Silent Witness (31 page)

Tony nodded, silent. He remembered the sense of solitude he had perceived in Ernie Nixon. He could feel it now. Yet he wondered, too, whether the end of Ernie's marriage was nearly that simple. And then he had another thought – that Marcie Calder, in her openness, would in some ways be better company for a guarded black man than Marcie's parents ever would. Or, perhaps, the man's own wife.

‘About Marcie,' he said, ‘I'm really sorry.'

Ernie faced him again. ‘Tony,' he said, ‘you've forgotten what sorry is. You want to come around here, fine – we can talk about old times. But we're not talking about Marcie Calder ever again.'

Picking up the telephone in his motel room, Tony saw that it was well past six o'clock.

‘Stella Marz,' she answered briskly.

‘It's Tony Lord, Stella. Working late?'

‘Not for me.' She had the crisp tone of someone who did not welcome this distraction. ‘What can I do for you?'

‘I just was wondering whether you got the autopsy report back.'

There was a pause. ‘Actually, I'm reading it.'

This made him edgy; something in her voice was close to hostile. ‘Is there anything new?' he asked.

‘At least one thing. Marcie Calder had sex that night.'

This gave him pause; either Sam had lied to him or there was someone else. ‘You can DNA the semen, I suppose.'

‘There is none. The coroner found traces of a lubricant used on a common brand of condom.' Her voice was flat. ‘It's called Adam's Rib. Because of the ridges.'

Tony was quiet for a moment. ‘Guess I've missed that one.'

‘I wouldn't know.' Stella paused. ‘It was in the anus, Tony.'

Tony sat back. ‘As in sodomy.'

‘Yes.'

‘Was it forced?'

Stella was silent. ‘There were abrasions,' she said coolly. ‘But maybe it was just her first time. I suppose you can ask Mr. Robb.'

What he had heard, Tony realized, was anger. ‘It could have been anyone, Stella. It could have been rape. Without sperm, you're not going to know. Unless you get a match on a pubic hair.'

She went quiet again. Tony guessed that there had been no hair; in this, whoever had anal intercourse with Marcie Calder had been lucky. Especially if it was Sam.

Cautiously, Tony broke the silence. ‘Is there anything else?'

‘Not until we get the DNA results. Any explanation for that spot of blood, by the way?'

‘Not yet.'

‘Too bad,' Stella said, and hung up.

‘Sam's gone running,' Sue told him. ‘He took a look at you and decided he was out of shape.'

On the telephone, her voice had an edge; Tony wished that he could see her face. ‘I'd like to talk with him.'

There was brief silence – worry, Tony guessed. ‘I can have him call you,' Sue answered. ‘Or you can just come over.'

Tony thought for a moment. ‘I'll come over.'

When he pulled up to the house, it was twilight. Down the street, a shadowy runner passed beneath the trees; even now, thirty years later, Tony recognized the loose-jointed grace of the boy he had once played catch with, laboring to carry the thicker, older body that now contained him. The shadow became Sam, stopping beneath a street-light. Rivulets of sweat ran down his reddened face. His chest rose and fell as his lungs sucked air.

‘You'll have a frigging heart attack,' Tony said. ‘I guess Johnny D'Abruzzi already did.'

Sam's eyes narrowed. ‘Johnny,' he answered, ‘let himself become a fat piece of shit, then died like one. If I've got all this time off, I'm going to do something with it.' He paused, wiping the sweat out of his eyes. ‘What do
you
do?'

‘A lot of cardiovascular, mostly. Some weights.'

Sam inspected him. ‘Haven't gained much, have you. Play any sports?'

Shrugging, Tony tried to cover his impatience, born of anxiety. ‘Pickup basketball, every now and then . . .'

‘Then we'll play. As long as you're here, you can start working out with me. Six-thirty a.m. , at our gym? I can pick you up.'

You're still throwing off your back foot
, Tony remembered Sam saying. ‘I'll consider it, Sam. But right now, we need to talk.'

Leaning over, hands on knees, Sam took several slow, deep breaths, the act of an athlete renewing himself. ‘Let's sit down somewhere,' Tony said.

Silent, they walked to the backyard. There was still a hammock in the place where Sue and Tony had once laid out Sam. As they sat, it occurred to Tony that he had not seen Sam drinking. ‘You give up liquor?'

