The Final Judgment

by Richard North Patterson

  Jackson gazed at the fire. “Megan perjured herself,” he said at last. “Who’d believe her?”

  “No,” Caroline said sharply. “I can’t lie about that.”

  Jackson turned to her now. With great calm, he answered, “You’ll never have to. I’ve made it very clear to your friend Megan that whether she’s indicted for perjury is wholly up to me. And that I don’t expect to see her charging anyone else with any crimes—whether in the courts or in the media.” He paused. “She’s left college, Caroline, and dropped out of sight. All she wants to do is avoid what last humiliation she can. She’s not a problem for you, anymore. And never will be.” He smiled a little. “After all, I have her diary now.”

  Caroline frowned. “I don’t want you to salvage me. Please don’t try….”

  “You were trying to salvage your daughter, for Christ sake. People do worse every day—I did worse, in this case, without breaking a single law. Which has led to some sobering midnight thoughts. But I very much doubt I’ll let them keep me from a judgeship.”

  Caroline shook her head. “You misjudged a witness, Jackson. I broke the law. On the Court of Appeals I’d have to review case after case of other people who broke it, many of whom offer up the most sympathetic of reasons. How can I do that, knowing what I know?”

  “Because it would be so colossally stupid not to. You’re a brilliant lawyer and, more to the point, a compassionate one. Nothing about this experience makes either of those less true.”

  Caroline stood abruptly, walking to the fire. For a time, she watched the flames, flickering orange blue. “Right now,” she said at last, “what I do with Brett seems a little more important.”

  She felt Jackson step behind her. “What do you want to do?”

  “Want?” She turned to him with sudden intensity, felt the depth of her desire and need. “Every fiber in me wants her for my daughter. I’m so damned sick of lies. But it’s much more than that.” She looked at him intently now, tears coming to her eyes. “I want her in my life, Jackson. The other day, watching Betty put her arms around her, I was so damned scared of losing her again.”

  He looked at her with sympathy and something that, in her despair, she could not quite identify. “How would Brett take it, I wonder?”

  “I don’t know—all right, I think, in time. But the one sure way to keep her is to tell her who I am. If anyone knows the power of parenthood, I do.” With sickening suddenness, Caroline heard herself, and then her voice became almost pleading. “She’s still a young woman, and I could help her. Before, I never believed that. But now I’ve been with her, and I know I could. How can I just walk off and leave her again?”

  Jackson gave her a considering look. He did not reach for her. “As I just told you,” he said at last, “you’re a compassionate person. Whatever it is, I’m sure you’ll know what’s right to do.”

  Six

  Three mornings later, when they buried her father, Caroline still did not know.

  The service was at the chapel at Masters Hill. The family sat in its pew—Larry at the end, Brett between Caroline and Betty. None of them said much; before the service began, Brett touched Caroline’s hand. She looked tired but composed.

  “Are you all right?” Caroline asked.

  Brett could not quite answer. “He was my grandfather,” she said simply.

  The pews were almost filled. Caroline knew many of the faces: people too decent to stay away or to forget who Channing Masters had been to them. Caroline felt the passing of a time. Many who came were old; Channing had been retired for over a decade, and most of his works—large and small—were now a matter of memory. He would surely be the last of them to be buried on Masters Hill.

  The service itself was spare and decorous—a soft-spoken minister whom Caroline did not know, simple words from the Old Testament, an expression of hope and redemption. Caroline listened fitfully; she had left this to Betty and Larry. As little as she believed in an afterlife, she believed even less in public pieties, the rituals by which the living, seeking to comfort themselves, obscure the truth about the dead and the act of dying. Her mother’s funeral had been enough: Caroline would bury her father, and David, in whatever way her heart might find.

  Still, she went to the graveside.

