Silent Witness

by Richard North Patterson

  “I trusted her.” Pausing, Sam briefly shut his eyes. “I was right to. All through this trial, witness after witness, Marcie never told a soul—” Sam’s voice broke off; to Tony’s astonishment, fresh tears were in Sam’s eyes, as though he was suddenly moved by Marcie’s loyalty.

  Stella stared at him. “So you didn’t go after her?”

  “No.” Sam touched his eyes. “I wanted to. But like I said, I was scared of being seen.…”

  “If you were so scared of being seen, Mr. Robb, why were you in the parking lot?”

  Sam blinked. “We were just going to talk.”

  “Well, you didn’t just talk, did you?”

  “No.”

  “You performed an act of anal copulation, which—if your story is true—could have been interrupted in a New York minute by someone parking next to you, right?”

  Sam hesitated. “Like I told you, I lost my head—”

  “Enough to have anal sex with a teenager in a semipublic place? Even though your prior act of intercourse was in a sleeping bag, hidden from view?”

  Sam reached for the water glass, gaze averted. “Yes.”

  “No,” Stella snapped. “Because you weren’t in the parking lot, were you? You were parked in another part of Taylor Park, beneath some trees, where no one else could see you.”

  Slowly, Sam put down the water glass, staring at Stella Marz. “No,” he said. “We were in the parking lot.…”

  “Nonsense. No one saw you in the lot that night, and you didn’t see any headlights. There was no one to keep you from getting out of the car, was there?”

  Stunned, the jury watched Sam redden. “There was—”

  Stella’s voice rose in anger. “So you got out of the car and went after Marcie Calder. And when you caught up, you killed her with a rock, getting blood on your clothes, and then threw the rock and her body off the cliff.”

  Sam gripped the sides of the witness chair. Tony waited, taut. “No.” Sam fought to keep his voice even now. “That’s why I went to the police.”

  “Didn’t you go to the police because—after you killed Marcie and started driving away—you did see a car? Didn’t that scare you into trying to make up a story?”

  “No.”

  “And when the facts kept changing, like Marcie’s pregnancy, your story kept changing. Isn’t that what happened, Mr. Robb?”

  “No.” Sam’s voice was tight. “That is not what happened.”

  Pausing, Stella gazed at him with utter disbelief. “All right,” she said. “Let’s go on with your version for a while. After you saw the car, you were so scared you wanted to get out of there, right?”

  Sam took a deep breath, calming himself. “Yes. That’s right.”

  “Why didn’t you just go home?”

  Sam bit his lip. “I was just so shaken up—”

  “About what? How to get rid of bloody shoes and bloody clothes before anyone saw you?”

  “No.”

  “Isn’t that why you went to the high school? Because you had spare sweat clothes in your locker?”

  “Objection!” Tony stood, his own tension becoming anger. “We’ve tried to give Ms. Marz some leeway here. But there is no foundation for these questions anywhere in the evidence. Ms. Marz is offering her testimony—her story, more like—without a scrap of proof. All to prejudice the jury.”

  Karoly nodded, turning to Stella. “I’m going to sustain that one, Ms. Marz. You’ve made your point.”

  Quickly, Tony sat down. “Good story, though,” Saul murmured.

  Stella started in again. “Tell me, Mr. Robb, do you recall the tennis shoes you provided the police?”

  Sam hesitated. “Yes.”

  “They were brand-new, weren’t they? Never been worn.”

  “Just that night, Ms. Marz.” Sam’s voice was cool. “The athletic department has an arrangement with Reebok. They send us free shoes. So we don’t keep old shoes around.”

  Stella stepped closer to the witness stand. “We can agree on one thing, can’t we? That you went to the high school to get rid of evidence.”

  “No. I didn’t.”

  “You got rid of the condom, didn’t you? Because it was evidence of the affair?”

  “Yes.”

  Stella placed her hands on her hips. “Wasn’t Marcie Calder’s baby evidence of your affair?”

  Sam looked up at her. Softly, he said, “I didn’t know about the baby, Ms. Marz. If I had, why would I go to the police?”

  Stella looked at him askance. “Before this trial, what did you know about DNA methodology?”