‘No. But since Marcie died, I haven't felt like a drink. But then I haven't felt much like eating. Or sleeping.' He turned to Tony. ‘Was that what it was like for you? Like your life before Alison was killed happened to someone else?'

‘A lot like that, yes.'

Sam inhaled. ‘Poor Sue,' he said. ‘In one week, she finds out about Marcie – at least, enough to guess. And all the help she's got is a husband who's lying or isn't really there at all.' His tone sharpened. ‘She doesn't even have you, does she, Tony?'

Tony tried to read his meaning. ‘I'm your lawyer, as you've already pointed out to me. Anyhow, I suspect she was used to you being off somewhere. Isn't that what happens when you have an affair? Or were you able to separate Marcie from Sue, and live in both worlds like nothing was wrong?'

Sam gazed at him. Night was falling, and Tony could not read his expression; he felt the weight of Sam's scrutiny in the length of his silence. ‘You have to try,' Sam answered coolly. ‘Unless you want to go crazy. But then you find out, like I did, that you've lost control.' He sat back in the hammock, putting his arms behind his head in a pantomime of boredom. ‘So what's new, pal? I already know that Johnny had a heart attack. So this must be something else.'

‘It is,' Tony said. ‘Someone sodomized Marcie Calder.'

Sam raised his head a fraction. ‘Meaning . . . ?'

‘That the night she died, some guy fucked her in the ass. Could have been consensual, could have been rape. Could have happened after you saw her. Or while.'

Sam became quite still. ‘What does your lady prosecutor think?'

‘She's got an open mind. The guy used a condom, called Adam's Rib. So there's no semen sample to DNA.'

For a long time, Sam was quiet. ‘How do they know about the condom?'

‘Why?' Tony asked softly. ‘Did they get the brand wrong?'

Sam sat up. Head propped in his hands, he stared ahead, as if Tony were not there. In the kitchen, a light went on. Sue's face was framed in the window, bent over the sink, rinsing dishes. Every so often she gazed at them; Tony was not sure that Sam had noticed her.

Silent, Tony tried to sort out his emotions. ‘You'd better tell me,' he said at last. ‘Unless you bought the rubbers in another state.'

‘Does
she
do this?' Marcie asked.

Sam's mouth felt dry. ‘No.'

She lay on her stomach, naked, in the back seat of his car. ‘Go ahead,' she whispered. ‘I want you to. I want us to do everything.'

He should not do this, Sam knew. He should say what he had come to say.

In the moonlight, her slender back was like marble. There would never be, for the rest of his life, another moment like this. His heart raced.

Slowly, she presented herself to him; for an instant, he remembered her, bent over in the starting blocks, the first pulse of his desire for her . . .

The next few moments were vivid, fleeting. Her small cry. The painful slowness of it and then, finally, the ecstasy of having her. It's all right, she kept saying in a muffled voice, it's all right.

Afterward, she lay beneath him. He shuddered in his solitude and shame.

‘I want us to get married,' she said.

Listening to Sam's story, Tony watched Sue in the window. It made the moment that much more painful.

‘I couldn't tell you,' Sam said.

‘Couldn't?'

‘I was ashamed, all right?' Sam stood, not facing him. ‘Here I was, wanting to break it off, and this beautiful sixteen-year-old wants to do something I've never done.'

‘That's pretty advanced for the girl everyone else describes to me.'

‘We'd talked about it, all right? Before. She asked me what I wanted –' Sam stopped abruptly, gazing at Sue. Quietly, he finished, ‘With a rubber, Tony, how would they know?'

‘Oh, the locals are quite sophisticated these days. And so is the coroner. The march of science and all that . . .'

‘Next time,' Sam murmured. ‘Next time, I said to myself, you can tell her somehow. Then she said we should get married, and it all snapped.' He turned back to Tony. ‘The rest was just like I told you, Tony. I didn't kill her, and I didn't think this part mattered – to you. Only to me and the school board.'

Tony stood. ‘According to Janice D'Abruzzi, Marcie begged Janice to cover for her. That there was something important she had to tell you.'

Sam shook his head. ‘It was about getting married, is all I can think.' His voice fell. ‘Or maybe she just wanted to please me . . .'

