Silent Witness

by Richard North Patterson

  Tearless now, Marcie shook her head. “I’m Catholic, Dr. Cox.”

  “So was I.”

  For some reason, Marcie’s fingers curled into Nora Cox’s. “Do you ever think about it?”

  Cox understood the subtext of the question: that the doctor, recently married to an older man with grown children, had no children of her own. It made her quiet for a time. “Yes,” she answered. “But I still think I was right.”

  Marcie gazed into her eyes with a look of precocity and insight that, in Cox’s mood, took her by surprise. “I’m sorry,” Marcie answered. “But I don’t think you were.”

  Gently, Nora Cox released Marcie’s hand, pulling back a little. To make this child face reality, she said in her most clinical voice, “There’s adoption, I suppose.”

  Marcie blinked. Watching the girl’s lips tremble, Cox saw with pity and sadness how wholly unprepared she was. Softly, she asked, “Does he know how worried you’ve been?”

  Marcie shook her head, unable to speak.

  “Then maybe it’s time,” Cox told her, “to turn to your parents. Sometimes families are best when things look worst. I know your mother, and I know how much she loves you.”

  Rocking forward, Marcie looked down, writhing in apparent anguish. “I can’t tell my father, ever. I just can’t.”

  Cox was quiet for a moment. “Then there’s only one way out, isn’t there?” She took Marcie’s hand again. “If you change your mind, I’ll help you. And find you counseling afterward.”

  Marcie leaned against her. “I can’t,” she said at last.

  “Then what will you do?”

  Marcie shook her head. “I don’t know. Only that I have to tell him, right away.”

  “The father?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you think he can help you?”

  “No.” Suddenly Marcie’s voice was cool and clear. “I have to warn him.”

  Once more, Nora Cox was surprised. “Because he’s married?”

  Tears came to Marcie’s eyes again. “God,” she murmured. “It’s so much worse than that.…”

  Cox put an arm around her. “What could be worse?”

  Marcie did not answer. Gently, she disengaged, and began to take her blue jeans off the hook.

  The paper gown dropped to the floor; Marcie looked so slim that Cox saw, or perhaps imagined, the first slight swelling of her belly.

  Naked, Marcie looked at her own body. “Please … don’t tell them.”

  She had nearly resolved to do so, Nora Cox realized. But all that she said was, “The lab results won’t be back for a day or so.”

  When Marcie squared her shoulders, Nora Cox’s heart went out to her.

  “I’ll tell him tonight,” Marcie answered.

  FOUR

  After lunch, Tony commenced his cross-examination.

  It was delicate: Cox was a sympathetic witness and, at this point, the jury would have no sympathy for Sam Robb. The challenge for Tony was to do his job without exciting more dislike.

  He began casually, hands in his pockets, keeping his tone mild. “As I recall, Dr. Cox, you knew Marcie Calder for roughly twelve years. How would you describe her?”

  Cox hesitated. “Polite, quiet. Thoughtful, I would say.”

  Tony nodded, adding a pause of his own; the trick was to make each new question seem spontaneous, creating the illusion that he and the jury were discovering things together. “Did Marcie strike you as a girl who kept things inside?”

  Cox frowned. “It would only be an impression.”

  “But from what you saw…”

  Cox considered him, pensive. “Well,” she answered, “she was certainly guarded about this sexual experience.”

  Tony placed a finger to his lips. “With respect to her pregnancy, she was also very frightened, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “And alone?”

  Reluctantly, Cox nodded. “So it seemed.” For the first time, the doctor sounded defensive. “That was the only reason I shared with her what I did—my own experience.”

  But not, Tony thought to himself, the reason you shared this conversation with the jury. That was something Tony, the lapsed Catholic, thought he understood: a public act of penance from a woman steeped in guilt—perhaps from her own past, certainly for Marcie Calder’s death—in the hope that Marcie’s parents would forgive her. It made his task that much more difficult.

  “But she rejected even the thought of an abortion, is that correct?”

  Cox gave him a brief, puzzled look, as if certain that her answer could only hurt Sam Robb. “That’s right—she did.”

