The Final Judgment (6 page)

“The state police did. I told them I had never seen it.”

He paused for a moment. “Plainly, they assume Brett brought it there.” Caroline shrugged. “For them to assume otherwise would be to assume that someone happened to be in the neighborhood, decided to butcher James Case in a particularly intimate way, and then left his knife as a calling card. Which assumes a great deal, if you’re the police.” Channing stood straighter. “That’s not how it happened. Someone followed them.”

“Into the woods at night? To my old lot?” His mouth compressed. “It belongs to Brett now, Caroline, and it’s been a long time since you lived in New Hampshire. We don’t have random killings here. Someone wanted to kill this boy and waited for a time to do it.” Caroline’s head had begun throbbing. She rubbed her temples. “That’s a tough sell without some evidence. Brett took him there, to an isolated place, owned by our family. To them, it may mean premeditation—”

“If Brett had not gone swimming, Caroline, she might be dead as well. She’s fortunate she startled him—”

“Who, damn it?” Channing slowly shook his head. “I don’t know. Perhaps a vagrant, who picked up the dead boy’s wallet and dropped it at the sound of Brett. Perhaps, as she said, it was trouble over drugs.”

“Does she know who his supplier is?”

“Of course not.” This time it was Caroline who shook her head. “Professionals don’t kill over a few thousand dollars.” She paused a moment. “Tell me, is there any evidence that someone was there? Other than Brett’s word, that is.” He did not bridle, Caroline noticed; for the moment, he seemed to put anguish aside and accept that they were dealing with facts. “We don’t know yet. The crime scene search was done by Jackson’s people—the state troopers.”

“Who found the body?”

“The Resolve police. Two young patrolmen, checking the trails.”

”What do you know about that?”

“Only what the local people told me. The two policemen happened on the body, promptly searched the immediate area. Finding nothing and no one, they called the EMTs and the state police, both of whom came to the scene. The EMTs pronounced Case dead, and the state police called Jackson at his home in Concord. After which he and the Major Crimes Unit got a warrant to search Brets property and person—with humiliating thoroughness—and then took her statement.” Caroline could see it all. “By which time,” she amended, “four or five amateurs had been stumbling all over the crime scene, leaving footprints, handling the body, and generally making a mess. Not to mention, quite possibly, blowing Brett’s Miranda warnings.”

“True enough.” Folding his arms, Channing paused for emphasis. “But the state police are excellent, and so is Jackson Watts. Don’t assume that he’s still the boy you dated.” Another pause. “Or, for that matter, jilted.” Caroline did not rise to this. “How is Jackson these days?”

“Smart and unassuming, which is part of his appeal. He’s chief of the attorney general’s homicide unit, and—prospectively—a judge of the Superior Court. Which, in other circumstances, would please me greatly, as he’s a very decent man.” His voice became sad, almost valedictory. “In fact, I wish he were already on the bench. As, I’m sure, does he.” He looked ashen, Caroline saw; his thin shoulders had slumped, and the passion had vanished. “Perhaps,” she ventured, “Jackson won’t handle the case.” Channing slowly shook his head. “He’s never owed me anything, Caroline. Except, perhaps, to remain the man I always knew that he’d become.” Caroline searched his tone for second meanings, a mute reproach. But all she heard was the throbbing in her temples. Almost gently, her father said, “You look tired, Caroline.”

I didn’t sleep, she almost said. Instead she answered, “The flight, and then the drive, made for a long day. And it’s not over yet.” Channing caught the reference. “You’ll like her, Caroline.” His voice was still soft. “Even under these circumstances.” She rubbed her temples. “Tell me, what was he like—James Case?”

“Very handsome.” He paused, then his tone hardened. “But he was one of the unstable ones, weak and selfish, with that narcissistic self-involvement women seem to find so attractive.” Caroline’s eyes narrowed. “How often did you meet him?”

“For more than a moment? Twice, perhaps three times.” She looked at him askance. “And you perceived all that,” she said in a flat voice. “As well as how he affected Brett.” Channing seemed to blanch. “That’s kept you going, all these years, hasn’t it? And now it’s about to make you a judge.” Caroline felt her face freeze; something in her eyes made her father hold up one hand, for silence. “Whatever your differences, Caroline, Betty has been a good mother. And because of it, Brett is a good person—”

“And one is, after all, only as good as one’s mother.” He did not flinch. “You can be cruel, Caroline. But I never felt that. Not then, and not now.” His hand fell to the side, and then his voice gentled in entreaty. “You will help her, won’t you?” Caroline gazed at him. “By staying,” she finally answered, “or by leaving.”

