Silent Witness (35 page)

Instinctively, Sam began to stand. Putting one hand on his chest, Tony turned to him and whispered, ‘
No
.' Sam flushed, chest pressing Tony's hand, and then sat back again.

Belatedly, Doug Barker resumed control, trying to preserve the form of an orderly meeting. ‘Are there any motions,' he asked, ‘as to how we should proceed from here?'

Both Kay Marston and Allan Proctor raised their hands. With the shrewdness of a small-town politician, Doug Barker let his nemesis take a position first. ‘All right, Kay.'

Tony watched Marston, his mouth dry. ‘Believe me,' Kay Marston began, ‘I share the deep concern and sorrow many have voiced tonight. No one feels more strongly than I about
any
misconduct toward women, let alone the girls in our schools. But we don't have the legal authority to fire without a hearing.' She gazed out at the spectators. ‘Our lawyer suggests that we wait.'

‘In other words,' Allan Proctor broke in, ‘do nothing.'

Taut, Tony watched their rivalry, knowing that Sam and Sue's immediate future hung in the balance. ‘No,' Kay Marston retorted. ‘Do nothing stupid. We'll reconvene if charges are brought, and have our hearing then. Right now, you're inviting a lawsuit you know we'll never win but which allows this board to pass the buck to some judge in Steelton, who will then pass our bucks to Sam Robb and his lawyer. I don't believe in hiding the facts from voters.'

Allan Proctor stiffened with offense. Unhappily, Doug Barker looked at the others. ‘Votes?'

Tony saw John Taylor lean forward in his seat, the Calders holding hands. ‘All in favor of Mrs. Marston's motion,' Barker said, ‘please raise your hands.'

Kay Marston did so and then, reluctantly, her ally, a chemical engineer who commuted to Steelton and now stared at the table.

‘Two,' Doug Barker said in a quiet voice. ‘Opposed?'

Allan Proctor thrust his hand up first, then Doug Barker's second ally, a retired schoolteacher with tight gray curls. Numb, Tony waited for Doug to cast the final vote for termination.

‘Two,' the board president announced grimly. Tony saw Sam grasping the armrests of his chair, Sue closing her eyes again.

Doug Barker massaged the bridge of his nose. ‘Tonight I wish I weren't on the board,' he said at last. ‘I deplore the death of Marcie Calder more than I can say. But I have to agree with Tony Lord – we've known Sam Robb too long to rush to judgment, and prudence suggests that the law should do its work.' Facing Sam, he finished: ‘I hope to God I never regret this, Sam. Mrs. Marston's motion carries, three to two. . . .'

There was a sharp intake of breath. Doug Barker looked up, as if astonished at what he had done, then mumbled into the cacophony: ‘That concludes our business.'

Sullen, confused, the crowd was slow to rise. Torn between relief and instinctive sympathy, Tony watched the Calders staring at the empty stage.

Sam Robb bent forward in his chair, and wept.

Sam's hands covered his face; the image – a man mired in relief and shame – was so riveting in close-up that, for a few seconds, a startled Tony Lord forgot what he was doing.

‘Hang on, lover,' he said to Stacey, and put down the telephone.

As Tony walked to the television and turned up the volume, Sam was replaced by a slender woman in her early twenties, sitting alone on a couch. ‘When I saw that school board meeting on the news,' she told the camera, ‘I had to come forward. No matter how hard it was.'

On the screen, her strong features, unadorned by makeup, gave the impression of sincerity and terrible anguish. ‘I don't know if there were other girls. But I know that Marcie Calder wasn't the first.' Briefly, her voice caught. ‘Maybe
I
was. . . .'

Stunned, Tony murmured, ‘
No
, goddammit. . . .'

Off-camera, a woman asked, ‘Can you tell us how it happened, Jenny?'

She bobbed her head, struggling for self-control. ‘I was seventeen and on the track team, like Marcie was. He told me I was special. . . .'

‘And you had sexual relations?'

‘Yes.' She paused. ‘Once in his office, the other time in a motel.'

‘Why are you coming forward now, after six years?'

The woman seemed to gather herself. ‘If I'd had the courage to do this
then
, Marcie Calder would still be alive. Sam Robb should
never
be allowed to touch another girl. . . .'

