Degree of Guilt (20 page)

‘That certainly is not our intention,’ the interviewer responded. ‘By asking these questions so close to Mark Ransom’s death, we run the risk of offending you and countless others. But however uncomfortable this may be, for us as well as you, it’s unethical to sit on questions when they’re brought to our attention.’

Mary frowned. ‘I’m a journalist, as you are. But I’ve also become the victim of an attempted rape. And I know, and you know, that our society is still unfair to women who are victims of rape.’

‘I agree.’ The interviewer paused. ‘May I ask you one more question – as a journalist.’

Watching, Paget recognized her expression: to anyone else it might seem thoughtful, but Paget knew it as deep wariness. ‘Of course,’ she answered.

‘What we have been told,’ the interviewer said, ‘is that another guest at the hotel, looking through his window, saw you pulling down the blinds in Mark Ransom’s suite.’

Paget felt Mary’s surprise like a contagion, knew that Sharpe had concealed this fact from him for just this moment. Duck this, Paget instructed Mary mentally, any way you can.

‘Let me ask
you
a question,’ Mary retorted. ‘Has the district attornet told you
why
I went to see Mark Ransom?’

‘Why do you ask?’

Mary nodded. ‘No. I didn’t think so. And
I
won’t tell you, although it would explain a great deal. Because it involves the reputation, and the feelings, of people other than myself.’ She paused, looking directly to the camera. ‘What you should demand of your sources is full disclosure: that they tell you exactly what was found in the room. And once
they
refuse to tell you, the one thing you will know is that
you
have been very badly used.’

Despite himself, Paget laughed aloud: Sharpe had warned Mary, and now Mary was warning Sharpe.

‘What’s she talking about?’ Carlo asked.

‘The tape,’ Paget said. ‘As a good Democrat, McKinley Brooks does
not
want to answer to James Colt’s family. Your mother just took that tape and struck it in Marnie Sharpe’s ear.’ In two days, Paget thought but did not add, no one will remember that Mary used it to avoid a question.

‘I have
more
questions,’ Mary went on, ‘that people should ask themselves.’ Her gaze was steady, her voice crisp and clear. ‘Why is it,’ she asked, ‘that in the case of a sex crime, so many people remember the sex and not the crime?

‘Why are the vicitms of rape, already so devastated in their own hearts and minds, cheapened in the eyes of society?

‘Why does the justice system treat them as if they have committed a crime?

‘Why are these women so often made to feel like they asked for what no sane person would want?

‘Why, tonight, is this happening to me?’

Her voice had thickened. Carlo leaned forward, as if to help her finish.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said to the interviewer, ‘that you can ever know how it feels. But hundreds of thousands of women know, and now
I
know.’

On the screen, her picture froze in close-up. Her eyes shone with tears.

For Teresa Peralta, Beverly Hills was a mirage.

It seemed far too lush for winter: the manicured sweep of lawns, the tropical mix of vegetation, the surprising bursts of pink and white, were like false spring. The sun was bright, the sky blue and crisp, the palm trees lining Santa Monica Boulevard seemed to float and vanish in the shimmering subtropic light. It made calling on Steinhardt’s daughter seem even more unreal.

At the end of a winding driveway on Canyon Drive, tucked behind shrubbery and green trees, Steinhardt’s white stucco home was a collection of rectangles and jutting squares; almost as high as it was wide, it looked as if it had been constructed by an imaginative child with a sense of light. There were many windows and skylights; the trees had been pruned to admit sun from every angle. When a Hispanic maid led her to the living room, Terri found herself beneath twenty foot ceilings, surrounded by shafts of light.

In Spanish, Terri said, ‘This is a beautiful room.’

The maid seemed surprised. Then she answered in the same tongue: ‘It is just as Dr Steinhardt left it,’ and went to find his daughter.

Terri looked around her. Something in the decor was too calculated, she decided: the prints were too carefully selected, the vases too perfectly placed, and the sculpture – African here, Asian there – seemed chosen to reflect their place of origin rather than a passion for the things themselves. It was more like visiting an art museum than a place where someone lived.

‘It always struck me as a room full of specimens,’ a husky voice behind her said. ‘Rather like a butterfly collection, but even less alive.’

