Silent Witness

by Richard North Patterson

  Sam’s eyes narrowed, “Johnny,” he answered, “let himself become a fat piece of shit, then died like one. If I’ve got all this time off, I’m going to do something with it.” He paused, wiping the sweat out of his eyes. “What do you do?”

  “A lot of cardiovascular, mostly. Some weights.”

  Sam inspected him. “Haven’t gained much, have you. Play any sports?”

  Shrugging, Tony tried to cover his impatience, born of anxiety. “Pickup basketball, every now and then…”

  “Then we’ll play. As long as you’re here, you can start working out with me. Six-thirty a.m., at our gym? I can pick you up.”

  You’re still throwing off your back foot, Tony remembered Sam saying. “I’ll consider it, Sam. But right now, we need to talk.”

  Leaning over, hands on knees, Sam took several slow, deep breaths, the act of an athlete renewing himself. “Let’s sit down somewhere,” Tony said.

  Silent, they walked to the backyard. There was still a hammock in the place where Sue and Tony had once laid out Sam. As they sat, it occurred to Tony that he had not seen Sam drinking. “You give up liquor?”

  “No. But since Marcie died, I haven’t felt like a drink. But then I haven’t felt much like eating. Or sleeping.” He turned to Tony. “Was that what it was like for you? Like your life before Alison was killed happened to someone else?”

  “A lot like that, yes.”

  Sam inhaled. “Poor Sue,” he said. “In one week, she finds out about Marcie—at least, enough to guess. And all the help she’s got is a husband who’s lying or isn’t really there at all.” His tone sharpened. “She doesn’t even have you, does she, Tony?”

  Tony tried to read his meaning. “I’m your lawyer, as you’ve already pointed out to me. Anyhow, I suspect she was used to you being off somewhere. Isn’t that what happens when you have an affair? Or were you able to separate Marcie from Sue, and live in both worlds like nothing was wrong?”

  Sam gazed at him. Night was falling, and Tony could not read his expression; he felt the weight of Sam’s scrutiny in the length of his silence. “You have to try,” Sam answered coolly. “Unless you want to go crazy. But then you find out, like I did, that you’ve lost control.” He sat back in the hammock, putting his arms behind his head in a pantomime of boredom. “So what’s new, pal? I already know that Johnny had a heart attack. So this must be something else.”

  “It is,” Tony said. “Someone sodomized Marcie Calder.”

  Sam raised his head a fraction. “Meaning…?”

  “That the night she died, some guy fucked her in the ass. Could have been consensual, could have been rape. Could have happened after you saw her. Or while.”

  Sam became quite still. “What does your lady prosecutor think?”

  “She’s got an open mind. The guy used a condom, called Adam’s Rib. So there’s no semen sample to DNA.”

  For a long time, Sam was quiet. “How do they know about the condom?”

  “Why?” Tony asked softly. “Did they get the brand wrong?”

  Sam sat up. Head propped in his hands, he stared ahead, as if Tony were not there. In the kitchen, a light went on. Sue’s face was framed in the window, bent over the sink, rinsing dishes. Every so often she gazed at them; Tony was not sure that Sam had noticed her.

  Silent, Tony tried to sort out his emotions. “You’d better tell me,” he said at last. “Unless you bought the rubbers in another state.”

  * * *

  “Does she do this?” Marcie asked.

  Sam’s mouth felt dry. “No.”

  She lay on her stomach, naked, in the back seat of his car. “Go ahead,” she whispered. “I want you to. I want us to do everything.”

  He should not do this, Sam knew. He should say what he had come to say.

  In the moonlight, her slender back was like marble. There would never be, for the rest of his life, another moment like this. His heart raced.

  Slowly, she presented herself to him; for an instant, he remembered her, bent over in the starting blocks, the first pulse of his desire for her …

  The next few moments were vivid, fleeting. Her small cry. The painful slowness of it and then, finally, the ecstasy of having her. It’s all right, she kept saying in a muffled voice, it’s all right.

  Afterward, she lay beneath him. He shuddered in his solitude and shame.

  “I want us to get married,” she said.

