Silent Witness (39 page)

‘Bullshit.' She could see the vein in his temple. ‘You're talking bullshit.'

‘Bullshit?' In her own anger and frustration, Dee gave him the faint, superior smile she knew that he despised. ‘Isn't little Marcie your prom queen, Ernie? Isn't that why you spend all those hours talking to her? It sure can't be her
mind
. . . .' She stood abruptly. ‘Oh, I know – you're just
concerned
about her.'

He stood with her. ‘You fucking bitch . . .'

She stuck her face in his. ‘It's all so
pathetic
, Ernie. She needs another daddy, so she plays into your white-girl fantasy. She gets an audience, and all she has to do is let you imagine fucking her –'

She could see it in his eyes, the instant before his palm crashed into her face. The world went white; as she reeled back against the wall, blinking away the tears of shock, Dee Nixon was honest enough to admit to herself that she had wanted him to do this.

Ernie collapsed back on the bed, stricken by his own shame. ‘I'm sorry, baby. I'm so, so sorry. . . .'

Dee Nixon shook her head. ‘I didn't leave because I thought he'd hit me again. I left because part of me had wanted him to do it, like my father did my mother.' Her voice filled with regret and self-disgust. ‘It was my own ugliness that scared me half to death – drove me to counseling, in fact. When my lawyer put that in the petition, I fired him. And now there's you.'

Tony tilted his head. ‘Did you believe that about Marcie Calder?'

Removing her glasses, Dee Nixon wiped their lenses, pensive now. ‘If Ernie felt that way, he didn't know it. I can't really see him sleeping with that girl, and I sure can't see him hurting her. If for no other reason than that he's so afraid of his own true feelings.'

Tony was quiet for a while. ‘In high school,' he said finally, ‘Ernie did me a kindness once. I never thought it was because he wanted to be like me. He just felt sorry for me, that's all.'

She put on her glasses, composed again. ‘He said you were a friend. But I don't think he had “friends,” really – I guess what he meant by that is you'd actually been decent to him.' She paused, leaning forward. ‘And now you're looking to make him out the worst kind of racist cliché – the violent black man, post-O.J. The thinking part of me doesn't defend any man hitting a woman for
any
reason. But
I
was there, and I know my husband. What happened between us was a private quarrel, two people's weaknesses flaring up until they exploded like they never had before. Race may have destroyed our marriage, but I don't want it to destroy
him
any more than it has already. So don't expect me to help you, Mr. Lord. Because whatever Ernie did that night, it's not nearly enough for him to deserve
you
.'

On the flight from Chicago to Steelton, Tony wrestled with his conscience.

His own instincts suggested that Dee Nixon was right: that although capable of violence, Ernie Nixon was not, by nature, a violent man; that such a portrayal could, in the end, appeal to subliminal bigotry. But she had her own share of guilt and shame; her own reasons – two children – for keeping the peace with an estranged husband; her own issues, including race, which might make Marcie Calder or Sam Robb a little less important.

‘Sam Robb . . .' she'd said to Tony as he left. ‘I used to work with him. All charisma and a yard wide, that kind of careless cocky charm that seems to take itself for granted. Until I saw how needy he was. That way, he reminded me of Ernie – hard to see a man who craves approval like that as a murderer.' But it was clear to Tony that she didn't care much.

Caring for Sam was Tony's job, unless he gave it up.

‘You probably wonder,' Stella Marz said without preface, ‘if I've been fucking around with you. But then I've been wondering what you did to Jennifer Travis.'

‘You
have
been fucking around with me.' Tony sat down. ‘About Travis, all I did was preview my cross-examination. Someone else should have been honest enough to tell her that coming forward might take her places she didn't want to go. But not to the criminal courts, I'm pretty sure – whatever its truth, her story is not one bit probative of murder.'

Stella considered him, her eyes brown-green ovals of thought. ‘You always manage to look so innocent. I can't even tell if you're embarrassed.'

‘Are
you
?'

‘No. And I wouldn't be too hard on the Calders, either. It's understandable that they didn't want me telling you, or anyone, that Marcie was pregnant.' She paused for a moment. ‘Until and unless it became evidence in a criminal prosecution.'

