The Final Judgment

by Richard North Patterson

  Caroline felt the emotion drain from her. “I promised her,” she said simply.

  He studied her for a moment. “No manslaughter, Caroline. If you want that, you’ll have to try the case.”

  Slowly, she nodded. “Then count on a hearing, all right?”

  He cocked his head. “Is that all?”

  “That’s all.” Caroline got up. “Thank you for your time.”

  They stood there, silent, looking at each other. Then Caroline smiled a little and turned away. He did not walk with her to the car.

  “Megan Race,” the detective repeated, and wrote the name at the top of a lined yellow pad.

  They sat in the office of Caroline’s new local counsel. Carlton Grey, a bespectacled veteran of the local courts, sat at his walnut desk; Caroline and the detective from Concord, Joe Lemieux—dark, ascetic looking, and thirtyish—in guest chairs facing Grey. Lemieux had turned to her.

  “What is it you need?” he asked.

  “Everything,” she answered crisply. “In less than ten days. Where she’s from, what jobs she has, what courses she’s taken. Her family. Whether she’s ever seen a therapist or is seeing one now. What friends she has. And, critically, former boyfriends. That one’s a priority.”

  Lemieux looked curious. “What are we after, exactly?”

  “Anything that I can use to destroy her credibility.” Caroline paused for emphasis. “She’ll have something, Joe. Everyone does.”

  He nodded, silent.

  “Then,” Caroline went on, “there’s her relationship to the dead boy, James Case.”

  Carlton Grey leaned forward. “As I understand it, Caroline, you want to know when it ended.”

  “According to her statement, Megan and James were lovers unto death—so much so that he asked her to go with him to California. But according to Brett, James broke it off in April—two and a half months ago. Did anyone, I wonder, see them together since?”

  Lemieux noted this on his pad. He had long fingers, Caroline noted, an air of delicacy. He would not put people on edge. “And the former boyfriends…?” he asked.

  “First, were there any. If so, then we’ll want to consider approaching them.” She looked from Lemieux to Grey and back again. “What would help is for someone to say that she’s malicious, spiteful, or—best of all—unbalanced.”

  Grey nodded. “You need a reason for her to lie.”

  “Precisely. It would very much help to have it for the probable cause hearing. Whether I use it or not.”

  “She won’t be there,” Grey put in. “Jackson would never call her.”

  Caroline smiled. “But I can subpoena her, can’t I? Assuming that the judge lets me.”

  Grey raised an eyebrow. “You’ve been reading our statutes.”

  “Oh, yes, I do that.” She still smiled faintly. “It’s one of my gifts.”

  “My niece has asked me to do this,” Caroline said slowly. “To my surprise, I find that I can’t turn her down.”

  It was night; she had called Walter Farris at home. At first, she heard only static, a faulty connection. Then Farris said, “That poses a problem.”

  Caroline forced herself to sound calm. “But should it? There’s no realistic question of my using influence here. Really, Walter, in the age of family values, I’d hope that people—including senators—might sympathize a little. What good is twenty years defending strangers if you can’t help your own niece?”

  The answer, carefully prepared, silenced Farris for a time. When he spoke again, his tone was neutral. “You’re quite close, I take it.”

  Caroline considered her answer. “We’ve become so,” she said, and returned to her carefully wrought appeal. “If it will help things, I’m prepared to write the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, explaining my difficulty, confirming my continuing interest, and expressing the hope that confirmation hearings can be held promptly after completion of the trial.”

  In the silence, Caroline felt herself tense. At length, Farris asked, “How long might that be?”

  Caroline hesitated. “Maybe six months.”

  “I think that’s too long.” His voice was brisk. “Once we get near the election, the Republicans can hold things up, see if they can elect a President. You’re too obvious a target.”

  Tense, Caroline forced herself to think swiftly. “Because I’m a woman?” she asked. “Or, as you put it, a feminist? Then that is a problem.” She made her voice sound tentative, musing. “But I suppose there may be another way to view this—as a chance for the President to remind them that he’ll stand by his appointments. Unless there’s a better reason than Jesse Helms’s displeasure, as you once put it.”

