Silent Witness (28 page)

‘Maybe. But I'm old enough to deal with that, and they need me. Besides, the price is right.'

Saul picked up his drink. ‘Maybe for them,' he said.

There were fresh flowers on her grave.

Nearly thirty years had passed; this corner of the Lake City cemetery, preserved for John Taylor and his family, was now circled by newer, fresher graves. From a distance, only the empty space surrounding her granite marker denoted that she had died far too young.

‘Alison Wood Taylor,' the marker read. ‘May 4, 1950 – November 3, 1967.' It was strange to have forgotten her middle name.

The flowers haunted him. They bespoke the living presence of the Taylors; their ineradicable loss of Alison. However imperfectly, Tony had been able to leave her here. Her parents would be with her to the end.

He stood with her now, beneath the shade of an oak tree, watching the shadows encroach on the gentle light of a spring afternoon.

The press had found him. There were two messages at the Arbor Motel, the only one in Lake City; both requested interviews. He could expect the first stories tomorrow.

Knowing that, he knew there was one thing left to do.

Standing on the Taylors' porch, Tony found himself wishing that no one would answer.

The door cracked open. An old woman stared at him, mouth parting; as he watched her realize who he was, he saw in her face, white as chalk, the woman who had been Alison's mother.

‘I'm sorry to come here,' he said. ‘But I felt I should.'

Her silence pained him. She looked like a stroke victim, he thought, who could think, or speak, only with great effort. The one sign of comprehension was in her eyes.

‘May I speak with you a moment?' he asked.

‘Let him in,' a harsh voice said. The door opened behind Katherine Taylor, and Tony saw the true cost of his return.

John Taylor's face was gaunt, desiccated, cross-hatched with lines and wrinkles; his gaze at Tony was like that of a bird – unblinking, cold. The room behind him had not changed much; the antiques were the same, the silence museum-like. On the mantel were new swatches of color – photographs of Alison's sister as a bride, then a mother. Between them, forever caught in the year 1967, was Alison. Tony felt himself wince at the contrast.

John Taylor remained as still as Alison's photograph. Katherine Taylor retreated to her husband's side, silent.

‘I've come to help Sam Robb,' Tony said softly. ‘I'm afraid the press will dredge up what happened, all over again.'

‘They've already called us.' John Taylor's lips seemed barely to move. ‘We thought it ironic.'

‘That occurred to me.' Tony paused, and then forced himself to go on. ‘But I was innocent, and I assume no less about Sam –'

‘
Innocent
.' John Taylor's voice rose. ‘Do you know who you remind me of? O. J. Simpson, offering a reward to whoever finds the person who killed his wife. Perhaps, as with Alison, it will be a man who can answer no questions –'

‘
John
.' It was his wife's first word, barely above a whisper. Yet it made John Taylor flinch.

Tony felt his stomach knot; perhaps he would never face these people without feeling what he had felt at seventeen, the fear of either speech or silence. ‘I loved her,' he said at last. ‘More than you ever knew. But I could never truly understand all you lost, and what you've gone through, until I had a child of my own.'

John Taylor nodded, the fierceness of his eyes undiminished. ‘Then you know how we feel about you, Anthony Lord. And always will.' His voice was soft with anger. ‘One way or the other, you caused my daughter's death.'

Silent, Tony made himself imagine what Christopher's death might do to him. He could not quite: his only certainty was that, could Alison but see it, she would hate what her death had done to
them
. But this was not his to say.

‘I'm sorry to have disturbed you,' Tony said, and left.

The Calder family lived in a brick bungalow not unlike the home of Tony's youth – a one-story rectangle on a postage-stamp lawn, in a neighborhood so neat and uniform that it was hard to distinguish one house from another. Coming from the Taylors, Tony had sat in his rented car in front of the Calders' house, reluctant to intrude on parents whose grief was so fresh. But Nancy Calder had agreed to see him; waiting for tomorrow – with its inevitable headlines – would be foolish. At a little past eight o'clock, Tony rang the doorbell.

