Silent Witness (63 page)

Sam was tired, Tony saw: it was becoming difficult for him to maintain deference for more than a few questions. But what was more troubling was the difference in manner, caused by his antagonism to Stella: Sam no longer seemed contrite. Glancing at the clock, Tony made up his mind.

‘Your Honor,' he said to Karoly, ‘it's close to noon. If, as it seems, Ms. Marz has reached a convenient place to break, perhaps we should take the noon recess.'

Stella was prepared for this. With a brief look of disdain at Sam for hiding behind his lawyer, she said calmly, ‘If Mr. Robb is tired, I'm willing to give him some time off. . . .'

‘I'm fine,' Sam shot back.

Tony gave Karoly his most pleasant smile. ‘I'm sure
Mr. Robb
is fine,' he said. ‘But I'm hungry. So perhaps we should ask Ms. Marz how much longer she plans to take.'

Stella paused. ‘At least two hours.'

Turning to Karoly, Tony shrugged. ‘The rest of the day, effectively.'

Karoly looked from Sam to Stella. ‘Let's take our break,' he said. ‘We'll reconvene at one-thirty.'

As Sam left the witness stand, clearly annoyed, Tony fooled with some papers, pretending not to look at him. Only when Sam was close enough did Tony say under his breath, without looking up, ‘Don't ever fucking do that to me again. For the next hour and a half, pal, you can damned well shut up and listen.'

Fleeing reporters, Tony and Saul hurried to the witness room, Tony carrying a bag of roast beef sandwiches from the courthouse cafeteria. ‘God,' Saul murmured. ‘I think I'm in love. Do you suppose Stella would go out with an old fat Jewish defense lawyer?'

Despite himself, Tony gave a thin smile. ‘Good, wasn't she.'

‘
Too
good,' Saul answered, emitting a mock groan. ‘“Explain it to me, Mr. Robb. Please, make me understand.” Only a woman could get away with this.' He stopped at the door of the witness room, pensive. ‘Maybe if I promise her I'll give up drinking. . . .'

Tony did not smile now. ‘I hope the jury's not having the fun that you are.'

‘Don't bet the ranch, Tony. She's killing him.'

Tony gave Saul his sandwich. ‘I'd better do this alone,' he said, and entered the witness room.

Sam was waiting there, hands folded on the table in front of him. He looked wan, resentful, drained by Stella's attack, and his gaze at Tony was opaque. ‘You wanted to talk,' Sam said.

‘I wanted you out of there before you started calling Stella a “cunt.”' Tony leaned forward, speaking more softly. ‘The woman's a professional, Sam, and she's doing her job. . . .'

‘
Professional
. She fucking hates me –'

‘Why wouldn't she?' Tony snapped. ‘Don't make that
your
problem, or it'll be the jury's.' He paused for emphasis, looking into Sam's clear blue eyes. ‘The issue isn't Stella Marz; its Marcie Calder. You're not nearly sorry enough about what happened to her, Sam, and you can take that any way you want. Because you're so busy resenting Stella that it even makes
me
wonder.'

Sam sat back. ‘She's
humiliating
me.'

‘Humiliation is the price of admission here. Your job is to see that it's the only price.' Pausing, Tony took the seat across from Sam, putting the bag of sandwiches between them. ‘Let me explain the game, pal. Stella's not just screwing up your time line. You're letting the jury watch you get pissed off at a woman, which is exactly what she wants. Every time you show a flash of temper, someone in the jury is imagining you crushing Marcie's skull with a bloody rock.' Tony made his voice soft again. ‘Maybe she offended you by getting pregnant, they're thinking. Maybe she said she'd tell someone. . . .'

Sam sat back, eyes wider. With equal quiet, he said, ‘What are you saying, Tony?'

Tony drew a breath. ‘What I want you to do, every time you're getting mad at Stella, is to think of Marcie Calder and how very sorry you are.'

Sam stared at him. ‘I didn't kill her, Tony.'

For a moment, Tony was quiet. ‘I didn't kill Alison,' he answered. ‘And there's not been a day in the last twenty-eight years I haven't felt sorry that she's dead. If you can't get back in touch with that same feeling, and within the next hour or so,
your
next twenty-eight years will be spent in prison.'

