“What made you think that story would fly?”
Sam turned to him, eyes glinting with an old defiance. “She was dead, Tony.”
The baldness of this made Tony pause: the remark, ruthless in its practicality, was as true of the story Sam had just told to Tony as of the one he had told to the police. Unsettled, Tony wondered what part might be manipulation, what part true. And then Tony remembered, as clear as yesterday, lying to the police about Alison.
“And Sue?” he finally asked.
The look of defensiveness vanished. “I told her the same thing.” Sam paused, standing. “Was I supposed to confess sleeping with Marcie and then ask my wife to lie if someone asked her? I did Sue a kindness, really. Even if she doesn’t believe a word.”
Once more, Tony was struck by the keenness of Sam’s instinct for survival; knowing that it was safe, Sam had told Tony a more credible version, admitting his shame while appealing to Tony’s sympathy for the innocent man made by random chance to appear guilty of murder. Quietly, Sam said, “I never wanted to admit this to anyone, Tony. When Sue wanted to call you, all I could think of was how pathetic I would look to you. But I didn’t know until now just how much I’d hate that.”
Tony shoved his hands into his pockets, silent.
“So,” Sam continued, “what do we do about Sue?”
The delphic question unsettled Tony. When he looked over, Sam regarded him with a thin, ironic smile. “You can’t tell her, of course—you’re my lawyer. How will that feel for you: stuck in the middle between your oldest friend and his wife? Or, looked at another way, your oldest friend and her husband.”
For an instant, Tony had the sense of being taunted, of Sam’s subtle reprisal for his own humiliation. Quietly, Tony answered, “I’ll explain it to Sue, pal. I wouldn’t care to add to your troubles.”
Sam blinked, and the irony vanished from his face. “I’m sorry, Tony. I really am. For that, and for everything I’ve had to tell you. But I never, ever have been capable of murder.”
* * *
When they returned, Sam drifted upstairs to the bedroom, leaving Sue and Tony alone. The mirthless smile with which she regarded him reminded Tony of Sam, save that Sue’s was sadder and without any malice.
“You have something to tell me,” she said.
He sat close to her on the couch. “Only that, as his lawyer, I can’t tell you anything. And neither can he.”
Sue watched his eyes. “I thought a wife could never testify against her husband.”
“That’s somewhat complicated. But the short of it is that, in some instances, it might be up to you, not Sam.” Touching her hand, Tony felt again the strange duality of his role. “For now, Sue, not being part of this is a mercy. Later, when it’s about your marriage, and not law, you can talk this through with him.”
Still Sue studied him. “Oh, Tony,” she murmured, “he was sleeping with that girl, wasn’t he?”
He did not answer; her question did not ask this of him. “I only hope,” she said at last, “this doesn’t get any worse.”
“He says he didn’t kill her, Sue. I think people will accept that.” Pausing, he tried to give her some encouragement. “I’m going to see the county prosecutor tomorrow. Maybe that part will go away.”
Sue smiled faintly. “Go away? Things like this don’t ‘go away.’ You know that better than anyone.”
All at once, Tony remembered something else. He spoke more quietly yet. “There’s at least one thing I should tell you, Sue. Today, more or less in the middle of everything, he asked if we’d ever slept together.”
Her face registered no surprise. Slowly, she nodded. “It’s come up before. What did you tell him?”
“The same thing you must have.”
Sue was quiet for a moment, and then she shook her head. “Poor Tony,” she said. “So many secrets to keep. Even ours.”
FOUR
The passage of time had done little, Tony saw, to change the face of Steelton. Nothing could reverse the way soot and harsh weather had seeped into the pores of gray concrete buildings; or the indifference of heavy industry, a century before, to preserving green space on the riverbank; or the absence of trees anywhere; or the fact that its stolid architecture, with a few faceless glass exceptions, was frozen in the last great period of rust-belt vitality, the forties and fifties. The pigeon still seemed to be the municipal bird; flocks strutted up and down the barren cement of Steelton Square, fouling the base of its presiding statue, a cast-iron Marshal Pilsudski. Tony had always imagined Eastern Europe as gray and feudal; in his mind, the Poles and Czechs and Lithuanians and Slovaks who had settled in Steelton were predisposed to the bleakness that the Calvinist barons who had built the mills and factories had done so much to provide. Approaching the office of the county prosecutor, a forties-style concrete bunker next to the courthouse, Tony recalled uncomfortably that his fate once had been decided here; he wondered if some file with his name on it, or Alison’s, was still stored in its bowels.
