Silent Witness (47 page)

‘Finesse,' Tony said in his best laconic manner. ‘And patience.'

Sam's eyes glinted. ‘I haven't forgotten. First time you pulled that on me, I was fifteen. Your team won the scrimmage.'

Taking the ball, Sam went to the spot where Tony had faked his jump shot, and sank one of his own. A few minutes later, when Sam pulled the same trick on him, Tony laughed aloud.

‘Fifteen all,' Sam called out. ‘This is getting worthwhile.'

They both were breathing hard now, chests heaving with the need for air. ‘Five more points to twenty,' Tony answered. ‘Let's take a break.'

‘Need one?' Sam asked with an air of challenge.

‘No. I'm just hoping that the fun will never end.'

Even as he said this, Tony admitted to himself that it was yet another trick, meant to mock their competition while depriving Sam of the adrenaline rush that might carry him to victory. Sam gave him a sour, knowing smile. ‘Have it your way,' he said, and sat down on the court again.

They were silent for a time. Interrupted from their challenge, Sam did not find conversation easy. Nor did Tony; he was preoccupied by Sam's primal need to win, his own response.

‘How're your folks?' Sam asked finally.

‘Good, thanks.' Tony realized that, since his return, they had never spoken of parents, save for Sam's fleeting reference to his mother. ‘Stacey and I helped them buy a place in Florida – it's not me, God knows, but Dad's discovered golf. It keeps him, in my mom's inimitable words, from “driving me to the funny farm.”' He smiled a little. ‘After fifty years, they have their routine down cold – bickering but inseparable. When one of them dies, it'll be tough on the other, especially if my dad goes first; she'll have to complain to his wedding picture.' He turned to Sam. ‘
There
's a generation of marriages I really don't understand. Maybe if I'd stayed married to Marcia, I might.'

‘So how can you regret divorcing?'

‘Oh, I never said I regret it – I said that I felt guilty. That's the Catholic way of having what you want.' Briefly, Tony smiled, and then his smile faded. ‘No, sometimes I'll wake up and look across the pillow at Stacey, and she'll be smiling in her sleep. And I realize, in spite of everything . . .'

He did not need to finish the sentence. Sam studied him, hesitant. Quietly, he asked, ‘Think you'd have married Alison?'

Tony shook his head in puzzlement. ‘I have no idea. It's so funny to think about now.' His voice softened. ‘But if you'd asked me a moment before I found her, I'd have answered yes.'

Sam gazed out at the lake. ‘Maybe she'd have met someone else, Tony. Maybe you would have.'

It was a curious remark, Tony thought – true, but irrelevant to the tragedy of Alison. ‘If she were married to someone else, and happy, that would be more than enough for me.'

When Sam turned to him, as though pondering his last remark, Tony suddenly wondered if his friend had applied the words to his own wife, whom Tony had also loved. ‘
Did
you ever sleep with her?' Sam asked.

With whom?
Tony wondered. But the only truth he could tell was the one that no longer mattered. Softly, he answered, ‘The night she died, for the first time. That's why she came out again.'

Sam's eyes first widened, then narrowed in a kind of wince, and though his lips parted, for a moment no sound emerged. ‘I'm sorry, Tony. I didn't know.'

Tony was not sure whether this apology was for Sam's question or for some deeper reappraisal of how wounded Tony had been. Tony supposed it did not matter.

‘It stayed with me,' he said at last. ‘I still have nightmares.'

Sam turned to him. ‘What kind?'

For a moment, Tony wished they could have talked like this at seventeen. But he did not care to mention his last dream. ‘There's only one,' he answered. ‘The moment I found her. Quite lifelike, if you can call it that, and then I wake up.'

Sam stared at him and then shook his head. ‘I can never remember my dreams,' he murmured. ‘Maybe just as well.'

What kind of dreams
, Tony wondered,
might Sam repress
? ‘It depends on the dream, I suppose.'

Sam propped his chin on tented fingers and, for a much longer time, was silent. ‘I keep remembering that night at the beach,' he said at last. ‘You and Alison, me and Sue, and all the things we didn't know. Ever wish you could hit the rewind button?'

‘I used to. Now I wish I could just erase a night.'

