Silent Witness (41 page)

He shook his head. ‘It's as I told you, Sue. Stella Marz can't call you, certainly not against your will. And Sam's lawyer – whoever that is – won't want to. For the precise reason you just identified: Sam lied to you too well. No sane defense lawyer would remind the jury of that.'

Distractedly, she took a sip of her drink. ‘But how do I live with that, Tony? How does anyone live with that?'

‘I don't know.' His fingers curled around hers. ‘But you're going to have to face it. Because any lawyer would want you there in court, the supportive and forgiving wife. And so will Sam, I'm sure. Whatever you decide, the consequences won't be pleasant.'

‘And if I stayed away?'

‘Better for you. Worse for him.'

She touched her eyes. ‘It's not just us,' she murmured. ‘It's the kids. They'll want to be here for him.' As if steeling herself, she finished her Scotch. ‘That's one thing I can honestly say – Sam wasn't a perfect father, but he loves them, and they love him. It's so funny: I was the manager, but they still remember how he played with them.'

It was her life with Sam in a capsule, Tony sensed, and it made him sadder yet. ‘They're lucky to have you, Sue. Including Sam. Do you really think he'd have been a better man without you?'

To Tony, her gaze was as bleak as his thoughts. ‘I thought he'd be a better man
for
me, Tony.' She looked down. ‘Sometimes I'd lie there at night, when he'd had too much to drink, and wonder what might have happened if I'd been brave enough, or selfish enough, to try and be with you.'

Tony felt a knot in his stomach. Softly, he asked, ‘What can I do now, sweetheart?'

For a long time she was silent, staring at the table. When she looked up, her eyes had filled with tears again. ‘Make him innocent, Tony. Maybe I'm as selfish as Sam is, and as foolish. But I don't know what else to ask now.' Her voice broke, and then she caught it again. ‘Make him a weak, selfish, foolish, innocent man. Because that's all that's left for me.'

And all that I can offer you, Tony thought, is innocence in court, not in life, perhaps at a price to us both. His thoughts moved to all the others whom his decision might touch – the Calders, Stacey and Christopher, Sam Robb and Ernie Nixon. But most vivid at this moment was the woman right in front of him, innocent of everything but the mistakes of her own heart.

‘All right,' Tony answered. ‘I'll try.'

Two and a half months later, on a sticky August day, the murder trial of Sam Robb commenced.

The Erie County Courthouse was a Baroque structure from the 1920s. At that time, Anthony Lord reflected, courtroom architecture had combined an aura of sanctity with the atmosphere of the men's club that the law then was – marble steps, oaken walls, varnished benches – and that even now induced a certain reverence. This era of municipal confidence had passed, of course, buffeted first by the Depression and then – more cruelly because it was particular to the rust belt – the decline of heavy industry. The deterioration of public finances showed in the building's dinginess and disrepair, even as the decline of Steelton itself was reflected in the jury pool. It was less educated and less affluent: left behind by the flight of their economic betters, disadvantaged blacks and hard-pressed ethnic whites were overrepresented. Without Saul Ravin to help pick a jury, Tony – accustomed to San Francisco – would have worried even more.

Of course, certain biases in the jury selection were universal. As discreetly as she could, Stella Marz winnowed out unemployed black males, believing that they lacked affinity for cops or the established order; reserving the Ernie Nixon option, Tony decided not to challenge her. The result was a jury that seemed better for the prosecution than for the defense.

Saul had warned Tony that the great bulk of the jury pool, mid-western and middle class, would tend to trust authority. Despite Tony's best efforts, Stella was able to impanel three Steelton Poles – a beautician, a bookkeeper, and the burly owner of a corner store – as well as two blue-collar Irish Catholic laborers and an Italian housewife. All had followed the rules as they perceived them: in varying degrees, they reminded Tony of his own parents, and he guessed that, like Tony's parents, they would have little sympathy for an assistant principal who slept with a teenage girl.

