When Tony was silent, Ernie slowly shook his head, and left.
TWENTY-FIVE
When Stella Marz faced the jury, looking from one to the other, Tony knew at once that she had chosen her first words with care.
“This is the trial,” she said with quiet contempt, “of a practiced—if not skilled—liar, who murdered a sixteen-year-old girl because lies could no longer protect him, and now asks you to accept his lies about that. And, when lies alone will not do, he asks you to accept coincidence.
“But there are far too many lies, and there is far too much coincidence.”
As Stella paused, the jury watched with deep attention; for over two weeks, they had listened to the evidence, and now she would tell them what it meant. The beautician was still, her fingers tented in the attitude of prayer. Next to Tony, Sam Robb listened silently, his face as blank as Tony had instructed.
“This is not a single murder,” Stella continued, “but two. The murder of an unborn child for the ‘crime’ of its conception, and of its teenage mother for the age-old ‘crime’ of any mother—to feel the growth of life inside her and to love.
“That this was murder there can be no doubt. The footprints on the cliff above where Marcie Calder lay; the drag marks left by her toes; the triple fracture of her skull; the single rock covered with her blood and hair; the postmortem injuries suffered in her fall—each of these cry out murder, and taken together, they are overwhelming.
“And what is the positive evidence for suicide or accident? There is none. Not at the scene, and not in Marcie Calder’s life. For it was this girl’s commitment to the life of her child that brought Marcie to Taylor Park that night, to meet the child’s father.
“And who was that?” Turning, Stella faced Sam across the courtroom. “Sam Robb.
“His path to that moment, and to that crime, is marked by a trail of lies—to his wife; to Marcie’s parents; to his principal; to the police.
“Just as his account of that fatal night is now riddled with coincidence.
“It’s just a coincidence that they were alone in the place that Marcie died.
“It’s just a coincidence that she was pregnant with his child.
“It’s just a coincidence that her blood was in his car and his fingerprint on Marcie’s watch.
“And like all his lies, which, once discovered, each give birth to a new coincidence, Sam Robb’s act of anal sex on Marcie Calder has now—incredibly—become his alibi.” Standing straighter, Stella made her tone withering. “It was the coroner, not Mr. Robb, who revealed the sodomy of Marcie Calder. But—ever practical—Mr. Robb has made a virtue of necessity. So that now the fingerprint, and the smear of blood, are not evidence of murder but the residue of what Mr. Robb tells us was the final act of love performed by a forty-six-year-old assistant principal on the teenage girl in his care.
“This is what Sam Robb tells you now—now that he has been forced to admit their affair, her pregnancy, and the shameful things he did to Marcie Calder. A girl who, before this, was a good student, a loyal sister, a loving daughter—in every way, innocent.
“ ‘I may be a liar,’ Sam Robb says now. ‘But trust me, I’m not a murderer.’
“Trust Sam Robb?
“This is a man who lied to his wife, the woman he lived with for twenty-four years, and deceived her every day of his affair with Marcie Calder.
“Every day he looked Sue Robb in the eye, lied to her, and got away with it. If he could fool this woman, who knows him so well, Sam Robb must surely believe that he can fool you too.” Stella’s voice vibrated with anger. “And so, awash in tears and righteous anger and unrelenting self-pity, he even asks that you pity him too.”
Tony sneaked a glance at Sue. But she was as stoic as the jury, listening to Stella Marz, her expression less suffering than remote, almost neutral. Eyes lowered, Sam did not look at her, or anyone.
“Don’t go for it,” Stella said with sudden passion. “This man is a sneak, a cheat, a liar, and—he’s now been forced to admit—a moral cesspool who broke the law, and violated his trust, by seducing a teenage girl, then lying about that until the truth caught up with him.
“He lied to save his job, his profession, his marriage, and his reputation. And when Marcie Calder told him she was pregnant, and lies would no longer do, he killed her. Killed her for the same reasons that he lied about seducing her—to save his job, his profession, his marriage, and his reputation.
