Silent Witness (52 page)

‘Including Ernie Nixon?'

Seed sat back, folding his hands. ‘We did not consider Ernie Nixon to be a suspect.'

There was something missing in the answer, Tony thought; it seemed careful, considered. ‘Do you now?' Tony asked.

The answer ‘yes,' Tony knew, would end the case in moments. Slowly, Seed shook his head. ‘We do not.'

‘When did you first meet Mr. Nixon?'

‘Four, maybe five years ago. When Mr. Nixon came to run the rec center.' Seed paused. ‘My kids go there a lot.'

‘When he came to tell you he'd seen Marcie Calder the night she died, were you surprised?'

Seed shrugged. ‘I can't say I was or wasn't.'

‘Is it fair to say, then, that your attention was focused on how Mr. Nixon's story fit the case against Sam Robb?'

‘What
I'd
say, Mr. Lord, is that we were interested in whether what Ernie Nixon told us – that Marcie was pregnant, that she was going to see the father – might shed light on her death.'

‘Fair enough.' For a split second, Tony paused. ‘At that time, were you aware that Marcie Calder was a frequent visitor to Mr. Nixon's home?'

Seed glanced at Stella Marz. ‘I was not.'

‘Did you ever search
his
house?'

‘No.'

‘Or Mr. Nixon's car?'

‘No.'

‘Or take any article of his clothing?'

‘No.'

‘Or take a sample of his blood?'

‘No.'

Tony skipped a beat. The next question was a risk, he knew; not knowing the answer, he could be walking into a trap, set by Stella. But to set it, Tony knew, she would have to take a risk herself. Softly, he asked, ‘Or check his shoe size?'

Seed folded his hands. ‘At what time?'

He had been right, Tony knew – Stella
had
found out, but not until Tony had tried to implicate Ernie Nixon. ‘At any time,' he said.

‘Yes.' Seed looked grim. ‘We did.'

‘And when was that?'

‘Approximately three days ago.'

Tony could feel his own tension. But there was no choice now; the questioning had gone too far. ‘And what,' he asked, ‘was Mr. Nixon's shoe size?'

Seed's face became opaque. ‘Size eleven.'

Tony felt relief course through him, overwhelming his ambivalence. He could sense the jury stirring with surprise. Confidence renewed, Tony asked, ‘So based on size, the footprints by the edge of the cliff could have been Sam Robb's, Ernie Nixon's, or someone else's altogether.'

‘Yes.'

‘All you know for sure is that the
tread
didn't match any tennis shoe you found at Sam Robb's home.'

Seed hesitated. ‘That's true.'

‘Nor did you find any blood on Mr. Robb's clothes, or in his home.'

‘No.'

Pausing, Tony shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘Wouldn't you expect to, judging from the nature of Marcie Calder's injuries?'

Seed paused, resistant now. ‘Not if Sam Robb, as we believe, got rid of the clothes he'd been wearing.'

Then
Sue Robb
would have noticed
. Tony thought. But this was not a point he could make without calling her as a witness – which, next to calling Sam himself, was the last thing Tony wanted. ‘But you have no idea, do you, when and how Mr. Robb could have disposed of what he was wearing?'

‘Not at this time, no.'

‘And you never found any clothes with bloodstains – either
in
Sam Robb's house or at the school, where Mr. Robb told you he went after Marcie left his car.'

‘That's right.'

‘Or any traces of blood in his office?'

‘No.'

Tony stood straighter. ‘What
did
Sam tell you he was wearing?'

‘A sweatshirt and sweatpants. The ones he gave us.'

‘Do you have any evidence that he
didn't
wear them that night?'

Seed gave him the measured gaze of a man trying to maintain his patience. ‘There
was
the blood on the steering wheel, Mr. Lord.'

This was the answer Tony had hoped for. ‘Did you consider that an important piece of evidence?'

Seed shrugged. ‘Important? We didn't go right out and indict him.' When Tony simply stared at him, silent, Seed added grudgingly, ‘At the time, we thought it could be significant.'

Pausing, Tony framed his final question with care. ‘And at the time, did this trace of blood help persuade you that Sam Robb – and not someone else – was the potential murderer?'

