The Final Judgment

by Richard North Patterson

  “With whom?”

  “Between Betty and James. After I found out that he was dealing, James came to the house. Betty answered the door. When I came into the living room, she was asking him to leave.” Larry gazed into some middle distance. “Her voice was low and tight—a sign that she’s on the edge of losing it altogether, just hanging on. Before I could do much of anything, James did the worst thing he could do. Which was to smile down at her.

  “You would have had to see him. He was dark, good looking, and somewhere he’d cultivated a smile that was superior and faintly derisive. So that when he looked down at Betty, his smile was somewhat like that of an anthropologist who’d happened upon a bizarre form of Pygmy.”

  Larry looked at Caroline now. “It was like a slap in the face,” he said softly. “Before I could stop her, Betty whirled, grasped a crystal vase, and threw it at him.

  “He didn’t even duck. Just moved his head a little, and the crystal shattered on the wall.

  “I stepped between them—James still with that quizzical smile, Betty with tears of rage. And then Brett came down the staircase, staring at the rest of us.

  “ ‘Your mother had an accident,’ James said carelessly. ‘Call me.’ And then he turned around and left.” Larry paused. “Left a mess on the floor and a mess between my wife and daughter that may take years to fix.” His voice grew low and intense. “God, Caroline, how I wish that was still the worst of our problems.”

  Caroline was silent for a time, caught in the vortex of the scene he had described. “And you couldn’t reason with her?”

  “Betty?” Larry stared at his lap, as if pondering how much to say. “There’ve been some problems, Caro. Betty’s vulnerable right now, and I don’t have much capital in the bank. And Channing felt as she did.”

  “Yes.” Caroline’s tone was as chill as her emotions. “Habit is such a hard thing to break.”

  They sat awhile, quiet again, in the flickering light.

  Larry folded his hands. “How was it with him?”

  “Father? The same. All the feelings, as fresh as when it happened. Except that instead of being twenty-two, I’ve spent twenty-two years living with it.” She shrugged, foreclosing conversation. “I’m a lawyer now, and I’m here to do a job. If only for a time.”

  “For a time?”

  “Isn’t it clear that I shouldn’t be Brett’s counsel? At least if it comes to a trial.”

  Larry’s face looked drawn now. “Do you think it will?”

  “I don’t know yet. But I’ll try to see Jackson Watts tomorrow. See if I can ferret out what he’s thinking.”

  “Jackson?” Larry shook his head.

  Caroline looked at him steadily. “As I said, I shouldn’t be counsel.”

  Larry sat back in his chair. He looked as weary as Caroline felt.

  When, she wondered, had his hair become so thin, the lines begun to pull the corners of his mouth, the look of disappointment stolen into his eyes? Once, his smile had been so easy; Caroline had yet to see it today, nor could she imagine smiling herself. His shoulders sagged with the unseen burden of his worry.

  “Come on,” Caroline said. “I’ll help you clear the table.”

  He looked at her again. And then, as she had wanted, he gave the first faint smile.

  Dishes had been their job that summer. Betty was the cook; washing the dishes after dinner, happy in each other’s company, Larry and Caroline would argue politics or movies or literature—Larry had admired Silas Marner; Caroline had considered George Eliot a life sentence—and watch the setting sun through the window as it spread red across the waters of Nantucket Sound. Five years her senior, with a doctorate in the works, still Larry had taken her seriously, though he had loved to tease and provoke her. One night when they had dried the last dish, finished a particularly hyperbolic argument over George McGovern, Larry had kissed her on the cheek and said, lightly, facetiously, “I married the wrong sister….”

  Twenty-three years later, that same Larry suddenly appeared in the eyes of this middle-aged man. “Are you sure…?”

  Caroline shrugged. “You have a dishwasher, don’t you?”

  He gave another slight smile. In silent tandem, they shuttled dishes to the kitchen.

  To Caroline, in some ways this was the strangest room in the house; no longer familiar but instead filled with her sister’s curios—bright hot pads, an embroidered sampler, some Hummel figurines, a porcelain rooster—the cheerful artifacts of a mother who wished to make a home. Next to her, Larry rinsed dishes and passed them in the rhythm of two decades before. Except that Caroline now placed them in her sister’s dishwasher, in the middle of her sister’s kitchen.

