Degree of Guilt (11 page)

Carlo seemed to search his face. ‘Do
you
believe her?’

Pausing, Paget replayed his son’s tone of voice; the question was not about Mary but about Paget himself.

‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘Essentially.’

Carlo was quiet. ‘Since I’ve lived here,’ he asked, ‘have you ever done a murder case?’

‘No.’

‘Then you should tell her you can’t do it.’

Paget felt weary. ‘It’s more complicated than that.’

‘But you can’t represent her, Dad, if you don’t even believe her.’

‘You misunderstood me, Carlo. I appreciate we’re talking about your mother. But we’re also talking about a human being, charged with murder and scared to death. When you’re facing
that
you forget things. Or your story isn’t coherent. Or you don’t say something because it will make you look less attractive, even if it doesn’t mean you’re guilty.’ Paget tried to speak more gently. ‘Being your mother is a real argument for canonization, but even saints aren’t perfect.’

Carlo seemed to search his words for meaning. Finally, he asked, ‘You did love her once?’

Paget looked at him. How to talk about this, he wondered, when every word might carry an unspoken subtext: Carlo’s life was an accident.

‘I thought she was beautiful, Carlo, and even more than that, I thought she was an extraordinary woman.’ Paget paused. ‘Did I love her? Did she love me? I honestly don’t know.’

‘Why not?’

‘Circumstances came between us before we had a chance to know. We were two very willful people, who didn’t really trust each other. We disagreed violently about politics, and then we were thrust into a situation that was very public and very painful – congressional testimony that destroyed Jack Woods, a man she worked for and deeply admired, and ruined the President they both supported. Our relationship simply became impossible.’

Carlo cocked his head. ‘Did you even try?’

Paget heard the question that Carlo had not spoken: Didn’t I make it worth trying? ‘I know it’s hard to understand,’ he said at length. ‘You would have been the reason, but we didn’t
know
you then. I’m sure that sounds strange now, but you were just an abstraction – you weren’t
you
then.’ Paget hesitated. ‘We had no plans to marry, no real basis for believing that it would work, and a lot of reasons to think that it wouldn’t. That kind of marriage is no favor to a child.’

Carlo’s voice turned stubborn. ‘Then why didn’t she have an abortion?’

‘I’m not sure. She could have done it, and I’d never have known.’ Paget paused again, searching for an answer that Carlo could accept. ‘But the ultimate answer is that – even if we didn’t know you – we both loved you too much already to miss out on who you would turn out to be.’ Paget touched his shoulder. ‘We wanted you. We just didn’t want to be married and didn’t particularly think you’d want us to if you’d had an informed vote.’

‘Did you ever talk about it?’

‘Not really. Most affairs like ours end with little to show for it. We’ve been lucky – we’ve got you, which is much more than either of us could ever have expected.’ Paget tried to smile. ‘As for you, you got a whole life out of the deal, and me for a father at that.’

Carlo did not smile. Paget heard his son’s next question before he even asked it.

‘Why did she give me up?’

Perhaps a hundred times, Paget thought, he had prepared for this moment, discarding a hundred different answers. ‘She didn’t really want to,’ he said finally. ‘Basically, I forced the issue.’

‘Why?’

‘You were with your grandparents more than Mary – she was traveling a lot. Your grandparents were loving people, but they were
old
people. She knew that.’ Paget looked at him intently. ‘Perhaps I was selfish. But I was pretty adamant on the subject, enough to go to court over it. She knew that too.’

‘What did
she
say about it?’

‘In the end, she agreed that it was best you be with me. But it was very hard for her to let you go, and harder still to stay away.’

‘Why did she?’

Paget paused. ‘To let me be your family,’ he finally said. ‘To not be the fantasy perfect mother, flitting in and out – to let you and me work things out when things got tough. However complicated my feelings about her may be, I know that Mary Carelli has character, and you should admire her for that.’

For a long time, Carlo just gazed back at him, doubt struggling with the desire for resolution. ‘It’s pretty confusing – if you’re me.’

‘I know.’

‘Then she comes back, and now this . . .’