Seed gave Tony a querying glance. At length, he answered, ‘Yes. It did.'

‘Do you have any notion how it got in Mrs. Robb's car? Based on personal knowledge, that is.'

Again, Seed hesitated. ‘No, Mr. Lord. Not personal knowledge. But there's no way Mr. Nixon put it there, and I sure know
we
didn't.'

Tony gazed at him a moment, silent. ‘Thank you,' he said politely. ‘I have nothing more.'

Walter Gregg, the Lake City crime lab specialist, had wire-rim glasses, a neat mustache, intense blue eyes, a thin, ascetic face. To Tony, he looked like either a scholar or a terrorist. But his voice and manner were a scholar's – dry and precise – even when Stella Marz took a color photograph of Marcie Calder's too-pallid face and pinned it to the bulletin board.

Marcie gazed at the jury, eyes frozen in death, the ribbon of blood purple on her cheek. For Tony, a moment passed before he could shake his instinctive recall of Alison Taylor. Then he glanced at Marcie's parents.

They were pale and motionless, their fixed gaze at the photograph an eerie replication of their daughter's. Next to Tony, Sam did not look at the photograph; at Tony's instance, Sue and her children were gone. Some of the jurors stared at Walter Gregg as though, like Sam, they found Marcie's face too painful. But no one, now, would forget the victim.

Yes, Gregg told Stella Marz, the photograph was his. So was the photo of footprints above the cliff, the peculiar scars in the mud beside them. This was the second of six photographs Gregg had taken, arrayed in a collage around Marcie's picture; with every photograph, the jury would be forced to look at her again.

Stella pointed to the third photograph. ‘And what is this, Detective Gregg?'

‘It's a photograph of Marcie Calder's tennis shoes.' Leaving the witness stand, Gregg stood next to Stella, placing a finger on the photograph. ‘What's important is the mud caked on the toe of each shoe, and nowhere else. According to our analysis, the composition of the dirt on these shoes corresponds to that in the marks running parallel to the footprints. Taken together, they suggest that the victim was dragged to the edge of the cliff and that the marks were made by the toes of her shoes.'

‘Where were the footprints and marks, Detective Gregg, relative to the location of Marcie Calder's body?'

‘Directly above it.'

Quickly, Stella moved to the next photograph; taken with Marcie's body at the foreground, it scanned the cliffside. ‘And what,' Stella asked, ‘does Exhibit D-4 portray?'

‘This shows the perspective from the victim's body, lying at the base of the cliff.'

‘Could you describe the geologic composition of the cliff?'

‘Yes. It's almost entirely clay, and a little shale. Both the clay and the shale are quite soft.'

‘Would you describe the hill as rocky?'

‘Not particularly. When I say shale, I mean slivers which crumble to the touch.'

‘And did you inspect the cliffside?'

‘We did. In quadrants, four square feet at a time.'

‘What did you find?'

‘We found a trail of crumbled shale and clay leading to Marcie's body. The fact that the mud found on Marcie Calder's jeans and sweatshirt were of the same composition confirmed that the trail was caused by the fall of her body.'

‘Did the clay or shale you describe contain any traces of blood?'

‘We found none, no. That helped us conclude that Marcie's injuries were
not
caused by her fall.'

Stella cocked her head. ‘Did you find
other
materials on the beach itself?'

‘We did.' Pausing, Gregg touched the fifth photograph. ‘A rock, shown here in Exhibit D-5.'

‘Could you describe the rock?'

Gregg nodded. ‘As this picture shows, it is oblong, roughly the size of a football. It was smeared with blood and a few dark strands of hair.'

‘Did you subsequently weigh the rock?'

‘We did. It was quite heavy, roughly ten pounds.'

Stella touched one finger to her lips. ‘Where did you find the rock,' she asked, ‘relative to the body?'

Gregg pointed toward the final picture. ‘The rock was situated in the sand, further from the base of the cliff. This photograph, Exhibit D-6, shows the distance between the rock and the body. When we measured it, the distance was over seven feet.'

‘Did you subsequently remove the rock and seal it in an evidence bag?'

‘We did.'