As soon as he said it, Tony felt this was a tactless answer. But Sam did not seem to hear it that way. Almost gently, he placed a hand on Tony's shoulder. ‘I'll buy you a beer,' he said. ‘We can finish the game some other time.'

When Tony returned to his new quarters, in Steelton – the dreary but convenient Palace Hotel – his notes regarding Ernie Nixon were strewn across his bed. It made him think again that life was full of ironies, of choices, of unintended consequences, which, once recognized, became one's own responsibility.

Tomorrow Ernie Nixon would take the stand, and Tony Lord the lawyer would be responsible for his own acts. He put the thought aside, imagining his cross-examination.

That night, Tony slept badly. At first dawn, he awakened, sweating, from his strange new dream of Alison, his image of himself that of an invisible camera, her delphic question driving him from bed.

Restless, Tony ordered room service – toast and black coffee – and spent an hour at the hotel gym, sweating feverishly as he punished the exercise bike. Then he showered, dressed, and presented himself at the courtroom of Judge Leo F. Karoly, a lawyer with a client to defend.

Taking the witness stand, Ernie Nixon wore a gray pinstriped business suit, a yellow tie with a geometric design, a crisp white shirt, and a look of cool self-possession, which, for a moment, he turned on Tony Lord. Next to Tony, Saul Ravin eyed Ernie with wary interest. ‘He's no Donald White,' he murmured.

The sardonic remark, Tony found, touched his conscience. ‘He never was.'

Briefly, Stella Marz glanced at Tony; today it seemed that the lawyers had a heightened awareness of each other. Even the jury seemed to feel it; waiting, they were silent and attentive, without the small smiles and whispered asides that characterize twelve people settling in with one another.

Somewhat stiffly, for her, Stella led Ernie through his first eighteen years in Lake City; his college education; his decision to come back; his five years as recreation director. Ernie's answers were precise, soft-spoken, and revealed nothing about the complexity of his feelings: listening, Tony imagined Ernie's return as the last nostalgic reel of that Frank Capra movie, the homecoming of a goodhearted man to the warmth and comfort of the place he loved most. All that was missing, Tony thought with irony, was the girl.

‘Yeah,' Sam said sarcastically, under his breath. ‘It's all been great, hasn't it . . .'

‘Could you tell us,' Stella asked, ‘how old Marcie Calder was when you first met her?'

‘Thirteen, I'd say. I coach a girls' track team, eleven to fourteen.' Ernie paused. ‘Marcie was best friends with another girl on the team, Janice D'Abruzzi, whose dad was my best friend. I guess Janice sort of brought her around.'

‘What was Marcie like then, would you say?'

Ernie seemed to consider this. ‘Shy – never any trouble. But you could see her watching, and thinking, like there was a lot going on inside her. So I'd say thoughtful, too, and sort of private. Like it took her a while to trust people.' Pausing, Ernie finished softly, ‘I don't think that part ever changed.'

It was already starting, Tony knew; Stella's portrait of a shy, inward girl whose mistake, terrible in its consequences, was to trust the wrong adult. ‘Over time,' Stella asked, ‘did you come to know her better?'

Ernie nodded. ‘Little by little,' he answered, and permitted himself a small smile. ‘About a year after she came out for the team, Marcie had a growth spurt. Most kids that makes kind of awkward. But what it made Marcie Calder was fast. All the sudden, she was the fastest kid on the team.'

‘How did she react to that?'

‘I guess you could say she was ecstatic. She couldn't get enough of running, or winning. Talked a lot more too – it was like I became a hero just for giving her the chance, even though, like I always told her, she'd provided all the talent.' Abruptly, Ernie's voice softened, and for the first time, he looked at Sam Robb. ‘Marcie needed attention, I could see. I think she'd have been attached to any adult who gave her that. Someone who made her feel important to him.'

This was getting close to the line, Tony thought, but he made no move to object. ‘When Marcie turned fifteen,' Stella queried, ‘and couldn't run for you anymore, did you do anything to help her?'

Ernie folded his hands again. ‘I encouraged her to go out for track in high school. And then, just to make sure she did, I called the girls' track coach. Sam Robb.'

