The Final Judgment (21 page)

“Caroline, I’m sorry—”

“I won’t give you his number.” Her voice was tight. “I can’t let him find out.”

Mannion shook his head. “He has to know”he began, and then something like comprehension appeared in his eyes.

Quietly, Caroline said, “Take me there.”

The ride was impressions. Dawn breaking over the Vineyard, as fresh as creation; the white homes and picket fences of Edgartown; then woods and farmland; telephone poles; stone walls; fields as open as the Scottish moors, rolling toward the sea. As they neared Chilmark, Caroline could feel Mannion’s reluctance, the leaden silence between them. “Did you always live here?” she asked.

She felt his surprise, a moment’s hesitancy. “No. I’m new. Until me, they never had state police on the island before.” Caroline was quiet for a time. “Do you like it?”

She felt him turn to her, as if to appraise what she needed. “The islanders aren’t so sure about me,” he said finally. “They’ve had their own way all this time. But my wife likes it, and it’s good for the kids.”

Caroline nodded. “How many do you have?”

”Three.” They turned off the road, down the dirt path toward Windy Gates. Caroline could say nothing more.

Trees enveloped them, thick and ancient and overgrown, hanging over the path so that only patches of morning sun dappled the red clay. Caroline felt the tightening in her chest and throat; with sudden clarity, she imagined her mother the night before, dancing with Paul Nerheim on the tennis court to music no one else could hear, their bodies close, a bucket of chilled champagne nearby ....

As they neared the fork in the road-one path leading to Nerheim’s estate, the other continuing straight to the water—Mannion slowed the car. His mouth was pressed tight.

Turning, Caroline looked toward the house. Imagined her mother driving down the twisting road, as they had the

night Caroline had come with her parents. Saw her mother squinting as the headlights struck the trunks of trees, guiding her on the pitch-dark path until she reached the gnarled tree that marked the fork: toward the ocean, or toward home. Remembered her voice, softly saying to Caroline’s father, “Left ...” Saw her in the darkness alone, this time turning toward the water.

Quietly, Caroline murmured, “She knew the way .... “ The look Mannion gave her had a touch of superstition, as if he were afraid to speak. And then they passed the fork, rose slowly upward on the twisting path Caroline had walked until she could go no farther.

They went more slowly now. The twists grew more abrupt; there was a chill on Caroline’s skin as the memory came to her, just before they reached it—a final bend to the right, as if to turn a corner, and then a rise breaking from the trees to an open sky ....

At the edge of the cliff was an ambulance.

As Mannion stopped the car behind it, Caroline said softly, “They should close this road.” Mannion could not look at her.

They got out. He stood by the car; alone, Caroline walked to where the road simply vanished, like the end of the world.

She inhaled. And then, by an act of will, she gazed down at the beach, two hundred feet below.

What she saw first was the white Porsche. It was upside down near the water, its nose dug into the tawny sand as glistening waves lapped against the hood. Near the car, the small figures of three men walked in a desultory manner, sometimes gazing at the water like lovers of nature who had awaited the dawn. Swallowing, Caroline watched one of the figures break away and slowly cross the sand.

He stopped, gazing down.

A tiny figure lay there in her mother’s dress, arms out-flung, her black hair strewn across the sand like seaweed washed up by the tide. There were patterns in the sand

around her, lines and arcs, darker where the crest of the last wave had touched. Caroline could not breathe. She felt Frank Mannion behind her. Slowly, Caroline walked from him to the stairs. Saw her mother as she left the earth, free-falling in darkness. I sent her here, she thought. Caroline took the last steps to the stairs. She descended them with her head bowed, Mannion behind her, not looking at the beach. Perhaps it was not her mother, she told herself in silent prayer; from above, the woman looked too small and frail to be the woman Caroline knew. The stairs behind her groaned beneath Mannion’s plodding steps. She took a her of stairs, then another and another, until her feet touched sand. Before her were the scattered ruins of other stairs. She stopped there, looking back up the cliffside. Saw the scarred clay near the bottom where her mother’s car first hit. Cool water lapped at her feet. The tide was rising, she realized; as she turned again, slowly walking toward the body, the first wave swirled her mother’s hair away from the white face. Like an automaton, Caroline walked the last few yards to the body of Nicole Masters. Her face was china. There was a delicate line of blood from her mouth, and her neck was strangely angled. Otherwise, she seemed untouched. But the spirit that once animated Nicole Masters had left her; to her daughter, this waxen figure in the sand had ceased to be her mother, the woman whose clean profile she had last seen in the mirror, who had kissed her goodbye. Tearless, Caroline sat by the body. “Leave her,” she heard Mannion murmur to the others. Caroline stayed there, gazing at her mother, wishing to unsay the things that would hurt Nicole no longer. After a time, she felt Mannion standing next to her.