Slowly, Stella walked to her desk, reached into a storage box, and removed a glassine bag that contained an oblong rock. As she carried it toward Gregg, cupped in both hands to suggest its weight, the jury gazed at the rock. Even at a distance, Tony – whose own expert had inspected it – could see the red-orange stain.

‘Jesus . . . ,' Sam murmured. To the side, Tony saw Nancy Calder crying as her husband stared ahead.

‘Is this,' Stella asked softly, ‘premarked as Exhibit 6, the rock you found on the beach?'

Gregg made no move to touch it. Gazing downward at the rock, still cradled in Stella's palms, he answered, ‘Yes. it is.'

‘Your Honor,' Stella said, ‘I would like to tender this exhibit to the jury.'

One by one, the jurors passed the rock, sometimes quickly, always gingerly. The beautician, holding it, gazed from the rock to the photograph of Marcie.

Quietly, Stella resumed her questioning. ‘Did you subsequently submit this rock – Exhibit 6 – to the county coroner's office for testing?'

‘We did.'

‘What did the coroner report with respect to the rock?'

‘The results of DNA testing. To which, I believe, the defense has stipulated.' Gregg's voice remained clinical. ‘The coroner's office concluded that the blood on the rock was Marcie Calder's, that the strands of hair were Marcie Calder's, and that the surface of the rock had traces of skin tissue. The tissue was from Marcie Calder's scalp, the area where I observed the lacerations which accounted for the ribbon of blood on her face.'

‘Did your search uncover any
other
objects which, in your opinion, could account for those head wounds?'

‘No. We found no heavy objects, or rocks of this size, whether on the cliff or closer to the body.'

Gregg, Tony knew, was systematically destroying the defense of accident or suicide, and now Stella meant to drive this home. ‘Did you form an opinion,' she asked, ‘as to how a rock with Marcie Calder's blood and hair and tissue on it wound up over seven feet from her body?'

‘Objection.' Tony stood. ‘We concede that Ms. Marz has qualified Detective Gregg as an expert with respect to the conduct of crime scene investigation. But there's
nothing
in his credentials or in the record to suggest that the “opinion” Ms. Marz asks for is any better than anyone's guess.'

Stella's gaze at Tony was ostentatiously unimpressed. ‘Your Honor,' she said, ‘the witness can state the factual basis when he states his opinion. If the court considers the basis inadequate, it can so instruct the jury.' Her voice took on a weary sarcasm. ‘As for expertise, I somehow think that this witness's extensive education and professional experience qualify him to opine on how a ten-pound rock managed to travel quite so far.'

When Karoly, turning, raised his eyebrows, Tony knew that objection had been a mistake: the judge's expression was a silent comment on Tony's effrontery. ‘Overruled,' he said in his flattest voice. ‘Do you have the question in mind, Detective Gregg?'

‘Yes, Your Honor,' Gregg answered. ‘My opinion is that someone took the rock from above the cliff, struck Marcie Calder on the head, and threw both her body and the rock off the edge of the cliff.' Pausing, he gave Tony a brief sardonic glance. ‘As to how I reached that opinion, there are a number of factors.

‘First, there are several rocks of a similar composition near the footprints above the cliff. We found no such rocks near the trail caused by Marcie's fall.

‘Second, there were no footprints near the rock, or near the body. Marcie Calder didn't walk there, and no one walked the rock another seven feet.

‘Third, Marcie Calder did not bludgeon herself to death with a tenpound rock. She wasn't strong enough, and if she were, who threw it off the cliff?

‘Fourth, it
is
a ten-pound rock. If Marcie's head had hit it in some accident, or in a fall, how could it travel so far from her body,
and
so far from the bottom of the cliff where the body ended up? Not plausible.

‘Fifth, of course, are the marks above the cliff. They're almost four feet long. Even if she fell, the toes of her shoes – which I believe made those marks – wouldn't have made so long a trail. In my opinion, Marcie Calder was dragged to the edge of the cliff.

‘Sixth, Marcie's body was heavier than a rock. Even someone with considerable strength could not have hurled a one-hundred-and-five-pound body very far out from the cliff. Ten pounds of a football-shaped rock is something else again. . . .'