  * * *

  Listening to Sam’s story, Tony watched Sue in the window. It made the moment that much more painful.

  “I couldn’t tell you,” Sam said.

  “Couldn’t?”

  “I was ashamed, all right?” Sam stood, not facing him. “Here I was, wanting to break it off, and this beautiful sixteen-year-old wants to do something I’ve never done.”

  “That’s pretty advanced for the girl everyone else describes to me.”

  “We’d talked about it, all right? Before. She asked me what I wanted—” Sam stopped abruptly, gazing at Sue. Quietly, he finished, “With a rubber, Tony, how would they know?”

  “Oh, the locals are quite sophisticated these days. And so is the coroner. The march of science and all that…”

  “Next time,” Sam murmured. “Next time, I said to myself, you can tell her somehow. Then she said we should get married, and it all snapped.” He turned back to Tony. “The rest was just like I told you, Tony. I didn’t kill her, and I didn’t think this part mattered—to you. Only to me and the school board.”

  Tony stood. “According to Janice D’Abruzzi, Marcie begged Janice to cover for her. That there was something important she had to tell you.”

  Sam shook his head. “It was about getting married, is all I can think.” His voice fell. “Or maybe she just wanted to please me.…”

  In the window, Sue turned out the lights.

  Tony’s voice went quiet again. “I asked you not to lie to me. Perhaps you didn’t hear me. But this is the last time I ask.”

  Sam folded his arms. “I didn’t kill her, Tony. This is the last time I tell you that.”

  For a time, Tony was silent. Because of who Sam was, Tony knew, his friend paid a price in Tony’s disillusionment and anger that no other client would. But that did not make Sam Robb a murderer. “What are the chances,” Tony inquired at last, “that Marcie was involved with someone else?”

  Sam looked at him sharply. “Someone else?”

  Tony hesitated. “Like Ernie Nixon, perhaps. She seems to have been attached to him.”

  Sam shook his head. “No way, Tony. No way.”

  “Why not?”

  Sam stood straight again. “Because she wasn’t like that. For better or worse, I was the one that Marcie wanted.”

  Tony watched him. Under his breath, he murmured, “Jesus, Sam.”

  * * *

  At nine-thirty, Tony lay on the bed in blue jeans, shirtless, gazing up at the ceiling.

  There was a knock on the door. Rising to answer, Tony wondered whether it was a reporter, or Sam, or maybe even Ernie Nixon. But, opening the door, he realized that he had expected her.

  Sue wore jeans, a sweater, and a denim jacket; in the dim light outside his motel room, she looked smaller, younger. It was like a sudden glimpse of the girl he had loved, which left him quiet for a moment.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can come back.”

  “No,” Tony answered. “You just caught me by surprise. Come on in, and I’ll throw something on.”

  As he buttoned his work shirt, she sat in a corner, looking over the room. “Not much, is it?”

  Tony smiled. “Kind of stark. Like my room when I was a kid.”

  Sue looked up at him. “Well,” she said, “things have gotten better. At least for you.”

  Tony nodded. “Lately. In more ways than one, I’ve been luckier than I deserve to be.”

  Sue stood, hands in the pockets of her jacket. “After that night,” she said at last, “the one that you and I had, Sam tried so hard. He
watched his drinking, was much more thoughtful of me. It was like you and I—just the thought of us together—had scared Sam into seeing how awful he could be. When we got married…” Pausing, she shrugged. “Eventually, he started drinking again. Mostly at home, where people didn’t see him. But the children didn’t like it—liquor throws his emotional balance off. I guess, for him, it dulls his disappointment.”

  Tony watched her. It was as though, in her loneliness, she were resuming a conversation with an old friend, one that had been interrupted only yesterday, or the day before that. “He tells me that since last week, he hasn’t drunk a drop.”

  Sue nodded. “Something happens that scares him, and he stops. Maybe this time it’ll be for good.” She looked at him. “Did he tell you he’d been drinking that night?”

  Surprised, Tony tilted his head. “How much?”

  “Enough to make his eyes bright. You know that one.”

  “Yes.”

  “I keep thinking about that night. Whether I knew, deep down. Whether I could have stopped him. The way he was when he came home…” Her voice fell off.