Tony himself disqualified three women who combined long-term marriages with devoted motherhood to teenage girls, and then gambled on another: a nutritionist, who, in Saul's ironic phrase, seemed closest to those ‘practitioners of the human arts' – counselors, psychiatrists, and sociologists – whose careers reward compassion. But neither she nor Tony's favorite juror – a donnish English professor from Steelton State, inclined to critical thought – seemed likely to emerge as foreperson. Sam Robb's best hope, Tony bleakly admitted to Saul, was that Stella had created a pro-prosecution monster that might, to her surprise, be turned against a circumstantial case through the artful use of Ernie Nixon.

The night before opening statements, they sat in Saul's darkened office, drinking Scotch. ‘It's not like you're tampering with perfect justice,' Saul remarked. ‘People hate defense lawyers because they imagine we're screwing up something purer than the screwed-up world that exists in their own workplace, their own homes, or – if they're really honest with themselves – their own psyches.
Our
consolation is knowing what a sewer a prosecutor's “justice” can really be – the snitches, the deals they make with sleazebags who are guiltier than the ones they take to trial, the racial assumptions Stella made in getting rid of blacks.' Saul sipped his whiskey. ‘If that last part back-fires on her, it's not an injustice, just another fucking irony. Except perhaps to Ernie Nixon, who isn't our client.'

Despite his misgivings, Tony smiled at the word ‘our.' ‘How did I talk you into this, Saul? I must be smarter than I think.'

Saul waved a hand. ‘Oh, it's not
that
. Any lawyer dumb enough to try this case for free needs all the help he can get.' He put down his drink. ‘Two things, really. First, I'm low on entertainment: I hear you're good, and I wanted to see
how
good. Second, you're way too close to this, which is why you took it and why you never should have. In fact, I think you're doing this more for
her
than for Sam Robb.' Saul paused a moment, voice quiet now. ‘I'm here to watch out for you, Tony. The last time I did that, you turned into a defense lawyer. So I figure I owe you. . . .'

Now, with Saul and Sam on either side of him, Tony awaited Stella's opening statement on the morning after another sleepless night, and thought once more of Sue.

You're doing this for her
, Saul had said.

Perhaps he was. At several points in the last three months, by protecting Sam's interests, he had spared Sue the immediate consequences of her husband's acts; quietly swapping Sam's voluntary resignation for a year's severance pay, he had also spared Sue a hearing at which Jenny Travis might yet appear. With Stacey's concurrence, Tony had guaranteed Sam's million-dollar bail – set to be prohibitive – putting their own finances at risk should Sam take flight, but sparing Sue and her children trips to the county jail. Even a few days before, when Tony rejected the idea of calling character witnesses to recite Sam's years of service, he had meant to avoid exposing Sam Robb to a devastating rebuttal from Jenny Travis, and, by this decision, he had saved Sue Robb from any more humiliation than the trial made inevitable.

She was here now, as Tony had asked, her composure intended as a model for her children. In other circumstances, the Robbs would have personified what men and women hope for when they marry: a quarter century of partnership; a future of serenity within their grasp; two nice kids – the requisite boy and girl – with college degrees and futures of their own. Sam junior resembled Sue, with the neat, conservative appearance of an MBA-in-waiting; Jenny had Sam's blond, athletic good looks and the warm and equable nature that had made Tony, all those years ago, able to imagine Sue Cash as the center of a family. Seeing Jenny and Sam junior moved Tony to reflect on what this role had brought Sue now: the duty to assure her adult children that she did not believe their father killed the teenage girl he had slept with.

As Tony had required, Sam dressed in a white shirt, a sober gray suit he did not like, and one of several bland rep ties Sue had purchased for the trial. Three months of hard exercise and abstinence from liquor had made Sam appear a younger man, as fit and clear-eyed as the athlete Tony remembered, and invested his snub features with a certain innocence – an improvement, Tony thought, though he found it curious that this ordeal would arouse Sam's competitive instincts. But it had: insisting that Tony and he were a team, Sam took a keen interest in the minutiae of trial tactics. Even now, Tony saw Sam trying to gauge for himself the mind-set of the judge, the Honorable Leo F. Karoly, whose seamed face, gray-brown pompadour, and pale, somewhat uncurious eyes made him look much like what Saul assured Tony he was – a veteran Democratic functionary of cautious temper and limited intellect, a better judge for Stella than for the defense.