Sam's mouth opened, soundless; suddenly he looked winded, dispirited, and his nod, when it came, was a delayed reaction. All that was left on his face was fear.

They still had an hour, Tony thought. ‘All right,' he said. ‘Let's get a little food in us. Then we can talk about where Stella's going.'

Taking the witness stand, Sam Robb was calm, composed.

‘After you got dressed' Stella asked Sam, ‘what happened next?'

Sam gave her a reflective look, as though trying to remember. ‘The very next thing,' he said at last, ‘was when Marcie said she wanted to get married.'

‘She just came out with it?'

Sam nodded. ‘I think the headlights spooked her too. And it must have been on her mind.'

‘How did you react?'

Sam shook his head in wonder. ‘I was flabbergasted – shocked. I remember that especially, but I know I felt guilty too.'

‘So you told Marcie you couldn't see her anymore.'

Sam tilted his head. ‘Like I told Mr. Lord, it was a little more than that – things about Sue, about being wrong for Marcie. It sounded empty, and I guess it really was.'

‘How did Marcie react?'

‘Upset,' Sam said. ‘Outraged. I'd never seen Marcie like that. I'm sure it was that she knew about the baby.'

‘How long did this conversation take?'

‘Not long. I'd say a couple of minutes.'

‘A couple of minutes?' Pausing, Stella looked incredulous. ‘Two minutes for Marcie to ask you to marry her, and for you to talk about your wife, your life, your twenty-four-year marriage, and all the reasons
Marcie
couldn't throw away
her
life for you?'

Sam placed a finger to his lips. ‘Maybe it was a little longer,' he said at last. ‘Maybe it was four minutes, or five. But we were both upset, for different reasons. I mean, when people fight, they start blurting things out at warp speed. You never stop to think.'

Next to Tony, Saul watched Sam with keen attention. ‘What did you do?' Saul murmured. ‘Sedate him?' As if to underscore Sam's change in manner, Stella gave him a considering look, ending in a smile so faint and so skeptical it was barely a smile at all. But Sam was behaving as Tony had ordered, and Tony's most fervent hope was that Sam not go too far.

‘So here you are,' Stella was saying, ‘scared to death, the vice principal of Lake City High School in a car with a sixteen-year-old girl who could cost you your job, your career, your marriage, and your family, and now she's terribly upset and angry with you, right?'

‘And you couldn't spare a few more minutes to try and calm her down?'

Sam gave a helpless shrug. ‘She was out of the car so quick –'

‘Didn't you
follow
her, Mr. Robb? To make sure she didn't do anything rash?'

Sam looked down. ‘I was worried about being seen.'

‘Weren't you even more worried that she'd tell someone?'

‘I don't know. . . .'

‘
You don't know?
By your own admission you were one step from disaster, which is why you say you lied to everyone, and yet it never occurred to you that by rejecting Marcie Calder – as you say happened – you'd bring that same disaster right down on your head?'

For a moment, Sam was silent. Tense, Tony watched the jury study Sam expectantly. ‘I thought she wouldn't do that to me,' he said in an embarrassed mumble. ‘Really . . .'

‘Wait a minute, Mr. Robb. The Marcie Calder you describe was impulsive enough to give you oral sex in your office, aggressive enough to ask that you penetrate her anally, and it never occurred to you that this impulsive, aggressive, angry girl might tell someone you'd had sex with her?'

‘I trusted her.' Pausing, Sam briefly shut his eyes. ‘I was right to. All through this trial, witness after witness, Marcie never told a soul –' Sam's voice broke off; to Tony's astonishment, fresh tears were in Sam's eyes, as though he was suddenly moved by Marcie's loyalty.

Stella stared at him. ‘So you didn't go after her?'

‘No.' Sam touched his eyes. ‘I wanted to. But like I said, I was scared of being seen. . . .'

‘If you were so scared of being seen, Mr. Robb, why were you in the parking lot?'

Sam blinked. ‘We were just going to talk.'

‘Well, you didn't just talk, did you?'

‘No.'

