Silent Witness (24 page)

‘That never quite happens, I'm afraid.'

Suddenly Sam looked down. Softly, he said, ‘I didn't kill her, Tony. That's why I went to the cops.'

The fierceness of Tony's desire to believe this took him by surprise. With equal quiet, he asked, ‘What happened to you, Sam?'

Sam turned to the window. For a moment, he was quiet. ‘We were all right, Sue and I. Not great, maybe, but all right. We were good parents. We did the right things – went to their activities, saved our money, sent them to college. They were the center of our lives. Then they were gone, and here I still was, not going anywhere . . .' Pausing, Sam faced Tony again. ‘That's why I didn't want you here. To see that.'

In its raw simplicity, the statement startled Tony – that Sam had come to know this and could say it to him so soon. Almost gently, Tony said, ‘Tell me about Marcie Calder.'

Sam glanced upstairs; to Tony, the presence of Sue, the delicate balance between wife and husband, was suddenly palpable.

‘Let's go for a walk,' Sam murmured.

The house, which once had been Sam's parents', was a few blocks from the high school. For most of the walk they were quiet; remembering each street, the wood-frame houses or brick bungalows of kids he once had known, Tony felt connected with a time, long before Alison had died, when this place and its sameness were comforting, the only world he cared about. He stopped in front of the white house, now covered with aluminum siding, where Mary Jane Kulas had lived.

‘Know what happened to
her
?' Sam asked. ‘She's a nurse. And a grandmother.'

‘Jesus.'

‘That's not the half of it. She must weigh three hundred pounds . . .'

It was odd, Tony thought; listening, he felt like a ghost.
I swear I saw Tony Lord
, he imagined someone saying,
the kid who killed Alison Taylor, big as life, hanging out with Sam Robb. Probably comparing notes
 . . .

Sam had stopped talking. ‘This is weird for you,' he finally asked, ‘isn't it?'

‘Yeah.'

They stood face-to-face on the sidewalk. Softly, Sam said, ‘I haven't left the house since Monday. Couldn't face anyone.' He paused, tears in his eyes. ‘That's when I knew how big an apology I owed you, Tony, all those years ago.'

They sat in the wooden stands, gazing at an empty football field. There was no one around.

‘What about Coach Jackson?' Tony asked.

‘Oh, he died, man. Popped an aorta, about five years after you left.' Sam propped his chin in his hands, looking straight ahead. ‘You knew he was fucking my mother, I guess. Everyone knew.'

Silence, Tony thought, was answer enough.

‘Well,' Sam said after a time, ‘at least she wasn't in high school.'

The naked self-contempt jarred Tony; perhaps he had been hoping for Sam's expression of sadness, some regret that a girl he had known was dead. But it was not the first time that Tony had seen this; the self-absorption of those facing murder charges was so total, their fear so complete, that they often forgot the victim. And seldom more so, Tony reminded himself, than when they were guilty.

Sam was watching him again. ‘There was something I've always wondered, though. About Sue. You were fucking her, weren't you?'

Surprised, Tony made his face blank, a lawyer's reflex. ‘You give me too much credit. And Sue too little.'

Slowly, Sam nodded. ‘Yeah. She'd never do that to me, would she.'

Once more, the words had a self-lacerating quality. ‘I guess you were “fucking” Marcie Calder, then.'

Sam sat straighter, inhaling. He did not answer.

‘Let's get something straight,' Tony said evenly. ‘I'm your lawyer now – not an old friend, someone you've met again at a high school reunion and want to impress. As a lawyer, my role is not to judge you but to give you the best advice and, if necessary, the best defense.

‘For those purposes, it doesn't matter if you slept with her – it shouldn't to me, and it can't to you, however we might feel as friends. But this is one time I'll fire a client for lying to me. Because it damn well matters if you try to use me, and if you do, all you'll get is the stupid advice you'll deserve.'

Sam turned to him, flushed. ‘Look . . .'

‘Screw around with me now,' Tony said in his most unimpressed voice, ‘and you'll lose your career, and maybe the rest of your life. The only way I can help you is to get the truth. Whatever that is.'