As the camera closed in, the woman bit her lip, fighting for composure. Tony felt an emptiness in the pit of his stomach.

‘This is Tamara Lee,' the newswoman's voice said, ‘for
Headline News
.'

Numb, Tony walked to the telephone. ‘Sorry, Stace. I need to call Sam right away.'

As he stared out at Lake Erie from the pier, Sam's face looked haunted. ‘She's lying, Tony. She wants to ruin me.'

How many times, Tony wondered, had he heard this from a client. ‘Now it's
two
girls,' he shot back. ‘And what reason does
this
one have to lie?'

Sam drew a breath. The response seemed heavy and burdened, as though Sam's persona had been stripped away by this last, public humiliation, and all that remained was some primal self who resisted his fate by instinct. ‘Six years ago,' he said wearily, ‘I threw her off the track team. For having marijuana in her locker.'

Pensive, Tony watched the evening sun slip toward the water, spreading faint light in the deep blue-gray. ‘Then someone else must know that, right?'

Sam slowly shook his head. ‘I let her say she would quit. It was one thing not to want her on the team, spreading this shit around, and another to screw up her life with an expulsion.' He gave Tony a sour smile. ‘I should have tossed her out. But I remember thinking that at her age I kept a fifth of whiskey in my trunk.'

The answer gave Tony pause: this was either an inspired lie, invented within an hour, or Sam had acted with more compassion than Jack Burton, in his bogus piety, had granted the seventeen-year-old Tony Lord. ‘This charge could devastate you,' Tony said at last. ‘It'll give the school board a pattern of “moral irresponsibility,” if not a reason to say that you're emotionally unbalanced. And Stella Marz may try to use Jenny to show that you lied to the cops
and
that you're obsessed with teenage girls. The question is why, after six years, she'd still hate you enough to make this up.'

Sam turned on him abruptly. ‘Jenny Travis isn't stable. Push her hard enough and she'll fold.'

The change startled Tony; Sam's eyes flared with anger, and there was a cruel practicality in his tone. ‘I didn't ask if I could break her, dammit. I asked you why she'd lie. . . .'

‘Look, Tony – Jenny Travis had a reputation for fucking a lot of guys, even then. Later, there were stories about her and another girl on the track team.' Sam's lips tightened. ‘When someone doesn't know which end is up, who knows why they do things.'

Watching the desperation in Sam's eyes, Tony thought of Sue, suffering in stoic anguish through the school board meeting. ‘How's Sue taking this?' he finally asked.

‘How do you think?' The mention of Sue changed Sam's vehemence to despair. ‘I told her what I'm telling you – that Jenny Travis is a liar. If I can't make Sue believe me somehow, I've lost her.' He paused, shaking his head. ‘I can't imagine that, pal. Just can't imagine it . . .'

‘All right.' Tony's voice was as reluctant as he felt. ‘I'll try to talk to Jenny Travis. But understand that it's a risk. If the conversation goes south, she can testify to that as well: the bullying lawyer, trying to intimidate her for the sake of his guilty client. And then I'll have made things that much worse for both of us.'

The private investigator Saul had located, Sal Russo, was efficient. Within twenty-four hours, Tony knew that Jenny Travis was an aerobics instructor in Riverwood; had shared an apartment with a woman named Ellen Fox for the past two years; had no criminal record or involvement in civil suits since graduating from Lake City High School; was twenty-three; had never been married; and had a clean credit record. As far as Sal could tell, neither she nor Ellen Fox, a day-care staffer, had a boyfriend.

As he sat in the small office cubicle, waiting for Jenny Travis, Tony watched the last five minutes of Jenny's aerobics class. She called out orders like a drill sergeant, upbeat but no-nonsense, to the militant beat of rap music; her sweaty and determined charges, various in their shapes and capacities, mimed her calisthenics on a sliding scale running from the sensual to the foolish. On some better day, Tony might have reflected on his own faltering efforts at basketball – the aging ex-high school star outrun by younger lawyers, all of them pale from overwork and as self-serious as he about their competition – and smiled at the human comedy. But these thoughts were too benign to suit his duties to Sam.