  Tony felt his own discomfort. “How was that?” he said at last.

  She looked away. “Contrite, careful. Like someone who’d been scared sober. He wasn’t the same person who’d left the house.”

  She did not wish to look at him, he saw. Just as he did not wish to question her. Finally, she faced him. “Where is this going, Tony? Sam won’t say.”

  “He can’t say. And neither of us knows.” His voice softened. “I hate this, Sue. For me, who’s still your friend, but most of all for you. I wish there was some other way to help you than being a lawyer.”

  “A lawyer is what I asked for. Because that’s what Sam needs. For me, you can’t make this any better, except by helping him. Sam’s still our kids’ father, the man I chose. I just wish I could see the end of it.” Pausing, Sue touched his arm. “And that there was something I could do for you. Instead of being someone else for you to worry about.”

  “You’re not. The problem is with me. Part of representing a client is to put your personal feelings aside.” Tony paused, speaking more softly. “But this is harder for me—because of Alison, of Sam, and, most of all, because of you. Tony and Sue, I sometimes think, still looking out for Sam. Except, this time, you and I will never get the night off, and I don’t even get to be your friend.” He tried to smile. “Which makes me just another guy asking you for understanding.”

  “Understanding?” Sue’s own smile was fleeting. “Yes, I’m good at that. Anyhow, I never thought that understanding you was anything big to ask.”

  Gently, she kissed his cheek, and said goodbye.

  When she left, Tony tried to fathom why he felt so sad, and who the sadness was for.

  ELEVEN

  “Why,” Tony said, “do I get the feeling that you know something I don’t.”

  “I probably do,” Stella Marz answered, and took a bite of her hot dog.

  They were standing in Steelton Square, near the statue of Marshal Pilsudski. It was a fresh spring day; around them, office workers, released from their air-conditioned tombs, patronized the hot dog and pretzel vendors, some feeding crumbs to the pigeons who straggled behind them. Fresh from court, Stella had only an hour; she had given Tony ten minutes between mouthfuls. “Do I have to guess?” he asked.

  “Look, Tony. I’ve got no obligation to tell you everything I may know, or suspect, about Sam Robb. Just like I’m not obliged to file charges because the Lake City cops—or the media—want me to.” She paused. “Or to give the Steelton Press a copy of the Alison Taylor autopsy report.”

  “They wanted it?”

  “Uh-huh. I told them it was still an open file, so no dice.”

  Tony shoved both hands in his pockets. “I appreciate that.”

  Stella shrugged. “The Taylors still have feelings too.”

  Tony waited for a while. “About Sam,” he said, “I can’t speak to things I don’t know about.”

  Stella turned to him. “Again, there are other people whose feelings are involved here. It isn’t just me and you.”

  “Marcie’s parents, you mean.”

  Stella wiped her lips with a napkin. “My telephone’s been ringing off the hook—you’ve seen the Calders, Ernie Nixon, Marcie’s friend Janice, even Alison Taylor’s parents. So you’ve begun to get the drift: Marcie Calder wasn’t suicidal; she was sexually involved with an older man; she needed to tell him something the night she died; and she was sodomized before, during, or after her death.” She turned to him again. “And, because I’m certain of it now, I’ll tell you one new fact. The blood on Sam Robb’s steering wheel was Marcie’s.”

  Though he was prepared for this, Tony felt shaken. “The DNA came back.”

  “On her blood. Yes.”

  Tony loosened his tie. “I’ve got the clear impression, Stella, that Marcie’s parents take it as fact that Sam was having sex with her. Is it the sodomy? Because they’re not the kind of people who would easily believe their teenage daughter was sleeping with a married man. Unless they had no choice.”

  Stella looked at him steadily. “Then you should feel sorry for them. Just last week, they had an innocent, living daughter.”

  Whatever else there was, Tony knew, Stella would not tell him. Perhaps she was not yet sure of it.

  “Are you indicting?” he asked bluntly.

  “Not yet.” Her face betrayed nothing. “Before I do, I’ll tell you that. And why.”

