Degree of Guilt (53 page)

The stenographer left. Masters stood, and then, as if in an afterthought, turned to Paget. ‘There is one thing I should say to you, Mr Paget. It’s this: You’re as welcome in this courtroom now as you were before Ms Sharpe played that tape. I don’t care what you did or didn’t know fifteen years ago, and I’m sorry Ms Sharpe does.’ She glanced at Sharpe, and then faced Paget again. ‘Personal lives are a complex matter, and it will be a pity if what’s private between you and Ms Carelli doesn’t get to stay there. I know your son’s here watching, and appreciate the pressure you’re under.’

For a moment, Paget was speechless. He had been prepared for anything from Caroline Masters but compassion.

‘
I
appreciate that, Your Honor. Truly.’

Masters considered him. ‘There is, perhaps, one other thing I should say. In simple fairness, so that you can assess your alternatives.’ She paused again, then finished softly. ‘You’ve done a very nice job. And you’re losing this case.’

Paget stared into the martini glass. Straight up, no ice. His first in weeks.

‘“You’re losing this case,”’ he said to Terri, ‘does
not
require extensive analysis.’

They sat at the Top of the Mark Hopkins, looking at the city as dusk fell. ‘Semantically speaking, no,’ Terri answered. ‘But it can mean either “Your witnesses better be damned good” or “Better cut a deal with Marnie while you’ve got the chance.” Or maybe “Don’t put Mary on the stand – you’ll lose anyhow, and you’ll just screw yourself up for trial.’

Paget nodded. ‘I think it’s one of the latter two. Maybe both.’

‘So do I. Unfortunately.’

He smiled faintly. ‘It’s one of the many things I like about you, Terri. You’re honest.’

She put down her wineglass, seeming to assess its contents. He could look at her then; the delicate face, crescent green eyes, the ridged nose that, Paget was sure, only she disliked. The woman he saw was smart and self-reliant, clear-sighted about everyone but herself.

‘One problem,’ he told her, ‘is that Mary still won’t take that deal. Even if they offered it.’

Terri still gazed at her wine. ‘You kept the tape out,’ she said softly. ‘There was nothing more you could do.’

‘
Caroline
kept the tape out. At least for now.’

She gave him a veiled look of worry; Paget watched her choose between sympathy and encouragement. ‘Tomorrow’s our turn. We didn’t expect to win now, remember? And Caroline did treat you well.’

‘She did, to my surprise.’ He paused, reflecting. ‘I find Caroline Masters completely inscrutable. I have the sense that something drives her besides sheer intellect, but I’ve no idea what it is. Or, really, who
she
is. It makes her impossible to predict.’

‘Then don’t try, Chris. I don’t think Caroline’s your problem here, and you’ve got far too much to think about.’

‘I know.’ Terri’s concern for him reminded Paget that she had worries of her own. ‘So how are things at home? And how’s Elena?’

‘Elena’s great.’ Terri paused. ‘As for home, it’s okay. Richie doesn’t really understand the demands of this hearing – he takes it sort of personally.’

Was there anything, Paget began to wonder, that Richie
didn’t
think was about Richie? ‘That can be hard,’ he said.

Terri shrugged. ‘I just try to shut it off. Two weeks, and we’re back to normal.’

Her voice was flat. As if she heard herself, Terri asked, ‘How’s Carlo?’

‘Too quiet. I’m sure it’s the implications about his mother and Ransom.’ Paget stared out the window. ‘More and more, I dread the day she takes the stand. Every time I drill her with questions, I find a new hole. Not to mention that Sharpe keeps coming up with new facts. It worries me, for Carlo most of all.’

Nodding, Terri sipped her wine, said nothing.

‘Sorry,’ Paget said after a time. ‘But if I don’t say this stuff to you, it seems I don’t say it to anyone.’

Terri looked at him. ‘That seems to be our arrangement, Chris. In addition to doing trials, of course.’

‘Lucky for me. Not only do you listen to me brood without visible boredom, but you come up with terrific lines of questioning.’ He smiled. ‘You may have struck a death blow to the panty hose industry.’

He watched her smile back. It lightened his depression for a moment, and then he thought of the tape again, and Carlo.

Terri glanced at her watch. ‘Melissa Rappaport should have checked in by now. I keep wondering if Caroline will let her testify in open court.’

‘Probably not.’ Paget finished his drink. ‘
I
just hope that Caroline remembers her whenever she remembers Mary’s voice on tape.’