On the fourth floor, Tony presented himself to the male receptionist who eyed him through a bulletproof glass partition. He asked for Stella Marz.
* * *
The woman burst through an unmarked wooden door, all energy and movement. Extending her hand, she inspected him with interest and the faintest glint of humor, as though the presence of Anthony Lord in the life of an assistant county prosecutor might prove to be a challenge or, at least, a stimulating novelty.
“Stella Marz,” she said and, without much more, steered him through a linoleum maze of hallways to an office with a view of Lake Erie over the cement breakwater—gray on gray. She nodded toward the window. “I hope you enjoy the scenery,” she said. “Until last week, I had an office overlooking the parking lot.” Her tone suggested that she had been too busy to consider the view herself; at once, Tony pegged her as a true believer beneath the brisk, professional manner.
She was mid-to-late thirties. If Tony’s experience was any guide, her assignment to a major potential homicide meant that she was a rising star who, as they were meeting alone, did not require baby-sitting by the head of the Criminal Division. She was sturdily built, and her broad face was quite attractive, with a cleft chin and somewhat exotic brown eyes, a hint of Eurasia that Tony had learned to associate with certain Slavic women. Her hair was brown and her skin pale and, judging from her makeup and well-tailored gray suit, she took care with her appearance. The gym bag in the corner of her office reinforced another guess: that she worked out, and did not fool around about it.
“You’re a long way from home,” she said.
“Not so long. I was born here.”
“I know. Your uncle Joe, I think it was, helped my father join the steelworkers union.”
Tony smiled. “Joe Stanicek. My mother’s brother.”
“That’s right. But by the time I was born, your family had moved out of the neighborhood.”
Another guess had been correct, Tony knew: she was a working-class Polish girl who had struggled hard to get ahead. He wondered how much, if anything, she knew about what had happened to him after his parents left. “My family moved to Lake City,” he said. “That’s how I know Sam Robb.”
She tilted her head, considering him. Tony sensed that she knew that he had not visited his parents’ old neighborhood in decades and, as to his relatives, maintained only Christmas card relations; he sensed, further, that such loyalties were important to Stella Marz. “Lucky for Sam Robb,” she said finally. “How much do you know about this?”
Tony shrugged. “I know what he told the police. But, from your side of it, nothing. Is there anything I should know?”
She frowned. “I don’t believe in hiding the ball, Mr. Lord—”
“Tony, please…”
“If we bring a case, Tony, I have to disclose my evidence, and I’d rather know in advance if a case has problems.” She folded her hands. “That’s just how I work.”
There was something defensive about th
is, Tony thought; she wanted him to know she was not going to roll over because he had a reputation or appeared with his wife in the pages of glossy magazines. Respectfully, he said, “I appreciate that, and prefer it. On both sides.”
Stella smiled a little. Okay, the look said to him, we’ve both announced what nice people we are—let’s see how it works.
“For openers,” she said, “I’m pretty sure this girl was murdered.”
It was blunt enough to unsettle Tony. “Not an accident or suicide? I know next to nothing about Marcie Calder. But she was upset, Sam tells me, and teenage kids have scary highs and lows—every bad experience is a first. And some don’t have the resources to cushion the fall.”
“As it were.” Stella’s tone was dry, but her eyes were not laughing. “Or, as we believe, the push.”
“How so?”
“The Lake City cops, who are pretty good these days, did some careful work at the crime scene. So did the criminalist from our coroner’s office.
“To start, the last few feet of the cliff above where we found the body are dirt, not grass. There were no footprints the size of Marcie Calder’s. But there were footprints—size eleven running shoes.” Stella raised her eyebrows. “Sam Robb’s shoe size.”
