Degree of Guilt (62 page)

Sharpe nodded. ‘Yes, Your Honor.’

The two lawyers left the bench. ‘What was
that?
’ Paget murmured.

Sharpe gave him a fleeting sideways glance, then shrugged. ‘Never up, never in,’ she said, and turned to face Mary Carelli.

In an even tone, Sharpe said, ‘Our next subject, Ms Carelli, is the moment you shot Mr Ransom.’

‘All right,’ Mary answered. ‘But for the record, I don’t remember it as the “moment I shot Mr Ransom.” I remember it as the end of a struggle, when the gun went off.’ She turned back to Masters. ‘You see, I don’t recall
shooting
him. And I didn’t
plan
to shoot him. I just wanted him to stop.’

Good, Paget thought; it was another step back from murder, and one they had worked on together.

‘Semantics aside,’ Sharpe said, ‘he let you reach into the purse unimpeded. Is that your testimony?’

‘I told him that I was reaching for a condom, Ms Sharpe. I’m sure he wasn’t expecting a gun.’

‘How did you ever reach the gun? Hadn’t he pinned you to the floor?’

Mary hesitated. ‘That’s true,’ she said in a patient tone. ‘But when I told him about the condom, he took his weight off me.’

‘How did he do that?’

‘I don’t know, really.’ Her voice became weary. ‘But the hand he’d slapped me with was free, obviously. Perhaps he leaned on
that
.’

Sharpe’s brow furrowed. ‘But when you pulled the gun, he was essentially on top of you.’

‘Yes.’

‘Too close to extend your arms in front of you.’

‘Yes.’

Sharpe walked back to the prosecution table. She returned holding Mary’s gun.

Silently, she placed it on the front rail of the witness box. ‘Could you show me,’ she asked, ‘how you held the gun and how close it was to your body?’

For a moment, Mary simply stared at the gun. Then she squared her shoulders, took it in both hands, and pointed it at Sharpe with her wrists bent to her chest. ‘Like this,’ she said coolly. ‘As best I remember.’

Sharpe eyed the gun. ‘He was still on top of you, correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘But he permitted you to pull a gun from your purse, clamp it in both hands, and assume the rather awkward position you’re demonstrating now.’

Mary held the gun steady. ‘He didn’t permit me to do anything,’ she answered. ‘As I said, he grabbed my wrists.’

‘While he was still on top of you?’

‘Yes.’

Sharpe cocked her head. ‘Could you describe your relative positions?’

Mary placed the gun on her lap. ‘It happened so fast,’ she said.

‘Just your best memory.’

Mary’s eyes narrowed. ‘He was kneeling between my legs, leaning forward. Both hands were on my wrists.’ She gave a melancholy shrug. ‘That’s what I remember.’

‘And as he grasped your wrists, the “gun went off,” as you put it.’

‘Yes.’

Sharpe looked puzzled. ‘Didn’t we just skip a step?’

‘Skip a step?’ Mary asked carefully. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I mean the step where Mark Ransom obligingly released your wrists and catapulted backward so that you could shoot him from at least three feet.’

The question was delivered with subversive innocence, in a tone so bland that it underscored the absurdity Sharpe meant to suggest. The buzz from the spectators was like a delayed reaction.

‘Jesus,’ Terri whispered.

Paget kept watching. ‘No. I think it’s all right.’

Mary stared at Sharpe, face quite composed, her perfect stillness commanding silence in the courtroom. ‘As I told you,’ she said calmly, ‘I don’t remember everything. But Mr Ransom was a very tall man, and I expect his
arms
were three feet long. And I think they were extended, pinning my wrists to my chest.’ She clasped the gun between her breasts, aiming at Sharpe again. ‘Like
this.
So you see, the bullet could have travelled close to three feet if he’d never even flinched.’

There were muted exclamations. Sharpe looked stunned.

‘She walked right into that one,’ Paget whispered. ‘Wonder why she believed that Mary and I wouldn’t think of it?’

Terri turned to him. ‘I wonder if it’s true.’

Looking up, Paget saw Masters’s faint smile at Mary. ‘All that matters,’ he said, ‘is that
Caroline
wonder.’

But Sharpe had recovered. ‘He was leaning forward, you said. Not backward.’