  Caroline took a dish from his hand. “Is that it?” she asked.

  “Just about,” he said. And then stopped, gazing at her in the track-lit brightness of the kitchen. Almost shyly, as if surprising himself, he said, “You’re beautiful, Caro. Still.”

  Caroline met his eyes, smiling a little. “ ‘Still,’” she repeated. “Don’t you think there’s something rather sad about that?”

  He shook his head. “For me,” he answered, “it’s about the only thing that isn’t.”

  Caroline looked down. After a time, she said, “There’s something I have to say to you.”

  “What?”

  “I wasn’t kidding, Larry. About the knife.”

  “How do you mean?”

  She raised her eyes to his. “We were brought up around guns and knives—hunting knives, fishing knives, whatever. My father had a collection in the stable.”

  Larry stepped back, as if to look at her. “What are you saying?”

  And what are you thinking? Caroline wondered. “That I want to be very sure that knife isn’t traceable. And that you’re prepared when the police do get around to asking you.”

  “Caroline.” Larry’s voice was firm now. “Think a moment. Brett is five feet three. Maybe a hundred ten pounds soaking wet. James’s windpipe was cut through—”

  “By the time I was ten,” Caroline interjected, “I could fillet a fish. So could Betty. With the right knife, newly sharpened, either of us could have cut this boy’s throat our first day in junior high school.” She touched his arm. “Please, don’t delude yourself that there’s some easy out here. There isn’t.”

  His mouth was tight. “I don’t think I’ve been quite clear with you. Whatever our problems in this family, we did not raise a murderer. And with whatever reservations, Brett cared for that boy deeply. Even if she didn’t, violence is just not in her. No matter how intoxicated.”

  Caroline looked away. “She has a temper, Larry, I’ve seen it.”

  “All you’ve seen is someone frayed by shock and tragedy.” His voice rose. “I mean, wouldn’t you be?”

  “Of course.”

  The concession, stated readily and mildly, seemed to drain Larry’s anger. “What Brett is, Caro, is someone with a lot of grit. Grit and spirit and independence of thought—despite all Betty’s protectiveness.” He smiled faintly again. “Some days I look at us and wonder just where it came from.”

  Caroline gazed at Larry, and then she asked the question she would never ask her sister.

  “Tell me about her,” she said. “Everything.”

  Five

  The next morning, Caroline showered, dressed, and drove two pensive hours to Concord, the state capital.

  After Larry had shown her to her room, Caroline, too disturbed for sleep, had tried to channel her thoughts toward meeting Jackson Watts. Part of her felt unready; the other part too anxious to wait. At eight-thirty, she had called Jackson’s office from the kitchen phone, edgy not only about Brett but about speaking to him at all.

  He was in a meeting, his secretary said. Caroline stated her name and business; there was a long delay, Caroline tautly waiting, and then the secretary returned with the bland message that she could come ahead. Filled with anxiety and relief, Caroline was slow to put down the telephone; in that moment, she
sensed, perhaps imagined, a soft click on the line.

  Eyes narrow, Caroline paused with the receiver in her hand, listening. The house was silent. Returning to the bedroom, she saw no one.

  She began getting ready. The night before, Caroline had hung a red dress in the closet, slightly off for her business but all she had. It was not too wrinkled, she noted; when she caught herself applying makeup with extra care, Caroline reproved herself that there was no problem so grave that it would erase her vanity. And then realized, again, how much of this was seeing Jackson Watts.

  Her face and body had been so different then; she had been so different. It was more than foolish—perverse—to hope that under any circumstances, let alone these, someone she had deeply hurt would still find her attractive. And yet she did.

  What was he like now? Caroline wondered. Wondered if he had a wife, or children; and how he had felt when his secretary delivered this morning’s message—that Caroline Masters wished to see him, to discuss the murder of James Case.

  Carefully, Caroline finished applying her eyeliner. Whatever else you are, she admonished herself—and you may be little else—you still are a professional.