  Her tone was so mild that Farris could not confront her. “What would you like me to do?” he asked with muted annoyance.

  Caroline held her breath. “Just to tell the President,” she said, “that I’ll do whatever he wishes. After all, I’m the nominee only at his pleasure.”

  Farris fell quiet again. Caroline could imagine him—cornered, unable to say so, wondering how much of this she had calculated. “All right,” he said at last. “I’ll run this by him.”

  Alone in her room, Caroline closed her eyes. “Thank you,” she said.

  Three

  A woman deputy brought Brett to a stark interview room with yellow walls and a pressboard table that, to Caroline, seemed passed on from some county office. Brett sat across from her; the deputy stepped outside the room, occasionally peering through a wired-glass rectangle in the metal door. A certain light replaced the dullness in Brett’s green eyes.

  “Thanks for coming,” she said to Caroline. “I’ve gotten to count on it.”

  Caroline smiled. “Oh, it’s pure self-indulgence—a place like this puts my company in a new and attractive light. Quite heady for a neglectful aunt.”

  Brett’s own smile was slow to come and, when it did, perfunctory; Caroline could see her imagining endless days like this. “Have you worked up some sort of routine?” she asked.

  “A little.” Brett gave a fractional shrug. “It reminds me of something my philosophy prof said once—that life is a way of killing time.”

  She looked somewhat removed, Caroline thought, almost detached. “What kinds of things do you do?” Caroline asked.

  “Yoga, a little reading … The people who watch us are nice enough, and in the cell there’s still only me.” Brett shifted in her chair. “A couple of friends came by—high school friends, ’cause the college people are mostly gone. But they don’t know what to say to me, or me to them.”

  She shrugged again, helpless. “I mean, I can’t tell them about nightmares, or missing James, or this fantasy I have where we’re in California now. It would be too weird for them, you know.” Brett gazed at the table. “It’s not their fault, I suppose. Not many people have this experience. They can’t exactly say things like, ‘I know how you feel.’”

  Brett paused again. “Do you know what’s really weird,” she went on. “This is the first time I can remember being alone—without Grandfather or my parents, or a roommate, or maybe James. That was another reason I wasn’t sure about going with James. It was time for me to be on my own.” Her voice filled with wonder. “Now I’m finally alone….”

  It was as if, Caroline thought, Brett were musing to herself, in Caroline’s presence. She felt a strange intimacy between them.

  “There was a time in my life,” Caroline said at length, “around your age, when I decided to spend time alone. It lasted for a while—a period of months, actually—and I even wrote a little. And when it was over, I found that I had come to some conclusions about the future I would have, for worse or better. And about the price I’d pay for that.”

  Brett studied her, curious. And then she simply said, “You’re saying that I should do that—take this time to think. And maybe write.”

  Caroline shrugged. “What else is it good for?”

  The fingers of Brett’s left hand idly stroked a tendril of brown
hair. “All that I can think about,” she said at last, “is how I got here.”

  Beneath this statement, uttered with the simplicity of truth, Caroline felt a challenge. I think about it, the girl was saying, because I’m innocent.

  Caroline’s own gaze was steady. “Think about whatever comes,” she answered softly. “But here you can talk—or write—about anything but that. Or James.”

  Brett’s look grew cool. “Because they’ll read it.”

  “Or hear it. And, perhaps, misinterpret it.”

  Brett sat back, appraising her before she spoke. “Why did you stay here, Caroline? When you don’t believe I’m innocent.”

  Taken by surprise, Caroline flashed on the bloody knife. She kept her own voice calm. “Lawyers don’t believe anything. Because belief is pointless. I, and the law, presume your innocence. My job is simply to preserve that presumption.”

  “That seems so cold.”

  It was strange, Caroline thought, that a simple word from this girl could hurt her. “Sometimes ‘coldness’ is merely a point of view. And you should presume that some lackey may try to curry favor by reporting something you said. Real or imagined.”