Tony smiled. “And mine. I assume you searched his house for running shoes to match, and found…”
“Other size eleven shoes. Which means either that the footprints weren’t his or that he got rid of the shoes.” Pausing, she steepled her fingers in front of her. “What’s more troublesome are the skid marks on the cliff, running parallel to the size eleven shoeprints—the kind made by someone’s feet when someone else is dragging them. There’s the same mud on the toes of Marcie’s tennis shoes. So it’s a pretty good guess that Marcie was dragged, then thrown over the cliff.”
Stella’s face was grim now; watching her imagine this girl’s last minutes, Tony sensed the passion that had made her a prosecutor. “For that,” he responded, “she’d have to be dead, or unconscious.”
“Dead, I think. From three blows to the head with a rock the size of a football, taken from above the beach. Or so the coroner believes.”
“Couldn’t she have hit her head going down the cliff?”
Stella nodded. “Could have—maybe. But we found a rock on the beach with Marcie’s hair and blood type, AB, all over it. It was several feet from the body, like it’d been thrown there. Otherwise”—here, Stella compressed her lips—“Marcie’s head would have had to knock it sideways, like a cue ball. Pretty strange physics. And there’s an awful lot of hair and blood on the rock for that.”
He had been doing this, Tony reflected, for roughly twenty years. But in every homicide, there was always some moment when he imagined the death itself. Now, involuntarily, he saw and heard the crunch of a stone on the skull of a black-haired girl.
“Even if you’re right that this was murder,” he said, “I’ve known Sam Robb for a long time.”
She nodded. “And he’s not talking to police anymore, right?”
“Right. It’s all going through me.”
She watched his face. “Then ask your old friend something for me, okay? Ask why we found specks of blood on his steering wheel.”
Tony made himself go blank. “What type?”
“AB.” Stella’s voice was flat. “Maybe there’s some simple explanation he’d like to share with us.…”
This hit him much harder than it should have. All at once, Tony felt his weakness: he needed Sam to be innocent. In his best conversational voice, he said, “I assume you’re running DNA on the samples.”
“Sure. But the results won’t be in for a while.”
“What about the coroner’s report?”
“Not yet.” She paused. “That’s something I give you only when I have to—when, and if, charges are filed.”
Tony reflected. “Let’s assume for a moment you’re right—someone bludgeoned her to death with a stone. You’re not only going to get blood all over the murderer—you’ll get it on her body and on the ground near where it happened.…”
Slowly, Stella nodded, eyes locked on his. “You’d think so.”
“Find any blood at his house, or on his clothes?”
“No. Of course, any sane killer would get rid of the clothes.”
“But what about blood near the cliff?”
“It rained that night, remember?”
“No witnesses, either, I assume.”
“Not yet.” For the first time Stella looked impatient. “If this were indictable right now, we’d indict him.”
Tony decided to back off a little. “I appreciate that, Stella. But I can’t help but wonder what his motive is supposed to be.”
Stella raised her eyebrows. “How about shtupping a sixteen-year-old girl? If she exposes him, Sam Robb is toast.”
Tony kept his voice neutral. “He told the police he wasn’t, as I recall. Anyhow, murder isn’t a cookie-cutter solution to a crisis—lying is. To murder someone, you’ve got to be capable of murder, and there’s nothing whatsoever in Sam Robb’s life to suggest that he is.” Tony paused, leaning forward. “If he were so afraid of exposure, why in the world would he go to the police? The only reason you and I are sitting here, with Sam at risk of losing his job and maybe worse, is because he did.”
Stella looked unimpressed. “Maybe he was afraid some witness would put him there—he did tell the police about seeing another car. And he wasn’t in a great position to ask his wife to lie for him, was he?”
It was a standoff. “About Sue Robb,” Tony said. “This hasn’t been great for her. Please tell the cops to leave her alone.”
“Spousal privilege?”
“Uh-huh.”
Stella nodded: this was nothing more than she expected, her expression said, and she was too professional to let it bother her. “Anything else I can do for you?” she asked.