  They buried him next to Betty’s mother, Elizabeth Brett. What might have happened, Caroline wondered, if Elizabeth had lived? There might have been sons to slake her father’s needs; Nicole Dessaliers might still live, an old woman in Paris. Surely there would have been no Caroline, no Brett, and her father would have died as he had meant to, in the fullness of time. And then the earth had covered him, and the four of them were alone.

  They stood facing each other, standing around the fresh-turned dirt, Brett between Betty and Larry. What memories of him did they have together? Caroline wondered; in that moment, what she must do became clear to her. Though perhaps she had always known.

  She looked at Brett, then at Larry. “Leave us here,” she asked.

  They knew what she meant. Larry nodded, and turned to Brett. Caroline watched them leave, side by side, walking to their house beneath the cool gray sky.

  Caroline faced Betty across their father’s grave. “I won’t tell her,” she said at last.

  Betty’s gaze was steady, stoic. “Why, Caroline? When it’s so clear to me that you want to.”

  Caroline nodded. “I do, very much. But no one should have to reinterpret her entire life at the age of twenty-two. That’s what you, and Father, made me do. I can’t bring myself to do the same to Brett.” Caroline’s voice filled with emotion. “Though there have been times, understanding what was done to limit her, that I’ve quite forgotten how selfish that would be.”

  Betty reddened. “Yes. It would be selfish.”

  “But there’s a price,” Caroline went on. “When she was born, I let her go. I can do it again. As long as you do, too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That it’s time for Brett to leave here. Leave you, if she wishes. Which, when she comes to terms with this, I’m very sure she will.”

  Silent, Betty gazed at their father’s grave, and then nodded. “If she does, I won’t try to keep her. Now.”

  Caroline regarded her. “Then I doubt you’ll see me again. Except, I hope, on Brett’s occasions—a wedding, perhaps a baby. But you needn’t have me on your conscience, Betty. I think that, now, I’ll be able to let you go.” She paused a moment; in the distance, she could see Brett and her father. “As for Larry, tell him that perhaps I always knew what he would do, and shut my eyes. It was all too much for me, then.”

  Betty seemed to look at her across the years, a graying woman who long ago, and at great cost, had gained for herself a daughter. “Can you really live without telling her?” she asked. “You won’t look at her, or someday her child, and need for her to know?”

  Caroline shook her head. “I’ve become a very disciplined person, Betty. You should know that much by now.” Caroline paused for a moment, and then told her sister the rest of it. “It’s enough that I came back for her,” she finished softly. “Brett will never be my daughter. But, for me, I’ve earned the right to feel like her mother.”

  Seven

  Alone, Caroline stood by her mother’s grave, where Betty had left her.

  Well, Caroline said silently, it’s over now. I’ve done the best I could.

  In the quiet, a few birds calling, she felt someone behind her.

  Turning, Caroline saw her daughter, waiting for her.

  “Do you mind?” Brett asked. “My mother said you might be here.”

  “No. I meant to see you before I left.” Caroline paused. “To say how sorry I am that you have to live with this.”

  Brett stepped closer now, hands in her pockets, seeming to avoid the sight of Channing’s grave. “I’ve loved Grandfather all my life. And then he kills someone I care for. How could he have thought that was out of love for me?”

  How best to answer? Caroline
wondered. “He was old, Brett. Something happened to him.”

  Brett gave a short, dissatisfied shake of the head. “He wasn’t old when you left here. Was that over a boy?”

  Her face, Caroline thought, was so very much like Nicole’s. Except that the mouth and chin were David’s. “Yes,” she answered simply. “It was.”

  Brett regarded her in silence. “I’m too old to need protecting, Caroline. From whatever this is about.”

  “I know that. But I’m protecting me. And I’ve got enough to deal with just sorting through this for myself.” Pausing, Caroline searched for a truth that might be helpful. “Your grandfather was a troubled man, I don’t know why; he wouldn’t, couldn’t, talk about himself … his own parents, his own hurts, anything. But there was something damaged about him: although he badly wanted to, he didn’t know how to love my mother, or your mother, or me, or you, or how to give us what we needed. Because whatever it was he needed kept him from knowing. So that, in the end, all of us were damaged too. You least of all.