Carlo’s voice trailed off. As if reciting a catechism, Paget murmured, ‘It’s okay, son. It’s going to be all right.’ Said that, and then heard himself saying these same words to a frightened seven-year-old boy, eight years before.

But Carlo, of course, did not remember.

‘I’m pretty tired,’ he finally said.

Paget knew the conversation was over, at least for a time. ‘Sure. But if you want to talk, wake me up.’

Carlo nodded, and stood to leave.

Paget hesitated. ‘How was your game?’ he asked.

For a moment, Carlo looked blank. ‘Oh,’ he answered. ‘Fine.’

Briefly, Paget considered asking who had won and how Carlo had done, wanting to know but afraid his son would see this as indifference to his mother. The moment passed. Silent, Paget watched Carlo climb the stairs.

He felt more tired than he could remember. But then lying had always done that to him, especially to Carlo, and long before this.

JANUARY
14 –
JANUARY
22

‘The way to shut this down,’ Paget told Teresa Peralta, ‘is to show Brooks that Mark Ransom was who Mary Carelli says he was.’

For Terri, the moment possessed an eerie normality. They were sitting in Paget’s office the next morning. The ten lawyers and staff could talk of little else. Reporters prowled the lobby, and the receptionist fended off requests for interviews. But Paget was having his calls held, and his office was quiet.

Seemingly well rested, Paget had reprised Mary Carelli’s statement to Monk with the professional detachment of a lawyer who had been handed the defense of a total stranger. The only apparent difference was the newspaper folded on his desk: the headline read:
MARK RANSOM SLAIN
; the subheading added: ‘TV Interviewer Claims Rape Attempt’; and the photograph was of Mary Carelli in close-up, swelling beneath her left eye, head resting against Christopher Paget’s face.

He followed Terri’s gaze to the newspaper. ‘This is difficult, obviously. All the more reason to start thinking like a lawyer.’

The remark was a concession to feelings that preempted any discussion of them. What he needed, Terri saw, was to deal with Mary Carelli as if she were not part of his life.

‘It’s pretty simple,’ Terri answered. ‘We need some prior acts of abuse. Something we can get before a jury.’

Paget nodded. ‘If we can show that Ransom raped someone before, McKinley Brooks would toss this case quicker than a dead mouse on his kitchen floor. Assuming that the judge would let us prove that.’

‘There
is
the bruise.’ Terri paused, surprised at her own anger. ‘I mean, aren’t blows to the face good enough? Or does some creep unilaterally deciding you want him inside you qualify that as foreplay?’

Paget shook his head. ‘Hardly. But we have to look at this from Brooks’s perspective. He’s got a case that could ruin his career, not a clue what really happened, and the only witness, Mary, saying what any woman would say who didn’t want to go to jail.’

‘But what if we don’t find anyone? What if Mary’s the first?’

‘Then it’s a problem.’

‘I feel sorry for
any
woman who’s some guy’s first victim. Who’s going to believe
her?
Maybe, after a while, she doesn’t want to believe it herself. Maybe, day after day, she has to see this guy again.’ Terri stopped herself. ‘Even if there
is
someone, I think we’d have a tough time getting her to talk about it.’

Paget considered her. ‘You were a rape counselor, I recall from your résumé.’

Terri looked away, surprised. ‘Just for a semester,’ she said, ‘and more in helping with the legal than the emotional side of things. I don’t think I was very good at it – I was busy, and it seemed to take a lot out of me.’

Paget gazed at the photograph of Mary. ‘It just struck me,’ he ventured, ‘that a woman with a bad experience might talk more easily to you. And that in the remote event this thing ever goes to trial, it might be better if you did the questioning as well.’

‘I haven’t got that much trial experience. A few misdemeanors with the public defender, and that’s it.’

Paget nodded. ‘That would bother me,’ he said, ‘if you were someone else.’

The tacit compliment surprised her. Mary Carelli was Carlo’s mother; at a time when Paget must surely feel great anxiety, however he might hide it, he had enough confidence to trust Terri and enough perception to treat her with some tact.

‘Do you really believe that?’ she asked, and then felt more embarrassed. The Richie effect, she thought; she was no longer used to compliments.

‘Not a word of it,’ Paget said. ‘I’m just shopping for a feminist lawyer that everyone on the jury will want to adopt. Someone to offset Marnie Sharpe’s warmth and humor.’

