Guilt by Association (42 page)

From a quarter of a century of professional practice, Natalie Shaffer had learned the art of detached listening, a method of filtering information without betraying anything other than objective interest. But the technique failed her now. Robert Drayton Willmont, the man she had voted for in two senatorial contests, the man she intended to support vigorously in the upcoming presidential campaign, the man she looked upon as the one real hope for the country, was turning into a monster before her very eyes.

“He told the police that you initiated the sex and then refused to leave the park with him?” she asked when the story was finished.

“That’s what the investigator said.”

“And you’re positive this is the same man? You couldn’t be mistaken? After all, it was such a long time ago.”

“There are some things you never forget,” Karen said stonily. “Maybe I could have mistaken the face, or even the voice, but as long as I live, I’ll never forget those eyes.”

Natalie got up from her chair and went to pour a brandy for herself. “I think
I
need one of these now.”

“I didn’t mean to burden you,” Karen apologized, “but I just needed to talk to someone. You know, someone who would maybe understand my side of it.”

“What’s not to understand?” Natalie shrugged. “It’s the old guilt-by-association ploy. You were there—ergo, what happened must have been your fault.”

“In all this time,” Karen confessed, “you’re the first person I’ve ever told.”

“Besides Ted, of course.”

Karen shook her head. “I couldn’t tell him. I was too afraid he wouldn’t want me if he knew, that he’d run away, like Peter.”

Natalie sighed. She desperately wanted Karen to be mistaken, to find some loophole in her story that would show that the man responsible for the terrible things she had described was someone other than the charismatic senator from California who had come forward to lead the nation back from the brink of disaster. But the psychiatrist had been trained to detect even the hint of duplicity, and Karen’s years-old recollections were far too clear, far too detailed to leave much room for doubt.

“In December,” she mused aloud, “voters in Louisiana will go to the polls to choose between a crook and a racist. If what you say is true, next year this country may be asked to choose between an incompetent and a rapist. I’m not sure I know what’s to become of us.”

Karen’s eyes widened. “You called him a rapist,” she whispered.

“Of course I did,” Natalie replied. “What else would I call him?”

Karen began to laugh and cry at the same time. “Are you saying you don’t think it was my fault?”

“Not from what you’ve told me,” Natalie declared, and then turned a thoughtful glance on her visitor. “Why? Do
you
think it was your fault?”

“Everyone seemed to think it was,” sobbed Karen. “They said I went with him and so I must have been looking for trouble. I must have teased him and led him on. They said he was a fine upstanding citizen, so why would he have done such an awful thing unless I had provoked him. The police, my parents—they told me what was past was past and to forget about it and get on with my life. But I guess I never did.”

“Of course not,” said Natalie. “You’re still struggling with what happened to you because no one ever let you deal with it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, when a person is assaulted, as you were, it isn’t just the body that needs to heal. The mind also has to heal. The doctors mended your body, but no one understood how important it was for you to mend your soul as well.”

“I never thought of it that way,” Karen marveled.

“You were never allowed to talk about it, you were never allowed to confront your attacker, you were never allowed to work through your fear and anger. Instead, you were made to feel guilt and shame, because that’s what the people around you were feeling.”

Tears ran down Karen’s cheeks. “I always felt exactly that way,” she whispered, “even though I never really thought I did anything wrong.”

“What was that?” Natalie asked.

“I said I felt that way even though I didn’t think I did anything wrong.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that last part.”

“I said I didn’t think I did anything wrong.”

“Once more,” the psychiatrist urged.

Karen took a deep breath. “
I didn’t do anything wrong,”
she almost shouted.

Natalie sat back in her chair. “You’ve just taken the first step toward healing.”

“But how can I heal when he’s still out there, walking around as free as the wind? When there are still people—my own family—who think that what he did was my fault?”

“As long as
you
know it wasn’t,” the psychiatrist said, “does it really matter what anyone else thinks?”

“It matters,” Karen said bitterly. “Because it isn’t fair. My whole life, ever since that night, I’ve felt so unworthy, so dirty. All my parents wanted to do was sweep it under the rug—sweep
me
under the rug. They couldn’t even call it what it was, you know—they always referred to it as my ‘accident.’ “

“You can blame them, if you need to,” the psychiatrist replied. “But the truth is, they probably didn’t know how to deal with it any more than you did.”