  “I don’t know.…” Pausing, Sam appeared bemused. “A little from the Simpson case, I guess. That they can identify blood.”

  “Did you know they could establish paternity by analyzing fetal material?”

  In the jury box, the nutritionist’s brow furrowed in thought, as, in the witness chair, did Sam’s. “I guess I did. But I’m not really sure.”

  “You weren’t surprised when the tests established that Marcie’s baby was yours?”

  Sam looked down. “It was the baby that surprised me. I don’t think the tests did. I mean, I knew it must be mine.”

  Tony stared at him.

  And they think it’s mine? Sam had asked him.

  They’re sure it is. With DNA, they can do that too. I guess you didn’t know that.…

  Silent, Stella studied Sam. “Tell me, Mr. Robb, do you believe that a fetus is a life?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “Did Marcie?”

  Sam’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t really know.”

  “You didn’t know that Marcie was a committed Roman Catholic, who believed that abortion was morally wrong?”

  “I mean, I knew she was Catholic. We just never talked about abortion.”

  “You knew Marcie was Catholic, you were having sex, and you never talked about what would happen if she got pregnant?”

  “No. We didn’t.”

  “Even after the condom broke?”

  Sam shifted his weight, uncomfortable. “I mean, we talked about what to do. She got a diaphragm—”

  “Because for Marcie to get pregnant would be a disaster for you, right?”

  “Yes. It would have.” Looking up, Sam added softly, “It has been. On top of everything else.”

  Stella watched him, stymied for the first time. That he had helped make Sam a better witness, Tony was discovering, filled him with disquiet that kept growing, moment by moment. Though Sam had not directly answered him, Tony felt certain that he had not known about DNA.

  “All right,” Stella was saying. “You’ve testified that you wish Marcie had told you she was pregnant.”

  “Yes.”

  “What would you have done, Mr. Robb? Suggest an abortion?”

  “Maybe.”

  “And what if she’d refused?”

  Sam slowly shook his head. “I don’t know,” he finally answered. “Help her have the baby, I guess.”

  “But that would have ruined you, wouldn’t it? Destroyed your career, your reputation, probably your marriage.”

  Sam wiped his brow. “I guess so, Ms. Marz.…”

  “But that’s not the choice you made, is it?” Stella’s voice was quiet now. “You needed your baby to die, and so Marcie Calder had to die. Because that was the choice you gave her.”

  Sam’s eyes filled with tears again. Blindly, it seemed, he sought out Sue. “No,” he said softly, as if to her. “I’m not like that. Despite everything else I’ve done, I’m not like that.”

  Stella gazed at him and then slowly shook her head. To Karoly, she said simply, “I think I’ve seen enough of Mr. Robb.”

  * * *

  Standing, Tony faced Sam again. Just concentrate, he told himself. Be a lawyer. But he felt empty to the core.

  “We’ve heard testimony,” Tony began, “that human life was precious to Marcie Calder. Is it precious to you?”

  Slowly, Sam nodded. “Yes. It is.”

&nb
sp; “Including Marcie Calder’s life?”

  “Especially Marcie Calder’s life.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because I was proud of her, as a coach. Because I became close to her. Because she was a beautiful young woman with so many good things ahead of her—a marriage, a family. All the things that I’ve had, and maybe lost.” Sam paused, swallowing. “Because, even though I betrayed everything I stood for, I’ve devoted my adult life to working with kids like Marcie.”

  Watch it, Tony thought reflexively. It’s too much. He put his hands in his pockets. “And when you went to the police, Mr. Robb, did you really think you could keep yourself out of trouble?”

  “No. It was from conscience—I was either going to be the person I used to be or let the bad things I’d done take over. Going to the police is the only thing I did that gives me any kind of self-respect.” He paused, voice quieter yet. “I’d do it again, if they could find her still alive.…”

  Sam’s voice faltered, and then, quite suddenly, he lost all composure. He faced the courtroom, tears running down his face.

  “We’re through now,” Tony said softly, and sat down.

  When he glanced at her, Sue’s face was stiff, expressionless. From her table, Stella gazed at Sam with narrowed eyes.