Sam drew a deep breath. ‘Oh, you'll get the truth, Tony. Just like you've always given it to me. So don't
you
lie to me now. You
care
. Your own girlfriend was murdered when you were seventeen, and you care a lot. Not about sex, maybe. But about whether your old friend Sam is a murderer.'

Tony felt himself tense. ‘All right, Sam . . . I want you to be innocent. Not just because of Alison, but because of Sue.
And
you.' He paused a moment, and muted his tone. ‘If you're guilty, tell me now and I'll find you another lawyer. Because I won't be the one you need. I know that, going in.'

Leaning forward, Sam's eyes locked Tony's. ‘I've done a lot of things, pal. Things you won't respect. But I am
not
a murderer.' He paused, finishing softly: ‘Please, I need you to believe that.'

Sam's voice was husky with suppressed emotion, the sound of truth. Through his own desire to believe, Tony found himself wondering which part of the statement was true – all of it, or only the last. Finally, he answered, ‘Then I do.'

Sam's bulky frame seemed to relax. After a time, he asked, ‘So what do you want to know, Tony?'

‘Everything. To start, what Marcie Calder was like.'

Sam gave him a long look before answering. ‘To tell you the truth, Tony, she reminded me of Alison.'

It was the way she carried herself, Sam explained – graceful, a little aloof, as if living in a secret. Marcie was not as smart, and surely not as privileged; yet there was this sense of privacy, of a girl who held herself back. Her greatest freedom seemed to be in motion.

She was tall and slender, Sam said; she had pale skin, straight black hair, which fell across her cheekbones. But her reticence seemed more like shyness than some deeper commitment to privacy; where Alison was practical – a realist, as Sam remembered her – this girl struck him as a romantic. It fell to Sam, her coach, to impose some discipline on her talent.

But she
had
talent and, Sam admitted, he liked to watch her, the careful way she listened to him, how she believed in him with her eyes. Next to those eyes, Marcie's legs were the best part of her; she was almost flat-chested, but she had the legs of a ballerina, strong enough to run not just the hundred-yard dash but also the two-twenty. Sam's assignment to the girls' track team had been an afterthought of the principal – an insult, Sam believed, because it suggested that he considered Sam's time unimportant – and Sam saw himself as the faded athlete, shepherding young girls on the field where once he had excelled, which now had become the treadmill of a stalled life. But Marcie had transformed this: not only did she admire him, but he could make her special. When she first asked to stay after practice, to work with him in that vital burst from the starter's block, he had been happy to do so. An hour later, she was much better; for the first time, watching from behind as she bent over the cinder track, Sam admired the sinew of her thighs, the tightness of her bottom. There was something sensual about the way she froze there, waiting for his command to start.

The first meet of the new season, Marcie won both races.

Even then, she was not talkative. But Sam could see it in her eyes. They
shone
, he said to Tony; he had helped her discover something even more important than the love of running – she, Marcie Calder, was the best. When she ran up to hug him, the pressure of her body, closer than Sam expected, made him feel aroused.

The girls went to their locker room; Sam to his office, next to the principal's. The secretaries were gone; the principal was attending a convention. Sam began reviewing the attendance report.

He heard footsteps in the front office, quiet and soft. There had been a problem with student theft; as he started to get up, Marcie Calder appeared in his doorway. She was still in her track suit; the surprise of this made Sam's heart skip. He took in her long legs and then her eyes, grave and very still, the light sprinkling of freckles on the bridge of her nose. Even before she said anything, he felt that strange electricity that any man knows – the sense that something never spoken no longer needs to be.

He tried to smile. ‘Hi, Marcie. What's up?'

She gave the smallest shrug of her shoulders, eyes not moving from his. ‘I wanted to say thank you.'

‘For what?
You
won the races.'

Slowly, Marcie shook her head. ‘You made me win.' Her voice was soft. ‘Please, can I close the door?'

Sam felt a constriction in his throat. How many times, he wondered, had he told his teachers never to meet with students behind closed doors – with how paranoid parents were these days, the dangers of sexual harassment charges, the risks of privacy were too great. ‘All right,' he heard himself say. ‘If you think you need to.'