“And now, of course, he has lied to you about that.
“In the course of this trial, Sam Robb professed to have learned a great deal about forensic science.” Stella faced Sam again, her voice etched in irony. “He has even learned that, by virtue of a tuna sandwich, we can tell you that Marcie Calder was most likely dead by ten o’clock.
“That is why Sam Robb now claims that he did not leave the park at ten o’clock, as he first told the police, but more like nine-thirty. Having rejected Marcie Calder’s proposal of marriage, with all he says that entails, not in thirty minutes, but in five—which makes Marcie’s death just another sad coincidence.
“Why? Sam Robb swears under oath that, despite the fact that Marcie Calder told two people—Dr. Nora Cox and Ernie Nixon—that she needed to see her lover that night to warn him she was pregnant, Marcie never got around to it.
“How handy for Mr. Robb—for if you believe that, then their conversation would take far less time, and Sam Robb loses his most compelling motive for murder.
“How handy, and how contemptuous of you.
“ ‘Trust me,’ he says, ‘the baby was just an excuse she gave to others. All she really wanted from me was a little sodomy, and maybe an engagement ring.’
“If you believe that”—here Stella paused, then softly repeated herself—“If you believe that, Sam Robb supposes, then he can ask you to believe that Marcie Calder was killed by someone else.
“If not Sam Robb, who?
“Well, Ernie Nixon, of course. I mean, it’s so logical. Mr. Nixon has no credible motive. No one places him in the park. There’s no evidence he was there. He says he wasn’t there, that he was home the entire night. And we know he was home at ten-eighteen.
“Ernie Nixon has told you no lies here. We know who he is.” Briefly, Stella turned to Tony. “And we know what this defense is. A callous attempt to smear an innocent man to save a liar and murderer.
“Of course, Mr. Lord suggests that the police should have checked Mr. Nixon’s clothes, because Mr. Robb—that paragon of full disclosure and complete cooperation—gave the police what he claims were the clothes he wore on the night Marcie Calder died.
“Of course,” Stella continued with sudden softness, “there was no trace of Marcie Calder on them. No perfume, no makeup, no hair—although, on Marcie Calder’s sweatshirt, Sam Robb’s hair was found. No blood—although on Sam Robb’s steering wheel, Marcie’s blood was found.” Stella paused. “No blood, even, on Sam Robb’s underwear, which had covered the supposedly bloody condom.
“Nothing, because these clothes, which Sam Robb did not wear that night, are another of Sam Robb’s lies.”
Stella moved closer to the jury box. “What happened that night is clear.
“Sam Robb learned that Marcie Calder was pregnant.
“Marcie Calder refused to take the baby’s life.
“And for that, Sam Robb took a ten-pound rock and ended Marcie Calder’s life with three crushing blows to the skull.
“He took the life of the child he’d seduced and the child he had left inside her, and then—as with everything to do with Marcie Calder—he lied about it.
“Perhaps his plan, such as it was, began when Sam Robb found that he had lost his control, that—this time—he could not bend Marcie Calder to his every wish.
“But that is planning enough. For you cannot then take a rock and shatter a girl’s skull in three different places without knowing that she’ll die, without wanting her to die.
“That, ladies and gentlemen
, is the man whom all these lies were intended to conceal—a murderer. And when murder itself was not enough, Sam Robb came before you to tarnish the only thing he had left to Marcie’s parents: her memory.”
The Calders, Tony saw, were weeping now, though they did not touch each other.
“I ask you to do justice,” Stella finished simply. “For Frank and Nancy Calder, and for their daughter Marcie, who cannot ask it for herself.
“I ask you to find Sam Robb guilty of the murder of Marcie Calder.”
Stella returned to her table, gaze downcast, as though lost in her own thoughts and feelings. Sam was pale, silent.
“It’s all right,” Tony murmured, to Sam and to himself.
