Silent Witness

by Richard North Patterson

  The last sentence, less question than statement, jarred Tony with its baldness. “To go home with him,” he said.

  Sue shrugged, the smallest movement of her back. Still she did not look at him. “When you were married the first time,” she asked, “did you fight a lot? Or was there this awful politeness, where you pretended not to notice that you didn’t want to touch each other, that it was only safe to talk about your son or work. This kind of quiet death.”

  He had never talked about this, Tony realized, except with Stacey. “Marcia and I did both, Sue. First the politeness, then the anger. As much as I hate anger, it was almost a relief.”

  For a moment, Sue was quiet. “For now,” she told him, “I keep the anger to myself. It’s like fifteen years ago—don’t fight too loud, the kids will hear. And there’s no room for anger when your husband’s on trial for murder. It just blots out everything else.” There was a sudden change in her voice; when she turned, the tears on her face startled him. “I’m so damned alone, Tony. I lie there at night, listening to him breathe, both of us pretending to sleep. Afraid to move, because he may say something, or I may have to. So I just lie there, and wonder.”

  Tony hesitated, then he got up and put his arms around her, holding her close. She hugged him fiercely, wanting nothing more, Tony knew, than not to feel alone. “So,” she murmured after a time, “had dinner yet? I promise not to cry.”

  There was humor in her voice again, meant now to reassure him. “I’m famished,” he said. “But you and I can’t be seen in public—I worry about what the press would make of it. So we’ll have to stay here.” Still holding her, Tony thought for a moment. “When was the last time you had pizza?”

  “I think it was when Jenny left for college.” Sue looked up at him. “Can we order a bottle of red wine?”

  He smiled. “Sure.”

  Tony went to the phone and called room service. When he turned around, Sue was settled in a chair in the corner.

  “Mind if I work a little?” Tony asked. “The pizza will take a half hour or so, and I need to write down some thoughts before I lose them.”

  Sue smiled, picking up a travel magazine. “Go ahead. I’ll just be here. Dreaming of far-flung places.”

  Tony took a legal pad from the nightstand, loosened his tie, and propped himself against the headboard.

  Ignoring Sue, he began scribbling questions. It was a comfort having her here, he realized: without Stacey and Christopher, he had felt quite alone, his only solace Saul’s friendship. And as with Stacey, he found that he could work with Sue in the room.

  Once, he felt her watching him. When he looked up, there was a fond smile on her face.

  “Work, Tony,” she said. “It’s no good if you notice me.”

  He smiled himself, and resumed writing. Sue was quiet until the pizza came.

  * * *

  They sat on the floor, the pizza between them, their wine bottle and two glasses on the open lid of the box.

  “What does Christopher look like?” she asked.

  “As a person, he’s very much him. But he looks so much like my high school yearbook picture that it’s silly. Fortunately, he doesn’t seem to mind.”

  Sue smiled. “He shouldn’t. I thought you were gorgeous.”

  “You were pretty quiet about it.”

  “I was taken.” Her smile vanished, as though her awareness of the present had returned with a jolt. It was a moment before she asked, “Is Christopher like you in any other way?”

  “I’m not sure. It’s easier to say what he is.” Tony sipped the Chianti, a ripe burst of flavor on his tongue. “He’s bright, and very good-humored—he banters with me a lot, which I couldn’t really do with my folks. He’s a decent kid, I think, and a nice friend; not as ambitious as I remember being, probably because he doesn’t need to be.” Tony paused, reflecting. “The thing that Stacey notices is how wary Christopher seems—always watching, taking things in so quietly you almost don’t see that he’s doing it. That’s the divorce, I think; though he never talks about it, I’m sure Christopher has an intense memory of conflict. It’s given him an instinct for trouble, for things about to happen.” Stopping to question himself, he looked at Sue. “Maybe that’s also from me. All my life, I’ve worried for him, that something bad might happen. But I’ve tried not to let it show.”