‘I think Karoly's someone we can reach,' Sam murmured.

Sam still refused to look at Frank and Nancy Calder, Tony noticed. Grief had muted them, as it once had Alison's parents: Frank Calder looked less angry than diminished; Nancy Calder had lost weight and appeared pale and haggard. Perhaps, Tony imagined, they were tormented by the knowledge that they had lost touch with their daughter, who now was lost to them.

Whatever their thoughts, it was clear to Tony that the Calders depended on Stella to sustain them. During breaks in jury selection, Stella had made it a point to speak with Marcie's parents, often touching one or the other: Tony guessed that this was both good theater and genuine kindness, reflecting Stella's empathy for a couple she saw as Sam's still-living victims. As the prosecutor rose to give her opening statement, their gaze at her was close to prayerful. In the anticipatory hush, Tony touched Sam's arm, hoping that the jurors would notice.

Stella wore a navy suit and just enough adornments – makeup and gold earrings – to efface that hint of feminist severity that this jury might find off-putting. Her first words sounded husky, and her manner was direct, angry enough to keep what Tony saw at once would be an appeal to emotion from lapsing into sentiment.

‘What the People intend to show you,' she began, ‘is the last four hours in the life of a sixteen-year-old girl.'

The courtroom was still.

‘Imagine Marcie Calder,' Stella said. ‘She is frightened and alone, and her doctor has just told her that she's pregnant.

‘Marcie begins crying, not knowing what to do. Dr. Nora Cox – who has known Marcie since she was four – urges Marcie to tell her parents. But Marcie is too stricken to answer. All she can do, over and over, is shake her head.

‘In desperation, Dr. Cox mentions the possibility of an abortion. For the first time, this girl – barely out of childhood herself – finds her voice.

‘“No,” she answers. “My baby is a life.”'

As if she were Marcie, Stella delivered the words with quiet certainty. Tony caught Saul Ravin's eye: Saul's faint smile was of appreciation for the prosecutor, reflecting Tony's own admiration at the skillful way that Stella Marz had slipped into the present tense, giving the jurors the moment-by-moment immediacy of each fateful step toward death. The jury looked rapt.

‘
That
,' Stella Marz went on, ‘is one thing Marcie Calder knows for certain. And, because she means to protect that life, Marcie Calder knows that there is one more person she also must protect – the father of her unborn child.

‘No one but Marcie Calder knows who that person is.

‘Now she wants his comfort, and his advice. Most of all, she wants to warn him.'

Stella paused, letting this sink in. Angrily, Sam murmured, ‘There's nothing to support
that
. . . .'

Tony clasped his forearm. ‘
Easy
,' he whispered.

Stella raised her head. ‘So Marcie goes to Janice D'Abruzzi, her best friend.

‘Janice knows that Marcie has been seeing someone older, but not who, nor even
why
it is so important that his identity be kept secret. Marcie begs Janice to cover for her that night – she needs to talk to her boyfriend, and her parents can't know.

‘When Marcie begins crying, Janice agrees.

‘That night, at the last dinner she will ever have with Frank and Nancy Calder, Marcie tells them she is going to Janice D'Abruzzi's to study.

‘In the last few weeks, they've noticed that Marcie seems preoccupied. But Marcie has always been a loving daughter, a caring sister, a good student. And, above all, Marcie never lies to them.

‘When she leaves, it is with the smallest of goodbyes. For there is only one person who could tell Marcie, and her parents, that they will never see each other again.

‘Before she meets him, Marcie Calder makes one final stop.

‘Besides her parents, Ernie Nixon is the adult to whom Marcie Calder seems the closest. He was her first track coach, the man whose kids she's baby-sat, someone she's come to confide in. And for the last six weeks, Ernie has been wrestling with his conscience – ever since Marcie confided that she was sleeping with her first man.

‘An
older
man, whose condom broke the first time they made love.'