Eyes of a Child (74 page)

They seemed more alert, perhaps a little surprised to be awaiting closing arguments instead of Paget's witnesses. It was a bad sign that so few looked in his direction; even Marian Celler, whom Caroline had wanted so much, kept her gaze straight ahead. Joseph Duarte was reviewing the notes that, Paget well knew, ended with the damage done by Anna Velez. Only Victor Salinas appeared at ease.

‘Mr Salinas,' Jared Lerner said gravely, ‘you may begin.'

Gazing at the jury, Salinas looked solemn and self-contained, a serious man doing a necessary job. There was no trace of showmanship.

‘
This
,' he began, ‘was a murder. And from the moment that he killed Ricardo Arias to the final and devastating moments of this trial, Christopher Paget has been trying to get away with it.'

He paused, letting that sink in. The jury watched with open faces, ready to believe him.

‘The mantra Ms Masters will repeat to you, I am sure, is that you
must
believe that we have proven Christopher Paget guilty of murder beyond a reasonable doubt, or you must find him innocent. So let us talk – right now – about what we're
not
required to show.

‘We
don't
need a witness who saw Mr Paget shoot Ricardo Arias. That hardly ever happens.

‘Nor does
every
witness have to be sure about
every
scrap of testimony.'

This was clever, Paget thought with apprehension: it would be Caroline's strategy to slice and dice the case into a thousand facts and then to cast doubt where she could. ‘No,' Salinas continued, ‘our job here is to present sufficient proof, accumulated in the form of circumstantial evidence, to satisfy men and women of common sense – the
same
common sense that Ms Masters asked you to bring to this courtroom – that Mr Paget
is
guilty.
Guilty
,' Salinas repeated, ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.

‘Is there a reasonable doubt that Ricardo Arias was murdered? There is not.

‘The medical examiner spelled out for us the medical evidence.'

Holding up his hand, Salinas ticked off his points one by one: ‘The absence of blood spatters on Mr Arias's hands.

‘The absence of gunpowder on his hands.

‘The strange position of the body.

‘The curious angle of the bullet.

‘And all those things Mr Arias plainly did
not
do to himself – the abrasion on his leg, the gash on his head, the bloody nose.

‘Mr Arias did
not
beat himself up.' Pausing, Salinas gave a first grim smile. ‘Nor did he pirouette around the living room, taking pratfall after pratfall, and then shoot himself in the mouth from the most uncomfortable position he could imagine after wiping his nose to make himself presentable.

‘He did
not
make a coffee date to tell Elena's teacher that he had decided not to kill himself.

‘Or make an appointment with Dr Gates just to keep his options open.

‘Or take five shirts to the laundry to provide a choice of fresh clothes for the funeral.'

Pausing, Salinas slowly shook his head. ‘No, ladies and gentlemen –
this
was a man who expected to live until the moment that he died, and no one who knows him believes otherwise.

‘Not Elena's teacher.

‘Not his own mother.

‘Not the psychologist he saw perhaps
forty
times.

‘Not even, it is obvious, his wife. Christopher Paget's lover.'

Turning, Paget glanced at Terri. Her gaze at Salinas was a silent challenge. But the jury did not see her; they were wired to the prosecutor. Even Caroline seemed absorbed, her ultimate compliment.

‘Which brings us,' Salinas went on, ‘to the defendant. Christopher Paget.

‘As Judge Lerner will instruct you, motive is not an element of the crime. But does anyone doubt that Mr Paget had
several
motives? The only “reasonable doubt” is which one was the strongest – political ruin, personal exposure, the loss of his relationship to his lover, or public knowledge that his son, Carlo, was charged with molesting Mrs Peralta's daughter.'

Carlo Paget stared stonily at the prosecutor. But Terri appeared as if her thoughts were elsewhere. Neither Terri nor Carlo looked at each other.

Salinas spoke to Joseph Duarte now; like Caroline, Paget guessed, Salinas must be expecting Duarte to become the foreman. ‘Ms Masters,' he said, ‘tells us that Mr Paget loved his son far too much to murder Mr Arias.

‘It is equally fair to ask whether he loves his son too much to see him publicly labeled as the molester of a five-year-old child.

