Degree of Guilt (69 page)

Her mouth opened to speak, closed again. ‘What is it, damn you? Bass?’

Paget watched her. ‘I’m not here to discuss why I want the truth. I simply want it.’

‘Then you can leave. You already have the truth.’ She folded her arms. ‘Your cross on Bass was right. Whatever Ransom could or couldn’t do, I was frightened.’

‘No,’ Paget said softly, ‘you were rational. And once I understood that, I knew the reason you delayed in calling 911.’

‘And what is that?’

‘To cover up the murder you’d been planning.’ To Paget, his own voice seemed to come from a distance, very calm and very polite. ‘There
is
one point you can help me with. What were you doing in the hallway?’

‘I was in shock, damn it.’ Mary stood rigid, clenching her fists, voice rising as she spoke. ‘Do you find some pleasure in tormenting me? Wasn’t the trial enough for you?’

‘No. It wasn’t.’

‘Please, Chris,
leave
.’ Her voice sounded brittle. ‘Leave me alone. I don’t want you here. The place I need you is in court.’

‘But I can’t leave.’ Paget spoke with exaggerated patience, as if to a child. ‘You haven’t answered my question.’

‘There
is
no answer.’

‘Oh, I’m sure there must be.’

‘Why? Because you’ve been talking to your diminutive friend, Ms Peralta?’

Paget raised his eyebrows. ‘What does Terri have to do with this?’

‘Will you
stop
.’ The first edge of Boston Italian appeared in her speech, as if her persona were unraveling. ‘I can’t remember
what
I was doing.’

‘It may come back to you.’ Casually, Paget took the tape from his pocket and placed it on the coffee table, still looking up at her. ‘Why don’t you think for a moment.’

As if by reflex, Mary drew up her hands. He face was white.

‘Of course, you may not remember what’s on
this
, either.’ Paget’s voice became softer yet. ‘Five years is a long time in the life of a parent. And it’s one third of the life of your son.’

Mary turned to the window. In the silence, she was stiff and still, and then her shoulders began trembling.

Paget stood. ‘Look at me, damn you. You had the courage to kill a man. All that you did to
me
was change my life. It shouldn’t be too difficult to look me in the face.’

Silent, Mary shook her head. She did not turn. The tremors ran through her body.

‘I lied for you,’ Paget continued. ‘I left Washington because of you, abandoned the career I’d wanted. I let my marriage founder and raised Carlo as my son, because of you. And now, because of you, I’ve found out what a joke it’s all been.’

Mary’s head bent forward. Her body shook in spasms now, but still she made no sound.

‘
Look
at me,’ Paget demanded. ‘You can use people, or kill them, or just warp their lives. People aren’t real to you –
I’m
not real to you. You don’t see anyone apart from what you want. For you, the only excuse I or anyone has for living is to serve as your pawn. So the least you can do is look at me.’

Mary’s back straightened.

Slowly, she turned to him. Tears ran down her face.

Paget struggled for self-control. It took all that he had; he felt no pity, but his voice was still soft. ‘Forgive me if I sound harsh,’ he said. ‘But I just found out that you arranged for me to raise Jack Woods’s son as mine. And you know how
I
hate surprises.’

Mary tried to speak, could not. Her hands touched her chest in a posture of grieving and shock.

‘You’re a remarkable woman,’ Paget said. ‘You helped me send Carlo’s father to prison to save your own career, and used
his
son to make me help you. It’s hard to put a name to that.’

‘Don’t you
know
,’ Mary burst out, ‘why I went to Ransom’s suite?’

‘Of course. To kill him.’

‘
No
.’ Through her tears, Mary’s voice shook with pain and anger. ‘To do anything he wanted. So that you and Carlo would never hear that tape.’

Paget was silent. ‘It’s touching,’ he said finally, ‘to consider the sacrifices you’ve made on my behalf. The guilt may be too much for me to live with.’

Mary seemed to blanch. She half turned from him, face wet with tears, arms crossed as if to hold herself in. Her shoulders quivered; she looked desolate and alone.

Paget did not move or speak. He simply watched her; his sole expression was one of distaste.

All at once, Mary sat down on the rug.

Her face bent to her hands; there was one convulsive sob, and then the sounds that followed were like keening. Whatever had happened with Ransom, the lies and torment that had come from it had pushed her to the edge. Now, at last, the second tape had shattered her: the Mary Carelli that Paget saw was the one woman he had never imagined.