  Brett folded her arms. “We’re in different places, aren’t we? And not just now. When you were my age and needed to think, you chose the time and place and subject.” Her voice turned bitter. “I’m not free to do any of those things. Unless you get me out of here, I may never be.”

  Caroline looked down, accepting the rebuke. “What I said was foolish. We’re not the same, and this isn’t the same. I was only trying to tell you to be careful.”

  “Fine. And I’ll try not to tell anyone that I cut James’s throat.”

  When Caroline looked up, there were tears in Brett’s eyes. They regarded each other, silent.

  Caroline drew a breath. “There’s something else we need to talk about.”

  Brett seemed to clasp herself tighter. In the pallid fluorescent light, her eyes had a vivid sheen. “Whatever.”

  Caroline rested her cheek on the fingers of one hand. “I spoke with Jackson,” she said slowly. “He won’t take manslaughter.”

  Brett’s face hardened. “I won’t take manslaughter. I already told you that.” She leaned forward, looking into Caroline’s eyes. “That might sound crazy to someone who only ‘presumes’ my innocence. But I won’t plead guilty to something I didn’t do.”

  After a moment, Caroline shrugged. “Well,” she said, “that makes it simple, doesn’t it.”

  Brett stood, pacing. Then, abruptly, she turned on Caroline. “This probable cause hearing you told me about—when is it?”

  “Eight days. Assuming we go through with it.”

  Brett stared down at her. “I want that hearing. And I want to testify.”

  Caroline pushed her chair back from the table. “No,” she said tersely. “Absolutely not.”

  “Well, I’m going to.” Brett’s voice rose. “I sit here, day after day, with no one to say I’m innocent. So I’m going to say it.”

  Caroline kept her own voice quiet, sympathetic. “I understand your feelings—at least as much as I’m able. But my whole purpose in forcing this hearing is to catch Jackson’s witnesses unprepared, Megan Race—who refuses to even speak with me—being the most critical of all. I won’t let him catch you like that.”

  The mention of Megan seemed to silence Brett, as Caroline had intended. She tried to seize the moment. “Trials are like theater, Brett. You have to know your lines or, at least, know the play well enough to improvise. I don’t have a firm grasp of their evidence yet. And there’s not nearly enough time to get you where you need to be.”

  “Theater?” Brett gave her a look of disbelief and anger. “The truth is the truth, and I’m testifying.” Her eyes were bright now. “Whose trial is this? Yours or mine?”

  Caroline stood, facing Brett across the table. “This is not negotiable. I refuse to help you commit suicide. Jackson will cut you to shreds before you even figure out that he isn’t Jimmy Stewart—”

  “Did you hear me, Caroline?”

  “Yes.” Caroline paused, steeling herself. “Now you hear me. If you insist on this, I quit.”

  Brett stared at her, lips parted. She was suddenly pale. “Then quit. I’m sick of not controlling my own life.”

  “This is a poor time to decide that,” Caroline snapped. “You’ll know you’ve grown up when your first decision isn’t quite so stupid.” She caught herself. “Don’t make the wrong choice for the sake of making one. Please.”

  Brett’s gaze seemed to waver, then her mouth set in a stubborn line. “You can leave now. Grandfather will find me someone else.”

  With what money? Caroline wanted to say. But the girl she saw stopped her for a moment—vulnerable, with pride and fear fighting for control of her face. “I’ll leave,” she said at last. “Though not before we do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “Sit down,” Caroline said curtly. “I’ll be Jackson, and you be you. Just like in that glorious scene in court you so vividly imagine without my interference, a mere eight days from now. And don’t forget to write.”

  Pale, resolute, Brett sat stiffly.

  Caroline stood, watching her. “The rules are simple. I ask the questions, you answer within ten seconds. So that your audience can see how forthright you are.”

  Brett stared at her, defiant. “Not quite so hostile,” Caroline said in an advisory tone. “Remember that I’m Jackson and that the truth is the truth.”

  Brett flushed. “Will you start?”

  “All right.” Pausing, Caroline could feel her own pulse. “You’ve described the murder, your own shock and horror, and everyone watching is incredibly sympathetic. Now you’re in the police car—all you have to do is explain what you did next.”