Caroline did not look up. “That’s her,” she told him. “My mother.” He knelt by her then, empty hands cupped in front of him. Quietly, he said, “She hit the brakes, Caroline. There were skid marks up above.” Caroline’s eyes shut. Only then did the tears run down her cheeks. “So,” Mannion said gently. “You see.” Dully, Caroline nodded. She could not speak. His voice was still soft. “We need to take her now.” After a moment, Caroline stood. She drew sea air deep into her lungs, gazed up at the cliff from which her mother had come. At its edge, she saw the figure of Paul Nerheim. Next to Caroline, Mannion said, “I’ll call your father.” Caroline still stared at the man above them. “No,” she said. “I will.”

They buried her mother at Masters Hill, some distance from where her husband would someday lie. The service was brief and spare: no one mentioned that she was French, or Jewish, or how she had come here. The details of her death were unspoken. But Caroline had spared her father nothing. When he had come for her, he put his arms around her and said in a hoarse, gentle voice, “Fathers protect their daughters, not the other way around. Why did you think I needed that from you?” Caroline could not answer. When she turned from the look on his face, it was no longer to protect him but to protect herself from the knowledge of her father’s pain. In the days after the funeral, they were alone; at her father’s urging, Betty returned to her interrupted tour of Europe. Her father treated Caroline with haunted kindness. Once, sleepless, she found him in the music room at midnight. “Do you want to talk?” she asked. “No, Caroline.” His voice was harsh. “Not to you.” In that moment, Caroline felt his solitude, knew that his

sternness was directed not at her but at himself. They never spoke of Nicole again. Nor would he hear of Caroline staying. They had enrolled her in Dana Hall; nothing, Channing insisted, should change their plans. When she thought of leaving him alone, Caroline’s heart ached. She wept for her mother where Channing could not see. In the weeks remaining, they made themselves the semblance of a life. Channing’s birthday fell three days before she left. In secret, Caroline picked a present for him; when the morning of his birthday came, she pressed him to take her fishing on Heron Lake. There were scattered clouds; sunlight sparkled on the lake, vanished, fell again. Caroline faced her father in the rowboat. “I love it here,” she said. “I wish I weren’t leaving.” Channing smiled a little. “You’re not leaving, Caroline-this is your home. You’re simply going away.” Caroline looked at him: the black hair, deep-set black eyes, strong face on which only Caroline could read hurt. Impulsively, she said, “I wish I could take care of you.” There was a brief wound in his eyes, and then he smiled again. “I’m not nearly old enough, Caroline. You’ll have to wait your time.” Caroline felt awkward, knew that she should not have acknowledged what she saw. As if to cover this, she told him, “I’ve decided what I want to do.” “Oh? And what’s that?”

“Be a lawyer. If you’re not a judge anymore, I can practice law with you.” He tilted his head. “And after that?” She hesitated; perhaps it was foolish, but she wanted him to know. “I’d be a judge. Woman or not.” For a long time, he simply looked at her. “Caroline,” he said in a soft voice, “that would please me greatly.” Caroline felt a catch in her throat. For a moment, she almost forgot his present.

Awkwardly, she reached into her backpack, pulled out the slim black box with the ribbon she had tied around it. “What is this?” he asked. Caroline placed it in his hands. “Happy birthday.” He gazed at the box with a funny half smile. “Shall I open it?”

“That’s why I brought it.” Carefully, Channing untied the ribbon. Inside the box was a handsome Cahill fishing knife. He held it in front of him, admiring the leather sheath, the bone handle, the slender steel blade. “Caroline ...” He paused; at first, Caroline thought he could not finish. And then he said, simply, “It’s the finest knife I’ve ever seen.” She tried to smile. “It’s so you can fillet a fish without me.” Channing Masters took her hand and covered it in both of his. At Thanksgiving, when Caroline returned from school, the knife hung on their rack in the old stable. Her father had kept it spotless.