Smiling, Terri wondered if Paget was helping her cover her own awkwardness. ‘Then I want to help,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry if I sounded funny about it.’

Paget seemed to appraise her. ‘No matter,’ he said finally. ‘Rape’s a subject that anyone normal feels funny about.’

Especially, Terri thought, when it happens to someone you know. She searched for a change of subject.

‘What,’ she asked, ‘did you think of Marnie?’

Paget leaned back in his chair. ‘Distrustful, I suppose. And brittle.’

‘Try steely. I’ve seen Marnie quite a bit, in court and because she’s on the board of the Women Trial Lawyers.’ Terri paused. ‘Can I give you some advice?’

‘By all means.’

‘First, don’t make her angry. Somewhere inside Marnie Sharpe is a little girl who knows the boys don’t like her and wants to hurt them back for it. And she can’t make McKinley Brooks the enemy, even though he’s kind of set her up. Which leaves you.

‘Speaking as one professional to another, you’re the kind of man – attractive, polished, seemingly secure – that Marnie despises most. It will be easy for her to feel that beating you would make her whole somehow. And like a lot of unhappy people who can function in the real world, she’ll find a socially acceptable way to rationalize her own needs. Not just to Brooks but to herself.’

Paget nodded. ‘I’ve often thought that a lot of lawyers would be tower snipers if they’d failed the bar exam.’

Terri shook her head, wanting to make sure he understood. ‘Don’t make her into a caricature. And
never
underestimate her, ’cause Marnie Sharpe was
always
first in her class. This may sound like pop therapy, but sometimes it helps me to see people as not too much older than Elena, my five-year-old. To me, Marnie is the kid who always did better than everyone else, even though she wasn’t the smartest, because working by herself gave her the only sense of mastery she ever had.’ Pausing, Terri realized that Paget was close to smiling. ‘Sometimes I take this stuff a little far. It’s just that I can imagine you thinking that maybe Brooks made a mistake if Marnie ever had to take this case to trial, and I’m not so sure he did.’

‘I was just thinking that you read my mind. How do
you
suppose Sharpe will be in court, then?’

‘Tough. Hard cases don’t scare her. Rape prosecutions
are
hard; she’s used to trying cases like this one, where there aren’t any witnesses and the evidence is circumstantial. So she’s won some cases she should have lost.

‘There’s something very admirable about her, really. She’s made rape her issue – not just prosecution but better counseling and support – and she’s earned a lot of gratitude from the women she’s helped. And she’ll have thought of absolutely everything, down to the sixth permutation, because that’ll be all she ever thinks about. To a jury, that comes off as trustworthy and professional. They may not love her, but they’ll absolutely believe her.’

Paget walked to the window, to stare down at the bay. The water was slate beneath gray skies; there were a couple of sailboats, a luxury liner, and a Honda freighter bringing cars in from Japan. ‘I liked my version of Marnie better,’ he said.

For the first time, Terri heard a note of worry. ‘Of course,’ she observed, ‘this time Marnie’s going after Mary Carelli.’

‘I wonder,’ Paget said quietly, ‘how that cuts.’

Terri tried to read his mood, gave up. ‘From my perspective,’ she began, ‘Mary Carelli is the whole case. So it’s a good thing she’s a defense lawyer’s dream.’

‘How so?’ Paget turned to her again. ‘I mean, from
your
perspective.’

Terri nodded. ‘When I was at the P.D.’s office,’ she began, ‘we represented a lot of people who could hardly speak their names: drugs, alcohol, mental illness, simple illiteracy – you name it. Most of them couldn’t even lie well. I tried to keep myself from getting too excited when I found out some client had told me the truth – I might begin to expect it. That was when I started wondering what practicing law did to the psyche.

‘But Mary Carelli is more than just credible. She’s successful, well educated, articulate. She’s a role model for women. She has a very sympathetic story to tell, and there are a lot of people who are ready to support her. She understands the legal process. She’s even TV trained, and she was a natural before that – I mean, her testimony before the committee was sensational.’

‘Yes.’ Paget looked out the window again. ‘I saw they ran that again last night.’