Silent Witness

by Richard North Patterson

  “Speaking of speeches,” Tony interjected.

  “Yes.” Karoly, as always, was too slow to assert himself. “That’s enough from both of you.” Pausing, he pursed his lips. “In context, I think Ms. Marz is entitled to Ms. D’Abruzzi’s opinion.”

  Sitting, Tony murmured to Saul, “That’s one for the appellate court.” But that did not change his concern and irritation, aggravated when Stella Marz, with a professional sweetness, milked the moment by asking the court reporter, “Could you read back my last question, please? The part before Mr. Lord’s objection.”

  The reporter, a stout, middle-aged man with thinning brown hair, thumbed the roll of paper that hung from his machine, squinting at the shorthand symbols. “Here it is,” he murmured, and then, in a monotone that somehow made the question sound more damning, read: “ ‘Why, do you suppose, Janice, did Marcie need to see this man on the night she died?’ ”

  As one, the jury looked from the reporter to Janice D’Abruzzi. “To warn him,” Janice answered. “So that he’d know he was in trouble.” For the first time, Janice’s voice broke. “Marcie was such a good person. She’d want to protect him.…”

  The courtroom was still. “Thank you,” Stella said softly, and turned to Tony. “Your witness, Mr. Lord.”

  * * *

  Tony stood beside the defense table. He did not want the jury to see him crowding a teenage girl—it might seem an unpleasant echo of his client.

  “Just for the record,” Tony said mildly, “am I correct that Marcie never told you why she wanted to meet this unknown man? So that your last answer is just a guess?”

  Janice eyed him warily. “It’s what I thought,” she answered. “Not what she told me.”

  “In fact, she didn’t tell you she was pregnant, either.”

  Briefly, Janice fingered the collar of her suit. “No.”

  “But if I remember our prior conversation, didn’t you ask Marcie if she was ‘in trouble’?”

  Janice’s face filled with distrust. “Yes.”

  “What did you mean by the question?”

  “I was worried that she was pregnant.”

  Tony nodded. “And based on your relationship with Marcie, do you think she understood you?”

  “Objection,” Stella said promptly. “How can this witness know what Marcie’s understanding was?”

  Tony kept his voice mild, a friend reasoning with another friend. “That really is the problem, Stella, isn’t it?” He turned to Leo Karoly. “We started down this road, Your Honor, when Ms. Marz asked Ms. D’Abruzzi why Marcie Calder wanted to meet this man. With your indulgence, I’d like to establish a foundation for my questions.”

  Karoly hesitated. “Go ahead, Mr. Lord.”

  Tony saw Stella Marz’s look of irritation; in a moment, he had reduced her from righteous prosecutor to erring colleague, his peer in some common search for truth. Turning to Janice, Tony asked, “Did you and Marcie have some common understanding of what ‘in trouble’ meant when you talked about girls and guys?”

  The jury did, Tony was quite certain. Janice paused, biting her lip. “It meant getting pregnant,” she said at last. “A couple of girls in school already had.”

  Tony nodded. “Looking back at it,” he said gently, “Marcie didn’t tell you the truth, did she?”

  Janice stared at him resentfully. “Marcie wasn’t a liar,” she retorted. “Maybe she wasn’t sure.”

  “But if she were worried, wouldn’t she confide in you?”

  Trapped between two bad answers, Janice looked down. “I don’t know.”

  “In fact, except for whatever Marcie chose to tell you, you don’t know anything about this relationship.”

  Janice’s full lips set in a stubborn line. “I knew Marcie, that was all.”

  “Did you?” Tony asked mildly. “Besides trying to protect this man, whoever he was, did Marcie give you any other reason for wanting to keep her affair a secret?”

  Janice stiffened. In a tight voice, she said, “She didn’t want her father to know she was having sex.”

  “Isn’t that part of the reason you covered for her?”

  Reminded of her complicity, Janice slumped a little. “Yes.”

  “And didn’t Marcie say to you that she needed to keep her father, quote, believing in the Virgin Marcie, unquote.”

  It was a deadly question, Tony knew: though he could imagine the remark in its teenage context, as the resentful humor of the pseudo-oppressed, in court the phrase suggested a different Marcie Calder. But just as Tony recalled about Johnny D’Abruzzi, his daughter was an honest person and would not lie. Softly, Janice answered, “Marcie was afraid of him, all right?”