In the window, Sue turned out the lights.

Tony's voice went quiet again. ‘I asked you not to lie to me. Perhaps you didn't hear me. But this is the last time I ask.'

Sam folded his arms. ‘I didn't kill her, Tony. This is the last time I tell you that.'

For a time, Tony was silent. Because of who Sam was, Tony knew, his friend paid a price in Tony's disillusionment and anger that no other client would. But that did not make Sam Robb a murderer. ‘What are the chances,' Tony inquired at last, ‘that Marcie was involved with someone else?'

Sam looked at him sharply. ‘Someone else?'

Tony hesitated. ‘Like Ernie Nixon, perhaps. She seems to have been attached to him.'

Sam shook his head. ‘No way, Tony. No way.'

‘Why not?'

Sam stood straight again. ‘Because she wasn't like that. For better or worse,
I
was the one that Marcie wanted.'

Tony watched him. Under his breath, he murmured, ‘Jesus, Sam.'

At nine-thirty, Tony lay on the bed in blue jeans, shirtless, gazing up at the ceiling.

There was a knock on the door. Rising to answer, Tony wondered whether it was a reporter, or Sam, or maybe even Ernie Nixon. But, opening the door, he realized that he had expected her.

Sue wore jeans, a sweater, and a denim jacket; in the dim light outside his motel room, she looked smaller, younger. It was like a sudden glimpse of the girl he had loved, which left him quiet for a moment.

‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘I can come back.'

‘No,' Tony answered. ‘You just caught me by surprise. Come on in, and I'll throw something on.'

As he buttoned his work shirt, she sat in a corner, looking over the room. ‘Not much, is it?'

Tony smiled. ‘Kind of stark. Like my room when I was a kid.'

Sue looked up at him. ‘Well,' she said, ‘things have gotten better. At least for you.'

Tony nodded. ‘Lately. In more ways than one, I've been luckier than I deserve to be.'

Sue stood, hands in the pockets of her jacket. ‘After that night,' she said at last, ‘the one that you and I had, Sam tried so hard. He watched his drinking, was much more thoughtful of me. It was like you and I – just the thought of us together – had scared Sam into seeing how awful he could be. When we got married . . .' Pausing, she shrugged. ‘Eventually, he started drinking again. Mostly at home, where people didn't see him. But the children didn't like it – liquor throws his emotional balance off. I guess, for him, it dulls his disappointment.'

Tony watched her. It was as though, in her loneliness, she were resuming a conversation with an old friend, one that had been interrupted only yesterday, or the day before that. ‘He tells me that since last week, he hasn't drunk a drop.'

Sue nodded. ‘Something happens that scares him, and he stops. Maybe this time it'll be for good.' She looked at him. ‘Did he tell you he'd been drinking that night?'

Surprised, Tony tilted his head. ‘How much?'

‘Enough to make his eyes bright. You know that one.'

‘Yes.'

‘I keep thinking about that night. Whether I
knew
, deep down. Whether I could have stopped him. The way he was when he came home . . .' Her voice fell off.

Tony felt his own discomfort. ‘How was that?' he said at last.

She looked away. ‘Contrite, careful. Like someone who'd been scared sober. He wasn't the same person who'd left the house.'

She did not wish to look at him, he saw. Just as he did not wish to question her. Finally, she faced him. ‘Where is this going, Tony? Sam won't say.'

‘He can't say. And neither of us knows.' His voice softened. ‘I hate this, Sue. For me, who's still your friend, but most of all for you. I wish there was some other way to help you than being a lawyer.'

‘A lawyer is what I asked for. Because that's what Sam needs. For me, you can't make this any better, except by helping him. Sam's still our kids' father, the man I chose. I just wish I could see the end of it.' Pausing, Sue touched his arm. ‘And that there was something I could do for
you
. Instead of being someone else for you to worry about.'

‘You're not. The problem is with me. Part of representing a client is to put your personal feelings aside.' Tony paused, speaking more softly. ‘But this is harder for me – because of Alison, of Sam, and, most of all, because of you. Tony and Sue, I sometimes think, still looking out for Sam. Except, this time, you and I will never get the night off, and I don't even get to be your friend.' He tried to smile. ‘Which makes me just another guy asking you for understanding.'