  At last, Sam stood, unsteady, giving a tentative glance toward Sue. Then he walked across the courtroom, to Tony, and put his arms around him, tears brimming again, just as he had on that spring day twenty-eight years before, carrying a trophy, applause washing over them both.

  “We’re still a team,” Sam whispered hoarsely. “Still a team.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Minutes later, after Tony had rested his case, Stella Marz declined to call rebuttal witnesses.

  “All right,” Karoly said. “We’ll have closing arguments tomorrow morning. Nine o’clock.”

  As the courtroom cleared, Saul said to Tony, “No Ernie.”

  Tony nodded. “Which means she still can’t account for his whereabouts between eight-thirty and ten-eighteen. Without that, I’m sure Stella figures that to have him simply repeat that he didn’t kill her would dignify our defense.”

  Saul glanced at Sam. “Maybe,” he said, and Tony understood at once: in Saul’s view, Stella had decided to go to the jury with Sam’s testimony fresh in their minds. Watching them as they filed out, eyes downcast, like strangers on an elevator, Tony could not tell what Sam had gained, or lost.

  Sam himself sat in a wide-eyed stupor that, to Tony, mimed the sightlessness of someone in profound shock. Perhaps this was exhaustion, Tony thought, or that utter loss of dignity that separates the person who sustains it from all those who have watched. Or, perhaps, it was Sam’s final, crushing acceptance of what his life had become. But the thought that troubled Tony most was that this torpor might be a clever self-portrait—another face Sam had chosen to present, which masked a perverse feeling of triumph. Whatever it was, Tony felt tired.

  Gently, he patted Sam on the shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  Looking up, Sam gave him a wan smile. “Thanks for helping me,” Sam said. “No matter how bad it was, I needed to do this.”

  Then it was the right thing, Tony might have said in other circumstances. His silence was the echo of his own disquiet.

  Together, they turned to Sue.

  Her gaze was not on Sam, Tony realized, but on him. Before he could interpret this, she flinched; at the corner of his eye, Tony saw a blur of motion.

  Frank Calder came across the courtroom toward Sam, scalded face distorted by loathing. Sam looked at him in dull astonishment, making no effort to defend himself.

  “You scum,” Frank Calder said. As he raised his fist, Sam did not move.

  Stepping between them, Tony grabbed Calder’s arm, jerking him sideways. Their faces were inches apart; Tony could see the pain in Frank Calder’s face as Tony twisted his arm, smell the man’s breath. Over Calder’s head, Tony saw a sheriff’s deputy hurry toward them.

  “You,” Calder burst out. “You’re as bad as he is.”

  Tony jerked his arm. There was something cold in Calder’s hatred, Tony thought, a reptilian quality that must have always been there. But what Tony felt most was pity for all that this man had been forced to hear, and for the things that he would never understand.

  “I’m sorry,” Tony said, and then the deputy clamped Calder’s arms and took him back to his wife. Nancy Calder stood there, pale, her expression one of grief, of estrangement from her husband. She could barely look at him.

  “Jesus,” Sam whispered.

  His voice held a hint of awe, the recognition of human wreckage. “They’ll never make it,” Tony murmured. “They were on trial too.”

  Then he noticed Sue. Briefly, she touched Tony’s wrist, then she told Sam in a toneless voice, “We should leave.”

  Taking Sam by the arm, she headed for the door of the courtroom, to meet the two deputies assigned to keep them safe. When Sam turned to her, speaking softly, she did not look at him.

  * * *

  That night, Tony tried to push everything else from his mind and review his final argument.

  He had outlined it before the trial. Very little had changed, because very little had surprised him. It was the sign of a professional.

  Lying on the bed, Tony put aside his legal pad. He had been a lawyer for twenty-one years: five years longer than Christopher’s life, fourteen years longer than his marriage to Stacey. At this age, forty-six, he was older than Saul had been when he saved the seventeen-year-old Tony Lord and, by doing this, changed the course of Tony’s life.