‘You performed an act of anal copulation, which – if your story is true – could have been interrupted in a New York minute by someone parking next to you, right?'

Sam hesitated. ‘Like I told you, I lost my head –'

‘Enough to have anal sex with a teenager in a semipublic place? Even though your prior act of intercourse was in a sleeping bag, hidden from view?'

Sam reached for the water glass, gaze averted. ‘Yes.'

‘
No
.' Stella snapped. ‘Because you weren't
in
the parking lot, were you? You were parked in another part of Taylor Park, beneath some trees, where no one else could see you.'

Slowly, Sam put down the water glass, staring at Stella Marz. ‘No,' he said. ‘We were in the parking lot. . . .'

‘Nonsense. No one saw you in the lot that night, and
you
didn't see any headlights. There was no one to keep you from getting out of the car, was there?'

Stunned, the jury watched Sam redden. ‘There
was
–'

Stella's voice rose in anger. ‘So you got out of the car and went after Marcie Calder. And when you caught up, you killed her with a rock, getting blood on your clothes, and then threw the rock and her body off the cliff.'

Sam gripped the sides of the witness chair. Tony waited, taut. ‘No.' Sam fought to keep his voice even now. ‘That's why I went to the police.'

‘Didn't you go to the police because – after you killed Marcie and started driving away – you
did
see a car? Didn't that scare you into trying to make up a story?'

‘No.'

‘And when the facts kept changing, like Marcie's pregnancy, your
story
kept changing. Isn't
that
what happened, Mr. Robb?'

‘No.' Sam's voice was tight. ‘That is
not
what happened.'

Pausing, Stella gazed at him with utter disbelief. ‘All right,' she said. ‘Let's got on with your version for a while. After you saw the car, you were so scared you wanted to get out of there, right?'

Sam took a deep breath, calming himself. ‘Yes. That's right.'

‘Why didn't you just go home?'

‘Sam bit his lip. ‘I was just so shaken up –'

‘About
what
? How to get rid of bloody shoes and bloody clothes before anyone saw you?'

‘
No
.'

‘Isn't that why you went to the high school? Because you had spare sweat clothes in your locker?'

‘Objection!' Tony stood, his own tension becoming anger. ‘We've tried to give Ms. Marz some leeway here. But there is no foundation for these questions anywhere in the evidence. Ms. Marz is offering her testimony – her
story
, more like – without a scrap of proof. All to prejudice the jury.'

Karoly nodded, turning to Stella. ‘I'm going to sustain that one, Ms. Marz. You've made your point.'

Quickly, Tony sat down. ‘Good story, though,' Saul murmured.

Stella started in again. ‘Tell me, Mr. Robb, do you recall the tennis shoes you provided the police?'

Sam hesitated. ‘Yes.'

‘They were brand-new, weren't they? Never been worn.'

‘Just that night, Ms. Marz.' Sam's voice was cool. ‘The athletic department has an arrangement with Reebok. They send us free shoes. So we don't keep old shoes around.'

Stella stepped closer to the witness stand. ‘We can agree on one thing, can't we? That you went to the high school to get rid of evidence.'

‘No. I didn't.'

‘You got rid of the condom, didn't you? Because it was evidence of the affair?'

‘Yes.'

Stella placed her hands on her hips. ‘Wasn't Marcie Calder's
baby
evidence of your affair?'

Sam looked up at her. Softly, he said, ‘I didn't know about the baby, Ms. Marz. If I had, why would I go to the police?'

Stella looked at him askance. ‘Before this trial, what did you know about DNA methodology?'

‘I don't know. . . .' Pausing, Sam appeared bemused. ‘A little from the Simpson case, I guess. That they can identify blood.'

‘Did you know they could establish paternity by analyzing fetal material?'

In the jury box, the nutritionist's brow furrowed in thought, as, in the witness chair, did Sam's. ‘I guess I did. But I'm not really sure.'

‘You weren't surprised when the tests established that Marcie's baby was yours?'

Sam looked down. ‘It was the baby that surprised me. I don't think the tests did. I mean, I knew it must be mine.'

Tony stared at him.

And they think it's mine?
Sam had asked him.