Brass Ring (50 page)

VIENNA

THE SKY WAS DARKENING
outside the foundation windows when Jon appeared in the doorway to Claire’s office.

“Patterson’s called a press conference,” he said. “Should be on in ten minutes. Want to watch with me?”

“
Yes
.” She was supposed to go to the Chain Bridge Theater tonight, early. It was opening night for the play Randy was directing, and she wanted to spend some time with him first, but she couldn’t miss seeing the press conference. “I’ll be right there.”

It had been two days since the hearings on Capitol Hill, and Vanessa’s outburst had been telecast over and over on the news. Claire had been shocked by the public reaction to her sister’s allegations. The media was tearing her apart. The victim was being systematically beaten into submission, while no one cast a doubting eye in Patterson’s direction. Even women’s groups, which Claire had expected to rush to her sister’s defense, were keeping silent, unwilling to derail the man they saw as their champion. She’d left several messages for Vanessa at the Omni, but her calls hadn’t been returned.

She had to admit that Vanessa didn’t make the most sympathetic victim. Her cursing at a much-loved senator didn’t play well with the public. Her past—the drug use, the teenage pregnancy, the alcoholism, all of which had been rapidly unearthed and paraded for

the world to see—didn’t lend her credibility. It didn’t matter that she was now a respected physician. That was not nearly as sensational as her sordid past. Besides, people
liked
Zed Patterson. After breathing a long, collective sigh of relief at his acquittal in the molestation case, Patterson’s devotees didn’t want to hear any more allegations about his behavior.

In the
Post
that morning, a psychologist had written an article offering half a dozen motives for Vanessa’s attack on the senator. The possibility that she might be telling the truth was not even considered. Vanessa had gotten a little too uncomfortably crazy during her testimony, Claire thought.

Somehow, a reporter had learned that Claire was Vanessa’s sister. He’d contacted her, asking her to verify the information Vanessa had offered, and she had done so willingly. Yes, she’d said, Zed Patterson had worked for her grandparents, and yes, she had sent Vanessa out to the barn to help him that morning, not knowing there was any danger. And yes, she believed her sister’s account of what happened. And although she carried with her the prestige of the Harte-Mathias Foundation, no one seemed to take her thoughts on the subject very seriously. Vanessa Gray was either a troubled woman who, in all innocence, had her facts twisted, or she was a clever zealot with some obscure political ax to grind against Patterson.

She had told Debra Parlow about Vanessa’s visit, and she’d wept in the therapist’s office for the sister she had lost and couldn’t seem to regain. Ironically, that painful session had left her more comfortable with Debra, more trusting of her nonjudgmental support. Maybe someday she would be able to talk with Debra about her memories.

Claire walked into the lounge to find the TV on and Jon and Pat deep in conversation. They sat with their chairs facing each other, leaning toward one another, close enough to touch. Indeed, Pat had her hand on Jon’s arm. Claire turned her eyes away, and Pat immediately let go of Jon and sat back in her chair.

“Hi, Claire.” Pat picked up her briefcase from the floor, rested it in her lap, and wheeled past Jon toward the door. “I’ve got to get out of here,” she said. “I’ll have to watch the news tonight to see what Patterson has to say.”

“’Night, Pat,” Jon said.

“Good-night.” Claire sat down in one of the upholstered straight-backed chairs by the table and looked up at the TV. A commercial was on, but the sound was off.

She felt Jon’s eyes on her. “Do you believe Vanessa?” he asked.

The question surprised her. Of course she believed her. Yet wasn’t there that little speck of doubt still lurking in the back of her mind? She didn’t know Vanessa, and Vanessa was doing all she could to be certain they remained strangers. She was still bothered by Vanessa’s continued allusions to a chariot on the carousel. And she didn’t really know what had happened in the barn that day.

“I’m ninety-nine percent sure she’s telling the truth,” she said.

Jon looked at the screen, where a woman with deep lines across her forehead was studying a bottle of cold medicine. “Well, I believe her one hundred percent,” he said.