The first few moments had an unnerving veneer of normality. Nancy Calder answered the door; except for the shadows beneath her eyes, the drawn look to her face, she could have been greeting an insurance agent, whose presence in her home was one of life's requirements. She offered Tony coffee and sat on the couch in the tiny living room, tightly holding a cup of her own. The room was orderly, and so was she – in slacks and a sweater, she seemed a fortyish version of the pretty, dark-haired daughter in the photographs. And then her husband entered the room, and without looking at him, Nancy Calder began silently to cry.

Tony stood. Everything about Frank Calder, he thought, seemed spare and grudging: the crew-cut brown hair; narrow blue eyes; a hard Irish face – thin lips, high cheekbones, skin so close to the bone that it seemed to have been stretched. But it was Calder's wife, Tony found, who made him regret the need to be here.

‘Nancy wanted to see you,' Calder said abruptly. ‘I didn't. Why in God's name should we talk to his lawyer?'

Tony steeled himself. ‘I'm just trying to understand this,' he answered. ‘Sam Robb is an old friend, and he seems devastated by what's happened. But if I ever became certain that Sam Robb harmed your daughter, I'd leave Lake City in a heartbeat.' That much was true; Tony had defended guilty clients before but could not do so if this man, his friend, had murdered a teenage girl. His last moments with the Taylors, his time at Alison's grave, had settled that for him.

‘“Harm,”' Frank Calder repeated. ‘Is that what you call it?'

Calder seemed to have forgotten his wife, Tony saw; it was as though hostility were a permanent part of him, their grief an overlay. She fingered the crucifix she held, as though striving to withdraw from her husband's rage. Facing her, Tony murmured, ‘If there's some better time . . .'

Slowly, Nancy Calder shook her head. ‘There will
never
be a better time,' she said, and Tony saw that her tears had stopped.

Without looking at Frank Calder, Tony sat across from her again. Softly, he said, ‘I'm sorry I didn't know her, Mrs. Calder.'

Nancy Calder grimaced. ‘The last two years, I was working, Mr. Lord. So maybe I didn't, either.'

It was better just to listen. ‘Tony,' he said gently. ‘I go by Tony.'

Blank-faced, Nancy Calder nodded. ‘I was never home after school,' she said after a time. ‘That's when the girls are fresh, when they tell you about their day. . . .'

‘We were saving for college.' Sitting next to his wife, Frank Calder spoke in a harsh voice. ‘You know what college costs these days.'

Again, Tony heard a strange defensiveness; he guessed that to Frank Calder, the failure to provide for their family by himself was galling. Calder was an accountant, Tony recalled from the newspaper clippings he had read, for a large trucking concern; though Stanley Lord had been far gentler, Tony sensed the same trapped grievances, the frustration of feeling like a rat in the corporate Skinner box, of a man serving out his time.

‘Well,' Frank Calder said to his wife, ‘we won't have to save for her now.'

It could have been cruel; but to Tony, it was his first acknowledgment of their shared loss, and the edge to his voice was submerged in weariness. His eyes were bloodshot.

Quietly, Tony asked, ‘Was there any sense in which she worried you? In the last few weeks, I mean.'

Silent, Frank Calder turned to his wife. ‘She seemed more distant,' Nancy Calder said at last. ‘Like she was somewhere else.'

‘Nothing more specific?'

Nancy Calder shook her head. ‘Her grades were down a little. But she still went with us to Mass – there wasn't the kind of rebelliousness or questioning Father Carney, our priest, sees in so many young people. She was so good to her younger sisters –' Nancy Calder stopped abruptly, and then finished in a different voice, flat with repressed anger. ‘And she still loved track, of course. The last time I saw Sam Robb, he made a point of telling me how hard she was working.'

Tony felt the moral ambiguity of his position; he knew from Sam himself that his friend had slept with Marcie – or, in Sam's telling, that Marcie had tried to seduce him. Cautiously, he asked, ‘Did Marcie seem attracted to him?'

Nancy Calder's eyes clouded with bitterness. ‘From what
he
told the police,' she said, ‘Marcie had a crush on him. But I never saw any sign of that.' She turned to her husband. ‘Did she talk about
him
any more than about Mr. Nixon?'

Frank Calder's gaze focused on the carpet. ‘No,' he said.

Nancy Calder nodded in affirmation. ‘She may have been looking for a parent figure – someone who wasn't us. But she wasn't looking for an affair.'

