Silent Witness (23 page)

For a moment, the present slipped away, and Tony was back in a crowded high school gym.

‘The Taylors,' he asked. ‘Are they still alive?'

‘Yes.' Sue gazed fixedly at the road. ‘I don't know how you remember them. But to me they look like bitter old people, serving out their lives.' She paused for a moment. ‘Katherine Taylor told my mother, only four or five years ago, that there has never been a day since Alison died that they don't remember. When I think of Marcie Calder's parents, I think of that.'

Tony felt his heart go out to her. At length, he asked, ‘How is he, Sue?'

Her fingers seemed to tighten on the steering wheel. ‘Scared,' she said. ‘You know what that's like.'

Something in Tony resisted the comparison. ‘All I know is what it was like for me.'

Sue was quiet for a moment. ‘He could be charged with murder,' she said in a flat voice. ‘Or, if he's lucky, all that we'll have to worry about is the end of his career as a teacher. Unless he can explain to the school board what he was doing in Taylor Park, at night, with a girl on his track team.'

What had Sam told her? Tony wondered. ‘If he takes my advice as a lawyer,' he answered, ‘Sam won't say anything to the school board. Not until we see what the county prosecutor does about her death.'

Sue did not answer. The roads became narrow; at the edge of a field, Tony saw the first familiar landmark – the white spire of Saint Barnabas Episcopal, where Alison's funeral had been held. Then they passed a white wooden sign, not unlike the one Tony remembered: ‘Welcome to Lake City, Home of the Lakers. Population 15,537.'

The next few miles were strange. It had been so long that, for an instant, this seemed like entering a place Tony had seen only in pictures. What hit him first was nostalgia and then remembered trauma – feelings from before and after Alison's death – followed by the sudden superstitious certainty that he should not have returned. Quietly, he said, ‘I never thought I'd come back here.'

‘I know.'

They took a curve in the narrow road, past an elementary school and some wood-frame houses, and then Tony saw something that had not been there before – a large wrought-iron gate to the entrance of a development of brick ranch houses. The contractor had left just enough maple trees to justify the iron lettering above the gate: ‘Maple Park Estates.'

In spite of himself, Tony turned. And then he felt Sue watching him.

‘Remember?' she asked.

What he felt, Tony realized, was a rush of pain and sweetness, surprise at the power of memory, the immediacy of his youth. ‘Remember?' he said softly. ‘It was the sweetest thing that had ever happened to me.'

Sue smiled a little. ‘If I'd known that, Tony, I'd have made you do it twice.'

As they drove on, silent, Tony felt his unease return, the moment slip away. More than being in Lake City, this came from thinking of Sam Robb again – whoever he might have become.

Reaching the town square, Tony saw the police station. ‘I have a favor to ask you,' he said after a time. ‘As a lawyer, I suppose. Before I see Sam.'

‘What is it?'

Tony turned to her. ‘Could you take me to Taylor Park?'

When they turned into the park, Tony tried to see it with detachment, as a crime scene. But for a moment, he could not move.

Quietly, Sue asked, ‘What is it you wanted to see?'

‘Where this girl went over the cliff, I thought.'

Near the cliff were metal stakes driven into the ground, bound with yellow tape to mark off where Marcie Calder might have fallen. But Tony did not go there; leaving the car, he saw the grove of trees where he had parked with Alison Taylor.

‘Do you mind?' he asked Sue.

‘No.' She paused. ‘Do you want me to come with you?'

‘If you like.'

When he began walking toward the grove, Sue was with him, a few steps behind. They were quiet.

The park was sunny, the breeze from Lake Erie fresh. But beneath the bower of trees where he and Alison had made love, there was little sun, and the ground was dark and mossy. It struck him that the park was almost empty.

Tony stood there for a moment, recovering that part of him that was a professional. ‘Who uses this?' he asked.

Sue stood behind him. ‘Kids, families. We used to bring ours here.'

‘What about at night?'

‘Kids still, parking.' She paused; Tony could feel her imagining her husband, parked with a teenage girl younger than their own daughter. In a thin voice, she added, ‘For a while, after Alison, high school kids found other places. Then people forgot.'