* * *
Rising, Tony saw faces that, for years or for months, had come to be a part of him—Sue, whom he had loved; the Calders, whom, perhaps, he had wronged; Saul, his friend, who had been to Tony what Tony was now to Sam. For Sam was not just the friend of Tony’s youth but his client; whatever his private qualms, they were swept away by the lawyer’s instinct to protect and defend, as Saul had once protected an innocent boy who—to almost everyone—had seemed guilty. So that it was Sam whom Tony looked to last.
His friend gave him a faint smile of confidence and encouragement, and then Tony faced the jury, speaking evenly and calmly.
“Ms. Marz has asked you to make a leap of faith,” he told them, “and then, having done that, to perform an act of revenge.
“The leap of faith is that the evidence shows beyond a reasonable doubt that Sam Robb murdered Marcie Calder, when it does not.
“The act of revenge is to find Sam Robb guilty of murder, not because you know that he committed murder, but because he had an affair with a teenage girl and then tried to conceal it.”
The beautician watched him closely, Tony thought—the sign of someone still willing to listen. “For that sin,” he continued, “Sam Robb has already paid, and will continue to pay for the rest of his life—in guilt, in humiliation, in the damage to his family, in the loss of his profession and reputation, in the loss, forever, of anything resembling the life he once had. His mistake—abusing his relationship to a student—was a terrible one. And he will pay a terrible price: a life sentence, in the truest sense.” This argument, Tony knew, flirted with impropriety; as Stella stirred, he finished it quickly. “That sentence must be served wherever Sam Robb goes. But the power to impose the added sentence of life imprisonment is in your hands, and you must act with justice.
“Consider, as you must, the prosecution’s evidence.”
Pausing, Tony envisioned Ernie Nixon, wounded and angry, then made himself go on. “Many men have size eleven shoes, including Ernie Nixon.
“Two men who have come before you cannot account for their whereabouts at the time of Marcie’s death—and one of them is Ernie Nixon.
“Two men left fingerprints on Marcie Calder’s watch, and one of them, yet again, is Ernie Nixon.
“There are two explanations for the smear of blood in Sam Robb’s car: one is sinister; the other—and far more likely one—is not.” Tony’s gaze swept the jury now, and his voice grew stronger, harder. “But that one smear of blood was enough to get us here. Because the police never checked Mr. Nixon’s car, or house—or story. They had their man, they thought—even though, we since have learned, it is Mr. Nixon, not Sam Robb, whose past suggests the potential for violence toward a woman.
“The police did not, and do not, have their man. They did not check out Mr. Nixon, or transients, or recidivists. And as professional as they are, Detective Gregg and Dr. Micelli cannot give us a murderer—they cannot even, to a moral certainty, give this jury a murder.
“Every scrap of evidence with respect to Marcie Calder’s death is susceptible to multiple interpretations.
“On this evidence, it is possible to speculate that Sam Robb is a murderer, or that he is wholly innocent of murder. The only certainty is that you can never be certain. Because the killer—if any—could be someone else.”
Tony extended his left arm, palm upward, toward Sam. “The only person who knows,” Tony continued softly, “is Sam Robb.
“Sam Robb does not deny the wrongs he did to Marcie Calder, and to her family. The account he gave here was not a pretty one, nor was it pleasant for him to tell. It ends with yet another failure—Marcie Calder, filled with emotion, running from a man who she feels has used and then rejected her. But Sam Robb has plainly told you that—with respect to the crime with which he is charged—he is the innocent victim of his own belated act of conscience. Without which, beyond any reasonable doubt, he would not be forced to sit here amidst the wreckage of his life.
“Look at the price he’s paid for that.” Pausing, Tony injected his tone with irony. “And then look at all he’s gained.
“To convict Sam Robb, you must not only disbelieve every word he says, but you must decide that the only way Marcie Calder could have died was as Ms. Marz imagines she did—you must accept, for example, the Alice in Wonderland notion that because Sam Robb’s clothes contain no evidence of guilt, they must be evidence of guilt.
“Such is the prosecution’s case.
“Accept it, and you may convict a man who has already endured so much, and yet nothing compared to what he will endure, for a crime he did not commit.”
