Degree of Guilt (72 page)

Terri hesitated. ‘She
did
try to protect you, in her way. At least with Ransom.’ She gazed at him intently. ‘I’d guess that most of the people you’ve defended are far more guilty than Mary. If you let this happen to her, that will become part of what you take from this. Do you want that?’

Silent, Paget bent to pick up a piece of driftwood. For a moment, he turned it in his hand. Then, as if gauging its capacity for flight, he slowly turned and flung it out to sea.

‘It’s not Mary I’m worried about,’ Terri told him softly. ‘It’s you.’

He turned to look at her. In the semidark, she could not read his face.

‘It’s Wednesday night,’ she said. ‘On Friday morning, you’re going to wake up and start living with what you’ve learned. But you’ll also have to live with what you’ve done. How would you rather face Mary and Carlo?’

‘I don’t know.’ His voice was equally quiet. ‘Really, I don’t.’

She moved closer to him, fingertips touching his shirt. ‘You may not be there for Carlo, or Carlo for you. How will you feel then, if you’ve abandoned Mary? And if you and Carlo still want to be together, dropping Mary will have made that harder. Impossible, perhaps.’

‘Ah, Terri . . .’

His voice, soft and despairing, trailed off to nothing. In the moonlight, his face seemed unspeakably sad.

‘Carlo loves you,’ she said. ‘And he expects things from you. For better or worse,
you’re
the person he’s
learned
to expect things from.’ She paused, trying to find a way to reach him. ‘It may not be fair, Chris, but Carlo told you the truth as he understands it. The only thing worse than abandoning his mother is what you’d have to tell him to justify yourself.’

Paget did not answer. Terri reached up, touching his face. ‘Finish this, Chris.’ Her voice was soft but clear. ‘Be yourself for one more day. Then you can choose who else to be.’

The next morning, Paget and Carlo rode in silence to the Hall of Justice.

Paget had not slept. The sun cut into his eyes; he had turned off the radio to banish the cheery morning voices. Carlo – it hurt Paget not to think of him as his son – preserved a taut and edgy quiet. Paget could not tell whether Carlo was upset about their rupture and his own part in it; afraid that speaking would increase Paget’s withdrawal; or restrained by some reflex of manners. Carlo did not ask what Paget would do.

Paget could not have answered him. The ebb and flow of feeling had become an undertow; he was not sure enough of himself to reassure anyone else. He had never felt this lost.

As they approached the Hall of Justice, he glanced at the profile of the boy who sat next to him. Carlo’s thin face had become handsome with age, but his eyes were bleak as they swept the warehouses and parking lots and treeless sidewalks, as if looking for something he could never find. His face seemed so familiar, Paget thought, and yet so strange.

It was like the death of a parent. When his mother had died, and then his father, Paget had felt a shift in the world that was beyond his ability to change or comprehend. They had given him little but money, one part of Paget knew, but nonetheless they were the touchstones of his life – the first people he had tried to love and, because he had tried to love them all their lives, the people who made him think most deeply about the nature of love, the limits of understanding, the curse of mortality.

Now there was Carlo. He had believed in Carlo and himself much more than he had ever believed in his parents, believed from the perspective of adulthood, as someone who had chosen to be a father, drawing on the lessons he had learned from being a son. He and Carlo had redeemed the shortfall of his family in a way that was mysterious to him: his fathering of Carlo was like a gift of understanding he had sent his parents, when it was far too late to do it any other way. But then he had believed that his parents, and Carlo, were kin.

It were too much to assimilate now, if he ever could, that the end of Paget’s family had been Paget himself. Or that his attempts to redeem the past and his highest hopes for the future – his vanity, perhaps – had been focused on the son of Jack Woods and Mary Carelli.

And yet here Carlo was, still sitting next to Paget, as he had for the past eight years.

Carlo watched the street as if it were a war zone. Mary was arriving by herself; as they parked and got out, Paget sensed that the boy was looking for his mother. Whether they would drive her was the one question that Carlo had asked; when Paget said no, he had lapsed into silence again.

Once the steps, Paget and Carlo edged through the media gauntlet. The reporters pressed too close; their open mouths and hectoring questions reminded Paget of a drunk in a bar, demanding his attention, oblivious to the fact that he wished to be alone. As with yesterday, their questions centered on Dr Bass or on what Paget would next argue. As with yesterday, Paget did not answer. He had ceased to care about them.