‘Anyone else?'

‘From the local paper, other kids dealing drugs, sometimes a few homeless people.' Her tone was flat again. ‘Sam always told Jenny not to come here.'

It would be wrong, Tony thought, to avoid looking at her. When he did, Sue simply shrugged. Her eyes were abstracted, almost lifeless; somehow she looked smaller than before. He did not ask about Sam.

Together, they left the grove.

Just as he had twenty-eight years before, hurrying home with Alison in the last hour of her life, Tony walked across the grassy park. As he moved from the trees that marked the Taylors' property, he stopped, overtaken by emotion. He felt the beating of his own heart.

The Taylor house needed repainting, he saw; the wooden shingles of the roof were warped and cracking, and the Gothic turrets looked dingy. His eyes followed a line from the back porch to their rear yard. He did not simply remember her face in the beam of the flashlight; for almost thirty years, this had been a recurring nightmare, awakening him at the moment that the light revealed her face.

Behind him, Sue said, ‘You almost never see them outside.'

Tony made himself turn to the house again. ‘Not exactly the House of Usher. But not what it was.'

The thickets where Ernie Nixon had shown him the hiding places were, if anything, more overgrown. He did not bother to inspect them.

‘Someone was here that night, Sue. Someone could have been here four nights ago.' He turned to her. ‘Marcie Calder left his car, Sam says?'

Sue's face lost all expression. ‘Yes.'

After a moment, Tony nodded. ‘I'd better take a look.'

There were two sections to the crime scene, Tony saw. The first, an area roughly forty feet square, was a section of the grassy bank extending to the edge of the cliff. Erosion made the cliff quite sheer; beneath its face – sixty feet of rock and clay and the occasional wind-swept bush – an area of beach had been cordoned by more stakes and yellow tape. Near the foot of the cliff, this time in white tape, the outline of Marcie Calder's body resembled a child's drawing.

‘In the dark,' Tony said, ‘she could have fallen easily.'

‘Wouldn't she hear the lake?' Sue asked, and turned away. In the deep susurrus of the water, Tony wondered if Sue believed that her husband – a man Tony no longer knew – was capable of murder. He went to where she stood, arms folded, staring at the ground.

‘Have the police talked to you?' he asked.

Sue did not look up. ‘They tried. Just before I called you, when they searched the house and impounded my car. The one he drove that night.'

Tony shoved his hands in the pockets of his khakis. ‘Did
he
want me to come here, Sue? Or was it you?'

‘It was my idea, at first.' Her eyes met his. ‘Sam's very proud, Tony. Still. He let you down about Alison, he said – how could he ask you to help him now? But after a while he knew how much he needed you.' She paused for a moment. ‘We both saw you on TV, defending the man who shot Senator Kilcannon. Sam couldn't believe how good you were. But I could.'

Tony watched her. There had been a change in her; at some time between then and now, as time and perhaps disappointment had done its work, her face had become hard to read.

‘What is he like, Sue?'

‘Before now?' Looking at Tony, she smiled without humor. ‘Not like you, Tony. Sam achieved his goals too soon.'

‘How do you mean?'

‘Oh, I think you understand. He stayed in Lake City; he married me – it was like he could preserve Sam Robb at seventeen, the way he felt then. But he couldn't.' The smile became a frown without changing very much. ‘Sam's a vice principal, not the principal. He needs someone to help him make good judgments – he knows that, and he hates it. In his eyes, he's become a small man in a small town: good old Sam, quick with a joke, the vice principal for life. So there's this terrible restlessness.'

‘And you?'

‘I'm different. We have two good kids, some friends we like, and what I do seems worthwhile to me. If Sam were happy, I could be happy.' She shook her head. ‘It's so funny to me – I remember seeing you with Stacey, on some awards show I think it was, and smiling to myself because you
had
married a movie star, and she was gorgeous. But it wasn't until my own husband turned to me and said, “Look at who Tony's with now,” that, just for a moment, I wished
I
could be her. Because I saw Sam jealous of you, and not happy with his life.'