  “You’re young, Brett. You’ve got a whole life, and now it’s yours. There’s nothing about you to keep you from living it fully.”

  Brett seemed to watch her. “I’d never met you,” she said at last. “But ever since you got here, I could sense you weren’t going to let anything worse happen to me. At least if you could help it.”

  Caroline gazed back at her, the daughter she loved in secret, standing near the headstone of her grandmother Nicole. It made Caroline want to smile, though she did not know why. “I wasn’t,” she answered. “It didn’t matter what you’d done. Though it rather pleases me that it was nothing.”

  Brett tilted her head. “Was that because of Grandfather? Things you thought we had in common?”

  “Perhaps at the start. But, in the end, it was because of you.”

  Brett hesitated, and then she touched Caroline’s sleeve. “Will I see you again?”

  Caroline smiled. “Maybe you’ll come to see me. I’d like that, very much.”

  “Would you?”

  “Oh, yes. After all, you’ve never been to San Francisco.”

  Brett smiled at this; for an instant, Caroline wanted to hold her, to tell her how she truly felt. Then she saw the fresh grave of her father, and knew once more that the final judgment was hers to make, the wounds of silence hers to bear.

  For a last time, Caroline studied her daughter’s face.

  “I’m ready to leave here,” she said. “Are you?”

  Brett was quiet for a moment. “Yes,” she answered, “I am.”

  Eight

  “So you’re leaving tomorrow,” Jackson said.

  “Uh-huh. By six o’clock, I’ll be in San Francisco.” Caroline’s voice softened. “It’s time, Jackson. Before I make some terrible mistake.”

  They sat at the end of Jackson’s boat dock, each drinking a can of beer and watching the last light of evening fade on Heron Lake. Quietly, Jackson said, “You did the right thing, you know.”

  Caroline turned to him. “Did I?”

  “Sure.” He smiled a little. “Besides, who ever said you’d be such a great mother? Was yours?”

  Caroline gave him a cool look. “That hurts a bit, you know. But no, she wasn’t particularly. In some ways, I suppose, I was my own mother.”

  Jackson had stopped smiling. “Then I take it all back.” He fell quiet for a moment. “You’re a good person, Caroline. To me, you grasped what seems important here: that your father’s silence hurt you, but that—at least for now—yours is a kindness. And that there are no rules for this kind of thing, merely the hope of empathy.”

  She faced him now, sitting cross-legged on the dock. “You’re the only person I’ve told all this. Perhaps the only one I’ll ever tell.”

  He gazed at her a moment, accepting this. “Then that makes me indispensable, doesn’t it? Or maybe just inconvenient.”

  Caroline shook her head. “No,” she said. “You’ve helped me a lot. You know that.”

  The look that Jackson gave her was tentative, inquiring. “Because I’ve wondered, after all this settles in, whether you’d ever want to see me again. Or whether, for your own sake, it would be easier to do what you did before.”

  For a long time, Caroline was quiet. “It’s gone too far for that, I think. Although I guess I’d like it better if, like Brett, you came to San Francisco.” Caroline smiled. “Of course, you’ll save hotel fare if you stay with me. I hear civil servants in New Hampshire don’t make much money. Even judges.” She touched his hand, finishing quietly: “I do care for you, Jackson. More than I ever knew.”

  After a moment, Jackson smiled again. “Then do me a favor, okay?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Take the judgeship, Caroline. You don’t have to give up everything. And it may make you better company.”

  In that moment, looking at Jackson, Caroline saw that this was more than kindness. He was asking her to accept the gift of his generosity. To accept it for herself.

  Perhaps she could, Caroline thought. Perhaps she could accept who she was: the daughter of Channing and Nicole, mother in silence to Brett. Flawed, with a life she did not yet understand, but learning still. She could feel Jackson watching her.

  That night, Caroline stayed with him.

