The Final Judgment (28 page)

“A ‘plausible’ suspect, you mean? As opposed to just a liar.”?”

Channing hesitated. “Yes.”

“I don’t know yet.” For a moment, Caroline watched him. “But your theory surely needs one. As does Brett, quite desperately.”

Caroline pored over her notes and began to outline her examination of the police witnesses—the arresting and interrogating officers, the medical examiner, the crime lab technicians. Carlton Grey’s spare office was quiet; the first light of dawn came through the window. It was four days before the hearing.

The press had begun calling. Caroline had been courteous; quietly, she intimated that the hearing would expose deep problems in the prosecutor’s case. But Jackson had refused, to fuel the stories with any comment of his own. Caroline did not know the status of Megan Race.

She rose from the desk, staring out the window. Brett was facing matters with a new composure; though she was clearly tired and afraid, she treated Caroline with a certain courtesy, as if sensing that self-control was something Caroline needed from her. It was as though they had exchanged roles—Caroline herself was short-tempered, her nerves frayed. She had passed the point of exhaustion without noticing.

When the telephone rang, Caroline flinched.

She turned, saw the phone on an end table she had never noted. She gathered herself, walked across the room, and

answered.

“Yes?”

“Caroline?” Jackson said. “I tried the inn, and they said that you were gone. I know it’s early, but I also know how concerned you’ve been.”

His tone was so polite that Caroline’s hopes began to fade. “This is about Megan, I imagine.”

“It is.” Jackson spoke quickly, as if his speech was well rehearsed. “If it were simply a matter of Larry’s demeanor, I would have found this easier—what he told me sounded persuasive, and seemingly quite painful. I came out wanting to believe him”

“But?”

“But he couldn’t give me any corroborating evidence, and our investigators couldn’t find a scrap of it—no one who saw them together, or even heard Megan speak his name outside class. Beyond some vague statement Megan made to a neighbor about the virtues of an older lover, there’s nothing that even suggests that Larry might be telling the truth—”

“So give him a lie detector test.” She had said it on impulse. But Jackson’s civility was too complete, she realized, to throw her own refusal regarding Brett back at her—sufficient answer in itself. “Once I do that,” he said evenly, “I have to test Megan too. Which transfers the task of assessing witnesses—none of whom are charged with a crime—from the courtroom to a machine, one that a fair number of experts don’t accept. We don’t run our cases that way and, with respect, I can’t start now. Even granting your concern.” Caroline stood straighter. “Quit treating me like I’m some emotional cripple at the deathbed of a relative, all right? I’m a lawyer whose client was indicted because of a witness who may well be a pathological liar.” For the first time, Jackson hesitated. “I’ve spoken with her, Caroline. Quite angrily—and also quite persuasively—Megan says that Larry was nothing more to her than a moderately interesting professor she had for a single class. And she reminded me, as if I needed it, that her testimony involves a proven relationship with James Case, which was discovered by your client. Another fact that, unless and until Brett testifies, no one has disputed. Not even you.” Caroline was silent for a moment. “Jackson,” she said at

length, “there’s something wrong with Megan Race. Her whole performance the other day was aimed at persuading me to plead Brett guilty. Every instinct I’ve got tells me she’s afraid of testifying.”

“Then she’s got a poor way of showing it. Because once she came forward, she had to know that testifying is a real possibility. And—assuming Larry’s story to be true—that he would be a central subject of any cross-examination—”

“All that she assumed,” Caroline interjected, “was that no one would be able to prove it. Which you haven’t.” At length he said, “Then that’s become your problem, hasn’t it.” Caroline’s fingers tightened on the telephone. “Please,” she said, “get a warrant. Look for calendars, datebooks, scraps of paper—anything with Larry’s name on it. Or James’s name.” This time Jackson did not hesitate. “I’m sorry, Caroline. I won’t harass this witness—not unless you’ve got something more. Do you?” Caroline paused. “No. Not yet.”

“Then please call me once you do,” Jackson said politely, and hung up.

With the office door shut, Caroline listened to Joe Lemieux’s report on Megan Race. It was past noon, and Caroline had not eaten. “There’s no therapy we can find,” he said in summary. “No history of strange behavior—at least nothing really bizarre.”

“What about merely eccentric?”

“Maybe that. She does seem a little short of friends—which may be why she treated that poor neighbor lady, and you, to lectures on her sex life. The one roommate I found said that she sort of glommed onto her, like she was trying to take over her life. The way she put it was that Megan wore her out.” Lemieux shrugged. “Since then, Megan’s lived alone.” Caroline nodded. “All that fits with Larry’s story. There’s

something obsessive about this girl, Joe. Which is exactly how she described Brett.”