  Caroline saw a first glimmer of uncertainty, perhaps self-doubt.

  “When the policeman stopped,” Caroline began, “you were naked, correct?”

  Mute, Brett nodded.

  “You have to speak up for the record. I’d recommend a clear, steady voice.”

  “Yes.” Brett’s tone was flinty. “I was naked.”

  “And covered in blood.”

  Brett hesitated. “There was blood on me, yes—”

  “Eye contact, please—you’ll make a bad impression.” At once, Caroline slipped back into her role. “Where did you think James was?”

  Brett’s eyes narrowed, as if straining for memory. “I was stoned.”

  “But you weren’t ‘stoned,’ were you, when you picked him up?”

  Brett squared her shoulders. “No.”

  “Couldn’t you remember that?”

  “I think so. Yes.”

  Caroline placed her hands on her hips. “Then did you also ‘think’ that James had simply vanished?”

  “I didn’t know.” Brett closed her eyes. “I had flashes, like a nightmare.”

  “There was a bloody wallet in the car, wasn’t there?”

  Brett’s eyes shut. “Yes.”

  “Did you think that was a nightmare?”

  Slowly, Brett shook her head. “All I had was fragments. I didn’t want to believe them.”

  “Oh, it’s not quite all you had. There was also a bloody knife on the passenger seat, was there not?”

  Brett’s face was haunted now. “Yes.”

  “And did you think that had arrived from a dream?”

  “No.” Brett looked up in silent appeal, as if seeing Caroline and not her tormentor. “You have to understand. Nothing seemed more real to me than any other thing. I couldn’t remember what happened.”

  Silent, Caroline sat across from her. She said, softly, “You mean you can’t remember whether or not you killed him?”

  “No.” Brett’s body went rigid. “I couldn’t have.”

  Caroline paused; the pit of her stomach felt hollow now. Quite calmly, she said, “ ‘Couldn’t have’? I thought you couldn’t remember.”

  “I did.” Brett�
�s eyes fell. “But later on.”

  “Eight hours later?”

  “I don’t know. Whenever it was that my head began to clear.”

  “Before that, where did you imagine all the blood on you had come from?”

  Wearily, Brett shook her head. “I didn’t know.”

  “So that, two hours later, you were only able to recall that James ‘might’ be at the lake.”

  “Yes.” Brett’s voice was husky. “I thought he might be.”

  Caroline leaned forward. “And why did you think that?”

  “Because I remembered taking him there.”

  “But you always remembered, didn’t you—just like you remembered picking him up. Because you weren’t stoned then.”

  “I don’t know.” Brett’s voice rose. “Maybe it was the knife in the car.”

  Slowly, Caroline shook her head. “No, Brett. Because you knew all of this—James, the blood, the knife, the wallet—two hours before, when you were still in your car.” Her voice became quiet. “When you told the patrolman absolutely nothing.”

  Brett touched her eyes. “I didn’t remember.”

  Caroline placed a finger to her lips, contemplating the girl. “Tell me,” she said in a tone of mild curiosity, “does your memory always work like that? Where it only comes back to you after hours, or even days.”

  Brett stared at the table. “It was the drugs. What I wasn’t stoned for, I can remember.”

  Caroline composed herself. “Such as the night you found James in bed?” A lethal pause. “With a naked girl named Megan Race?”

  Brett’s head fell slightly. “Megan…” she began, and stopped.

  Caroline leaned forward. With terrible quiet, she asked, “Were you stoned then, Brett?”

  “No.”

  “But when the police asked you about girlfriends, you somehow didn’t mention that.”

  “No.” Caroline saw a throbbing in Brett’s temple. “I didn’t want to think of it. Or remember it.”

  “I understand.” Caroline’s voice was gentle now. “Just like you don’t want to remember killing James.”

  A tremor ran through Brett’s body. When, at last, Brett raised her head, tears ran down her face. Her silent gaze at Caroline was her last, tenuous show of defiance.