  The next morning Caroline Clark Masters, soon to be a judge of the United States Court of Appeals, flew back to San Francisco to prepare for her confirmation hearings. Her niece, Brett, drove her to the airport.

  Also by Richard North Patterson

  In the Name of Honor

  The Spire

  Eclipse

  The Race

  Exile

  Conviction

  Balance of Power

  Protect and Defend

  Dark Lady

  No Safe Place

  Silent Witness

  Eyes of a Child

  Degree of Guilt

  Private Screening

  Escape the Night

  The Outside Man

  The Lasko Tangent

  Acknowledgments

  As usual, my task was made easier by a number of friends, old and new.

  In San Francisco, I consulted Assistant District Attorney Bill Fazio; defense attorneys Hugh Anthony Levine and Jim Collins; medical examiner Boyd Stephens; homicide inspector Napoleon Hendrix; and private investigator Hal Lipset. And once again, Assistant District Attorney Al Giannini advised me and reviewed the manuscript. For three books now, their help has been invaluable.

  Readers devoted to New Hampshire will recognize that Masters Hill and the town of Resolve are fictional locations: a small community in New Hampshire seemed too particular a place to fairly depict here. I hope that I have nonetheless captured the flavor and legal milieu of this unique region. My dear friend and fellow writer Maynard Thomson helped impart to me his deep love and appreciation for the state. Others generous with their time include Assistant Attorney General Janice Rundles; County Attorney Lincoln Soldati; Jennifer Soldati of the New Hampshire Trial Lawyers Association; attorney and writer John Davis; defense attorneys Bob Stein and Paul Maggiotto; Kathy Deschenaux of the office of the New Hampshire Medical Examiner; and Sergeant Kevin Babcock of the New Hampshire State Police. I owe all of them a great debt for whatever success I have achieved; any errors, or simplifications for narrative purposes, are mine.

  Special mention should be made of the late Dr. Roger Fossum, chief medical examiner for the State of New Hampshire. In the time that I spent with Roger, I quickly came to appreciate the professionalism, intelligence, humanity, and good humor that endeared him to his many friends.

  Martha’s Vineyard has a unique charm and history. William Marks—environmentalist, publisher, and writer—was extraordinarily generous in sharing the history of the island, suggestions for locating specific scenes, and advice on sailing. The Vineyard portions of the novel would have been far different without him. Thanks also go to George Manter, a former chief of police of West Tisbury, who helpe
d fill in several gaps in island history. In addition, John Bitzer and his family showed me around their wonderful home and graciously allowed me to use it as a model for the Masterses’ summer home.

  In assessing the possible impact of drugs and alcohol on Brett’s behavior and perceptions, I was kindly assisted by Dr. David Smith of the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic, and writer Rick Seymour. Dr. Rodney Shapiro helped me consider the potential emotions and motivations of Brett, Channing Masters, and Megan Race. In outlining for me the possible routes through which Caroline Masters might come to be considered for an appellate judgeship, my friend Chief Judge Thelton Henderson enabled me to better posit what might be happening to Caroline. Finally, renowned serologist Dr. Henry Lee graciously responded by telephone to several questions regarding the potential medical evidence in a case such as this. I hope I have done their advice something close to justice.

  My wife, Laurie; my friend and agent, Fred Hill; and my wonderful publishers—Sonny Mehta of Knopf, and Linda Grey and Clare Ferraro of Ballantine—commented on the manuscript. And, as usual, Philip Rotner and Lee Zell were generous with their advice.

  Most of all, there is my assistant, Alison Thomas. With each new day’s writing, Alison helped me pick it apart—looking for weak spots; flaws in characterization; infelicitous language; and flagging plot lines. Writing is a solitary business: without Alison’s keen eye and kind encouragement, it would be far more difficult. She has become a dear friend and an integral part of my work. For all those reasons, and more, this book is dedicated to her.

  Previously published as Caroline Masters by Random House, Inc.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.