Turning, Terri saw a sharp-featured woman in her thirties, tall and slender in a coppery silk jumpsuit, with tinted ash-blond hair and long red fingernails. Her eyes were a vivid green; beneath this chic veneer, her carriage had the tensile alertness of a greyhound. Terri’s first impression was of a woman who trusted no one.

‘I’m Jeanne-Marc Steinhardt,’ the woman said, adding dryly, ‘My mother was French.’

There was something bloodless in the reference, as if she were speaking of a vase and not a person. Terri extended her hand.

‘Teresa Peralta.’ Smiling, she added, ‘My mother was Guatemalan. Still is, actually.’

‘How nice for you.’ Jeanne Steinhardt looked past her at the room. ‘Mine slashed her wrists when I was five. For years, I thought it was the art.’

What, Terri wondered, should she say to
that?
‘Then I’d change the decor,’ she finally answered.

Steinhardt turned to face her. ‘Oh? And what would your mother favor? Although I’m afraid an oil of the Madonna and Christ child would be incongruent with my background.’

Terri felt herself tense; the sole ambiguity in Steinhardt’s remark was whether its bias arose from class or race. ‘Many of us,’ she said evenly, ‘used to favor a framed portrait of James Colt. Preferably one that glowed in the dark.’

Jeanne Steinhardt looked surprised and then moved her lips in an expression of chill amusement. ‘I take it,’ she said at last, ‘that you know what’s on that tape.’

Terri nodded. ‘I’ve stopped lighting candles for James Colt, if that’s what you mean. And so did Mary Carelli, after Mark Ransom played it for her.’

Jeanne Steinhardt stared at her openly, as if appraising and reappraising. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I saw her on
60 Minutes
last night. Impressive. Please sit down.’

Silent, she led Terri to a long couch in the middle of the room, a white cotton fabric with an Aztec design. Terri sat at one end, Steinhardt at the other, hands folded, legs carefully crossed.

It was time, Terri thought, to soften her tone. ‘Your mother,’ she ventured. ‘That must have been hard.’

‘I barely remember her.’ Steinhardt gave an elegant shrug. ‘It’s less a loss than an absence.’

Terri tried to imagine her life had Rosa Peralta been ‘absent.’ It was, Terri found, like imagining that she herself did not exist. In that moment, she saw the emptiness she sensed at Jeanne Steinhardt’s core as the absence of love.

‘As you say,’ Terri answered, ‘I’ve been fortunate.’

Steinhardt made a dismissive gesture. ‘You came about my father, and his tape.’

Terri nodded. ‘About the tape, and about Mark Ransom.’

Steinhardt gave her a curious look. ‘What is it that you care to know? Seeing that your client has already killed him.’

Terri was silent for a moment, gazing out the window. There was a pool outside, a long oval that contrasted with the lines and angles of the house itself. A Hispanic poolman stretched over it with a long wire net, reaching for a tropical leaf that marred the blue surface of the water.

‘How was it,’ Terri asked, ‘that Mark Ransom acquired that tape?’

‘That part’s quite simple.’ Steinhardt gave a thin smile. ‘I called him.’

That, Terri thought, was no surprise. ‘For what reason?’ she asked politely.

The question was perfunctory; Terri was quite certain that she already knew the answer: money. Steinhardt was silent for a moment. ‘Because,’ she answered coolly, ‘I found listening to it so educational.’

Terri hesitated. ‘Wasn’t it confidential?’

‘That was certainly my father’s intention. He left instructions that all tapes were to be destroyed by his executor.’ Steinhardt permitted herself another cold smile. ‘
I’m
his executor.’

Terri tried to choose a neutral voice. ‘Don’t you have problems with the psychiatrist-patient privilege?’

‘Oh, I think not. Laura Chase moved beyond my father’s ministrations, as it were, when she put the gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger.’ The husky voice seemed to drop a register. ‘Perhaps Laura felt she’d graduated.’

Terri paused again, off balance. Beneath this woman’s icy air of intelligence and self-interest, Terri felt another emotion which she could not identify. ‘Still,’ she said carefully, ‘people might argue that Laura would have wanted to protect her privacy.’

Steinhardt shrugged. ‘
They
might. But I don’t expect to hear from
her
about it. Which left me quite free, my lawyer confirms, to contact Mark Ransom.’