  She picked up her briefcase and left the room.

  What, she asked herself, had she heard on the telephone?

  She paused on the staircase, trying to place the others’ rooms. One flight above her was Brett’s room, her old room. She could not help but wonder who had chosen that room for her, what Brett’s life had been like in this home. For a moment, she imagined Brett as Caroline herself had been, a young girl running down the stairs to go to school, innocent of the past, oblivious to the future, a smile on her lips….

  Caroline started toward Brett’s room, to see how she was.

  No, she told herself. That is not your role. This is—to drive to Concord and see Jackson Watts. For the next two hours, traveling through sunlight and shadow, Caroline focused her thoughts on the case against Brett Allen.

  Concord was little changed. The storefront signs on Main Street were brighter; the brick and stone commercial buildings a shade dingier; the town perhaps was a little poorer. But the side streets were tree-lined and gracious. And there was, of course—as there had been for Caroline the child—the building she still thought of when she heard the word “capitol.”

  Parking the car, she walked across its grounds. A sweep of green lawn, leafy shade trees, a statue of Daniel Webster. And then, behind it, the sculpted building of granite—a pillared federal design, topped by a gold dome. Another reminder of Channing Masters.

  When Caroline was barely nine, her father had brought her here to meet his friend the governor. They had begun by touring the marble corridors, Caroline holding her father’s hand, then the intimate Senate gallery, and then the vast and ornate House of Representatives—whose four hundred citizen legislators, Channing explained, made up the third-largest representative body in the Western world, yet selflessly served for two hundred dollars a biennium. After this, they had chatted with Governor Powell—dignified but warm to Caroline, easy yet respectful with Channing—in the governor’s spacious reception room, replete with oil portraits of early governors, a hand-carved wooden mantel over a black marble fireplace, fourteen-foot ceilings, a long mahogany table. Sitting with Channing in an overstuffed chair as he talked to the governor about matters she did not yet understand, Caroline felt sure that no man was greater than her father, no state better than New Hampshire. She could not imagine another family, another home….

  Her thoughts on Brett now, Caroline walked two more blocks to the old bank building that now housed the attorney general’s staff. She took an elevator to the second floor, followed the sign that said “Homicide Division,” and asked for Jackson Watts.

  The receptionist rang him. Caroline sat in the reception area, legs crossed, arranging her face in a look of distant calm.

  A door opened. “Hello, Caroline,” a man’s voice said, and then she looked up and saw him.

  By reflex Caroline almost smiled. The man who stood there was much like the Jackson she remembered—tall and rangy, hair still black, though flecked with gray where it touched the tops of his ears. The ears themselves were still slightly too large, but better now that his face had filled out a bit. His face looked much the same, with the strong cleft jaw, the furrowed cheeks and ridged nose, the luminous brown eyes that were always his best feature. As he studied her, she realized that he was almost handsome now, a handsome Abe Lincoln.

  Caroline stood. “Hello, Jackson.”

  Somewhat awkwardly, she extended her hand, one lawyer to another. His clasp was cool.

  “Thank you for seeing me so soon,” she said.

  A slightly puzzled look. So soon? the look said. It’s been twenty-three years since you simply vanished. But all that he said was, “I’m sure you’re worried. Please, come in.”

  She followed him down a corridor with the stark, slightly Stalinist look of modern government, to a neat rectangular office with files stacked on a faux-wood desk. He sat himself behind it, tie askew and sleeves rolled up, and directed her to sit opposite him. Then silent, he looked at her with an air of puzzlement.

  “I’ve been wondering,” Caroline told him, “what to say to you first. When my niece’s file is sitting on your desk and you’re now the chief of the Homicide Division.”

  Somehow she had hoped to see some connection in his eyes. But she saw nothing she could read.

  “There are a lot of reasons, Caroline, for me to be unhappy about this.” He expelled a breath. “Not only do I respect your father a great deal, but I remember meeting Brett when she was eight or nine….” He shrugged; there was nothing he wished to say.

  “Let me start over,” Caroline said quietly. “How are you, Jackson?”