  “Did Marcie seem afraid that night? Even desperate?”

  Janice swallowed; Tony could see her remembering how Marcie had appeared to her. “Yes. She started crying.…”

  Tony made his voice sound puzzled. “Had you ever seen Marcie act like that before? Desperate and afraid?”

  Silent, Janice shook her head, then remembered to answer aloud. “No—not like that.”

  “When you told Ms. Marz you didn’t think Marcie wanted to get married, you based that guess on things she had said before that night, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  Tony cocked his head. Softly, he asked, “Do you think being pregnant might have changed Marcie’s mind about marriage?”

  Once more, Stella got up. “Objection. Calls for speculation.”

  Tony gave her a drawn-out look of astonishment. “Oh, Stella…,” he murmured, and then turned to the judge. “Counsel opened up this door on direct, Your Honor. This is well within the scope of what the court has already permitted her.”

  It was all improper, Tony knew. But only the defense could take the judge’s rulings to the appellate court—a potential embarrassment, Saul had assured Tony, that Leo Karoly dreaded even more than most weak judges. With unusual promptness, Karoly said, “Objection overruled.”

  Tony asked the reporter to read back the question, his tacit payback to Stella. “ ‘Do you think,’ ” the reporter intoned, “ ‘being pregnant might have changed Marcie’s mind about marriage?’ ”

  Janice glanced at the Calders, the context for her answer. After a moment, she said, “It might have.”

  Tony walked forward, stopping a few feet from Janice. She looked up at him, less afraid than vulnerable. Softly, he said, “You feel guilty, don’t you? About misleading Marcie’s mother.”

  For the first time, tears came to Janice’s eyes. Her voice was trembling. “Marcie was my best friend.…”

  Now Tony’s compassion was not feigned but came from his own piercing memory of Alison Taylor. “And you feel as though you’re somehow responsible for Marcie’s death.”

  Janice blinked. “Yes.”

  Tony no longer had to think. “So now you’d like to help punish the person you believe is directly responsible.”

  Janice turned away, voice low. “Yes.”

  “And because the county prosecutor has charged Sam Robb, you think he’s that person.”

  “Yes.” Blindly, Janice rearranged her skirt. “I do.”

  Tony waited for a moment. “Before he was charged, you didn’t think Sam Robb was Marcie’s lover, did you?”

  Slowly, Janice’s gaze rose to his. “No.”

  Tony moved closer yet. Quietly, he said, “In fact, you thought it was someone else.”

  Janice’s eyes froze. With a kind of fascination, Tony watched her make her choice. But Janice D’Abruzzi was an honest girl.

  “Yes,” she conceded. “I thought it might be someone else.”

  Tony gave Janice a brief nod. “That’s all I have,” he said softly, and took some consolation in her look of relief.

  * * *

  After court had recessed for the day, and Sam had quietly thanked him and left with his family, Tony gathered his papers at the defense table. Stella Marz stopped on her way out.

  “I’m learning, Tony,” she murmured.
“I’m learning. And please don’t call me Stella in open court.”

  Tony glanced around him. “Fair enough,” he answered. “By the way, think we can cut down on the hearsay a little? It’s clear that your friend Karoly won’t, and self-help makes me weary.”

  Stella’s oval eyes narrowed in a faint smile. “I’ll think about it,” she said, and left.

  * * *

  That night, Tony dined with Saul in a steakhouse in an old converted warehouse on the river. Across the water, the yellow lights of Steelton flickered in the dusk.

  Contrary to his habit during trials, Tony had ordered a martini. “One day,” he said to Saul, “and I’m already tired.”

  Saul was contenting himself with a bottle of red wine and the largest porterhouse steak Tony had ever seen. “The stress of a meddling client?” he asked. “Or distaste for the crime?”

  Tony sipped his martini, idly contemplating a half head of iceberg lettuce with bright-orange French dressing poured all over it. “Defending your oldest friend on a charge of murder is more than enough.”

  Saul’s eyes were curious. “You setting up Sam’s testimony? Sure looks like that.”