Tony sat back, edgy now. ‘Is that why you called me?'

‘Uh-huh.' She folded her hands. ‘We're indicting, Tony. Sam Robb's the father.'

Somehow her tone, casual and off the cuff, made this even worse. Perhaps because it was so clear that she had expected this.

‘You've got your motive,' Tony said.

Stella nodded. ‘That Marcie told him she was pregnant. Your friend Sam lied to us – he'd been having sex with a sixteen-year-old girl, and now she was going to have his child.' Her tone held quiet contempt. ‘She didn't believe in abortion, so there was no place for him to hide. His career, perhaps his marriage, would be out the window. So he took
two
lives instead.'

There was no stopping this, Tony knew. It was only by reflex that he asked, ‘So why did Sam go to the cops when she went missing?'

‘Panic, guilt – his mind was probably a jumble. But I'm sure he didn't know we could DNA a six-week-old fetus, and was afraid of getting caught.'

Tony stood, hands shoved in his pockets; for once, he did not care if someone saw his own distress. ‘It would have been less of a risk to just let her lie there, murderer that he is. Or maybe he just forgot that she was dead the last time he saw her.'

Stella regarded him impassively. ‘That's your argument, all right. Maybe a jury will even buy it. But they'll have to, because we're trying this unless you plead him.'

Tony could no longer fight off the images – Sam's face when he told him; Sue, sitting in the courtroom. Perhaps it might be better, for everyone, if he loaned them the money to find a lawyer to whom this was less personal, whose feelings were less conflicted and complex. At length, Tony asked, ‘Plead him to what?'

‘Murder two.'

It surprised him enough to grimace. ‘That's not an offer, Stella – it's the most you can get. Even if you could persuade twelve people that Sam killed her, you can never prove premeditation.'

‘So come back with a story that supports manslaughter – like that somehow he didn't mean to kill her – and I'll consider it. Though with several apparent blows to the head, it's hard to imagine what that story would be.' Her gaze grew pointed. ‘Drunkenness, maybe. But your client would have to give the court a statement, spelling out exactly how it happened. In this kind of case, I don't want to leave any doubts around. You, more than anyone, can appreciate that.'

Tony drew a breath. He no longer had to decide whether to mention Ernie Nixon; the place for that decision, now, was at trial. Softly, he said, ‘I think I can beat this, Stella. I'm not sure you've got enough.'

Stella gazed at him a moment. ‘I'm sorry,' she said at last. ‘I know this is difficult for you. But I have to try the cases I think should be tried, even if there's a chance that I could lose.' She gave a fatalistic shrug. ‘If we do try it, Tony, I'm sure I'll learn something.'

Tony managed a smile. ‘Maybe I will.'

Stella summoned a smile of her own, looking at him with level eyes. ‘Modesty,' she answered, ‘doesn't always become you. But maybe you'll learn a little something about Sam Robb. At least if you don't already know it.'

At around four-thirty, in a day that already felt achingly long, Tony found Sam Robb at the Lake City baseball diamond.

Watching the Lake City team play Riverwood, Sam sat alone in the grass adjacent to deep right field, well away from the stands, where his presence would have excited comment or alarm. As Tony approached, he felt pity for Sam's isolation, for what he had lost and was about to lose. In this elegiac frame of mind, Tony imagined that his friend was seeing his youth from some great distance, now barely able to hear the cries of the players, the crack of a bat, the slap of a baseball on a leather glove. Though perhaps the fatalism in Sam's gaze as he looked up was a trick of Tony's mind.

‘News?' Sam asked.

Slowly, Tony nodded. ‘Marcie Calder was pregnant, Sam.'

If this was not a surprise, Tony thought, Sam had the talent of turning pale at will. His eyes shut. ‘And they think it's mine?' he said at last.

‘They're sure it is.' When Sam's eyes flew open, Tony added, ‘With DNA, they can do that too. I guess you didn't know that.'