Head bowed, she closed the door behind her. When she faced him, Marcie hesitated for a minute.

‘I'm in love with you,' she said.

Blood pounding in his head, Sam ventured another smile. ‘Just like Jennifer, my daughter. Until she saw through me.'

Her eyes did not accept this; where had she learned so much, Sam wondered, and how had he given himself away? Calmly, she answered, ‘Like a woman, Mr. Robb.'

He should have smiled at that last. But all he said was, ‘Oh. Like that.'

She was by his chair now. He could see the crucifix around her neck, the delicacy of her collarbone. ‘I've never slept with a man,' she said quietly. ‘I don't think I'm ready.'

‘Neither am I. And when you are, Marcie, it'll be someone more age-appropriate, like they say at teachers meetings.'

‘No,' she said. ‘I want it to be you. Just not now.'

The blinds beside him were open, he realized. From the inner yard, some janitor might see them. ‘Then what is it you want?' he asked.

She had followed his eyes. When she lowered the blinds, he did not stop her.

Kneeling, she unbuckled his belt.

‘Marcie, for God's sake . . .'

She looked up at him. ‘I know how,' she said. ‘Not from experience. But people talk, you know. . . .' Then she paused, and the crown of her head bent forward.

Sam stopped thinking.

He raised himself slightly. When he looked down, he saw what he had already felt. Her black hair grazed his thighs.

For a time, he did not move, or make a sound.

To Tony, it sounded wrong: the seductive student, the aging man.

‘Have you just finished
Lolita
?' he asked. ‘It's classic male fantasy.'

Sam shrugged, staring straight ahead. ‘I guess that's why it happened.'

Pausing, Tony reviewed his incredulity. ‘This sixteen-year-old just came to you like that? No come-on from you, no double entendres, nothing to tell you that
she
was a little off? Just out of the blue?'

‘You wanted the truth, dammit.' Sam turned on him. ‘This wouldn't only get me run out of Lake City, or even just cost me my license to teach anywhere. If a teacher told
me
that story tomorrow, I'd be obliged by law to take this to the county prosecutor. I don't know about San Francisco, but in this state, statutory rape and oral copulation with a minor are good for time in prison.' His voice was soft with bitterness. ‘As an assistant principal, I'm a perfect object lesson for some judge. I'm already on administrative leave because I
might
have had sex with her. So my “classic male fantasy” is way too dumb to be a lie, Tony. Even before the part where Sue walks out and my kids can't stand to look at me.'

Tony sat back, gazing at the football field where, twenty-eight years before, with Sue and Alison watching, he and Sam had achieved together the moment they had always imagined. ‘All right,' he said softly. ‘Tell me about the night she died.'

They met at twilight, around eight-thirty, in the parking lot of a defunct gas station. It was the second time they had done this; as before, Marcie left her car and slipped into the passenger seat next to Sam. On the first night, six weeks before, the risk had lent a sense of danger to a novelty that, Sam confessed to Tony, aroused him – a willing girl for whom everything they did was new. They had gone to Taylor Park; hidden by bushes, Marcie had undressed. As Sam had slipped on the condom, she lay back on the sleeping bag, legs open for him, waiting. He was careful not to hurt her; when he entered, Sam could feel the light skipping of her heart, her soft breath against his face. Then she had whispered, ‘I love you,' and her voice had been so wispy, so young, that his own climax had filled him with shame.

As Sam told it, the night she had vanished was to be the end. The lawyer in Tony could not assume that Sam's story was true. But Sam had the storyteller's gift: from the beginning, Tony could imagine the silence in the car – a man hoping to pull back from self-destruction, a girl lost in fantasy, oblivious to the gulf between them.

Tony sat back and allowed himself to envision the night as Sam described it and even, at some moments, to believe him.

The evening was cool, clear. It was a school night, and the lot at Taylor Park was empty. When the car stopped, Marcie moved close. Softly, she asked, ‘What do you want tonight?'