  Tony was quiet for a moment, gazing out at the lights. “I’m setting up the option, that’s all. One advantage is that Stella’s got no idea what Sam’s story is. But no, I won’t put him on unless I think I have to.”

  Saul seemed to study him, and then slowly nodded. “I’d be careful, Tony. Your oldest friend overrates himself.”

  SIX

  On a gray Friday morning, Stella Marz called Nancy Calder as her third witness.

  Nancy Calder wore a black suit, which underscored her pallor, her haggard face, the dark circles and pouches beneath her eyes. To Tony, she looked ten years older than the woman he had met a week after Marcie’s death. Her voice was weary, uninflected.

  For the first half hour, Stella helped Nancy Calder make Marcie live again for the jury. With an eerie pride, broken by moments of grief, Nancy recalled her daughter’s sweetness, her honesty, her steady grades, her unswerving Catholic faith. Even when she spoke of Marcie’s love of track, Nancy Calder would not look at Sam.

  For his own part, Sam regarded her with what seemed quite genuine compassion. Sue sat behind him, her face reflecting the haunted sympathy of one mother watching another confront every parent’s worst fear, the untimely death of a child. But to Tony, the sanitized near saint presented by Nancy Calder was less persuasive, and less moving, than the trapped and frightened girl described by Nora Cox and Janice D’Abruzzi.

  Stella seemed to sense this. “Did there come a time,” she asked, “when Marcie’s behavior changed?”

  Briefly, Nancy Calder glanced at her husband. Hunched, with his hands folded, Frank Calder had that peculiar gaze at nothing which, to Tony, suggested shame as much as grief or anger. Tony’s sense of fracture—in the marriage and in the man—deepened.

  “It changed, yes.” Nancy Calder’s voice sounded pained. “About two months before … before she died.”

  “How would you describe this change?”

  Nancy Calder paused, as if to reexamine her daughter’s life for clues. “She seemed preoccupied—dreamy, but not in a healthy way. We’d say something to her, like at the dinner table, and she wouldn’t hear us. She’d only pick at her food.…” Recalling, Nancy struggled for words. “It was like she was withdrawing from our family, from our life. She spent more time in her room, doing homework, she said, but her grades started falling off—A’s to B’s, B’s to C’s. She hardly seemed to notice us.… Not just Frank and me, but her sisters, Meg and Mary. She had always taken so much interest in them—and then, nothing. I could see the hurt in their eyes.…”

  Beside Tony, Sam took a deep breath. The jurors seemed sharply attentive, captured by the mystery of Marcie Calder’s slide. Gently, Stella asked, “Did this change coincide with any difference in the way Marcie spent her time?”

  “Yes.” Nancy Calder’s voice was newly bitter. “It began shortly after Coach Robb asked her to stay late after school. For extra track practice, she said.”

  She straightened in her chair, seemingly determined not to look in Sam’s direction. “Did you know Sam Robb?” Stella asked.

  “Oh, yes. After Marcie started running.” Her tone became flat again. “He was the soul of charm, Ms. Marz. The last time I saw him was two weeks before Marcie died. He made it a point to come up to me and say just how hard Marcie was working after school, and that it was really paying off. Coaching Marcie was a pleasure, he said, a real pleasure.…” All at once, Nancy Calder’s eyes shone with loss and regret, which made her voice turn tremulous. “I’d been thinking that Marcie should quit track, that it could be hurting her grades, even affecting her physically, not eating and the like. But when Coach Robb said that to me, I thought, Why take that away from Marcie. It’s the thing she’s doing well, that she takes pride in—”

  Nancy Calder could not go on. Face covered, she wept into her hands. She made no sound at all.

  Take a recess, Tony thought. But when Karoly gazed at Stella, she shook her head. After a moment, Nancy Calder straightened in the witness stand, strained but composed. Softly, Stella asked her, “Tell me about the night Marcie disappeared.”

  As Nancy Calder spoke, trying not to cry, Marcie came alive again in Tony’s mind.

  * * *

  They sat at the kitchen table under a bright light—Marcie, her parents, and her two sisters.

  Marcie was not eating; she picked at her food distractedly, while Meg and Mary, who adored her, looked at her as if she were a stranger. More and more, dinners seemed dominated by the vacuum that this change in Marcie had created, and the silences that came with it.