Paget waited until the keening stopped. Walking across the room, he stood over her, holding the tape in his hand.

‘Then tell me.’ The quiet in his voice was anger, barely controlled. ‘Everything. But not until you look me in the face.’

For a long moment, Mary’s face stayed in her hands. Then her face rose to meet his gaze. ‘It wasn’t
me
,’ she said, ‘who did those things with Ransom.’

‘The things you say Ransom wanted? Or killing him?’

Mary swallowed. ‘The things I did for him,’ she said at last. ‘Only killing him was me.’

‘Then tell me,’ he repeated.

Slowly, Mary nodded. ‘All right,’ she answered quietly. ‘But I can’t talk about this with you standing over me.’

Paget stifled a harsh response. He thought of pulling her up, then decided that he did not wish to touch her.

After a moment, he sat cross-legged on the floor, several feet from her. ‘You can start,’ he said, ‘with Ransom’s first call.’

Mary looked at her hands. ‘It was simple,’ she said at last.

‘Ransom described the tapes and said he’d give them to me.’ Her voice became muted. ‘One meeting at a time.’

‘Was he more specific?’

‘He said that I had a choice. He could undress me in public or in private.’ Her tone turned bitter. ‘He wanted to be fair with me, he said. I should understand that in private, I would do anything he asked me to do. So I shouldn’t assume that my “private exposure” would be any less humiliating than “public exposure.”’

‘And you agreed?’

‘No. I took his number and said that I’d call back. When I put down the telephone, my hand was shaking.’ Mary hesitated. ‘Then I went to the bathroom and threw up. Just as I said in court.’

Mary paused for breath. When she began speaking again, her voice was weaker. ‘I couldn’t imagine it: how this man could have
those
tapes; why he needed to do this to
me.
I couldn’t sleep that night. I thought of everything – the Lasko case, Steinhardt, my career, Carlo. Even you. And then, after that, I imagined what Ransom must want.’ Her eyes shut. ‘In the morning, I called him back.’

‘What did you say?’

‘That I would meet him.’ Mary’s eyes remained closed. ‘If he gave me my choice of tapes.’

For the first time, Paget hesitated. ‘You asked for the second?’

‘Yes.’

Paget fell silent. After a time, he asked, ‘Why did you buy the gun?’

Mary’s eyes opened. ‘Because I was afraid,’ she answered simply. ‘Once we were alone, I didn’t know what he would do.’

Paget searched her face. ‘The night before, you came to see us. After eight years.’

‘I came to see Carlo.’ Her gaze was steadier now. ‘It was
me
who said that I’d meet Ransom in San Francisco. I was still torn about what to do. I thought, in a strange way, that seeing Carlo might help me.’

‘How?’

‘Enable me to go through with it.’ Abruptly, she looked down. ‘If you and Carlo found out the truth, then no good would have come of letting you believe he was your son. I wanted to believe that good had come of it.’

‘And did you?’

‘When I saw Carlo, I knew that he was happy. It made up my mind. Because I knew that good
had
come of it.’ Her voice fell. ‘Until now.’

Paget looked past her, struggling for calm, felt his grip tighten on the tape. For this moment, he told himself, put your emotions aside. First you should know the truth.

‘What happened,’ he asked, ‘when you got to the room?’

Mary still stared at the floor. ‘Ransom opened the door. He didn’t say anything. Just looked at me, with a strange smile on his face. His expression was almost gloating, and yet I felt the tension beneath it. It was like walking into a nightmare.

‘He still wouldn’t talk. I put my purse on the coffee table, where I could reach the gun.’ Hesitant, she tried to look at Paget again. ‘Then I asked him to play the tape for me.
My
tape.’

‘And did he?’

Slowly, she nodded. ‘Listening to it – my voice, Steinhardt’s questions – brought back how I’d felt. When I couldn’t look at him anymore, he put his hand on my breast, like he did with Marcy Linton.’ Her gaze broke. ‘And when I didn’t take it away, Ransom knew we had a deal. He’d never had to say a word.’

Paget’s stomach felt hollow; since Bass’s testimony, he had not eaten. He found that he could not ask questions.

