Silent Witness (9 page)

They got to the station.

The two officers led him to the basement. He accepted this without question – it was part of the logic of his nightmare – just as he obeyed the request by a third cop, given with the politeness of a doctor performing a physical, to strip. The man took blood from his arm; slid a needle beneath his fingernails; snipped a sample of pubic hair; swabbed the tip of his penis; snapped photographs of the welt on his cheek, which Tony supposed the branch had left. For however long this took, Tony asked nothing. All that he could think about was Alison.

They gave back his clothes and put him in a cubicle with yellow cinder-block walls. The room was claustrophobic, hardly larger than a closet, with a bare table and chairs beneath a bright fluorescent light. Tony slumped at the table, exhausted.

She had died for him, in a state of mortal sin. He could think of nothing else. It felt like the aftershock of a blow to the head, his memory a void, pain the only fact that he could grasp. His skull pounded.

He did not know how long he was alone. He did not care: his parents, his friends, were nothing to him. Only Alison.

Two detectives entered the room. Dully, Tony recognized the young one, greyhound sleek, his brown hair slicked back – Sergeant Dana, the police liaison to Lake City High, whose job it was to sniff out drugs and theft. The older man was red-haired, slit-eyed, with the high color of a drinker. His freckled hands on the table seemed restless, twitchy. He lit a cigarette.

‘I'm Lieutenant McCain – Frank McCain. You know Doug Dana from the high school, right? Used to play quarterback, like you. But nowhere near as good.'

Tony rubbed his eyes, unable to process what was happening. McCain took a deep drag of the cigarette, as if to force himself to go slowly. ‘It's a terrible thing, Tony. A terrible thing. I'll bet you're as sad to be here as we are to be with you like this. I'm real sorry about having to put you through that physical stuff. But it's just routine – we have to do it.' As he took another drag, McCain's hand seemed to tremble. ‘We've got a big responsibility here, Tony. A beautiful girl is dead – someone I know you cared about. Like you, her parents will have to live with that forever. We need to help them understand what happened. For whatever peace that brings.'

Tony stared at the table. ‘It's my fault,' he mumbled. ‘Tell them it was my fault.'

McCain became very still. ‘How was that, Tony?' The cigarette burned in his hand.

‘I wanted her to come back out. To be with me.' A lump formed in Tony's throat. ‘If I hadn't wanted her to, he wouldn't have killed her.'

Dana's eyes were keen now. ‘Who would that be?'

‘I don't know. I heard someone in the park. . . .' Tony stopped; beneath this pitiless light, footsteps in the dark sounded foolish, hallucinatory.

The two police watched him. ‘Just tell us about your night,' Dana said. ‘Everything after the football game.'

Tony's lips were parched. Miserably, he tried; meeting Sam and Sue, taking Alison off alone, deciding to meet her again, the footfalls in the dark, the soft cry that led him to her body. Even as he spoke, Tony prayed that he could go back – stay with Sam and Sue, or tell Alison to remain inside, safe with the family who loved her. But the one fact that he omitted, her desire to make love with him, was the only way he could still protect her.

Dana was frowning. ‘How'd you get that cut on your face?'

Tony tried to remember. ‘From a branch . . . running through the trees.'

‘Why did you leave the car?'

‘She was late to meet me. I went to look for her, and heard him in the park –'

‘How would he know she was out there – the guy who killed her?' Tony shook his head, bewildered. Quietly, Dana asked, ‘Did you have sex with her last night?'

Tony's eyes shut. ‘No.'

‘We think someone did, Tony.' With an air of melancholy, McCain shook his head. ‘Alison may be dead, but her body will tell a story. So will yours, when the samples come back from the lab.'

Tony felt guilt overcome him. ‘Could Father Quinn be here . . . my priest?'

McCain watched his eyes. ‘I'm Catholic, Tony, like you – we know that confession is good for the soul. But what you tell Father Quinn won't help anyone but you.
This
is your chance to help someone else, like the good Father would tell you to. To keep the trust of people in this town.' His voice slowed for emphasis. ‘So let's start by telling me if you had sex with Alison Taylor.'