  “And she also told you that she couldn’t ever imagine telling her father. In fact, she seemed afraid of him.”

  Cox gave the Calders a brief glance of apology. “With respect to being pregnant, yes. But that’s not so surprising.”

  Cox seemed distracted by her own remorse, Tony thought. But, in one or two questions, she would see where he was headed. “When you mentioned adoption,” he asked, “how would you describe Marcie’s reaction?”

  Cox looked down. “It was as I said: she seemed completely unprepared to have this baby. I don’t think she’d had time to consider the reality of it.”

  “So when you asked her to consider taking the baby to term, she seemed frightened by that too?”

  “Yes.”

  To his side, Tony saw Stella Marz lean forward with a new attentiveness. Softly, he said, “Let me try to summarize Marcie’s state of mind as you perceived it. She was opposed to an abortion, afraid to tell her father, unprepared to have a baby, and isolated from adult guidance. Is that correct?”

  Cox’s eyes were cool now. “Yes. Essentially.”

  “Did she suggest what she thought her choices came down to?”

  “No.” Cox’s tone hardened. “Except to tell this man.”

  Tony tilted his head. “What about marriage?”

  Cox glanced at Sam Robb. “The man was married, Mr. Lord.”

  “Did Marcie suggest to you, one way or the other, whether she’d considered the idea of marrying this man herself?”

  Cox’s eyes flew open. “She said that her pregnancy could ruin him.…”

  “But did she, in words or substance, rule out the idea that this unknown man—or some man—could marry her?”

  “Objection,” Stella said. “There’s no foundation for this question. How can this witness know what Marcie Calder thought about an option that Marcie never mentioned?”

  “That’s precisely the point,” Tony said to Karoly. “It’s an open question.”

  Judge Karoly pursed his mouth. He had a gift, Tony was beginning to notice, for making his job look harder than it was, and he did not seem in command. Turning to Cox, Karoly said at last, “You may answer.”

  Cox gave a shrug of irritation. “I don’t know what—if anything—Marcie was thinking about marriage.…”

  “Or how her emotional state might be affected were that option later foreclosed to her?”

  Cox folded her arms. “I have no reason to believe that Marcie thought it was an option.”

  Tony did not argue with her. “But she was frightened.”

  “Yes.”

  Tony moved a step closer. More quietly, he asked, “And lost?”

  He felt the jury watch him now. Stella was up quickly. “The question is hopelessly vague, Your Honor. What does ‘lost’ mean?”

  Tony turned to Stella. “Oh, I think Dr. Cox knows. But I can ask it another way.” Turning to Cox, he asked, “Have you ever had a patient who committed suicide?”

  Stella stood at once. “Objection,” she snapped. “Irrelevant.”

  “Hardly,” Tony said to Karoly. “This goes to the heart of our defense.”

  Slowly, Karoly nodded. “You may answer,” he told Cox.

  Cox’s face had set. “If you’re suggesting—”

  “Just answer the question,” Tony cut in. “Please.”

  Cox gave him a
trapped look. “Yes. I have had. As I guess you know.”

  Tony nodded. “For the jury’s benefit, how many patients does this involve?”

  “Two.”

  “Two teenage girls, to be precise. Fifteen and sixteen.”

  Cox grimaced. “Yes.”

  “Do you have any idea why they killed themselves?”

  “Only what I read in the papers. Unfortunately.”

  Tony tilted his head. “Is it true that you saw one of the girls, Beverly Snowden, roughly three weeks before her death?”

  “Yes.” Cox made her voice even now. “But I had no idea. In fact, she seemed quite normal.”

  “More normal than Marcie Calder?”

  “Objection,” Stella Marz called out. “Calls for speculation.”

  “Is it true,” Tony amended, “that Marcie Calder was in a fragile mental state on the afternoon of her death?”

  “It’s true.” Cox looked at him directly. “But in the Catholic Church, suicide is a sin. As is abortion.”

  Tony let the answer linger. “But you were Catholic,” he said softly, “if I recall this morning’s testimony.”

  Dislike flashed in Cox’s eyes again. “I was, yes.”