  There was still a piece missing, he guessed. Just as they once had with Tony himself, the prosecutor’s office was waiting for the case to get better. He wondered how much of the queasiness he felt was for Sam, how much from the memory of feeling stalked.

  “How much time do I have, Stella?”

  She turned from him, eyeing the pigeons. “If you can find anything to help him,” she said finally, “I’d do it soon.”

  * * *

  The young woman looked up from her notepad, pushing the wire-rim glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Is it strange for you,” she asked, “returning to Lake City in a case so similar?”

  Tony’s eyes gave her nothing—no resentment, no surprise, no relief from his own scrutiny. “Alison Taylor was strangled. I know, because I found her. But the chances are considerable that Marcie Calder died in a fall.”

  It seemed to fluster her. She sat back, gaze flicking around the bleak cafeteria of the Steelton Press. “All right. But both Alison and Marcie died under suspicious circumstances, and you—then—and Sam Robb were both placed at the scene.”

  “I was found at the scene. Sam Robb put himself there.” Tony kept his voice level. “Before you write this article, comparing Sam and me to the Menendez brothers, remember that Sam Robb went to the police voluntarily. I’m really a much better target for the kind of article you seem bent on writing now. Because I was a far better suspect.”

  She flushed; Tony watched her wonder if she was drinking coffee with a murderer. He had no interest in making this any easier.

  “Do you believe him?” she asked.

  Tony permitted his eyes to widen. “Twenty-eight years ago,” he said succinctly, “Alison Taylor’s father found me by her body. People from this paper, with inquiring minds like yours, printed that we’d had a stormy relationship and implied that I might have killed her in the process of a sexual assault. They nearly ruined my life, and they did it without conscience, for a story.” He made his voice soften. “If I told you I was innocent, and that I never quite got over what people like you did to me, would you believe me? Because you seem ready to do it all over again, and this time take Sam Robb with me.”

  She began fidgeting with her hair. “You’re saying that he’s innocent, like you were.”

  “I’m saying something more important: that Sam Robb is innocent under the law. Blemish me if you like—I’m almost past caring. But don’t make Sam Robb’s reputation the price we pay for the First Amendment.” For the fir
st time, Tony permitted himself a smile. “Please tell me if I owe you an apology. I’m afraid I bring my own experience to what Sam Robb and his family are suffering now. And, like me, Sam Robb hasn’t been charged with anything.”

  She sat back, relieved that Tony had lowered the tension a little. “I understand,” she said. “Believe me, I want to be fair.”

  “That’s all I can ask.” Tony paused a moment. “If Donald White had never come to Lake City, Alison might still be alive. And if Saul Ravin hadn’t uncovered him, I might not be free to speak for someone else’s innocence.”

  When she began scribbling furiously, Tony knew that he had just written her closing paragraph—that his coldness, followed by a thaw, had worked as he intended. It was just as well that she did not know that only the coldness was real and that, try as he might, Tony Lord could not separate her from what other reporters had done to him before she was ever born.

  * * *

  Saul cast an ironic glance around him. “To Donald,” he said, and took a swallow of whiskey.

  They sat in the same waterfront bar where, twenty-eight years before, Saul had freed Tony to go on with his life. To his surprise, Tony remembered it well and saw that little was new—a couple of placards for lite beers that had not existed then, some video games. The food smell, the darkness, the dull sheen of varnish on the bar and tables, were as before.

  “I’d have given a lot,” Tony said softly, “to look Donald White in the eyes. To know what he did to her, and whether she suffered.”

  “It’s done, Tony. Except for the press, it’s done.”

  Tony shook his head. “For some people, you once told me, it’ll never be done. You just forgot to mention that I was one.” Pausing, he took a sip of his Scotch. “It’s like a time warp—Alison, Sue, Sam … Even now, he can’t resist competing with me. It’s instinctive.”

  “It probably doesn’t help that you slept with her and then went on to Stacey Tarrant. It’s just another reminder that you left him in the dust.”

  Tony looked up. “He doesn’t know that, Saul. And neither do you.”

  “Oh, he knows.” Saul gave him a small smile. “People like the Sam I imagine would know you screwed her even if you hadn’t. By the way, what do you make of your old friend these days?”