Suddenly Tony had to urinate. ‘No,' he said.

‘Did you fight with her last night?' Dana prodded. ‘I mean, you were having trouble, right? For a while you broke up.'

Tony's temples throbbed. ‘Who told you that –'

‘So what was the trouble last night?' Dana cut in.

Tony's bladder hurt. ‘Nothing.'

McCain put down his cigarette. ‘Work with us, Tony. Tell us what happened with you and Alison.'

Tony did not answer. Dana's voice was soft again. ‘I think maybe I
know
what happened.'

Tony felt something in the room change. ‘How?'

Dana sat back, regarding him without expression. ‘Sometimes women like to tease you. Or maybe let you think they like it a certain way, then figure out they don't.' His look became confiding. ‘Is that why you wanted her to come out again? To do something a little different for you?'

‘I just wanted to be with her –'

‘Maybe you had a disagreement about it.' Dana's tone was cool now. ‘Maybe
that
's what her body will tell us. That you forced her to do that for you.'

Tony shook his head. ‘
No
.'

‘So what you want us to say to her parents is that she was fooling around with someone else.'

‘No . . . we were
going
together.'

‘Then let's be kind here. You say Alison had no other guy. You say Alison wasn't sleeping around. You want to be fair to her, don't you? You want to honor her memory. The only way to do that is to tell the truth about what you did to her.'

All at once, Tony understood. Horror left him speechless.

McCain covered Tony's hand with his. ‘Did you love her, Tony?'

The surprise of this brought tears to Tony's eyes. ‘Yes. I loved her.'

McCain nodded slowly. ‘To me, this looks like a cold-blooded killing. But I can't believe you'd kill in cold blood a girl you were in love with.'

‘No . . . I wouldn't.'

McCain patted his hand. Maybe, Tony thought, this man believed him after all. ‘So how do you think,' the detective asked, ‘the person who did this is feeling now?'

‘I don't know.' The pressure on Tony's bladder felt unbearable. ‘I need a bathroom –'

‘Do you think he really wanted to kill her?'

The detective's voice was soothing. But now some intuitive part of Tony, listening through his shock, heard what lay beneath. Softly, he answered. ‘I know he wanted to.'

Something flickered in McCain's eyes. ‘How do you know that, Tony?'

Tony took a deep breath. ‘Because I saw what he did to her.'

Across the table, McCain leaned closer, forehead a foot from Tony's. ‘Then what do you think should happen to him?' he asked. ‘Surely there could be some mercy, if we only could understand.'

‘No,' Tony answered. ‘I think whoever killed her should die. The way she did.'

McCain's hand squeezed Tony's. ‘I don't think so. Not if he didn't mean it to happen. Not if things just got out of hand.' The detective's eyes locked his. ‘It's time to be a man, Tony. Last night, you were a hero in this town. You can be a hero again. It's not too late for you.'

Tony made what reasoning part of him remained focus on his own survival. ‘All I have to do is tell you what really happened, right?' Then I can go to the bathroom?'

‘Right.' Tony felt a tremor in McCain's hand. ‘You didn't mean for her to die, I know that. No matter how bad this looks.'

Slowly, Tony removed his hand, then looked at the detective dead on. ‘Okay. I didn't kill her. I found her like that. So you can quit being my friend.' He stood, voice trembling with loss and fear and anger. ‘I want you to call my parents, right now. And tell me where the bathroom is.'

McCain stared up at him, face turning red. For a moment, no one spoke.

‘It's down the hall,' Dana said.

His parents came. His mother's eyes were red; without makeup, hair too blond, her face looked pallid. She ran to Tony, hugging him desperately. ‘I didn't kill her, Mom.'

‘It's all right, Tony. It's all right.'

Tony looked over her shoulder, at his father. Stanley Lord stood straighter. For an instant, his chin looked firm, his face more commanding. Somehow it reminded Tony of the wedding picture Helen Lord kept on the mantel; Stanley's hair, swept back, was darker, his Slavic features were thinner and keener. ‘See how handsome he was,' Tony's mother would say, as if speaking of another life.