  “And the reason you shared your personal experience with Marcie was that you were worried for her, correct?”

  “Yes. But about Marcie ending her life in a figurative sense, not literally. If she believed her fetus was a life, how could she kill both the fetus and herself?”

  “That’s an excellent question. As a doctor, are you aware of how the incidence of suicide among teenagers compares to the rest of the population?”

  Cox hesitated. “It’s quite high.”

  “And the decision to commit suicide can seem quite sudden, can it not? As with Beverly Snowden.”

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s often because when the girl sustains some trauma, she has nothing to compare it to, no experience with coping.”

  “So the literature suggests.”

  “And teenage girls also can become quite isolated, true? They keep their suffering to themselves.”

  “Again, I’m not an expert. But that’s what the literature suggests.”

  “Did you suggest psychological counseling for Marcie Calder?”

  Nora Cox looked stung now. “No.”

  Tony paused a moment, letting the jury absorb this. “Didn’t Marcie Calder need professional help at least as much as she needed an abortion?”

  Cox stared at him, torn between self-doubt and open dislike.

  “Objection,” Stella Marz called out, quickly approaching the bench. “Dr. Cox is a pediatrician. She has not been qualified as an expert in child psychology. Mr. Lord’s attempt to blame others for this tragic death is offensive.”

  Tony kept his own voice mild. “So is this attempt to blame Sam Robb alone for what may be the tragic result of a chain of events in which several adults, whatever their intentions, failed Marcie Calder quite badly. The jury is entitled to consider that.…”

  “Enough,” Karoly said belatedly. “Both of you.” Facing Tony with the weak man’s sudden stubbornness, he said, “Dr. Cox is not a child psychologist. Your question is outside her expertise.”

  Of course it is, Tony thought. But all that he said, quite respectfully, was, “Thank you, Your Honor.” He was, indeed, most grateful: in sound-bite form, he had just given his opening statement and suggested to the jury, several of whom were Catholic, that Dr. Cox had offered this vulnerable and lonely girl the wrong sort of help. Though Sam was mistaken about the reasons, he was right about the end result—Leo Karoly could be worked with.

  Tony turned to Cox again. “As Judge Karoly has reminded us, it may be unkind to belabor what I know was a very sad experience. Given Ms. Marz’s objection, is it fair to say that you can form no opinion—professionally, that is—as to whether the despair you observed in Marcie Calder might have rendered her suicidal?”

  Next to him, Tony felt Stella hesitate. The twist he had just put on her objection, should Cox rise to it, was to suggest that Cox’s belief that Marcie was not suicidal had no real basis. Then Stella did what Tony would have done: placed her trust in Cox.

  The witness had composed herself. “All that I can tell you is that, as a layman, I did not consider the possibility that Marcie would take her own life. For all the reasons I suggested.”

  Tony nodded his understanding. “Just as, in the case of Beverly Snowden, you did not foresee it, either.”

  “No.” Pausing, Cox fought back. “But in Marcie’s case, she assured me that she had an adult to talk to.”

  It was the response that, sooner or later, Tony had hoped Cox would give. “This adult—did you ask who he was?”

  Cox steepled her hands. “Yes.”

  “And what was Marcie’s response?”

  “I don’t think she gave one.”

  “She avoided the question, in other words.”

  Cox frowned. “I can’t say that she did or didn’t. There was so much else to think about.”

  “I understand. Tell me, did she give you any information about the nature of her relationship with this man?”

  Cox’s look was cool, appraising, tinged with distaste. “No.”

  She was braced for some insinuation, Tony saw. But there was grace in knowing when to stop, and Tony had the jury’s sensitivities to consider. Politely, he said, “Thank you, Dr. Cox. I have nothing more.”

  Sitting down, he saw the beautician follow him. Her gaze was not hostile but filled with puzzlement and interest; at once, Tony knew that he had stopped at the right moment. But what lingered with him was the image of Nancy Calder, regarding him with a hurt and anger so palpable that Tony could feel it himself.