  “Fine. Otherwise.” Jackson studied her. “The basic facts are these—one teenage daughter I love, one dog, no wife anymore. A fishing camp on Heron Lake, a decent shot at a judgeship, and a certain basic contentment. Surprisingly enough, a lot of my life is pretty much what I expected it to be.” Another shrug. “Or maybe that’s no surprise to you.”

  Oh, Jackson, Caroline thought, it was never that—it was so many things that have nothing to do with you. Quietly, she said, “I’ve thought about you a lot. Still do, at times.”

  He propped his chin on one hand, studying her with a level gaze. “I never heard from you. Not since you wrote that letter from Martha’s Vineyard.”

  Caroline felt a stab of guilt. But it was far too late to apologize, she knew, and she could never explain. “I know,” she answered simply. “No one did.”

  “And now here you are. For Brett.”

  “Yes.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “It’s a bad case, Caroline.”

  It took her a moment to catch up with him. Her throat tightened. “Bad? Or just ‘looks bad’?”

  “Bad.” He seemed to hesitate. “I don’t have to tell you anything, of course—there’ve been no charges filed. But the basic facts aren’t going to change. I can walk you through what you must already know, or at least guess.”

  “Please.”

  “All right.” He was crisp now, a prosecutor. “Let’s begin with the idea of premeditation. She took him there, to an isolated place, known to her but not to him. And then got him stoned—”

  Caroline held up one hand. “Intending to kill him? On her own property? With a knife?”

  Jackson considered her. “Her prints were on the knife. And on his throat. No one else’s.”

  “You’ve finished the lab work, then?”

  He paused. “Most of it.”

  “Because I’ve never heard of anyone lifting prints off a man’s body.”

  Jackson frowned. “For now, all that I can tell you, Caroline, is that they’ve done it.”

  He was not, Caroline sensed, prepared to be pushed. In a muted voice, she asked, “Did the lab find anything else?”

  “Yes. His blood was all over her, in a pattern consistent
with arterial spurt. Traces of his skin were found beneath her fingernails. And her prints are on the wallet—again, no one else’s.” He paused. “By now you’ve met her, Caroline. She’s not a fool; even in the worst of circumstances, you can see her mind work. And she seems to have had the presence of mind to take the wallet, the knife, and her clothes—perhaps to make it look like a robbery, or even that she was never there. Yet for hours, she was supposedly too stoned to even tell the police what happened.” He shook his head dismissively. “That’s a tough one to buy. You could argue pretty easily that she never expected a cop to pick her up and then spent the next several hours adapting. So that we didn’t get any real story, such as it was, until close to dawn.”

  His account was unnervingly like the one Caroline had given Brett. Rather than argue with it, she asked simply, “Do you have the search warrant papers?”

  Slowly, Jackson nodded, and drew a file from his drawer.

  She read the papers quickly. “According to the arresting officer,” she said, “Brett’s hair was wet.”

  “So?”

  “So if she was wet, and yet had blood on her, it suggests that she went swimming. Just as she said.” She looked up at Jackson. “There’s no sign that James was swimming, right?”

  Jackson studied her. “Not as I understand it.”

  “Because I recognize the curly hair he describes here as the family curse—I got it whenever we went swimming, remember? And if Brett went swimming alone, someone else would have had time to kill him. Just as she said.” She paused a moment. “Tell me, Jackson, what was her intoxication level?”

  “Point one six.”

  “Impressive.”

  Jackson tilted his head. “Are you saying that cuts against premeditation?”

  “I’m saying that it cuts against your case.” Caroline sat straighter now. “You may not like her story, but it explains everything—the blood, the fingerprints, the skin under her nails, even his failure to ejaculate. And there’s not a hole in it. Everything that happened could have happened just the way she says it did.” Caroline paused for emphasis. “She’s either telling the truth or she’s an intuitive criminal genius, who not only can plan and carry out the grisly murder of a young man half again her size and twice her strength but can invent the most complex account, covering physical evidence even a criminologist could only guess at, within hours of slashing her boyfriend’s throat. All while drunk and stoned. If it weren’t for the moral and legal circumstances, I’d be terribly proud of her.”