “To which you said…”

  “That I was her doctor, and wouldn’t. And then, because she seemed so frightened, I asked what she meant to say when her parents got the bill for her deductible and asked why she’d come to me.” Her voice was soft again. “Marcie was so naive, so scared, that she’d never thought of that.” Cox paused a moment, looking down. “It was like she was visiting the tooth fairy.”

  In seeming compassion, Stella paused. “What did you do?”

  “What I’d thought of doing was just to send the bill and let her parents figure it out. It was clear to me that Marcie was in a bad situation, way over her head, and needed the help of an adult. Other than the man who’d taken her virginity.”

  Stella stepped closer. Softly, she inquired, “Did you ask if Marcie had such a person?” and Tony saw how well the prosecutor had anticipated him.

  “Yes.” Now Cox looked at her steadily. “Marcie said she had someone else to confide in. Another adult.”

  “Did she tell you who?”

  Slowly, Cox shook her head. “Only that he was like a counselor, someone she’d known for a long time. I made Marcie promise that she’d talk to him.”

  “Did you say anything else?”

  For a moment, watching the Calders, Nora Cox did not answer. Then her gaze broke, and she touched her eyes. “That if Marcie promised, I wouldn’t send her parents a bill.”

  In the jury box, the beautician’s lips parted. Still watching her witness, Stella Marz asked Karoly for a ten-minute recess.

  * * *

  Down the corridor, Sue Robb and her children looked lost; they stood together, isolated, speaking little. Huddling with Tony and Saul, Sam Robb seemed muted. “I’m sorry,” he said to Tony. “You can’t be objecting all the time. It would only make this worse.”

  For the first time, Saul looked at their client with something like tolerance. “Nothing Tony could do about the real problem.
Marcie wasn’t screwing around with Ernie—she was faithfully carrying out a promise to her doctor, like the honest girl she was.” He turned to Tony. “Stella’s seen us coming.”

  Tony shrugged. “There’s no wind so ill,” he said for Sam’s sake, “that it doesn’t blow a little bit of good.” But he could not help wishing that he were home in San Francisco or, even better, that he believed his friend and client innocent.

  When Nora Cox resumed the stand, Tony’s mood lingered.

  Cox had regained composure. With Stella’s help, she began to paint a picture of Marcie’s last visit, on the last day of her life. So accustomed was Tony to imagining Marcie Calder that, as Cox spoke, he saw a slender, dark-haired girl, solitary and frightened, sitting on an examining table. Tears ran down her face.

  * * *

  “It’s only a home pregnancy test,” Cox said gently. “But for positives, it’s close to a hundred percent.”

  Marcie’s voice was light, less that of a woman than a girl. “But you think I’m having a baby.”

  Cox sat next to her. “You’ve thrown up the last three mornings, Marcie. And this HPT is quite reliable.” She took her hand. “Your period is two weeks late. The timing works out with the broken condom.”

  Marcie folded her arms, as if she were cold. The examining gown she wore made the crinkling sound of crumpled gift wrap.

  “Let’s think together,” Cox said softly. “In case you are.”

  Marcie blinked back her tears. “There’s nothing to think about,” she said. “I’m a mother, that’s all.”

  It sounded so absolute, and so pitiful, that Nora Cox shook her head. “Teenage pregnancies are hard, Marcie. You may see this as the beginning of a life, but it may be the effective end of yours. You do have choices.…”

  “No.” Marcie’s voice turned stubborn. “I can’t do that.”

  “You can.” In her despair for this girl, one of the first patients she had ever had, Nora Cox left behind her role as doctor. “Marcie, listen to me. When I was in medical school, I became pregnant. The whole thing was just impossible.” Cox paused, softening her voice. “The father was a teacher I admired, a surgeon. He was married. To have his baby might have damaged his career and maybe ended mine—worse, it might have destroyed his marriage. Your situation is that much worse.”