For the first time in years, his father took Tony by the hand. Looking from McCain to Dana, he said, ‘We're taking our son home.' Tony felt the gratitude of a child who had been found.

Passing another office, they saw the chief speaking softly to John and Katherine Taylor. John Taylor stared up at Stanley Lord with terrible bitterness. Stanley Lord's eyes held compassion but no apology: he would take care of his own, the look said, no matter who John Taylor was. Then Helen Lord plucked at her husband's arm, and they left.

In the thin light of dawn, his mother leaned against their blue Dodge. Hands to her face, she wept. ‘You should have stayed away from her. I always knew it . . .'

The words hit Tony hard. For once, it did not help him to perceive the superstitious fearfulness of a woman still defined by the Polish neighborhood they had left behind. Shaken, Tony turned to his father. ‘I'm sorry, Dad. I think I need a lawyer.'

Tony saw Stanley Lord shrink from what this tragedy could do to them. Then saw his father come to terms with his new reality: a girl was dead, the son he loved in trouble.

Stanley Lord drew him close. ‘We'll find one, Anthony.'

As he faced Saul Ravin, it struck Tony that the lawyer was someone who, in the life he had led until now, he would never have met.

In his first two days of grief and sleeplessness, Tony found that acceptance of Alison's death came slowly, inexorably, like drops of water on stone. The Saturday paper had seemed unreal: Alison's yearbook picture, the color drained from it, looked like a hundred other pictures of teenagers whose lives were cut short by tragedy. The headline read: ‘Lake City Girl Slain,' and beneath that: ‘Boyfriend Questioned in Death of Popular Student.' Tonelessly, Tony had asked his mother, ‘Who brought this?'

‘Mrs. Reeves, from down the street. With a tuna casserole.'

Something about this had made Tony laugh. The bitter sound froze his mother's face. ‘Next time I murder someone,' he had told her, ‘ask her to bring lasagne.'

Her hands had flown up to cover her mouth. From beside the window, where he watched the reporters who had gathered in front, his father had turned and said softly, ‘Son, we have to be good to each other. Especially now.'

His father's skin looked sallow, the pouches beneath his eyes like bruises. As if in penitence, Tony had sat on the couch across from Helen Lord. ‘There's only us,' she had told him. ‘Your uncle Joe and aunt Mary Rose wanted to come out. But we couldn't let them, with these people outside.'

Tony had looked around him at the only home he could remember. The tiny living room with his parents' wedding photo, his own school picture, the porcelain bust of Saint Stanislaus, the figurine of two costumed peasants, dancing a polka. To him, the room reflected the borders of his parents' narrow lives: his mother's fears; his father's small diversions – bowling, church activities – his patient, hopeless serving of time in the cramped cubicle of a corporate bureaucrat. How many times had he imagined leaving this behind – his home, now his prison. Tony had wished that he were dead, like Alison.

Now it was Monday afternoon. Three days before, Tony would have expected to be in school, accepting more congratulations for beating Riverwood. Instead the school was closed for Alison's funeral; Tony and his parents found themselves in the office of this criminal lawyer, who was, they had been assured, the best in Steelton. At odd moments, Tony gazed through Ravin's window at the rustbelt city below, seemingly all cement and steel: gray buildings; gray highways; the polluted Steelton River a gray ribbon filled with gray ore boats and flanked by gray smokestacks. Even the smoke was gray.

Ravin put the facts of the Lords' new lives directly. This was a serious matter: Ravin would need a ten-thousand-dollar retainer, and if Tony was charged with murder, his parents would have to mortgage or sell their home. But today he was pleased to meet with Tony free of charge.

Regrettably, the lawyer concluded, he must do this without Tony's parents, who could not be Ravin's clients and therefore should not ask Ravin or Tony about anything said between them; further, as prospective witnesses, his parents should never discuss that night with Tony at all. It was not that Tony was guilty, Ravin was quick to add, but that a clever prosecutor could twist small differences in what the three of them might recall. Mystified, the Lords listened to this as if to a strange new catechism. Then Ravin shepherded Tony's parents to the reception area and closed the door behind them. Tony and Saul Ravin were alone.