Silent Witness (32 page)

‘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.

‘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 first 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?'

Idly, Tony traced the rim of his glass with the tip of a finger. ‘I'm not sure,' he said at last. ‘Sometimes Sam seems sensitive, even brave – he did go to the cops, after all. At other times he seems callous and self-interested to the point of narcissism: the Marcie Calder he describes to me, the compliant sexual adventurer, doesn't jibe with what I'm getting from other people. I don't know whether it's a lie; an excuse; Sam's distorted vision of reality; or my own unwillingness to believe him even though I want to. But anytime I find myself appalled by his affair with Marcie, part of me can almost get how it happened, and the shame he feels now. Then I'll remember myself in the confessional, praying for expiation, and I don't know whether my compassion – if that's what it is – is for Sam or for myself. And now that he seems cornered, with the facts getting worse, it's my instinct to defend him.'

‘Even if Sam killed her.'

‘No. Not then. But I don't
know
that.'

‘But you think he might have.'

Tony folded his hands. ‘He'd been drinking that night, Sue tells me. A kind of impulsiveness goes with that, a lack of self-control.'

‘To the point of murder?'

Sitting back, Tony tried to imagine his friend with a rock in his hand, bludgeoning the pretty girl in her parents' photograph until she crumpled to the grass. Finally, he shook his head. ‘My memory is from when we were kids, Saul. I can't know what might have happened to him since.'

Saul considered him. ‘Drunkenness
is
a defense.'

‘Only if Sam admits to killing her. He hasn't, and I don't think he will.'

Saul looked around them. A couple of crew from an ore boat were drinking beer and playing video games; otherwise, the place was quiet. Finally, he asked, ‘Any guess what Stella's waiting on?'

‘I'm not sure. The coroner has already opined that the skull fractures were no accident. So maybe it's something else from the lab, like some high-tech effort to lift Sam's prints off the rock. That would be no help.'

Saul shrugged. ‘You can always find an expert of your own. There are a million ways to attack theirs.'

Tony drained his Scotch and ordered another. ‘What I could use,' he said at last, ‘is another Donald White.'

Saul gave him a skeptical smile. ‘They don't grow them on trees, thank God.' Abruptly, he stopped, looking into Tony's face.

Tony met his gaze. ‘Ernie's possible, Saul. How many men invest hours in the company of a single teenage girl, unless there's at least
some
element of desire. If Sam crossed the line, he could have too. I mean, count the college professors you must have known who went off the deep end.'

Saul's smile became a look of bleak amusement. ‘They fucked them, Tony. They didn't kill them. For all you know, he was out with friends that night.'

‘For all I know, he was the one Sam saw in the other car.'

Saul's smile vanished. ‘You know what you're doing here, don't you?'

Tony felt stung; in the case of Ernie Nixon, he found, the defense lawyer's carapace did not numb his feelings. ‘Of course I know. That's also an odd remark, coming from you.'

Slowly, Saul placed the drink down. ‘I'm beyond cynical, Tony. I don't need it anymore.'

‘So you drink instead?'

Saul's eyes grew hard. ‘There are a thousand reasons why I drink. You'll never know me well enough to know them all.'

Tony drew a breath. ‘Sorry,' he said at last.

Saul regarded him for a time. ‘Don't mention it. I know how guilty you can feel, and you've only just begun. . . .'

‘Dammit, you know as well as I do what my obligations are, and my
feelings
can't get in the way. As long as I'm Sam Robb's lawyer, my only loyalty is to him. It's incompetence of counsel not to check out a defense.'

Saul smiled with the side of his mouth. ‘A black man in Lake fucking City, the only black in town. Beautiful, Tony. Truly.'

Tony's head had begun throbbing. ‘I know,' he said softly. ‘Just find me a detective, all right?'

Saul looked at him hard, shaking his head, and then he glanced toward the pay phone. ‘Got a quarter?' he asked. ‘Maybe we can ruin Ernie before I get too drunk to care.'

In profile, Sam's face was set. ‘Jack Burton called me late last night. My principal.'

They were driving to the gym. It was roughly six-thirty in the morning; the sky was cloud-streaked, and dim yellow light seeped through the gray. To their right, its shapes emerging from the darkness, Taylor Park went unremarked.

‘I remember him,' Tony answered. ‘He refused to give me a recommendation for Harvard. I always thought John Taylor had gotten to him.'

‘Well, he probably has again.'

‘How so?'

‘They're petitioning the school board – Marcie's parents
and
the Taylors. To have me fired outright.'

Tony turned to him in surprise. ‘The Taylors? I thought they pretty much kept to themselves now.'

‘Not entirely.' Sam's voice was muted. ‘I guess I'm a cause worth coming out for.'

‘Did Burton say what his position will be?'

Sam was quiet for a moment. ‘He won't support me, Tony. “Sometimes appearances are the reality,” he said.'

Gazing out the windshield, Tony recalled the last spring morning he had seen Lake City this early; driving Sue to her parents' house, her hand resting lightly on his leg, to find Sam Robb waiting on her front steps. ‘What do you want to do?' he asked.