  * * *

  In the corridor, Sam clasped his arm. “That was fucking brilliant,” he said. “You really got her. Both ‘her’s.”

  To the side, Saul was quiet; he seemed to know that this was a compliment Tony did not need or want. Almost gently, Tony said, “I was glad to do it, for your sake. But there’s something you should understand, pal. So that you don’t take it personally.

  “I just humiliated a perfectly nice woman and, in the bargain, may have helped drive a wedge in the Calders’ marriage. Before this is over, I’ll do far worse. There may come some defining moment when the jury decides to hate me, and if that happens, it’s over for you.

  “That worries me. Then there’s how I feel. I’m doing this for you as a client, and as a friend. Most days, that satisfies me, but I don’t always love it.” Tony paused, putting a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “Just so you know that, okay?”

  Sam looked at him with embarrassment, comprehension, compassion. “I understand. If I weren’t so damned scared, I’d feel it too. But when you’re just hanging on…”

  His voice trailed off. Down the corridor, Tony saw Sue watching them, her own face troubled. “Go talk to Sue and the kids,” Tony said. “No matter how hard it is. The jury notices things like that.”

  FIVE

  Uncomfortable in her tailored blue suit, Janice D’Abruzzi fidgeted on the witness stand. She could not look at the Calders.

  Stella Marz took her through Marcie’s account of an older, married lover, whose identity Marcie had promised to protect, and then Marcie’s plea that Janice lie for her on the night of her death. Janice’s responses, halting and ashamed, seemed to touch the jury, supplanting the doubts Tony had raised with Nora Cox. Then Stella began attacking Tony’s defense.

  Her manner was firm but gentle, that of an older sister. “Did Marcie ever suggest that she was involved—romantically or sexually—with anyone other than this man?”

  The thought seemed to startle Janice. “No,” she answered firmly. “And it wouldn’t have been like her.”

  “To your knowledge, was Marcie Calder sexually experienced?”

  There was an objection here, Tony knew, perhaps two or three. Janice stole a sideways glance at the Calders. “Marcie told me this guy was
her first. She’d never talked about sex before and didn’t really know anything.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Janice looked down. “She wanted to know different things—I mean, what people did, exactly.”

  “Did she tell you why she wanted to know?”

  “Yes.” With sudden, surprising anger, Janice looked at Sam. “Marcie wanted to please this guy. He knew so much, she told me, and she loved him. She didn’t want him to lose interest.”

  To Tony’s relief, Sam’s gaze at Janice did not waver. But Tony could feel Sam’s restiveness: his lawyer had not objected as Stella used Janice to firm up Nora Cox’s story of a monogamous teenage girl, seduced by an adult, whose first act of intercourse had led to pregnancy and death. Tony scrawled on his notepad, “The kid was yours, remember? Why remind them?”

  Staring at the notepad, Sam nodded slowly.

  “Did she ever talk about marrying him?” Stella asked Janice.

  “No way.” Janice seemed to gather herself. “What Marcie said was that they had their own world, and it should stay that way.”

  Stella gave Janice a pensive gaze. “Why, do you suppose, Janice, did Marcie need to see this man on the night she died?”

  Now Tony had no choice. “Objection,” he said to Judge Karoly. “I’ve let the prosecutor lead this witness through hearsay and speculation—on Marcie Calder’s sexual experience, on Marcie’s relationship to a man whose name Ms. D’Abruzzi never even knew, on what these two people said or did or felt when they were alone. But this last question assumes that Janice D’Abruzzi could read Marcie Calder’s mind and now can tell the jury—without any factual foundation whatsoever—why Marcie Calder did whatever she did while Ms. D’Abruzzi was misleading Marcie’s parents. In simple fairness, Your Honor—enough.”

  Stella Marz appeared unruffled. “Your Honor,” she said mildly, “please admonish Mr. Lord not to use objections as a pretext for speeches to the jury. His only legitimate objection is exactly three words long: ‘objection—no foundation.’

  “As to that, Janice D’Abruzzi has testified to numerous conversations about what was driving Marcie Calder: that she was afraid this affair would ruin her lover’s life, that she was trying to protect him—”