“Meaning?”

“That if you’re disturbed enough, you project your disturbances onto other people. Megan saw in Brett all the threatening qualities she herself had.” Lemieux frowned; with his thin face and thoughtful eyes, he looked less like a detective than a doctoral student, lost in his own private specialty. “Maybe,” he said dubiously. “But if you’re right, then Megan’s pretty good at maintaining. There’s no evidence, for example, that she’s ever been in therapy. She was a high school honor student, and she’s gotten through three years of college with good grades and no obvious problems—let alone being caught baying at the moon.” He looked at Caroline more closely. “There is this, Caroline: You know that job she has at the student union— noon and night?”

“Uh-huh.”

“For whatever reason, and for whatever it’s worth, she called in sick the night Case was murdered.” Caroline cocked her head. “We can confirm that?”

“With time slips, sure.” Lemieux scowled. “The problem, of course, is that there’s no good reason to believe that she had any reason to hate the guy, or was anywhere near Heron Lake. Let alone that she walks around with—what was it?—a knife and a gun.” Caroline studied him. Softly, she said, “Anyone can get them, Joe. It’s the American way.”

“So it is. But you’re a long way from putting a gun in this girl’s hands. Or even that knife.” Caroline was quiet for a time. “I also wanted her current schedule,” she said at last. Lemieux looked at her hard now. “Can I ask why?” Caroline shrugged. “Curiosity.” Lemieux’s eyes narrowed. In a flat voice, he said, “Same schedule—noon to two serving food, and eight to ten running the coffee bar. Some nights, when it’s slow, she closes early.”

“Thanks.” Lemieux considered his fingernails. “No luck with the prosecutor?”

“None.” Caroline folded her hands in front of her. “What kind of security does Megan’s building have?” Lemieux looked up at her. “It’s a fifties apartment,” he said slowly, “like the one Case lived in. A buzzer at the front door is all.” For a moment, Caroline was quiet. “Dead bolts?” she inquired. Lemieux’s eyes met hers. With equal quiet, he answered, “I can’t do that, Counselor.” Caroline’s stomach felt empty. She kept her face expressionless. “You can’t tell me if there are dead bolts?” Lemieux’s eyes did not move. “I didn’t see dead bolts,” he said at last.

At two o’clock, restless, Caroline left the office. She was dressed in jeans and behind the wheel before she knew where she would go. She drove past Masters Hill, hardly glancing at her father’s home, and did not get out until she reached the foot of the trail she had climbed two weeks before—before she had met Brett Allen and begun unraveling the self-creation of more than twenty years, until she was no longer sure what it meant to be Caroline Masters. Slowly and steadily, Caroline traversed the side of the hill, climbing between the brush and trees. As she reached the top, she half expected to see her father on the fallen log, surveying Resolve and the country beyond. But Caroline was alone. Though the day was overcast, she could see great distances—the roofs and spires of the town from which she had driven, mountains undulating westward until the last peaks met the sky. But nothing else was clear to her. For twenty years, Caroline had lived by the law and its rules. Perhaps not the rules as lay people understood them—Caroline the defense lawyer accepted the hardest

truths of justice: That the presumption of innocence must protect the guilty. That when police and prosecutors break the rules, sometimes an evil person must go free. That it was Caroline’s job to enforce these rules at whatever cost. Sometimes this had haunted her: police without rules were an injustice waiting to happen, but where was the justice in freeing an incorrigible criminal—a murderer, a rapist, a molester—to harm yet another victim? The fact that she might also have protected the innocent was, on certain nights, too theoretical to allow for easy sleep. But she had always obeyed the rules as she understood them. Just as, she insisted, the police should. Closing her eyes, she imagined Brett’s life. This was far too easy for her now. Caroline knew Brett’s daily routine—loneliness, too little exercise, reading until the words swam in front of her, writing in a diary she must censor to protect her deepest thoughts. And then, in her mind, Caroline followed her through the twenty-year sentence that Jackson Watts, with the prosecutor’s pitiless sense of duty, demanded as the minimum. Knew the terrible apartness, yet the loss of all her privacy. Felt the absence of friends or lovers or children, the withering of sexuality as twenty-two became thirty-two, and then forty-two. Saw the pallor as Brett at last left prison, her face lined from the passage of empty years, the richness of her youth behind her. All because of a single witness and the darkness of a single night. All at once, a memory came to Caroline. She was young again, a lawyer for perhaps a year. A client, out on bail, had come to her office. He did not deny his guilt, hoped merely for a lighter sentence. He was scruffy and slight, and wore a slightly aggrieved expression. “They made it so easy,” he complained—like so many of her clients, Caroline realized, he blamed a nameless “they” for the actions he had taken. And then, to prove his point, he closed the door to her office, produced a thin plastic credit card, and slid it through the slit near the door handle.