  To fill the quiet, Nancy Calder asked her twelve-year-old, “How was dancing class? Did you dance with anyone you liked?”

  Meg, who despised this embarrassing waste of time, wrinkled her nose. “The boys act so weird. Jesse, the one who’s supposed to like me, asked a friend to tell me.” Her voice filled with disgust. “His friend was wearing white socks with a suit.”

  Marcie looked up from her plate, eyeing Meg with mild interest at most. Nancy missed the Marcie who would tease with Meg, making her an ally rather than an object of ridicule. But this Marcie was silent.

  “What’s wrong?” Frank Calder asked abruptly.

  Nancy watched Meg blink, then see that her father was looking at her older sister. Marcie gazed back at him without expression. “I’m not hungry,” she said.

  It was so typical of the new Marcie: an answer meant to be unresponsive and annoying to her father. As if to shut him off entirely, Marcie picked up her fork and, in an ostentatious show of forced appetite, began to eat a few bites of asparagus. As Nancy Calder glanced at her husband, imploring him to let it go, she felt Meg and Mary look from one parent to the other.

  In a quiet voice, Frank Calder said to Marcie, “That’s not what I meant.”

  Marcie faced him again. “I have a report due,” she said. “On women who’ve helped change America. I’m behind.” There was a trace of sarcasm in Marcie’s voice, an echo of her disagreements with Frank Calder. As though afraid to anger him, Marcie turned quickly to her mother. “I’m going to work on it at Janice’s. Miss Bates says we can do the report together—”

  “You know the rules,” Frank Calder cut in. “No going out on school nights unless there’s a special reason. Plus, young lady, your grades are slipping—”

  “Please,” Marcie was pleading with her mother; the emotion Nancy saw in her eyes was mystifying. “This is important.…”

  Something was wrong, Nancy sensed. But it would be better to talk with Marcie alone, after she returned. Without looking at her husband, Nancy said, “All right, Marcie. But I’ll expect you home by nine-thirty—”

  “Ten o’clock, okay?” Now Marcie seemed a child again, with a child’s desperate lack of perspective. “Please…”

  Perhaps it was nothing, Nancy thought, but the
age-old quarrel with rules and deadlines. “All right,” she said, and then, remembering her husband, added, “That means ten, not ten-oh-one.…”

  Frank Calder got up from the table, silently carrying his plate to the sink, and left.

  Glancing at his retreating back, Marcie said, “Thanks, Mom,” and went to get her jacket before her father returned. Nancy sat alone with her two younger daughters. “White socks,” she said to Meg, “aren’t the worst thing in the world.”

  From the living room, Marcie said, “ ’Night, Mom.…”

  Abruptly, Nancy got up. “Wait,” she called, not knowing why.

  Marcie froze by the doorway, looking frail in her jacket, jeans, and outsize Lake City Lakers sweatshirt. Nancy gazed at her. “Don’t you need books? Or paper, at least?”

  Marcie looked startled, as if the question were absurd, and then seemed to remember what she had said. “Oh, don’t worry. Janice has all the stuff we’ll need.”

  Nancy stared at her daughter, wondering how to reach her. Then, to her surprise, Marcie took two steps and kissed her on the forehead. “I’ll be back,” she said. And then she was gone, closing the door behind her before Nancy Calder could find words.

  * * *

  “If I’d known,” Nancy finished brokenly, “we would have helped. We could have raised the baby.…” She stopped, neck bowed.

  The beautician, Tony saw, had tears in her eyes. So did the dark-haired nutritionist, who had two daughters. Gently, Stella asked, “If you can, Mrs. Calder, tell us what happened next.”

  Slowly, Nancy Calder composed herself. “I couldn’t wait until ten o’clock. I started wondering, watching the clock.…” Her tone went flat again. “Finally I called Janice D’Abruzzi. When she told me they’d been working together and Marcie had gone to the library, I felt better for a time.…

  “It wasn’t until eleven, when Janice admitted lying to me, that Frank called the police.”

  There was a terrible simplicity in the last sentence; the doubt-filled mother, blaming herself, the father taking over. “We waited all night long,” she said softly. “At about eleven-thirty the next morning, the police came to our door. Marcie had been dead for hours, lying alone in the cold and rain.…”