‘Ms Masters tells us that Mr Paget loves Ms Peralta far too much to leave her.

‘Perhaps, instead, he wanted her too much to
lose
her.

‘And then there are those far less worthy motives – ambition and self-protection – which Mr Paget had in such abundance. Just as surely,' Salinas said with sudden harshness, ‘as he had abundant opportunity for murder.

‘For, as became so abundantly clear to us all, here is a man who cannot account for several critical hours on the last night that
anyone
saw or heard from Ricardo Arias.

‘Because, for those same hours, no one at all saw Christopher Paget. Not Ms Peralta and
not
his son – however hard he tried to
hear
things.

‘In truth, there was no one home for Carlo Paget to see
or
hear. Because someone else
did
see his father, leaving Ricardo Arias's apartment.' Salinas turned abruptly to Caroline Masters with an air of challenge. ‘Georgina Keller, who described Mr Paget perfectly –
before
she saw a single picture.'

Salinas faced the jury again, speaking with quiet irony. ‘As one lawyer to another, I should pause here for a moment and pay tribute to the true sophistication that Caroline Masters has brought to Mr Paget's defense. The way, for example, she suggested that Ms Peralta – somewhat like Typhoid Mary – might have tracked fibers from Mr Arias's rug into Mr Paget's home, ground them into the driver's-side carpet of Mr Paget's car, and, better yet, made Mr Arias a gift of Mr Paget's fingerprints.

‘So that it was no surprise, at least to those of us who admire her, when Ms Masters suggested that Mrs Keller had summoned Mr Paget from her television set.'

From Caroline, Paget saw, there was a brief, thin smile, the tip-off to how unamused she was: adroitly, Salinas was trying to lead the jury to view her with skepticism.

‘It's a touchy point for the defense,' Salinas continued, ‘because if Mr Paget was at Mr Arias's apartment that night, he not only had every chance to kill Ricardo Arias but he lied to Inspector Monk about it – a telling admission of guilt. So it was doubly important that Ms Masters discredit this critical eyewitness. And she tried
very
hard; suggesting not only that Mrs Keller had confused a real man in a gray suit with an image on a screen but that Mrs Keller had spent far too much time watching this man examine an injured hand, and a stained sleeve, to truly take note of his face.

‘Here, I can only sympathize,' Salinas said with the same irony. ‘For little did Ms Masters know that her very best work, transmitted through television, would summon Anna Velez into our midst. The woman to whom, shortly after the police began their inquiry, Mr Paget made a gift of a pair of shoes and a gray wool suit coat with a stained sleeve.'

Salinas's voice turned hard. ‘With
that,
there is no doubt anymore that Georgina Keller saw exactly what she said she saw –
Christopher Paget
leaving Ricardo Arias's apartment, examining his injured hand
and
the stained sleeve of his gray suit coat.'

Paget felt numb; in the eyes of the jurors, locked onto Salinas, he had a premonition of the verdict. Next to him, Caroline's face was blank.

‘Like his lies to the police, ladies and gentlemen, this charitable “gift” is an admission of guilt. Part of a cover-up which began with Mr Paget's trip to Italy and culminated in his defense.' Salinas paused for an instant. ‘Such as it has been.'

It was the nearest that, without reprimand, Salinas could come to reminding the jury that Paget had not testified. ‘An admission of guilt,' Salinas repeated, ‘by a guilty man.

‘The man Ricardo Arias was waiting for, when he told Ms Peralta he had an appointment.

‘The man whose trip to Italy, like his trip to Goodwill, is the alibi available to a man who is as careless of money as he was careless of life.'

Salinas spread his arms. ‘And yet after
all
this, ladies and gentlemen, Ms Masters will ask you to look at what isn't there. She will ask you, for example, why we never tied Mr Paget to the gun that killed Ricardo Arias.' His voice grew quiet. ‘But all you need is common sense. And with
that,
you can ask Ms Masters, “Are you seriously suggesting that Mr Paget would buy a revolver over the counter, register it in his name, then plant it with Mr Arias's body as part of a fake suicide?” And then, armed with the same common sense she recommends to you, you will answer her, “No. It is Ricardo Arias who,
if
he meant to kill himself, would not bother to conceal the purchase of a gun.”