The class ended. The students chatted among themselves like kids released from school. Jenny spoke to most of them, squeezing shoulders and offering encouragement; her manner was almost too intense, as if she were preparing her troops for some future assault on life. When a few hugged her back, Tony wondered if they were offering support in her newfound notoriety. Then Jenny Travis came through the door, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her wrist. Then she saw him, and her eyes widened in alarm.

‘You're Tony Lord,' she said. ‘I've seen you on television.'

Her voice had an astringent quality, brittle and a little afraid, and she did not try to feign goodwill. This seemed to fit the rest of her: the short pageboy haircut, the clear blue eyes, the complete absence of makeup to embellish skin so pale that, combined with her drab brown hair, it made her look drained of color. She was almost too slender, and beneath her brisk movements and challenging gaze, Tony felt something defensive.

He met her stare. ‘I thought it would make sense to look at where this thing might go. Before it goes there.'

It came out as more threatening than he wished, less reluctant than he felt. ‘Marcie Calder's dead,' Jenny retorted. ‘So she's already gone there.'

‘True. So this won't go away – you've already been overrun by the media, and now they're talking about another school board hearing.'

Jenny's narrow-eyed look conveyed worry, distaste for who she conceived Tony to be, contempt for his moral opacity. ‘And
you
already know that Sam Robb had sex with another student. Maybe you knew that
before
the school board meeting.'

She spoke as though her truthfulness should be as clear to him as it was to her. ‘I only know what you told Channel Seven,' Tony answered, ‘and I didn't hear that much . . .'

‘Well, what does
he
say?'

‘That it isn't true, and that he's willing to face a hearing.'

Jenny grimaced. ‘He really
is
a liar.
And
a murderer.' She leaned forward. ‘Do you know
why
I know that Sam Robb murdered Marcie Calder?'

It startled Tony. ‘No.'

‘Because he blackmailed me, for sex. A man who likes to force a woman is capable of taking it all the way.'

Pausing, Tony reined in his emotions; to frighten her could be fatal. In a different voice, lower and softer, he said, ‘I'd like to know what happened.'

She gave him a look of doubt, followed by a what-the-hell shrug. ‘If I'm going to have to tell it over and over again, I might as well tell it to you. After all, I've been living with it for the last six years.'

That would make Sam barely forty, Tony realized, and Sam's own Jenny, his daughter, roughly the same age as this woman. ‘Was Jenny Robb in school with you?'

Jenny Travis stared at him. ‘Classmates,' she said.

‘Did you know her at all?'

‘Everyone knew her – she was senior class president. But we were in a different group.'

Tony caught a hint of dislike, perhaps hostility. But there was no way to probe this without talking to Jenny Robb. Tony found it hard to imagine the recklessness, if this woman's accusations were true, of a school administrator who would have sex with a daughter's classmate.

‘When you say that Sam “forced” you . . .'

Jenny crossed her legs. Behind her, another class was forming, a handful of women in tights. Tony became acutely aware of silence: the silence of the women on the other side of the glass, the silence of the woman in front of him.

‘He caught me with drugs in my locker,' she said at last.

Jenny Travis closed the door behind her.

Coach Robb sat at his desk, studying her with a heavy-lidded gaze. Then he took two joints from his drawer and put them on the desk.

Jenny felt her heart race. It was better not to speak.

‘You could be expelled,' he said. ‘It's my duty to report you.'

Mute, she nodded.

Sam grimaced in dismay, a man faced with a distasteful task. Softly, he said, ‘Sit down, Jenny.'

She did that, miserable, staring at the joints.

He leaned forward, looking at her across the desk with those clear blue eyes that were the youngest part of a still young but softening face. ‘You have such potential,' he said. ‘As an athlete and as a person. Why are you throwing it away?'

Jenny shrugged, struggling for an answer, trying to determine from his manner if her fate was still open. All that she could manage was to say, ‘I don't know.'

‘Well, you're going to have to figure it out, all across the board.' He paused, folding his hands. ‘You test well, Jenny, but your grades are average. In track you don't run to your potential. And now this . . .' He paused, staring at his desk. ‘Maybe I should talk to your parents. That's what I'd want if you were
my
Jenny.'