FEBRUARY
13 –
FEBRUARY
19

‘He told me to undress for them,’ Laura murmured.

Her smoky voice sounded plaintive, more bewildered than angry. Caroline Masters looked from the tape to Terri.

‘What is this?’ she said quietly.

Terri paused, torn from her image of Laura Chase lying on a white couch in a white room, Steinhardt an unseen voice behind her. ‘Please listen, Your Honor. I think we can show relevance.’

‘And
did
you undress?’ Steinhardt asked.

‘Piece by piece.’ A long pause. ‘Jamie told me what to take off and how to move.’

‘How to move?’

‘Yes.’ Her voice fell. ‘While they watched me, I danced for them.’

‘Danced?’

‘Jamie told me how to move,’ she repeated. Laura did not seem to answer questions; it was more that she was talking to herself, or what was left of herself. Her voice sounded dead. ‘When to turn around for them. What parts of me to uncover.’

Masters looked at Terri. ‘James Colt?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

Slowly, Masters shook her head.

‘What did you think about,’ Steinhardt was asking, ‘while you were doing this for him.’

‘That I wanted to keep drinking.’ Her voice stayed flat. ‘We were in the recreation room of his friend’s house. There was a bar there. They had everything they needed.’

‘So you drank more.’

‘Gin. Every time I took off something new. It helped me float away.’ Her tone became distant. ‘When I slid my panties down, and turned around for them, I imagined that I was about to go swimming. With
her
.’

Masters’s gaze seemed to turn inward; the effect was of someone who had removed herself. Terri’s palms were damp.

‘Then,’ Laura whispered, ‘he asked me to touch myself.’

Paget and Sharpe’s assistant looked at the floor. Marnie Sharpe sat with her arms folded. No one spoke.

‘Touch yourself?’ Steinhardt asked Laura Chase.

‘At first just my nipples. Then moving my hands, like I was discovering new parts.’ Another pause. ‘After a while, he asked me to slide to the floor, and lean back against the bar.’

‘For what?’

‘I masturbated. While they watched me.’

The tape was silent.

‘While I did it,’ Laura murmured, ‘I closed my eyes. Under my breath, so they couldn’t hear, I whispered her name to myself.’

Caroline Masters’s eyes shut.

‘Then someone put his penis in my mouth.’ Laura’s voice became wispy. ‘I kept my eyes closed. I didn’t want to know who it was.

‘When he was through, and I opened my eyes, Senator James Colt handed me another drink.’

Her tone was suddenly angry. The future leader of the free world, Terri remembered; that was what Laura Chase had called him, talking to Lindsay Caldwell. Lindsay had said it was the humor of a slave. But it was more than that: the phrase had a bitter irony. Terri’s revulsion turned to anger.

It was all right, James Colt was saying. It was all right for Mark Ransom to treat Marcy Linton as his friends had treated Laura Chase.

Chr stopher Paget glanced over at Terri.

Don’t get sidetracked, she told herself. You’ve got an argument to make. You asked to argue this yourself, and Chris agreed.

Laura Chase kept speaking.

‘The second one stretched me out on the rug, and opened my legs again.’ Her voice became distant. ‘It made me think of that movie I made. Letting two men fuck me so other men could watch. I try never to think about that.’

‘You bought up all the copies, didn’t you?’

‘I hope so.’ Pain deadened her voice again. ‘But now it doesn’t really matter, does it?’

There was silence, and then Laura’s tone went cold. ‘It stopped mattering a long time ago.’

‘Tell me,’ Steinhardt asked softly. ‘Did anything else happen?’

‘The other one rolled me over.’ There was a long pause. ‘He was hard again.’

‘Rolled you over?’

‘Yes.’ Laura’s voice held a faint note of anger. ‘They wanted to have me every way.’

Steinhardt’s voice was quiet. ‘That must have hurt you.’

‘Not really. My father used to do that.’ Her voice became flat again. ‘While it was happening, I looked up. Jamie was sipping his martini, watching.’

Caroline Masters seemed to inhale, and then she opened her eyes.

‘I’m afraid,’ Steinhardt said, ‘that our time is up.’

Slowly, Masters shook her head. From the tape recorder, Laura said in matter-of-fact tones, ‘I may not be here next week.’

‘That’s all right, Laura. Just call my secretary, and we can reschedule. We’ll certainly need to talk about this more.’