“Stay, Caroline. Please. I’m asking you for peace. Only for a time, and not for me—or Betty. But for her.” He stood straight again. “I know my granddaughter, in a way you never can now. Most of all, I know she’s innocent.”

At the door of the house, Caroline paused, picturing the young woman inside. Silent, Channing Masters opened the door, and Caroline entered her father’s house. She stopped in the living room, hands jammed in her pockets, looking about. All was as she remembered—the antique furniture, the Chinese carpets, even the smell of things from another time. In the foyer was the grandfather clock, made in the 1850s. Oil paintings of ancestors hung in the living room, portrayed in the heroic convention—a general, a senator, a lumber magnate, a clergyman with beetling eyebrows. Her father’s books remained in his library: the original Kipling and Poe, complete editions of Dickens and Henry James, Pliny’s letters. It was where he had always read to her. What was she doing here ... ? Slowly, Caroline walked to the dining room. Her family had eaten every meal at this same polished mahogany table, on china drawn from the beveled-glass cabinet. After Betty had left for Smith, and then Caroline’s mother had died, for a few months there had been only the two of them—Channing and his youngest daughter, dining alone, discussing his work or her studies or the news of the day. It was more than conversation, Caroline remembered. It was a tutorial in politics and human nature and how they intersected, with lessons drawn from a scale as large as history—Jefferson, the economics of slavery——or as small as the village of Resolve, the foibles of its affairs and its citizens laid bare by Channing’.s discerning but not uncharitable eye. Caroline had basked in it. All that she had wanted then was to settle here as a lawyer, to follow her father’s path as far as she could. On the eve of her departure to boarding school, at Dana Hall, Caroline could feel his loneliness, read the sadness in her father’s eyes. Grasping his sleeve, Caroline asked him again if she could stay. He shook his head. “They will attend to your education now,” he said. “Better than I or any school nearby. Children do not always live to please their parents, or parents to please themselves .... “ It was that, more than anything, that had made her wish to please him. He was standing next to her, Caroline realized. The house felt empty. Softly, Caroline asked, “Where is she?”

“Her room’s upstairs.” Caroline did not turn. “Which one?”

“Yours.” Alone, Caroline walked to the staircase, still feeling her father’s gaze. She paused, hand on the rail. Turning her head, Caroline faced the music room, imagined her mother, sitting at a piano that was no longer there. Even then, before Caroline knew how it would end, her mother had seemed miscast—febrile, high-spirited, too mutable and vivid for this place. Caroline remembered her mother planning trips they somehow never took, until she simply stopped; recalled how her parents began to argue over politics. Nicole had conceived an unreasoning passion for Adlai Stevenson and then John Kennedy, both anathema to her Republican husband. Barely an adolescent, Caroline had sensed this conflict as a metaphor for a conflict too deep to be spoken easily: her mother’s desire to leave a life that never quite seemed hers. She had begun to notice nights when her father grew remote. When her mother, retreating to the music room and

the lacquered grand piano, sang Edith Piaf in the breathy French she had never bothered to teach Caroline, that no one in their home could speak or understand. But even this language, Caroline came to know, was not quite her mother’s own. History had left her without family or country, or any home but this. Even her mother’s “La Vie en Rose,” Caroline remembered, had the sound of irony. Dark head poised, eyes nearly shut, Nicole Dessaliers Masters would sing with a faint half smile .... Turning from the music room, Caroline slowly climbed the stairs, to Bret’s room.

Brett sat facing the window. At first, Caroline could see only her back—the first impression of slimness, brown curls. And then she turned, a quick twist of her body, startled from thought. Caroline gazed at her for what felt uncomfortably long, though it could only have been seconds. Saw a delicate chin, full, even mouth, slender face and high forehead. Saw that Brett was more than pretty. Saw the smudges above her cheekbones, the hours without sleep. But the green eyes—startlingly alive—gazed at Caroline with uncanny direcmess. “You’re Caroline, aren’t you. My aunt.” Her voice was soft, yet clear. For an instant, Caroline replayed the sound of it. “I’m Caroline, yes.” Closing the door, she forced herself to stop looking at Brett, to glance around the room at the mishmash of early womanhood—a red pantsuit slung over a chair; some CDs by the singer Tori Amos; Susan Faludi’s Backlash on top of a stack of paperbacks. After a moment, she managed to say, “This isn’t quite how I remember it.”