Beneath these few soft words, Tony heard the bitter sense of good intentions gone wrong. The first mention of the name Sam Robb had made the jury still, attentive.

‘And what did Sam Robb say?'

‘That he'd “watch out for her.”' Ernie paused, gazing at Sam again. ‘Yes, I think those were his words: “I'll watch out for her.”'

Sam's returning stare seemed emotionless, Tony thought, without feeling or expression. Stella let the moment linger.

‘After Marcie left
your
team,' she asked, ‘and joined Sam Robb's, did she keep in touch with you?'

Ernie still appraised Sam; something like distaste came over his features, lending him an air of hauteur that, curiously, reminded Tony of Dee Nixon. Then Ernie turned to Stella and, with a casual smoothness that seemed rehearsed, answered. ‘She did, yes. Sometimes she'd come around the office, sometimes we'd ask her to watch our kids. So, one way or the other, I'd see her maybe two, three times a month.'

‘And from time to time, did she talk to you about how her life was going?'

‘Uh-huh. Sometimes at the office, other times when I'd drive her home from baby-sitting.' Briefly, Ernie paused. ‘Once in a while, she'd just drop by the house. To talk.'

‘Did she ever give the impression that her enjoyment of seeing you went beyond talking?' Stella paused, adding in a flat voice, ‘By that, I mean that she had romantic feelings for you, some sort of crush.'

‘Absolutely not.' Ernie's tone reflected Stella's, a shared contempt for anyone who would smear this girl – or him – to spare a guilty man just punishment. ‘What she wanted was an adult who was a friend, rather than a parent. You see this kind of attachment in that age kid a lot – it's normal, even healthy, and it's part of growing up. When I was a kid, I wish I'd had more of it.'

For the first time, Tony glanced at the Calders: Frank Calder raised his head, and his wife nodded with silent vehemence. But to Tony, Ernie's answer was far more subtle, suggesting the man as he wished to see himself and reminding Tony that Coach Jackson, whom Tony had admired, had seemed to take little interest in Ernie as a human being. Tony sensed that an unspoken gulf lay between the Calders and Ernie, the territory in Marcie's life that Ernie felt they had left to him, the caring adult he once had wanted and now wished to see in himself.

‘What kinds of things did Marcie talk about?'

Ernie shrugged. ‘Everything and anything – grades, school, track, guys.' He glanced at the jury. ‘Kids that age are remarkably candid. They haven't closed up yet, like adults.'

Leaning his head to Tony's, Saul murmured, ‘What is this, Adolescent Development 101: all little kids tell Big Bird about busted rubbers?' But there was nothing Tony could do; objecting to Ernie's generalities, however self-serving, would make Tony look too anxious.

‘Did there come a time,' Stella asked, ‘when you became worried about where Marcie's life was going?'

Ernie nodded. ‘Yes,' he said firmly. ‘Very worried.'

‘What were the circumstances?'

Surveying the jury, Ernie talked to them directly. ‘Marcie came to see me, at my office. I could tell she was pretty shaken up, even before she said she needed my help.' His tone was subdued, as if the memory burdened him still. ‘Marcie said she'd begun having sex, and she was scared.'

The beautician gazed back at him, Tony thought, with unquestioning compassion. Stella waited for a moment. Quietly, she asked, ‘Did you ever have sexual relations with Marcie Calder?'

Ernie sat straighter. ‘Absolutely not. That was never the way I saw her.'

Stella, Tony saw, was asking
his
questions, blunting their impact. ‘Even after your wife left?' she prodded.

Ernie folded his arms. ‘That's not something I'd do, Ms. Marz. It's not something
anyone
should do who's got responsibility for other people's children.'

Though this was meant as a jab at Sam, Ernie's face was set, and his words suddenly sounded defensive, as self-righteous as a political platform and as lacking in any acknowledgment of human weakness, of desires felt but not, in the more complex and more honorable exercise of human decency, acted upon. The true Ernie, already revealed to Tony, was hidden now – perhaps because Ernie had begun lying to himself; more likely, Tony guessed, because Ernie knew that most people told themselves convenient lies about their own motives and thus might not forgive Ernie Nixon for the tangle that was his. But something had been lost, and not just from Stella's case; Ernie was no longer himself, and knew that Tony knew it.