‘But what do
I
have to do with anything?'

‘For Sam? A lot, I think, sometimes.' Pausing, Sue seemed to muse aloud. ‘This may sound funny, as far away from here as you've been, and for so long now. But if you'd stayed, and been the basketball coach or something, I wonder if Sam would be a little less disappointed with himself.'

Sue, he was certain, already knew how pointless this was. Softly, he answered, ‘He was never going to be like me, Sue. After Alison, the only question was who
I
was going to be.'

Sue tilted her head. ‘Are
you
happy with who you are?'

‘Mostly. There are still parts of me – because of Alison's murder, I'm sure – that I wish I could tear out by the roots. Sometimes I find myself waiting for the other shoe to drop, some terrible thing to happen to Stacey or to Christopher, or even to me.' For a moment, he paused. ‘But it hasn't, yet. And the rest of me, more days than not, is happier than I ever believed I could be.'

Sue was quiet. And then she touched his face, the gesture of a friend, gladdened that the life of
her
friend was as he wished. In that moment, Tony realized that being with Sue was still, despite everything, mercifully easy – that, even now, she understood things about him that the two people he loved most never could. What he wanted, for both their sakes, was to hold her one more time.

Perhaps Sue wanted this too, Tony thought. But he was here as a lawyer, and must start to find his way. ‘I hope I can help you,' he said. ‘And Sam.'

‘You already have,' she answered softly. As she removed her hand, Sue's fingers grazed his cheek. ‘We'd better go, Tony. Sam's waiting. The last four days, it's all he's had to do.'

From the basement couch, Sam Robb gazed up.

His quick glance at Sue, his look away, struck Tony as instinctive shame. But his rueful smile at Tony was like that of a man caught cheating at golf. Perhaps, Tony thought, Sam was still working out what had happened to him. He appeared no more ready for Tony than Tony was for him: Tony's first thought, sickening and inevitable, was to wonder if he was gazing at a murderer.

‘Hello, Sam.'

Awkwardly, Sam stood, and the two men embraced. ‘Tony Lord,' Sam murmured. ‘Sweet Jesus Christ.'

‘Oh,' Tony found himself saying, ‘I'm not quite that good.'

Sam gave a short laugh, harsh in its suddenness. He leaned back, clasping Tony by the shoulders. His face was puffy, Tony saw, the white-blond hair streaked with silver. But his eyes had a sudden bright glitter; it was like seeing the seventeen-year-old Sam peering at him from behind a mask. ‘Sue thinks you're that good,' he answered, and then his voice softened. ‘I sure need you to be.'

Sue had turned from her husband. ‘I'll be upstairs,' she said to Tony. ‘If you need a sandwich or something . . .'

‘Thanks, babe,' Sam told her.

Her eyes flickered; in a room with Sam, Tony thought, there was something stricken about her. She went upstairs without acknowledging her husband.

Sam exhaled, running a hand through his hair. Above the top of his sweatpants, Tony saw a small, but noticeable, belly; his chin was soft, his face creased. The effect was somewhat raffish, but not unattractive. He looked like a once youthful actor who, ten years past his prime, had not so much aged as dissipated; the boyishness kept showing through. For an instant, Tony could imagine him with a teenage girl, and felt an instinctive flash of revulsion.

But what stayed with Tony was sadness, the sense of promise lost. The room around them was dark, cramped; a sliver of daylight came through a small window at ground level. On the mantel of a brick-veneer fireplace Tony saw a couple of gold trophies from the Lake City Country Club; a picture of Sam and a slim, dark-haired boy who looked more like Sue; and another trophy Tony recognized at once. S
AM
R
OBB
, the brass lettering said, A
THLETE OF THE
Y
EAR
– 1968. Suddenly Tony felt claustrophobic.

Sam was watching him, Tony realized. ‘I told Sue you'd never come back,' he said softly. ‘But then she always had a better sense of you, I guess.'

‘You're in trouble, Sam.'

‘So were
you
, once.' Sam's gaze was steady, penetrating. ‘You're still not over it, are you?'