Tony paused, and then his voice became imploring. “Marcie Calder’s death is a tragedy.
“Nothing can redeem it. Nothing can give Marcie back to us—to her community or to her family. There is no redemption, anywhere, in placing the name of murderer on an innocent man.”
Tony stopped, drawing the eyes of the jury. “That,” he finished, “would be a tragedy all its own.”
PART FOUR
SUE ROBB
THE PRESENT
ONE
For three days, Tony waited for the jury to come back.
He called Sam at the end of every day, to report the lack of news. Increasingly agitated and anxious, Sam attempted to extract from Tony speculation about what the silence meant; all Tony could say was that some jurors must be finding the case quite difficult. Privately, he suspected a split in the jury, and worried about what this might mean.
As for Sue, when she answered Tony’s calls, she was pleasant, somewhat distant, and—once Tony told her there was nothing to say—incurious. Tony stifled the impulse to keep her on the telephone.
So Tony killed time. He talked to Stacey, reviewed by fax, at Christopher’s request, his son’s essay for the admissions committee at Harvard. San Francisco seemed very far away; Lake City was terribly real now, and his past felt like his present.
At the end of the second day, he called Stella Marz. “Can I buy you a drink?” he asked. “I’ve been having separation anxiety.”
Stella responded with a modest laugh and agreed to meet him at the hotel bar.
The bar was a plush, quasi-Victorian replica, half filled with the usual depressed-looking assortment of commercial travelers and giving off that sense of unreality unique to instant fabrications of a bygone decor. Their server introduced himself by name, and when he brought Tony’s martini in what looked like a brandy snifter, Tony rolled his eyes at Stella.
“You really are a snob,” she said. “At least the drinks don’t cost ten dollars.”
Tony smiled. “Then they’re on me,” he said, and touched his snifter to Stella’s wineglass. “Nice job. That was what I wanted to tell you.”
Stella gave him an amused, somewhat skeptical look. “You too. And now that we’re such good friends again, you’re hoping I won’t retry your other good friend, Sam Robb, if the jury just happens to hang. Which is a little easier decision to swallow when his lawyer’s a gracious, humble man like you.”
Caught, Tony laughed aloud but did not, thereafter, smile. “You have your heart and soul in this one, don’t you?”
“Oh, yeah.” Stella gazed at the table, her face hard, her eyes reflective. “He’s a real bad guy, your friend. Watching him o
n the stand convinced me all the more.” She looked up at Tony. “It’s a tough prosecution case—I knew that going in. But when you put him on, I think, you let me back into the game.”
Tony sipped his drink. “Not my idea,” he said at last.
Slowly, Stella nodded, still watching him. “No. I didn’t think it was.”
Tony put down his martini, looking her in the face. “If it’s any help, Stella, I don’t know anything that makes him guilty. What he said in court two days ago could very well be the truth.”
“Yes,” she answered calmly. “But do you believe it?”
She did not expect an answer. “A lot of people,” he said at last, “have been telling me I don’t believe in anything.”
Stella shook her head. “No, you believe in something. You and I even believe in some of the same things. When I worked my way through law school, I told myself it wasn’t just to make my life better, but to make this place better. But that was my choice. When I judged you for leaving, I forgot that, or how many reasons you might have had, starting with what your parents wanted for you. My parents never wanted a thing for me, except that I be them. So Saint Stella the self-righteous is my very own creation.” She picked up her wineglass, regarding him over the rim. “You’re fair, Tony, and I did learn something. I watched you, and the trial played out the way you thought it would.”
Appreciative, Tony smiled a little. “Except for the ending. I haven’t a clue what that will be.”
Stella finished her drink. “I may lose this one,” she said. “Maybe I should. But God knows I don’t want to.”
Shortly afterward, she left. Tony watched her stop in the doorway of the bar, to brush back her hair with graceful fingers, then resume her determined stride through the swinging doors. Thinking of his client, Tony hoped that he would not be forced to admire her for winning.
Silent Witness Page 48