The only thing he noticed, at the edge of his vision, was Carlo.

Silent, the boy glanced at him as they pushed through the crowd. This time, Carlo said nothing to the press in defense of his mother; Paget had become certain that Carlo feared pushing him over the edge. The thought unsettled him: Paget’s last eight years had been devoted to helping Carlo to trust and to feel safe. To be a source of worry to Carlo violated some deep instinct; the residue was guilt, and then anger at Mary.

Why was he here?

The weeks since Ransom died had changed him. Waiting for the elevator reminded him of taking it with Mary on the night the police had brought her in, their encounter with the media just moments away. Now, alone with Carlo, he felt like a different man: as they walked down the corridor, the memory of his first appearance here, on the day he had demanded this hearing, was like a dream. Entering the courtroom, he wished that he had never entered it before.

Yet they were all here. Reporters, their faces now familiar. Terri sitting calmly, with her notepad in front of her, as if their conversation on the beach had never happened. If Terri wondered what Paget would do, she gave no sign. Last night, she had tried to help him by speaking to his heart, and now she would try to help by acting like a lawyer.

Next to her was Mary.

They had not spoken since he left her hotel room. Now she turned to watch him coming toward her. Her expression, a surface calm covering deep watchfulness, triggered yet another image: it was how she had looked when Paget entered the Senate hearing room and she had not known what he would say or do. Paget first saw the difference – a certain fatalism – when he drew within a few feet of her. She gave an almost imperceptible shrug, an indication that she was resigned to whatever happened, and did not much care.

He sat next to her without speaking. She turned away, as if she knew to leave him alone. But he felt something deeper from her: buried shame, and quiet apology.

In a moment, Caroline Masters would enter, and nothing else would matter.

Sharpe sat poised at the prosecution table. She had the tensile alertness of a lawyer ready to argue her biggest case; it was odd, Paget thought, how the past twenty-four hours had opened a gulf between them. He no longer felt like a lawyer, or even like himself.

Looking past her, Paget saw McKinley Brooks.

Unobtrusive, the district attorney sat on a bench behind Sharpe. Save for the day of Linton’s testimony, Paget had not seen him since Mary had turned down the offer of a plea bargain and Brooks had filed murder charges. The reason Brooks was here now, Paget knew, was politics: he would get a feeling for the courtroom and for Judge Masters, to add to the soundings he no doubt had taken from his precinct leaders and in the neighborhoods. He sat with his hands folded on his stomach, inscrutable as Buddha; catching Paget’s gaze, he gave a small smile, which did not reach his eyes. The stakes were too high, Paget thought, for Brooks to pretend otherwise.

‘All rise,’ the courtroom deputy called out, and Judge Caroline Masters ascended the bench.

She, too, looked different. At the beginning of the trial, Masters would commence the day with an alert, expectant look that bespoke some inner pleasure; she was a woman at the height of her powers, and they were finally being stretched a little closer to capacity. But now there was something muted about her: her face was somber, her expression inward. Paget could no more read her thoughts than he could those of McKinley Brooks.

He had expected Judge Masters to give some preface, tracing her expectation for the argument with incisiveness and a certain dry wit. But Masters did not do so. Nodding to Sharpe and then Paget, she said simply, ‘This is a great responsibility. Please do your best to help me.’

It was far better than a speech. When Sharpe approached the podium, her manner was respectful, and her opening words were soft.

‘For the district attorney, as well, this case is a responsibility which has occasioned great thought. We have tried to address the issues responsibly and thoughtfully, and will try to do so now.’

It was effective, Paget saw; she had caught the judge’s mood and would not oversell her case. Caroline Masters, he realized, was not the only person who had grown.

‘Mary Carelli,’ she said in the same quiet voice, ‘killed Mark Ransom. She admitted that long ago. And unless she can show self-defense, that killing is a murder.’

It was strange, Paget realized: that was what he had said to Carlo at the beginning of their terrible – perhaps fatal – argument. Turning to Carlo, Paget saw pain etched in his face, as if he were hearing a chorus of voices arrayed against his mother.