  To defend those who might be guilty had always meant that he could not dwell on their presumed crimes, but on the need to make the government prove its case, to question its errors and assumptions, to ensure that it not convict on supposition. But that the defendant was Sam, and the victim a teenage girl, had made Tony face, and then inhabit, the gulf between the morality of the defense lawyer and that deeper morality, the layman’s sense of right and wrong, which had been part of Tony since childhood. He envied Stella Marz this much—that her public beliefs and her private self were not in conflict here.

  As for Tony the lawyer, he did not know that Sam was guilty. He was not even certain that he had lied on the stand.

  Picking up the legal pad, he began scratching notes in the margin, and then he heard a knock on the door.

  Tony half-expected Sue. When he opened the door, torn between worry and anticipation, Ernie Nixon was standing there.

  “You going to invite me in?” Ernie asked.

  Tony’s surprise became alarm. But he nodded and stood aside.

  Ernie crossed the room and sat near where, a week earlier, Sue had read the travel magazine. His thin frame was taut.

  Watching him, Tony shoved his hands in his pockets. “What can I do for you?”

  Though Ernie’s gaze was level, Tony saw that he was fighting for self-control. “Not much now, Tony. Not much, now that half the folks who send their kids to me don’t want to anymore. All that you can do is satisfy my curiosity.” Pausing, Ernie looked up at him, his tight-lipped smile a grimace of repressed anger. “You really believe I killed that girl, Tony? Or were you just playing the ‘race card,’ as it were?”

  Tony made himself be still, seemingly calm. “What difference would my answer make?”

  “I’d just kind of like to know why I’m going through all this. And you’re the only one who knows.”

  “No,” Tony retorted. “You are. All I know is that you didn’t use good judgment, and can’t account for your time.”

  The bitter smile vanished altogether. “But what do you think, Tony? Are your palms turning sweaty ’cause you’re locked in a hotel room with a murderer who’s got every reason to hate you? Maybe you just think I was sleeping with her, or go around beating women? Or was all this another joke to share with your pal Sam?”

  For a moment, Tony wondered if this was a trick—either on Ernie’s own initiative
or with Stella’s collusion. Then he saw the Ernie he had known at seventeen, vulnerable yet contained, and felt again his own guilt. All that was left was to be honest.

  “All right,” Tony said at last. “Do I ‘think’ you killed Marcie? No. Do I think you were sleeping with her? Probably not, though there’s room to wonder. Were you emotionally involved with her? Damned right. And if you think any of this is fun for me, you’re out of your mind.

  “What I know is that Sam Robb is charged with a murder you could have committed, out of jealousy and anger, and that you shaded the truth about when and how you saw Marcie Calder. Probably you’re not guilty of anything more than human weakness. But I don’t know that’s all it was, and I’m not entitled to guess.

  “But you already hate me, so I’ll give you something to take home with you. Yes, I’m perfectly aware, and always have been, that some members of the jury may be more likely to suspect you because you’re black. And when I repeated what your wife had said to you, I played into that. It may even help acquit Sam Robb. But Dee did say it, and you did hit her.”

  Ernie stared at him. “You know what’s the worst thing about you?” he finally said. “You don’t believe in anything. You don’t believe your client’s innocent, and you don’t believe I’m guilty. You’re not even an out-and-out racist. You’re just a hired gun, and you remember from Alison Taylor what worked for you.”

  Like any half-truth, Tony thought, the part that was true hurt, the part that was unfair stung all the more for that. But he was through with offering excuses. “So now that you’ve figured me out,” he said, “you can go home.”

  Ernie did not move. “What home, Tony? What home?”

  Tony did not answer. Without resistance, the passion seemed to go out of Ernie. What Tony saw now was a hurt and loneliness that pierced him to the core. But Tony could say nothing, for he himself was the cause; he had damaged Ernie, for Sam’s sake, perhaps as unfairly as the Lake City police once had damaged him.

  Slowly rising from his chair, Ernie stopped two feet from Tony. “You know what’s worst of all for me?” Ernie asked. “Having known Marcie Calder, and knowing that Sam Robb killed her. Knowing that you’ve done all this for a murderer.” He paused, finishing softly: “That’s what I wish for you, Tony. That you come to know it too. Although maybe you can live with it just fine, prick that you are. For you, winning is the only thing, isn’t it?”