  Sue considered him. “They sense things, though. Mine do—especially Sam junior. His father intimidated him, and I think he watched our marriage and identified with me. He is so careful—afraid to commit himself to a girl, or even to how he feels. God knows what he’s thinking now.” She paused, gazing at Tony with a gentle curiosity. “You try pretty hard not to look back at your life much, don’t you? Sometimes I find myself thinking that this trial has made you do that.”

  Tony’s instinct was to say that he was fine—not wanting to admit to himself, in the middle of this trial, how wearing it was not to feel, telling himself that to admit this was not fair to Sue. Then he looked at her, at the same clear brown eyes he had known at seventeen.

  “I hate this case,” he said.

  Sue studied him. “Because of Sam?” she asked softly. “Or Alison?”

  “Because of all that, and because of me.” Tony paused, and then the words rushed forth, the things he had never said, even to himself. “Except for you and Saul, I never had any help getting through what happened when Alison was murdered. My folks didn’t know what to do, and they thought that shrinks were for crazy people, even if they could have afforded to get me one. So my way of coping was to try to leave it all behind: the shock of finding Alison, the way the town saw me after that. Even who I was, the middle-class boy who’d believed that life would only get better and then the boy who felt so desperate and so scared—when I think of him, it’s like holding my hand over a flame. Even then I didn’t want to know that boy was me. So as soon as I could go to Harvard and get away, I pretended that he wasn’t.

  “I still do that. There’ve been times, sitting with Stacey in that beautiful home, that I’ve barely remembered him at all. Like Tony Lord at seventeen is some other person, one I hardly knew. Except that I’ve always had these nightmares of finding Alison, and now—since the trial—a new one. Where she accuses me of killing her.” Pausing, he shook his head. “It’s all so fucked up, Sue. Sitting in court, I can’t let myself remember the boy I was. Not just because I’m a lawyer. It’s because when I try to believe Sam’s innocent, I don’t want to feel how scared he must be, how responsible I am for saving him from something he doesn’t deserve. And when I wonder if he’s guilty, I think about the seventeen-year-old boy whose girlfriend was murdered, and I’m damned sure that boy hates me. Even without what I may be doing to Ernie Nixon.” Tony rubbed his temples. “It is screwed up. I don’t even know what I’m saying now, and I’m afraid of saying it.”

  Sue was very still. “I knew that boy, and he was a very good person. He still is.” She took his hand. “Oh, Tony, how badly hurt you were. How badly that whole town hurt you.”

  There was a tightening in his throat. “You never hurt me, Sue. Maybe I hurt you, not knowing what to do. I look at you now, and I wish I could go back—just for a moment—and change that.”

  Sue’s eyes filled with tears. She shook her head, mute, and then slid across the carpet, resting her face against his chest. To Tony, it felt as natural as breathing.

  Gently, he took Sue’s face in his hands.

  She gazed up at him. He was not sure whose head moved first. Only that their mouths were closer, an inch apart, and then that there was no distance at all.

  Mouths touching, they rose together, Tony’s hands on her waist. Their lips parted for each other, in a moment that seemed never to end, and then their kiss went deep.

  As her hips pressed against him, Tony kissed her hungrily. This was not wrong, he told himself—this was Sue, who was there first, who had rights to him that he had never acknowledged, who, in some past he had wished to hide from himself, he had love
d more deeply than Alison Taylor. The woman who that same part of him, both boy and man, loved still.

  Then their kiss ended, and Stacey Tarrant was his wife again.

  This was all that stopped him. It would not change the beating of his heart, the wanting her, the sense of loss and sorrow. But Sue, his partner in this, felt all of it.

  Their foreheads touched. “I know,” she said softly. “You can’t do this. You shouldn’t.” A tremor went through her body. “But God, how much I wanted you, and have for years. Even since our night together.”

  Our night, Tony thought. Their gift to each other, and their sadness. “That boy,” he murmured, “is someone I just met again. And he loves you so much it hurts. Just like before.”

  Though her eyes were moist, she smiled a little. “That helps me, Tony. It helps a lot.”