“Just keep an open mind.” He paused. “Even if you think this may be murder, there are a lot of people in that park at night.”
Stella was quiet for a time; for once, she did not look at him. “I know what happened to you,” she said at last. When she looked at him, and her face softened at what she saw, Tony knew that his own impassivity had deserted him. “A reporter called this morning,” she went on. “Someone saw you at the airport with Sue Robb. I may be too young to remember the Alison Taylor case, but it was the last murder in Lake City. This guy reminded me that you were a suspect.”
Once more, Tony felt the depression of his return descend on him. “Then you know I’ve got some feeling about this.”
Stella studied him, as if waiting for Tony to protest his own innocence. When he did not, she said, “I don’t like the feel of your friend Sam—I know why he was there with Marcie Calder, and so do you.” She sounded certain; Tony wondered whether, in this instance, she knew more than she was saying. “I also happen,” Stella went on, “to believe in the value of every human life—it’s a religious and moral principle with me, from abortion to the death penalty. So I can’t go along with my friends in this office who see some murders as public service killings and executions as God’s will. But the murder of a teenage girl, if that’s what this was, hits me harder than most. This girl should never have died, and her parents never should have had to feel what they’re feeling.”
“That’s what I felt about Alison, and Alison’s parents.”
Stella nodded. “What I’m telling you is this—if I think your friend killed Marcie Calder, and I’ve got a prosecutable case, I’m going to try my damnedest to nail Sam Robb to the wall. But I’ll be careful, very careful, about deciding that. And you’ll always get a hearing from me.”
“That’s all I could ask.” Tony paused, curious. “Do you still go to Mass, then?”
“Every Sunday.” A small smile of her own. “The Church helped free Poland, after all.”
“Poland,” Tony could not resist answering, “but not women.”
“That’ll come,” she r
esponded crisply. “Sometimes I wonder why men and lapsed Catholics want to do my worrying for me.” She paused a moment. “Especially ones who may have forgotten where they’re from.”
Tony considered his answer. “You’re right,” he said at last. “It’s hard to judge someone else’s faith—or life. As for my own disaffection with the Church, it’s more complex than you could know, and rooted in a particular time and circumstance.” His voice took on a slight edge. “Believe me, Stella, I haven’t ‘forgotten’ anything.”
Stella gave him a somewhat rueful smile. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Actually, you were a little bit of a hero to me—especially knowing where you were from. During law school, when the Carson murder trial was on TV, I watched you whenever I could. I was torn between wanting to grow up to be like you or to be the kind of prosecutor who kept lawyers like you from walking people like Harry Carson. Either way, I admired you for having come so far. So this has been interesting.”
Tony smiled. “I’m glad you added that last.”
Stella stood, extending her hand. “Anyhow,” she said, “welcome back. I hope you’re prepared for the media.”
“Do I have a choice?”
Stella shook her head, not smiling. “No,” she said. “Not anymore.”
FIVE
“Well,” Saul Ravin said, “if it isn’t Hollywood Tony Lord.”
Tony laughed. “Hello, Saul.”
They shook hands, and then Saul stepped back and gave him a mock once-over. “Better clothes too, I’d say. Not bad for a Polish boy.”
“You created a monster, Saul. No question.”
“A monster I could live with—I’ve represented several. But a criminal defense lawyer…” Saul paused, shaking his head. “Oh, well, Tony, it’s too late now. So have a seat.”
Saul’s office was much the same. Saul was not: his hair was a curly white nimbus, and his paunch had become a belly worthy of a sumo wrestler or a Mafia don. His eyes were still bright, but the red flush to his skin was worrisome and, at a little past two, there was an open bottle of Scotch on his desk. Tony had seen the signs before—the aging criminal lawyer, perhaps still sharp but too mired in drink and cynicism and the fatigue of too many trials for too many years to function in more than short bursts. Tony realized that he had preserved Saul in his memory as the savior, a lawyer at his best, and that part of him still wished this to be so. Instead Tony found himself pondering once more the hidden cost of the criminal lawyer’s life—the need to submerge personal feelings to serve abstract principles: the burden of proof, the presumption of innocence …
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