Mary put down the gun. ‘I don’t know, Ms Sharpe. Somehow the gun went off, and somehow the bullet traveled two to three feet. All that I know for certain is that I didn’t mean for it to happen.’ She shook her head. ‘I only meant to scare him. To make him stop.’

Sharpe placed her hands on her hips. ‘Isn’t what happened that you bought this gun planning to shoot Mark Ransom, came to the Flood and killed him from a safe distance – after which you closed the blinds, scratched yourself, tore your own panty hose, and scratched Mark Ransom’s buttocks, in an effort to claim rape? Isn’t
that
what happened?’

‘It’s nearly over,’ Paget whispered to Terri.

‘Pardon me,’ Mary said politely. ‘But didn’t you skip a step? The part where I slap myself?’

Another, deeper sound. Terri murmured, ‘You know, I’ve never seen anyone quite like her.’

Neither, it was clear, had Marnie Sharpe. ‘I didn’t,’ Sharpe finally said. ‘Because when you pulled the gun, Mark Ransom swung at you by instinct. And then you shot him, just as you intended.
That’s
what happened, isn’t it?’

Once more, Caroline Masters turned to Mary. Pausing, Mary folded her hands. ‘No,’ she said calmly. ‘That is
not
what happened. Mark Ransom tried to rape me, and I defended myself.’ Mary’s voice grew quiet. ‘A gun went off. But as tragic as that is, I’d defend myself again.’

Slowly, Sharpe shook her head in silent disbelief. Then, in a tone of dismissal and contempt, she said, ‘No further questions, Your Honor.’

‘She survived,’ Terri murmured to Paget.

Paget nodded. ‘Yes. She did.’

It took a moment for Masters to turn from Mary. ‘Redirect, Mr Paget?’

Paget stood. ‘No questions,’ he answered. ‘None at all.’

Masters nodded. ‘You may step down, Ms Carelli.’

Mary stood stiffly, seemingly unsure that it was over. She was still for a moment, as if preparing for the reporters outside, the cameras, the people who wished to cheer her, to revile her, or simply to collect her autograph. Then she walked across the courtroom, composed again, as she had been that day fifteen years before, leaving the Senate.

Mary flashed on the screen, pointing the gun at Marnie Sharpe.

Paget and Carlo watched in the library. ‘In a tense confrontation,’ the narrative began, ‘Mary Carelli held her own with Prosecutor Marnie Sharpe. Refusing to wither under repeated attacks, Ms Carelli fought back at the end of her testimony, dramatically affirming her innocence.’

Carlo turned to Paget. ‘She
was
good,’ Carlo said.

He seemed to need reassurance, as if doubting the evidence of his own senses. ‘Very good,’ Paget answered.

He fell silent. He could not say to Carlo that Mary had
needed
to be good simply to survive; that drama was not innocence in the eyes of Caroline Masters; and that in the unsparing calculus of evidence – the relentless accretion of fact upon fact – Sharpe’s attack had been telling. Nor could Paget say that the secrets Caroline Masters already knew, and that he hoped Carlo would never know, might have damaged Mary beyond repair.

‘Do you think the judge believed her?’ Carlo asked.

Carlo now seemed to have the caution of a lawyer, rather than the fierce loyalty of a son. It was painful to see. ‘Your mother gave her reason to,’ Paget answered. ‘Tomorrow morning, Terri puts on Marcy Linton. By this time tomorrow evening, Caroline Masters will know that Mark Ransom raped a defenseless young woman.’

Carlo looked hopeful; it was as if he, too, would then be persuaded. ‘After that, the judge should
know
that my mother’s telling the truth, don’t you think?’

‘Caroline’s hard to read. But it will at least make Mary more credible, and much more sympathetic.’ Paget switched off the television. ‘This trial has been hard for you, hasn’t it?’

Carlo shrugged. ‘In a way.’

A glancing phrase, Paget thought, which held much more: children are meant to learn ambiguity and moral complexity in some other place than the trial of a parent, to never learn their parents’ secrets, or even that they have them. ‘Like most of us,’ Paget said, ‘your mother has done things that she’s ashamed of. But that doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t believe her.
All
the women who dealt with Mark Ransom seem to have suffered for it.’

Carlo was quiet. ‘Do you think she’ll ever tell me what was on the tape?’

Inwardly, Paget flinched; the conversation made him feel like a hypocrite, using Mary as a shield. ‘If she never did,’ he asked softly, ‘would you stop caring about her?’