  He felt himself breathe again, letting the passion go. “Then stay for a while. After tonight we can’t be with each other like this. Even without Stacey, I’m Sam’s lawyer…”

  He did not have to finish. They sat together; without needing to speak, Sue leaned her back to his chest and, sitting between his outstretched legs, rested in Tony’s arms. After a while she reached out for the Chianti and a wineglass; she filled the glass, and they took turns sipping wine, Sue still nestled there.

  “You really love her,” Sue said at last. “Stacey.”

  “Very much.” Tony paused, reflecting. “She’s smart, and she’s honest, and yet there’s this kind of tact—a sense of when to leave things alone. She’s wonderful with Christopher, and she knows me as well as anyone can. Sometimes it strikes me how little help I’ve been with that.” His voice softened. “I’ve said more to you, tonight, than I’ve ever let myself say to her.”

  Sue’s voice was equally soft. “Thank you for that, Tony. Not for Stacey’s sake, but mine. Even if it was just because I was here.”

  The tenderness Tony felt was painful now. “It was more than that, Sue. Just like it was more than that before.”

  Sue was silent again, seemingly reflective.

  “I guess you recognized that piece of beach,” she said at last. “The one where they found Marcie.”

  “Uh-huh. It was where the four of us built the bonfire. The night I fought with Alison.”

  She leaned back. “I think of Marcie Calder, Tony, and then us at that age.… Do you know Sam keeps a revolver by the bed now?”

  “Why?”

  “He’s afraid that people want him dead—of Frank Calder, maybe.” She paused. “God, I hate what’s happened to us. And what we’ve done to you, reminding you of Alison.”

  Tony kissed the top of her head. “Lawyers hurt what’s most human in them all the time—it’s a professional requirement. So maybe it’s best that I’m forced to face that, and what I started doing to myself well before.” His voice was gentle. “Nothing you ever brought to me was bad. Only what I did with it.”

  Sue took a sip of wine, pensive. “Did you ever read The Sun Also Rises?”

  “Sure. Poor Jake Barnes, impotent, with Lady Brett Ashley loving him hopelessly. I found it painful to think about, in more ways than one.”

  Sue smiled a little. “Remember what she says to him at the end? You were always a reader.”

  Tony thought for a moment. “Something like, ‘Oh, Jake, what a fine time we could have had.’ And he answers, ‘Wouldn’t it be pretty to think so.’ ”

  Silent, Sue nestled closer.

  After a time, the wine finished, she kissed him softly on the mouth, and left.

  * * *

  That night, Tony could not sleep; not, this time, because of nightmares, but because of thoughts too deep to avoid. He did not feel like a lawyer.

  Finally, he phoned Saul at home. “I think you’re right,” Tony said. “I’m tired. Were you serious about helping?”

  Saul could not conceal his surprise. “Sure…”

  Hanging up, Tony found himself staring at the pizza box, the empty wine bottle, the empty glasses.

  FIFTEEN

  The next morning, in court, Tony felt the vibrations of the night before: Saul’s new focus as he scribbled notes in the margins of the coroner’s report; the heavy-lidded silence of the man next to him, his client and friend, whose wife Tony cared for; his own unsettling sense that he was headed toward some reckoning with himself. When Tony turned to look at Sue, she gazed back at him with a certain fond sadness, not looking away. Then Tony turned his attention to Dr. Katherine Micelli.

  Kate Micelli was in her mid-fifties, with deep-set eyes, a beaked nose, and lusterless jet-black hair, which, Tony guessed, came from a bottle. Her lined face bespoke deep seriousness, and when she smiled, it was fleeting and preoccupied, a formal offering. It was clear that she found little humor in her work.

  This was understandable. In a flat, unresonant voice, Micelli told Stella Marz that she had responded to the crime scene, and then described the intake process for Marcie Calder’s corpse: combing her clothes for blood, hair, and fibers; inspecting her hands and nails for traces of skin; drawing a sample of her blood; undressing the body and taking oral, rectal, and vaginal swabs to determine the presence or absence of semen; carefully assessing the appearance of the body; taking X rays of Marcie’s head; and finally, performing an autopsy to determine the cause of her death. Tony, who had seen several autopsies in his career, pitied Marcie’s parents for what they were learning; he would never forget the sound of one human being sawing off the top of another’s skull, the sight of gray-white brain matter being placed in a pan and weighed. To judge from Frank Calder’s pinched eyes, the way Nancy Calder swallowed, the idea of their once living daughter being systematically disassembled was shocking, then devastating, then numbing. For an instant, Tony imagined Alison lying naked on the autopsy table, the same indignities recorded in the same sterile prose that Saul read now.