‘Common sense, ladies and gentlemen. It really is all you need to penetrate the smoke and mirrors which is Mr Paget's defense. It is all you need to know that someone who lied to the police – let alone an experienced lawyer like Mr Paget – did so for a reason.'

Salinas's face and voice had become commanding now. ‘Mr Paget's reason,' he concluded, ‘is that he killed Ricardo Arias. There is
no
reasonable doubt about it. And, for that, Christopher Paget must pay the price.

‘I implore you to return a verdict of guilty. Guilty of
murder
, in the first degree.'

Finishing, Salinas gazed at Joseph Duarte. Instinctively, Paget turned to Terri and Carlo. Terri was still looking at Salinas. But Carlo saw his father; the way he tried to smile made Paget feel that much worse.

When Caroline rose, she walked to the jury box and stood silent, gazing from one juror to the next.

‘Did you notice,' she began, ‘how Mr Arias disappeared from Mr Salinas's closing argument? Yet when his case opened, Mr Arias was the purehearted underdog, battling for the safety of his daughter against the rich and arrogant Chris Paget – wife stealer, protector of child molesters, and, of course, killer of the less fortunate.'

Caroline paused, letting her startling first words make their own impression. ‘The banishment of Mr Arias, members of the jury, is the key to this case. For the one thing that Mr Salinas
has
proven beyond doubt – and these were
his
witnesses, remember – is that the one decent man in this case is the one he asks you to convict of murder.'

She looked directly at Duarte now. ‘But let us consider
why
Mr Salinas has banished Mr Arias, and why that is so important to the decision you must make here.'

It was a good opening, Paget thought; in less than a minute, Caroline had turned the tables on Salinas and reminded the jury of who Ricardo Arias really was. ‘The
real
Ricardo Arias,' she went on. ‘A man who was twice accused of stealing.

‘Who was fired from at least four jobs.

‘Who exploited his own wife and cheated his own mother.

‘Who used his six-year-old daughter to collect ten thousand dollars from a tabloid.

‘Who, it is clear, engineered his custody fight as the paid hireling of Mr Paget's political opponents to torpedo Chris's candidacy for the Senate.

‘Who insisted on putting Elena through an unnecessary hearing, despite the fact that his
own
psychologist implored him not to do it.' Duarte, Paget noticed, seemed to watch Caroline with interest. Her voice grew quiet. ‘A man who did that because the psychological evaluation – if Ms Peralta continued to insist on it – would expose him as a compulsive liar, cheat, and worse.

‘In sum, Ricardo Arias was a man who hid his motives
and
his fears from his mother, from his wife, and from everyone else he ever met.'

Glancing at Terri, Paget sensed the pain beneath her unflinching gaze at Caroline. She had been married to Richie for six years, shared a child with him, and now he had been revealed as someone she had understood too little and too late.

‘And Ricardo Arias,' Caroline went on softly, ‘had so very much to fear. A life at the margins, unemployed and unemployable. A future of financial desperation. Exposure as a sociopath.

‘And, almost certainly, the loss of his daughter – his
only
connection to the one person who could still take care of him and keep his life together. Teresa Peralta.'

Caroline turned to Marian Cellar now, tone passionate and imploring. ‘Why is it so important that we focus on the real Ricardo Arias? First, because
Mr Salinas
is so certain that Ricardo Arias did not kill himself.

‘
I
say, who can know? But when someone is as troubled as Ricardo Arias, I defy
anyone
to say anything else beyond a reasonable doubt.

‘The medical examiner,' Caroline went on, ‘cites the lack of blood spatter and gunshot residue on Mr Arias's hands.' Her voice rose suddenly. ‘But there were traces of blood and GSR on Mr Arias's hands, if not enough to satisfy Dr Shelton. And there are
also
smears that suggest he wiped his nose – which, if true, shatters the notion that someone knocked Mr Arias to the ground, shoved a revolver in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.

‘I don't know
how
Mr Arias got the abrasion on his leg and the gash on his head.' Caroline paused for emphasis. ‘And neither does the medical examiner.