Her husband would not look at her. Replaying the phrase ‘parent figure,' Tony heard the word ‘father'; he sensed that Marcie and her parents had been more divided than the Calders said. ‘Were there
any
difficulties?' he asked. ‘Disagreements?'

Nancy Calder glanced at her husband. ‘One,' he said tersely. ‘I wanted her to go to a Catholic women's school. With all the drugs and sex –' He cut himself off. ‘She didn't want to, and Nancy didn't want to push it. So that was
my
fault, I suppose.'

This sounded closer to the mark; Frank Calder seemed like a man with rules, better at proscribing than at listening. Gently, Nancy Calder said, ‘You wouldn't have made her go, Frank. Marcie knew that.'

The sadness of this struck Tony hard: a limited man, regretting what he had said to a daughter to whom, suddenly, inexplicably, he could now say nothing; his wife offering him consolation that perhaps she did not believe. ‘Were you worried about emotional problems?' Tony asked.

‘No.' Frank Calder stared at him now. ‘There was nothing like that. Our daughter certainly didn't need a psychiatrist.'

Nancy Calder compressed her lips. ‘There's no question of suicide here, if
that
's what you're asking. Marcie was much too stable – a little quiet, that was all.
And
a believing Catholic, too devout to ever think of taking her own life.' Her voice hardened. ‘Over her track coach, or anyone else.'

Tony decided to shift ground. ‘You mentioned a Mr. Nixon.'

Still lost within her anger, Nancy Calder gave a brief nod. ‘Ernie Nixon,' she said. ‘He's the town recreation director here. A black man.'

Tony covered his surprise. ‘Yes. I know him. Or did, once.'

‘He was the first person to encourage Marcie about her running. Before his divorce, Marcie would watch his kids from time to time.' Her eyes misted abruptly. ‘Marcie loved children, and children loved her. Starting with her own sisters . . .'

Suddenly Tony sensed something beneath the surface of this meeting, more volatile than grief. Softly, he asked, ‘What do you think happened to her?'

Nancy Calder raised her head. ‘Sam Robb murdered her,' she said quietly. ‘To keep from being found out. Sooner or later,
you'll
have to face that too.'

All at once, Tony felt certain that the Calders knew that Sam and their daughter had been having sex. But there was no way to confront this. With equal quiet, he said, ‘It could have been an accident, Mrs. Calder. Or someone else.'

Nancy Calder flushed. ‘There
wasn't
anyone else,' her husband said tightly. ‘Marcie wasn't a slut . . .'

‘Please, I wasn't suggesting that. My “someone else” could be a stranger.'

They both fell silent; from their fixed expressions, they were mollified – if at all – not by the possibility of a stranger but by Tony's concession. The sense of something left unsaid bedeviled him.

‘Who was Marcie close to?' he asked.

Nancy Calder's eyes flew open, as if the question were an accusation that she had failed her daughter. Then she answered tersely. ‘Janice D'Abruzzi. Her best friend.'

She spoke the words like a curse. Frank Calder stood abruptly. ‘Go home,' he said to Tony. ‘Leave us with our daughter's memory, and at least some hope of justice. For
him
, if not for her.' He left the room.

Nancy Calder gazed after him. ‘We're very tired,' she said simply, and Tony knew that his time was up.

She saw him to the doorway, composed again. Her eyes met his. ‘Please,' she said with hushed urgency, ‘don't defend Sam Robb. Not if you're a decent man . . .'

The article was on page three of the
Steelton Press
. Next to a photograph of Tony and Stacey, the headline read: ‘Robb Lawyer Linked to Prior Slaying.' In the photograph, Tony was grinning broadly.

‘Nice picture,' Sam Robb remarked. ‘Your very best killer smile.'

Tony stared at him across Sam's breakfast table, annoyed by his friend's insouciance, troubled by Stella Marz, the Taylors, Marcie's parents. ‘If I were you,' he said, ‘I wouldn't be that happy, either.'

Sam looked up. ‘I'm not, Tony. I still remember how much you wanted to leave all this behind.' He paused and then placed his hand on Tony's forearm. ‘What I'm trying to say is that I'm grateful for your help, that I'm proud you're still my friend, and that I'm bothered by this bullshit because it bothers
you
. Maybe this time out I'll learn to tell you what I mean.'