For a moment, Sam's stillness was not the stillness of thought but the paralysis Tony had seen at the moment a person heard something that he could not accept – the sudden death of a parent, the murder of a child, the betrayal of a lover, the ruin of a life. Only Sam's lips moved. ‘It's over for me here. . . .'

‘I'm afraid so.'

‘
Sue
 . . .'

The name, spoken with sudden anguish, said much more than Sam could express. Tony felt his own chest tighten. ‘You'll have to tell her, Sam. Before she hears it from the media.'

Sam turned to him, his irises pale blue in the frozen white of his eyes. Softly, Tony said, ‘They're filing charges tomorrow. Murder one, unless you plead. You've got twenty-four hours to decide.'

Folding his arms, Sam stared at the ground. ‘
Sue
,' he said again, a whisper.

It pierced Tony's self-possession. ‘I'm sorry,' he murmured. ‘For both of you.'

Sam did not seem to hear, nor could he seem to look at him. ‘You should have taken her away, Tony. After Alison died, all those years ago.'

Startled, Tony wondered how much Sam knew, or guessed. Quietly, he said, ‘That was never a choice I had.'

‘Worse luck for her. Now she can look back at our life and see this at the end.' He shook his head, as if in awe at the devastation he had caused. ‘A broken rubber . . .'

Tony waited a moment. ‘You didn't know?'

‘She never told me . . .' Sam's eyes seemed haunted, distant, wondering. ‘I guess that must have been what the marriage thing was, what she said about giving me children. If I'd known, Tony, I'd have done it different. I'm not sure what, exactly. But I wouldn't have let Marcie run off into the park at night.' Thoughts seemed to come to him in increments, one puzzle piece, then another. ‘No wonder she was so out of her mind . . .'

Tony watched his eyes film over. The defense lawyer Tony Lord had an instinct for lies and evasions that the other Tony, friend of Sam Robb, seemed to have lost. What Tony saw now was either a man in shock, confronting for the first time a bitter, damning trick of fate, or a liar so gifted yet so troubled that he was able to convince himself. But if the latter was so, Sam's greatest gift was that – at this moment – his first concerns seemed to be his wife and a pregnant teenage girl he had last seen alive and thus still could imagine saving. In his own sadness and confusion, Tony found it better simply to remain beside his friend, silent.

From a distance, Tony heard a thin cry rising from the crowd, saw a Lake City player – all churning arms and legs – round first base as the left fielder ran toward the fence, pursuing an invisible ball. He and Sam Robb were in another world, their own.

‘I know how bad you feel,' Sam said at last. ‘But I don't think there's anything more you could have done.'

The phrase combined sympathy with an odd detachment, as if Sam were consoling him for the lingering, expected death of some third person. ‘It's not over,' Tony answered. ‘Maybe in Lake City, but not in court. They don't have an airtight case.'

‘They can't,' Sam said simply. ‘Because I didn't kill her. For whatever that's worth now.'

Tony did not answer. Softly, Sam told him, ‘You've done enough, Tony. You came back, whether it was for Sue or me or both of us. You went through what happened with Alison, all over again. You saved my job for a while and did some things to try and save my ass that I know you didn't like doing.' He turned to Tony, touching his shoulder. ‘I couldn't ask more from a friend, and if I'm still any kind of friend to you, I'll send you back to Stacey and to Christopher. It's time for me to let you go.'

Tony felt the same whiplash of emotion he had first felt thirty years before: whenever he concluded that Sam was selfish and insensitive, his friend would touch him with some astonishing act of grace. It was all the more touching, Tony realized, because
this
was the person that some inextinguishable boy in Tony – the optimist, the Roman Catholic, the believer in redemption – had always wished Sam Robb to be, and that boy existed still.

‘What will you do?' Tony asked.

‘Find a lawyer. Borrow retainer money, I guess. That's what people do, isn't it?'

That was true, Tony knew from his own practice; it was the first lesson he had learned from Saul. And there was no question – but for guilt and history and a justified belief in his defense lawyer's skill and coolness – that Tony's peace of mind would best be served by his putting as much distance as he could between himself and the death of a teenage girl. As if reading his mind, Sam said, ‘Besides, you still wonder if I killed her, don't you? Maybe more than ever.'