‘The first thing he said,’ Mary told him softly, ‘was that we would share a bottle of Roederer Cristal. Because Laura Chase drank Cristal with her lovers. After she undressed for them.’ Mary touched her eyes. ‘Once the room service waiter left the suite, I knew that I would have to take off my clothes. That was why I asked him to hang the privacy sign.’

Paget was silent. Mary had stopped crying; her shame seemed beyond tears. ‘Ransom put the tape between us,’ she murmured, ‘and watched me undress.

‘When I was naked, he motioned me to the couch, to sit facing him. He positioned me in a certain way.’ The sudden anger in her voice was like the memory of hate. ‘He wanted to see each part of me, he said, without having to tell me what to show him. Because the tape I was about to hear demanded my total attention.’

‘Laura Chase,’ Paget said softly.

Mary nodded, still looking away. ‘I was to listen carefully, he said, while he inspected me. So that I could do for him what Laura had done for James Colt.’ Mary paused. ‘Then he made me drink a toast to Laura Chase.’

Mary seemed to shiver again. Drained of defiance or calculation, she looked tired and too thin. But her narrative had taken on a relentless quality; Paget had wanted the truth, and now she would spare neither of them. ‘I sat there, listening to that tape: Laura Chase describing in a lost voice what she had done for those men, what they had
made
her do.

‘With each act she described, Ransom would smile at me and then slowly move his eyes across my body.’ Mary paused again; for a moment, her voice was thick. ‘By the time the tape was over, the champagne was almost welcome.

‘He still didn’t speak. I sat there in his silence, watching him look at each part of me, taking his time. There was an almost casual cruelty in it, as if he were making sure that degrading me still held interest for him.’ Mary raised her head. ‘Then he smiled,’ she finished quietly, ‘and started to rewind the tape.’

Mary’s eyes stayed fixed on Paget. ‘He didn’t need to say anything. When the tape finished rewinding, I would be standing in front of him, doing what Laura Chase had done.

‘I asked him to close the blinds. “Do it yourself,” he told me. “That way I can see how you move.”’

Her voice had become flat; to Paget, it made what had happened seem inexorable. ‘I went to the window,’ she said. ‘Below me was the city, people going about their normal lives. I stood looking out, wishing I was one of them, not wanting to turn and face Mark Ransom. That was when John Hassler saw me.’

The mood had shifted again; the flat words held an understated horror and, beneath that, irony – Mary had lied about what Hassler saw, but the scene as Hassler witnessed it was more illusion than truth. Softly, Mary said, ‘Then I heard Laura’s voice again, and pulled down the blind.

‘When I turned, Ransom stopped the tape.

‘“You’re already naked,” he told me. “So when I turn on the tape, I want you to start dancing. Please listen to Laura carefully.” Then he smiled again, and said, “I want Laura Chase to be your teacher.”’

Mary swallowed again. ‘He tried to sound casual, in command. But I’d started to feel something desperate beneath it – as though if I got it wrong I would break some spell. Before, I was disbelieving, angry, ashamed. Now I felt frightened.

‘When I began moving for him, he took his penis out.

‘I felt like a courtesan. Dancing to make him hard, as Laura told me how.’ Color came to her face. ‘I did whatever Laura Chase did, desperate to be as Ransom imagined her, until I felt more like Laura than me. It was like losing my soul.’

Paget shook his head. ‘Why did you do all that?’

Mary gave him a silent prideful look, the first semblance of her former self. ‘The tape he made me dance for would destroy Carlo,’ she said simply. ‘And the tape I didn’t ask for would destroy
me.
I wanted them both.’

‘But to keep on . . .’

‘I was alone with him.’ Mary looked at Paget steadily. ‘As Mark Ransom watched me dancing, standing with his penis in his hand, I knew he was insane. I was afraid of what would happen to me if I couldn’t make him hard.

‘I kept listening to Laura. When Laura touched herself, I touched myself. And when it was time to slide down the wall and masturbate for Mark Ransom, I did that too.’ Her voice became callous, almost brutal. ‘It’s not the first time a woman has pretended to come. Women my age were taught to be actresses for men, in all sorts of ways, first by our mothers. It was like a tribal skill, still there when I needed it. I was merely glad that Laura Chase had kept her eyes closed.

‘When I felt his penis enter my mouth, I knew that it had worked.’ She paused. ‘I began to suck him. Just like Laura on the tape.’