The door seemed to spring open in his hand. “See,” he said in an accusatory voice. “No dead bolt.”

“Yes,” Caroline had answered dryly. “What else can ‘they’ expect?” What they could expect, Caroline thought now, was that a judge would honor the law. At whatever cost. Caroline gazed at the distant town. When she was done, whatever happened, she would ask them to withdraw her nomination.

Caroline sat in her car, a half block down the twilit street. Her watch read 7:50. Edgy, she scanned the rearview mirror. No one passed through the front door of the apartment building. Perhaps, Caroline thought, Megan would not work tonight. She waited, poised between tension and relief. In the mirror, the door to the building opened. Caroline did not turn. There was a flash of reflected movement; in the dusk, the figure of a woman was a tiny shadow in a piece of glass. Caroline could not tell who she was. The passenger window was cracked open. Caroline waited, utterly still, listening for footsteps on the other side of the street. Hoping that twilight and the shade of trees hid her inside the car. The sound of wooden heels on cement came faintly through the window. Still Caroline did not turn. Only after another moment did she see the tall, stiff carriage of Megan Race as she passed beneath a tree. A streetlight came on. Caroline last saw Megan as a shadow, moving from light to darkness, heedless of anything. Looking about her, Caroline stepped into the silent street. It was tree-shrouded, empty. Dressed in a light jacket and jeans, Caroline crossed the street. Her running shoes made no sound.

The half block to the apartment seemed vague, unreal. She reached the door with a sense of disbelief. The building was a sterile rectangle with four floors. Megan was on the fourth, Caroline knew, which increased the difficulty of entrance or escape. She stood there, irresolute. This was no good—someone might see her. She fought her imagination: the thing to do was to go one step at a time. Knowing that these moments, however fatal to her spirit, could pass without detection. Stiffly, Caroline pushed all ten buttons for the second floor. Silence. Caroline breathed in, waiting. Then some trusting soul above her pushed the door buzzer, and she was inside. She stood in a bare lobby—an elevator, a stairwell with a green neon exit sign. Caroline opened the door to the stairwell and then closed it behind her. The stairs were dark. Soon apartment doors would open on the second floor and tenants would peer into the hall, wondering who had buzzed them. Caroline hurried up the stairs. At the second floor, she whirled, saw a lone woman in the hallway through the glass window of the exit door. It was only as she reached the fourth floor that she realized this reminded her of Brett, and prison. Breathing rapidly, Caroline peered through the window. The corridor was empty; there was no sense of the disturbance two floors down. Once in Megan’s apartment, Caroline could disappear. With an air of calm she did not feel, Caroline stepped into the corridor. It was not long, just five doors on each side. Megan’s apartment was on the left. Don’t think, Caroline told herself. Just do. She went to Megan’s door. In the pocket of her jacket was a handkerchief and the thin plastic card that Caroline used to enter her office

building after hours. It was the one card that did not bear her name. Looking over her shoulder, she saw no one. The hollow sound of voices on a television came through the door next to Megan’s. Caroline slipped out the card and placed the handkerchief on the metal doorknob. Her forehead felt damp. No longer would anyone mistake what she was doing; suddenly, she regretted again that wearing gloves would make her conspicuous, that buying them would make her memorable. She slid the card through the crack— It slipped from her fingers. Caroline caught her breath. The card hit the tile with a slap and lay at her feet, glistening in the light. Taut, Caroline knew that she could have lost it through the crack. Quickly, she picked it up. With every hesitation, the inevitable moment when the next person entered the hallway was that much closer—perhaps the manager, following up the unexplained ringing. Caroline’s watch read 8:17. Slowly, she reinserted the card, eyes narrow. Slipped it above the latch, then at an angle, to catch the indentation of the lock. Breath held, Caroline slid the card between the lock and the door and pulled gently on the door. There was a soft click. The knob had moved in her hand. Opening the door, she slid into Megan’s apartment and softly shut the door. It was pitch dark. It took Caroline a moment of blind fumbling, handkerchief covering her fingertips, to find the switch on the wall. She stood there, blinking in the light. The apartment was simple—a living room with a kitchen to one side and, next to that, the door to what must be Megan’s bedroom. As Caroline stood there, irresolute, footsteps sounded in the corridor.