  “And did you,” Stella asked, “determine the cause of death?”

  “We did.” Micelli’s expression was so grave as to appear angry, almost fierce. “Marcie Calder died of a cerebral hemorrhage which, in my opinion, was caused by multiple blows to the head with a heavy object.”

  “ ‘Multiple’?” Stella repeated pointedly.

  “Yes. At least three.”

  “Could you describe the fatal wounds, Dr. Micelli, and explain how you came to that conclusion.”

  “Surely.” Micelli turned to face the jury, a professor giving a grim but crucial lecture, which they must not fail to grasp. “Miss Calder’s scalp displayed severe lacerations—a tearing through the skin. The skull itself was fractured and displayed three concentric rings of compression, indentations in the bone.

  “These concentric rings reflected three blows, in close proximity. We can tell this because the fracture pattern for a later blow—a series of irregular circles, almost like the rings of a tree—intersects with the pattern from an earlier blow, stopping the pattern from spreading. The three concentric rings met in this manner.”

  Narrow-eyed, Saul scribbled a note. The jurors listened intently. “Did you,” Stella asked in measured tones, “form an opinion as to how Marcie Calder received these blows?”

  “Definitely.” Once more, Micelli surveyed the jurors, her hawklike eyes demanding their attention. “Marcie Calder died at the hands of another.”

  Today, Tony thought, Stella was methodical and undramatic; she would let the sheer weight of the evidence, cloaked in the mantle of science, stand on its own. “Did you consider, Dr. Micelli, the possibility that this trauma to Marcie Calder’s skull was caused by a fall down the cliff?”

  “I did, Ms. Marz, quite thoroughly. I rejected it.”

  “Why is that?”

  Micelli folded her hands. “To start, because the three blows were in such close proximity. It would be a great coincidence to have a falling body suffer three blows so heavy and so close together. And were the body falling, it is difficult to understand how such blows could be caused by a single rock.

  “In f
act, I believe that the fatal blows were delivered by someone of considerable strength, on the ground above the beach, and that Marcie Calder was already dead by the time she was thrown off the cliff.”

  “On what do you base that conclusion, Dr. Micelli?”

  “Several factors.” Facing the jurors, Micelli began ticking off points with metronomical precision. “To start, internal brain injuries are different in a fall than when administered by another.

  “This is a straightforward matter of physics. An injury to the right side of the head, if suffered in a fall, would result in injuries to the opposite side.

  “For example, an external injury to the forehead would cause an internal brain injury at the back of the head. This is because the force of a fall causes the brain to move to the opposite side; we call this a ‘contre-coup injury.’ Whereas with a blow to the head given by another, one would expect to see a ‘coup injury’—an internal bruise to the brain which is on the same side as the external wound to the head—”

  “And in the case of Marcie Calder…,” Stella interjected.

  Micelli frowned at the interruption, then nodded curtly. “Both the internal and external injuries occurred on the right side of the head. Therefore, the medical evidence is inconsistent with injuries suffered in a fall and consistent with a homicide.”

  Watching the jury, Tony saw the professor leaning forward, intent. It seemed clear that the jurors understood Micelli and were impressed by her authoritative manner; Saul’s job would be to crack this veneer and thus cast doubt on everything Micelli said. Saul had stopped taking notes; now he simply watched her.

  “Are there further reasons,” Stella asked, “why you believe that Marcie’s death was not caused by a fall?”

  “Yes,” Micelli told the jurors. “On Marcie Calder’s face we found several abrasions, scrapes to the skin. These injuries were orange in color, rather leathery to the touch, and involved no hemorrhage. That’s what happens when a trauma to the skin occurs after the heart has stopped pumping.”