Caroline stood at the foot of her mother’s grave. The morning was bright, beginning to warm; only in this corner of the cemetery, shaded by woods, did dew remain on the grass. The edges of Nicole’s headstone were covered with moss. Two days before her father’s call, bringing her back to Masters Hill, Caroline had returned to where her mother had died. The trail at Windy Gates was overgrown now, fit only for walking; the stone wall was barely visible beneath a tangle of vines and shrubs. At the end of the path was a wooden barrier, and then sheer cliff. One hundred feet or more had been eroded by time; the cliffside seemed to crumble beneath her feet. Staring over the edge, Caroline had been surprised to see no car, no body, so strong had been her memory. She did not walk the beach. Turning, Caroline had taken the path to Nerheim’s mansion. It was dark and dank and half ruined. There were tracks outside; a rock singer from California had bought it, Caroline had learned, to restore it to its days of pleasure. But the tennis court was overgrown with weeds .... Gazing at her mother’s headstone, Caroline heard footsteps behind her She did not turn. “What is it?” she asked. “We need to talk, Caroline.”

“Then you could have picked a better time. And place.” Her father was quiet for a moment. “For the twenty years you were away,” he answered, “I’ve come here. The memories, of whatever kind, belong to both of us.”

Turning, Caroline walked a few steps, away from the grave, and faced him. The shock of Bret’s arrest was written on his face, and his black eyes had the intensity of fever. “I knew that you would stay, Caroline.” The instinct to escape, the deep imperative to leave this place and this man, returned to Caroline across two decades. She folded her arms. “Is that what you came to tell me?” The light in his eyes dulled. “Betty says that you’re going to Concord, to review the prosecution files. I want to go with you.”

“No. Thank you.” He stiffened. “Brett is my granddaughter.” Caroline felt a rash of anger. “Is that what it always comes down to? What’s yours?”

“Is this about me, Caroline? Or about you?” His voice mixed pride and desperation. “No one is better equipped to advise you. Are you forgetting—after Nuremberg, I had Jackson’s job, then twenty-five years on the bench. I know the law, the lawyers, the judges, all the things that no one ever writes down. If I weren’t your father, you’d be begging for my help.” He stopped himself, framed his last words with the softness of a plea. “There was a time, Caroline, when you wanted nothing more.” Caroline watched his face. “So that’s what this means to you,” she said coldly. “Through Brett, you’ll win at last. All that she needed to do was kill someone.” A patch of color stained his cheeks. “How can you say that?”

“That she killed him?” Caroline shrugged. “True, I can’t be sure. But now that I’m her lawyer, whether or not she murdered this boy is of no particular interest to me. And your feelings about it interest me somewhat less.” Channing walked over to her. For a moment, it seemed that he would reach out to her. His hands were stiff and awkward at his sides.

“Please,” he said in a rough voice. “I could die soon. I want to see her vindicated.” Caroline felt suddenly weary. “That won’t be easy, Father. You may have to live for a while.” He seemed to slump. “How is she?” he asked softly. “Under the circumstances? All right. She’s frightened, of course, and her moods change. But she seems to have a certain resilience.” Channing looked away. “Do you think she can hold up?”

“Yes. For a time.” Channing turned to her. Quietly, he said, “I know that I’ve put a lot on you.”

“You? I stayed for her.” He did not answer. “This judgeship,” he said at length. “Where does it stand?” The inquiry surprised her. For an instant, she felt her ground slipping from beneath her. “Really, I can’t think about it now .... “

“I can help, Caroline.” His voice gained strength. “Tim Braddock is on the Senate Judiciary Committee, in line for the chairmanship. I could call him .... “ Caroline shook her head. “That’s the last thing I need. Or want. Can you understand that?” Momentarily, her father looked more frail. “Yes,” he answered with dignity. “I can.”

“That part of our life is over, Father.” Looking into his face, Caroline drew a breath and then finished: “But if you want to think Bret’s problem through with me—without emotion—I’m willing to put all that aside. At least for now.” He raised his head. “Thank you,” he said simply, and left her there.

From the photograph, James Case stared up at her. The fatal slash through his throat was a dark line, and his head twisted at an angle impossible in life. His eyes looked dry, glassy. His face was flecked with blood; from his lips, slightly parted, came a red bubble.