‘As the court knows,’ Sharpe went on, ‘proof of motive is
not
an element of murder. But as this court also knows, Ms Carelli had a compelling motive.’ Here Sharpe paused. ‘A tape,’ she said succinctly, ‘which could ruin her life.’

Alone among all who were there, Paget could hear the tape that no one but Terri had heard.

‘All that stands between Ms Carelli and probable cause,’ Sharpe said, ‘is whether she has proven self-defense.’

The silence was complete. Sharpe had them now; she knew better than to raise her voice. ‘Ms Carelli has
claimed
self-defense. But her attempt to prove that has proven only that she is unworthy of belief.

‘The formal caption of this case is “People versus Carelli.” In reality, it has been “Ms Carelli versus the evidence.” For the only thing that supports Ms Carelli’s
story
is Ms Carelli’s
word
.

‘The court must consider, then, what Ms Carelli has proven her word to be worth.’

Better than Marnie Sharpe, Paget thought,
he
knew the answer. But in his own reaction, subjective as it was, Paget felt the shrewdness of Sharpe’s argument. Short of proving Mary a murderer, Sharpe could prove her a liar. People – including judges – do not care for liars.

‘Mary Carelli asks this court to believe her, just as she asked the district attorney to believe her before we brought this case. We therefore ask the court to learn from us, just as we learned from Ms Carelli.’ Sharpe paused. ‘Learned, and kept learning, until we had no choice but to charge her with murder.’

Caroline Masters leaned forward, frowning as she followed Sharpe’s argument. She did not look at Mary Carelli, nor Mary at her.

‘Part of what we learned,’ Sharpe said, ‘is that Mary Carelli cannot be believed.

‘Ms Carelli told
this court
that she visited Mark Ransom’s suite because he had a tape – a tape so damaging that Ms Carelli’s lawyer insisted that it be suppressed. And yet, before we found that tape in Mark Ransom’s home, Ms Carelli had never mentioned it to us. Instead she invented an elaborate story about visiting Mark Ransom solely to hear a tape of Laura Chase.’ Sharpe lowered her voice. ‘Invented a story, coolly and plausibly, within an hour of shooting Mark Ransom dead.’

There was a low murmur in the courtroom. Sharpe had given her argument a new and compelling thrust; rather than focus on the evidence, she would erode all sympathy for Mary, as a woman or as a victim. And perhaps, in the process, root out any sympathy Sharpe herself might feel.

‘But the discovery of the tape,’ Sharpe went on, ‘answered all the mysteries of Ms Carelli’s story.

‘We discovered that Mary Carelli had bought a gun after Mark Ransom first called her. Because, she said, she had received threatening phone calls.

‘We thought it strange that these calls had driven her to that point of fear and yet that she had never revealed them to anyone. But when we found the tape, we also found the answer: Mary Carelli bought the gun to kill Mark Ransom. Because he had the tape.’

Sharpe paused again; her pauses, as well as her voice, had fallen into a rhythm. Paget felt it sweeping away Mary’s fragile story.

‘After she brought that gun to Mark Ransom’s suite, and shot Mark Ransom to death, Mary Carelli told us that he had tried to rape her.

‘We thought it strange that there were no secretions on his penis.’

There were no secretions, Paget suddenly realized, because – afraid for her life – Mary Carelli had sucked Mark Ransom’s penis until he had gone soft.

The judge’s frown had deepened. As if encouraged, Sharpe’s tone became mordant.

‘We thought it strange,’ she said with lethal clarity, ‘that Ms Carelli had scratches on her neck and thigh and yet that
Ms Carelli
, and Ms Carelli alone, had skin beneath her fingernails.’

‘We thought it strange that the scratches on
Mr Ransom’s
body seemed to have been made when he was dead.

‘We thought it strange that Ms Carelli claimed to have shot Mark Ransom from a mere three inches and yet left no gunshot residue.’

Sharpe paused again. ‘Perhaps, in fairness, I should amend my statement. Those of us without training as pathologists thought these things strange. But Dr Elizabeth Shelton merely found it grisly. For she concluded, as
all
of us concluded in the end, that the medical evaluation best supports the thesis that Ms Carelli had murdered Mr Ransom, fabricated the evidence, and accused a dead man of rape.’