“This was your roon, wasn’t it.” From birth, Caroline thought, until the day she had left. Every night of her childhood, her father would climb the stairs and kiss her on the forehead. And then there were those much rarer nights, surprising and priceless, when

Nicole Masters would read to her, a faint smell of claret on her breath, her lively French-accented English lending each story a touch of the exotic. Turning out the lights, Nicole bent her face to Caroline’s .... Caroline found herself staring at Brett. “What is it.”?” Brett asked. Caroline composed an answer. “Nothing, really. Just a foolish memory—my first childhood act of defiance. At night, I used to listen to Red Sox games. After my mother or father would turn off the lights and my radio, I’d sneak a transistor under the covers and keep listening, rapturous to be getting away with it.” Caroline smiled faintly. “Looking back, I’m sure he knew. Perhaps was even pleased.” Brett’s eyes showed the faint glint of kinship. “Grandfather used to take me to Fenway Park to watch the Red Sox.” A quick sideways glance. “Did he take you?” Caroline nodded. And then remembered, so suddenly that her forgetfulness shocked her, why she had come. Crossing the room, Caroline sat two feet from Brett. What happened next surprised her. For close to half her life, Caroline had sat this close to clients accused of rape, or child abuse, or murder by torture or mutilation. The serial killer whom Caroline had described to her father—a pockmarked man with ferret’s eyes—would have raped and killed her for the pleasure of it had there not been Plexiglas between them. So that Caroline had learned to stifle certain images. But as Brett gazed back at her, eyes filling with hope and fear, Caroline imagined the blood on her fingertips. She touched her eyes. “Forgive me if I seem more like a lawyer than an aunt. But we’ve quite a lot to cover.” Suddenly, Brett looked tense, deflated. Caroline fought back sympathy: she knew too well that the most intense emotions—anguished innocence or the horror of guilt—mimed each other on the faces of her clients. “Actually,” Caroline said, “I’m most interested in whatever you told the police. That’s what you have to live with.”

Brett sat back. Her voice was taut. “I told them the truth. Just like I’m telling you now.” Brett, Caroline realized, had suddenly perceived the working premises of Caroline Masters the defense lawyer. That Brett was guilty. That she would lie. That Caroline’s job was not to learn the truth but to keep it from the prosecution. “The truth is often useful,” Caroline said gently. “But what you told the police is unavoidable. And they do seem to have questions.” Brett swallowed. Gazing back at her, Caroline suddenly imagined a child beneath the woman, frightened and alone. And then Brett Allen reached slowly across Caroline’s silence and touched her hand. “Just believe in me,” she said. “Please.” Caroline looked down at Brett’s fingers, white against the tan of her own skin. She felt the lightness of Brett’s fingertips. By impulse, in the face of years of training, Caroline nodded. “All right,” she said. “Tell me everything.”

It was dusk when Brett had finished; the quiet room seemed twilit, a filtered gray that soon would fade to darkness. Caroline felt exhausted. Softly, she asked, “Did anyone know you’d be at the lake?”

“No one.” Brett still seemed lost in memory; her response was slow in coming. “It was a last-minute thing. So we could talk in private.”

“Because you were worried about being overheard?” A short nod. “I thought I heard someone picking up another phone. Maybe I just imagined it.”

“Someone?” Brett’s voice was toneless. “My mother.” Caroline watched her face. “Not your father? Or your grandfather?” Brett shook her head. “My dad wasn’t home. And

Grandfather has his own phone line to his room. That’s not something he’d ever do.” Caroline was quiet for a moment. “But your mother would.”

“Because of James.” Brett turned to the window, added in a lower voice, “My mother hated him. She knew he was dealing.”

“You told her.”?”

“Of course not. But my dad heard rumors, from the campus police.” She looked at Caroline again, paused. “You know he teaches there.” Of course, Caroline thought. That was how he lured them back here—a .job for a struggling graduate student, a home for his family, a granddaughter to fill the void. And all that Larry had to lose was himself. “Then your father,” Caroline said, “must have had some feelings about James.”