The question seemed to give Carlo pause. He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t have anything to do with me, really. Or her and me.’

Perhaps, Paget thought, his son would never learn that the tape had everything to do with Mary and Paget, Mary and Carlo, and why Paget had raised him. ‘Then let it be. The hearing will be over soon.’ Paget paused. ‘Perhaps it will have taught you to be less like me – judgmental to a fault – and better able to separate the mistakes people make from their worth as people. As someone like Terri seems able to do.’

Carlo gave him a curious look. ‘She talked you into letting me come, didn’t she?’

‘Terri?’

‘Uh-huh. Because you’ve never done a one-hundred-eighty-degree turnaround on any “no” I can remember.’

Paget smiled. ‘I’ve always believed that consistency is a virtue. Of course it was Terri.’

Carlo smiled back. ‘I know you, Dad. From
me
you’ve got no secrets.’

Paget was quiet for a moment. ‘Just one or two,’ he said.

Teresa Peralta sat on the couch in Mark Ransom’s suite, gazing at the bloodstained carpet.

It was six-thirty; at seven, she was meeting Marcy Linton at a nearby hotel, to prepare for the most important day in court she might ever have. But an hour before, on impulse, she had called Marnie Sharpe for permission to visit the suite again. Sounding tired from her cross-examination of Mary, Sharpe did not question her, leaving Terri to question herself.

Why was she here?

The truth, Christopher Paget had told her, was something he wished never to know. All that mattered was that Sharpe never find the second tape.

Where was it?

Terri sat back, reflecting.

Where, for that matter, was the Lindsay Caldwell tape? If Ransom had failed to bring that as well as Mary’s second tape, despite his promise to both women, why had Sharpe not found the missing tapes in his home with Mary’s
first
tape?

Terri stood, eyes moving across the furnishings.

Why, in the moments after Mark Ransom died, had Mary gone from the end tables to the bookshelves to the desk? Leaving fingerprints on each.

Because she was looking for the tape, Marine Sharpe had suggested. That was wrong, Mary answered; she was in shock, wandering aimlessly. Not sure of where she was and what she was doing.

Terri opened the drawers of one end table, then another. A telephone directory. A Gideon Bible. Nothing else.

The bookshelf was no different. One drawer, empty. A few volumes of coffee table literature. Banal and impersonal, suited to a room where people came and went.

She found herself gazing at the bloodstain.

What had happened here between Mark Ransom and Mary Carelli, in the moments after Paul Aguilar had brought them champagne? Was Mary the naked woman standing in a distant window? What was Mary Carelli doing in the hallway when Edward Tench had seen her? While, inside the suite, Mark Ransom was lying dead.

Turning, Terri walked slowly to the desk.

On top were a pen, blank paper. She opened the drawer.

Empty, except for stationery and envelopes, imprinted with the address and logo of the Hotel Flood. A shield with a script
F
.

Closing the drawer, Terri gazed out at Berkeley, as Paul Aguilar claimed to have done.

Elena was there. Having dinner with her father while Terri worked again.

He was the care provider, Richie would tell the judge.

The unfairness of it seized Terri by the throat.
She
should raise Elena. At least she saw Elena as someone outside herself. As a person to be nurtured.

She turned away, standing over the stain Mark Ransom’s death had left, lost in her own thoughts.

Finally, she looked at her watch.

Six-fifty. It was time to go; Mary’s defense depended on Marcy Linton now, and there was much to do.

Terri picked up her purse and left the suite.

In the hallway, a uniformed policeman waited at the elevator Edward Tench had used. Terri turned toward it and then stopped, glancing at the mail slot.

She had stood here with Chris and Johnny Moore on the morning they first saw the suite.

What was Sharpe’s point, Terri had asked, about Mary being in the hallway?

No idea, Chris had answered. And then he had made a bitter joke: ‘Probably figures Mary found herself with a half hour to kill, scribbled a few postcards on Ransom’s rear end, and then mailed them to all her friends.’

Terri turned and reentered the suite.

She walked to the desk. Opening the drawer, she took out an envelope, studied it, pensive. Then, without quite knowing why, she slid it in her purse.

She stood still for another moment. Then she hurried from the suite toward the elevator, to meet Marcy Linton.

‘I can’t find the tape,’ Johnny Moore said. ‘And neither can Marnie Sharpe.’