His words touched her. She studied his face. From where she sat in the darkening room, the brown of his eyes looked like amber, and she could see the full length of his eyelashes in the light from the television. Silver-dusted hair, high cheekbones, hollow cheeks. The tightness low in her belly took her by surprise. Jon Mathias would still be sexy when he was eighty.

A group of people suddenly appeared on the screen, a few men and a woman standing behind a microphone-littered dais in a room with baby blue walls. Jon hit the sound button on the remote, and the muffled, cluttered noise of a pre-press-conference crowd filled the lounge.

“I feel the need to share with all of you my response to the allegations of Dr. Vanessa Gray.” Zed Patterson let his eyes roam over the unseen crowd. Next to him stood a young, redheaded woman. Claire recognized her from pictures she’d seen in the newspaper. Patterson’s wife, Penny, age thirty-something, mother of his two young children.

“It took me a while to piece it all together,” Patterson said, “and I’ll do my best to tell you all I know.” He spoke with an unhurried, easygoing style; there was a despicable hint of a smile on his lips.

“I hate him,” Claire said, the words surprising her. “I hate this man.”

“I was indeed the sheriff of Jeremy, Pennsylvania, in 1962, the year in which Dr. Gray alleges the abuse took place,” Patterson said. “I was twenty-seven years old, a young man with a penchant for law and order and a growing interest in our legal system. As many of my constituents know, I didn’t come from a privileged background. My father was an automobile mechanic, and that was the first trade I learned. So when Vince Siparo, one of the farmers in Jeremy, was looking for a mechanic to help with the machinery that ran the rather amazing carousel he was building in his barn, I offered my services. Dr. Gray is accurate to that point. I did help her grandfather one summer—the exact year I couldn’t say. Her grandparents were fine people. Fine, hardworking people.”

He stopped to take a sip from a glass on the dais.

“I’ve racked my brain to try to remember more about the home situation there on the farm. I know Siparo’s daughter and son-in-law were there from time to time, and I believe there were some children around. Boys, girls, I don’t remember.” He took another drink from the glass, and Claire pressed her hand to her mouth.

“He’s lying,” she said. “He knows perfectly well who was there. He gave me presents, Jon.”

Patterson looked at his wife, who gave him an encouraging smile. “So that brings me to Dr. Gray’s accusations,” he continued, “and believe me, I’ve given this a lot of thought. Dr. Gray is in a position of responsibility and esteem in a children’s hospital in Seattle. I can’t—and none of us should—simply shrug off her serious accusations. I would guess that she sincerely believes what she is saying. Something probably
did
happen to her way back then. It just didn’t happen at my hands. The mind works in funny ways. Maybe when she heard about the recent accusations against me, she made the leap in her reasoning that, since I was around then, I must have been the person who abused her. Otherwise, why on earth didn’t she come forward with this some other time in the past thirty years?”

His wife nodded, shielding her eyes against the lights in the room.

“People know me and will continue to trust me as an advocate for the rights of abused women and children, and I think Dr. Gray is right—we do need to provide services for adolescents who suffered abuse in their younger years.”

Penny Patterson nodded again, like a robot. Claire felt sorry for her.

“Therefore,” Patterson continued, “I plan to have services for adolescents added to the Aid to Adult Survivors Bill. The fact is, despite all she’s accomplished professionally, this one incident obviously did traumatize Dr. Gray to an enormous extent—as we all witnessed on the Hill on Wednesday.” He offered a wry, condescending smile to the camera. “Although she was misguided, it must have taken great courage on her part to come forward in that way, and I must thank her for bringing the matter of how childhood abuse can wreak havoc on the adult to our attention so graphically.”

“Oh, he’s a flaming prick!” Claire pounded her fist on the table.

Patterson fielded a few questions after speaking, but only a few, and he said nothing new. His wife was asked to comment, and she said something about it being “fashionable” these days for “grown women” to accuse men of long-ago abuse, and how “such behavior” can steal the focus from “today’s real victims.”

“I simply don’t understand Dr. Gray’s motives,” she added. “My husband is, I’m afraid, more toleraut than I am on this issue.”