Steinhardt seemed to be speaking by rote, Terri thought: there was a certain relentless quality to her indifference, as if she wished to ensure that it was noticed.

‘What did you tell Ransom?’ Terri asked her.

‘Just enough.’ The clipped words had a faint derisive edge. ‘That I admired his work. That I’d read an article he’d written about Laura Chase – “Flesh Become Myth,” I believe he called it. That I shared his interest in Laura’s death. And that, were he interested, I might let him listen to my father’s tapes.’ She smiled at the coffee table. ‘At a price to be negotiated, of course.’

‘What did he say?’

‘That he wanted to meet me.’ The strange smile reappeared. ‘So we did. Sitting in my father’s office, with the door locked, surrounded by his tapes.’

The image of their meeting, Terri found, unsettled her. ‘Where is his office?’ she asked.

Steinhardt gave her a look of surprise. ‘Here, of course, in my father’s home. So very private, so very
him
.’

Terri hesitated. ‘May I see it?’

‘If you like.’

Steinhardt led her through a hallway hung with Flemish tapestries and opened a white door. She stood in the doorway, arms crossed.

Terri entered the room. It was sparsely furnished, almost entirely in white – including the couch for patients to lie on and Steinhardt’s leather chair at its head. The empty touch and chair were haunting, Terri thought; they reminded her that Steinhardt could not help Laura Chase.

‘As sterile as an operating room,’ Jeanne Steinhardt said from the door. ‘But then someone once called my father “The Surgeon of the Mind.”’

Terri turned. ‘Where are the tapes?’ she asked.

Steinhardt pointed. ‘Through here.’

In the wall, between the couch and the chair, was a door Terri had not seen. Steinhardt walked quickly past her and unlocked it.

The second room was dark.

Steinhardt switched on a black desk lamp. Terri saw shelves, books on psychiatry, a single desk, two black chairs, no prints or vases anywhere. The room was wholly impersonal.

‘The inner sanctum,’ Steinhardt said in a mocking stage whisper. ‘My father’s cerebral cortex. Or, perhaps, his essence.’

Terri walked toward the bookshelf on the far wall. It was honey-combed with slots, as if for tapes of someone’s favorite music. But these tapes, in white plastic cases, were coded with Roman numerals, numbers, years, dates. Removing one, Terri felt unclean.

‘It could be anyone,’ Steinhardt said behind her. ‘How does it feel to hold someone’s life in your hands?’

Staring at the tape, Terri replayed Steinhardt’s words, her tone of voice, sensed some feeling she still could not grasp.

‘How did you know which tapes were of Laura Chase?’

‘My father had an index.’ Once more, the voice turned sardonic. ‘I showed it to Mark Ransom when we met. Rather like a shopping list.’

It was difficult, Terri found, to look at Steinhardt. She edged along the shelf, her gaze sweeping hundreds of tapes. Then found a gap; one shelf, then half of another, were empty.

‘That space represents Laura Chase,’ Steinhardt told her. ‘Her cure took quite some time.’

Terri was silent for a moment.

‘Ransom took them?’ she finally asked.

‘Yes. That was part of our negotiation.’ Steinhardt sounded almost amused. ‘He wanted to work at home.’

Terri stared at the last shelf of tapes, less to inspect them than for something to do.

There was, she saw, another gap. It was small, two empty slots where tapes would fit. She placed her fingers there. ‘And this?’ she asked. ‘Also Laura Chase?’

‘I don’t know.’ Steinhardt paused. ‘If so, they would have been out of order.’

Terri looked at the tapes on either side. If she understood Dr Steinhardt’s code at all, they belonged to two separate patients; the numbers and numerals were different, and the dates overlapped.

‘
Was
there anything in this space?’

For a moment, Steinhardt looked puzzled. ‘I’m not sure. I noticed that the other day. But I couldn’t remember.’

‘If there
were
tapes, could Mark Ransom have taken them?’

Steinhardt shrugged. ‘It’s possible, I suppose – once or twice I let him listen in here, alone. You know, when he couldn’t wait.’ Steinhardt’s voice turned dry. ‘He seemed to like communing with Laura in the room where she had most exposed herself – figuratively speaking, of course. How he must have wanted to
be
my father.’

Terri felt a kind of chill. ‘Would the index show if tapes were missing?’

There was a moment’s silence. ‘It would have. Yes.’