There was a faint sound of movement: Laura rising from the couch. ‘You know what’s so funny about it?’ she asked. ‘I can never come. Except with her.’

Her voice broke. There was one sob, then the convulsive sound of Laura Chase, breaking down.

The tape clicked off.

For a long time, no one spoke.

Caroline Masters touched her eyes. ‘Just what,’ she said to no one, ‘am I supposed to do with
that?
’

‘Let us play it,’ Terri answered quietly, ‘in open court.’

Masters thought for a moment. Then slowly, she got up from her chair and summoned the stenographer.

As before, the woman settled in an unobtrusive corner. ‘All right.’ Masters looked to Sharpe. ‘What do the People say?’

‘That tape should be suppressed.’ Sharpe’s voice had an undertone of disgust. ‘It may be appalling, but it’s not relevant to anything.’

Masters stared at the tape. ‘It’s relevant to some things,’ she said. ‘Why Laura Chase killed herself. Who James Colt really was. How he felt about women. If I were a historian, I would strongly argue that Colt is due a hard second look. But I’m merely a municipal court judge.’ She paused. ‘And, at the moment, I wish I weren’t even that.’

‘I may agree with you, as a matter of personal philosophy,’ Sharpe answered. ‘But that has nothing to do with any issue in this case – which, after all, is about the death of
Mark Ransom
.’ Sharpe glanced at Terri. ‘What the defense is trying to do is create a scandal which will deflect attention from Ms Carelli’s culpability. And, frankly, make this case expensive for the district attorney by alienating a family that still matters, a son who is running for governor, and all the people who believe that the country’s finest moment was cut short by a plane crash.’

‘The tape goes to who
Mark Ransom
was,’ Terri shot back. ‘Our defense is that Mark Ransom was a tangle of sexual pathology, at the heart of which was a need for physical and mental dominance of women as symbolized by his obsession with Laura Chase. Any political damage to District Attorney Brooks
or
Ms Sharpe is the incidental cost of a case
they
wanted to bring.’ Terri paused. ‘I don’t know how they can argue that the tape Mark Ransom played for Ms Carelli – one that sexually aroused him in the moments before he attacked her – isn’t relevant.’

‘In other words,’ Sharpe said to Masters, ‘make the victim so distasteful that it doesn’t matter if someone murdered him. It’s the world’s tiredest defense strategy, Your Honor, dressed up as a feminist cause.’

Terri shook her head. ‘Our strategy is to show that this isn’t murder at all, Your Honor. We ask that you not rule on the tape until you’ve heard all of our witnesses. Including the three witnesses Ms Sharpe wants you to hear in chambers.’

Masters looked at her. ‘But the only purpose of
that
is for me to rule on whether their testimony is admissible. And, therefore, can be part of the hearing on which the court determines probable cause.’

‘That’s why I suggest you wait to rule on
this
. We think that the testimony of our witnesses,
and
the Laura Chase tape, should be taken as a whole.’

‘Who are they?’

‘The first is Melissa Rappaport, Mark Ransom’s ex-wife. The second is Marcy Linton, the writer.’

Masters nodded. ‘I’ve read her stories. And the third?’

Terri paused. ‘Lindsay Caldwell.’

Masters raised an eyebrow. ‘What does Ms Rappaport have to offer us?’

‘A description of Mr Ransom’s obsession with Laura Chase, and with rape. Among other things.’

‘What about Ms Linton?’

‘Mark Ransom raped her,’ Terri said softly. ‘In Aspen, four years ago. He came to her cabin, under the pretense of a literary meeting, to commit rape.’

‘And she’s willing to say so?’

‘Yes.’

Masters looked pensive. ‘And Lindsay Caldwell?’

Terri tried to read her face. ‘Lindsay Caldwell,’ she answered quietly, ‘was the “her” Laura mentioned. On the tape that I just played.’

From the side, Sharpe turned to stare at Terri. Masters’s eyes flickered. With equal quiet, she asked, ‘Can you explain the relevance of that?’

‘Yes. Ransom told Ms Caldwell that he had another, more explicit tape regarding her relationship with Laura Chase. He used it to arrange a “meeting.”’ Terri paused. ‘It was scheduled for the day after he met Ms Carelli.’

For once, Sharpe looked openly surprised; Terri watched her try to calculate the impact of what she had just heard. From the corner of her eye, Terri saw Christopher Paget’s faint smile of approval, to assure her that she was doing well.