They watched in silence as the press conference came to a close, and Claire was aware of how dark the room had become with only the television for light. She could smell the soft scent of Jon’s aftershave. On the wall, the clock ticked toward the hour of the play. Randy was probably wondering what had happened to her.

She touched Jon’s arm lightly. “I have to go.”

“To Randy,” Jon said. He didn’t often mention Randy these days.

“It’s the opening night of his new play.”

“Ah.”

Jon clicked off the television, and darkness swept across the room. Neither of them moved.

“Jon?”

“Mmm?”

“I want you to know that it’s not physical with Randy.” That was misleading, she thought. “What I mean is, that was never what motivated me, and—”

“Shut up, Claire.”

She cringed. She wasn’t saying this well. “You’re the sexiest man I’ve ever known.” She tried again. “I just want to be sure you know that my attraction to Randy had nothing to do with sex. It was a different sort of need altogether.”

Jon wheeled over to the door and flicked the light switch on the wall. “See you Monday?” he asked. There were red blotches on his cheeks and neck, and she knew he wanted to be rid of her and her impulsive rambling.

She blinked against the sudden brightness in the room. She wished she could talk with him longer. She wanted to tell him she was trying to learn to take care of herself. It was hard, she would say. Scary.

But she stood up instead and, with a sigh, bent over to brush her lips across his temple.

“Monday, yes,” she said. “Good-night.”

WASHINGTON, D.C.

VANESSA AND BRIAN RENTED
a paddleboat in the Tidal Basin Saturday morning, and as they pushed off from shore, Vanessa felt a welcome sense of isolation from the rest of the world. The cherry trees surrounding the basin had dropped their blossoms, which circled the water with a faded pink-and-white blanket. The sky was a rich, cloudless blue. Ahead of them, Thomas Jefferson stood silhouetted in his domed monument.

Late last night, they’d checked out of the Omni and into a smaller, more intimate hotel under Brian’s name. They had lost the wolves, they hoped, and they’d called their respective employers to let them know they were taking a few more days off. The city was beautiful, signs of spring were everywhere, and they were determined to escape Vanessa’s tormentors without having to leave Washington itself.

Out in the middle of the basin, Vanessa stopped pedaling. She slipped off her lightweight jacket and raised her face to the sun. Brian took her lead, taking off his own jacket, then putting his arm around her and letting the little boat drift idly in the water.

Reporters could be frighteningly quick and ruthless, Vanessa had learned. They had dug up enough information on her teenage years to fuel any argument against her credibility. And they were not her only tormentors.

Terri Roos had tracked her down the night before. Vanessa had already heard from a few other people in the network. Most expressed a stunned, but reserved, sympathy. Terri, though, was clearly angry.

“You put your personal agenda ahead of the greater good,” she’d said. Vanessa had simply hung up on her.

Doug Jenks, the chief executive officer of Lassiter Children’s Hospital, had called to tell her she should have thought through the potential repercussions of her testimony, both to herself and to Lassiter, before going public with her allegations. But it was the call from the reporter who said he had learned that she’d relinquished a baby for adoption twenty years ago—and was trying to track that young woman down—that propelled them into changing hotels.

“Please, don’t,” was all Vanessa had managed to say before her tears started. She was tired. Tired of the phone calls. Tired of the questions.

The one truly heartening call had come from Darcy, who’d cried on the phone and chastised Vanessa for not having told her. Brian suggested that if she returned the calls from Claire, she might find support there as well. He was probably right, but she didn’t have the strength to talk to her sister right now.

“I’ll call her when we get back to Seattle,” she promised. And she would. Her anger toward Claire was gone, and she realized it had been misdirected all along. In its place was a mounting sympathy. Claire was battling old memories. Vanessa had seen too many women in the midst of that fight to be able to shrug off her sister’s suffering. But she couldn’t deal with it now.

The boat rocked lightly in the basin, and the sun warmed her face, and despite the trauma of the past few days, Vanessa felt more at peace with herself than she had in a long time. She’d done what she had to do. If they believed her, fine. If not, what did it matter? It was obvious to her, if to no one else, that she had scared Zed Patterson. He was going to include aid for adolescents in his bill just to keep her off his back.

“Let’s not go back to shore,” Brian said.