“Maybe not,” Karen conceded. “But that’s no excuse for them not believing me, is it—my own parents? All these years, I doubted myself because of them. I had no confidence in my own judgment. I could hardly bear to look at myself in the mirror. I was never able to have a decent relationship with a man. I believed the most important thing was that no one
ever find out, that as long as no one knew, everything would be all right. But all the time I thought I was coping, I wasn’t coping at all. Everything is still churning around inside of me, like a volcano waiting to erupt.”

“Let it,” Natalie advised.

“You don’t mean I really should go out and kill him, do you?”

“Is that your only solution?”

“I can’t deny the idea has real appeal,” Karen declared.

“I don’t doubt that,” Natalie replied reasonably. “But, on the other hand, what will killing him accomplish? Will it give you back what he took from you? Will it justify all your years of torment? Will it restore your self-respect?”

“Well, I won’t really know until after I do it, will I?”

Natalie stared at her visitor for a minute before she began to chuckle. “Well, at least you still have your sense of humor.”

Karen shrugged. “I feel like I have to do something.”

“I agree,” Natalie assured her. “But now that capital punishment is back on the books, killing Robert Willmont will only succeed in ending what’s left of
your
life, too, and where’s the justice in that?”

“Maybe I don’t care,” Karen said. “Can you honestly tell me he deserves to live?”

“Perhaps not, but
you
do,” the psychiatrist observed. “Despite the years of pain and anguish and betrayal you’ve suffered, look what you managed to create. You have a marriage with real potential, you’ve raised three beautiful girls, you’re producing a series of wonderful books. Now, I’m certainly not saying that you wouldn’t have had a happy life if you’d never met up with Robert Willmont. I’m only saying that, on balance, you’ve done very well for yourself, and I’d think long and hard before I decided to throw all that away on a momentary act of revenge.”

“Tell me the truth,” Karen urged. “Do you think the man who did those things to me deserves to be in the White House?”

There was a long pause.

“I’d like to think that people can change,” Natalie said
slowly. “That a man who raped you and beat you half to death at twenty-three could have learned how to build rather than destroy at fifty-three. But to be honest with you, even though I sometimes think the White House has become little better than a whorehouse, no, I guess I have to say I don’t think Robert Willmont belongs in it.”

Karen smiled an almost luminous smile. “I can’t believe how good it feels to finally tell someone, to say all the words right out loud, for God and the whole world to hear.”

“Don’t stop there,” Natalie suggested.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, go home. Talk to Ted. It’s time, and if I’m any judge of character, you may be in for a very pleasant surprise.”

The idea of telling her husband dredged up all the painful memories of Peter in Karen’s mind. But she knew Natalie was right.
Ted was a good man—understanding, compassionate, supportive, and they had lived with the lie between them long enough.

“In spite of myself, I guess I’m a lot stronger now than I was then,” she said, knowing it was true. “If Ted turns away from me—like Peter did—it’ll hurt, but I can handle it.”

“I do believe you can,” declared the psychiatrist.

With a little nod, Karen stood up. “Thank you for listening,” she said sincerely. “I can’t tell you how much it’s helped.”

And it had. By sharing her pain, she had lightened its load. By letting the ugliness out of the dark, she knew she could begin to put the excruciating episode into some sort of perspective.

“What will you do?” Natalie asked.

“I’m going to take your advice,” Karen replied. “I’m going to tell Ted.”

“And then what?”

Karen shrugged. “We’ll see,” she said.

It was after midnight when Karen let herself back into the
house, but Ted was still awake, sitting patiently at the breakfast-room table with a fresh pot of tea ready.

“I waited up,” he said simply, “in case you wanted to talk.”

“I do,” Karen responded, sitting down across from him.

He poured tea for both of them, adding the dollop of honey he knew she liked in hers. Then he wrapped his hands around his cup and waited for whatever was to come.

Half an hour later, they were both drained.

“I should have told you long ago,” she said, “and I’ve felt guilty all these years for deceiving you. But I knew you’d never have married me if you’d known. So I let myself behave very selfishly and kept it from you.” She stared at the bottom of her teacup. “If you want that divorce now, I won’t blame you.”

Instead, he came around to sit beside her. “I guess I can’t honestly say how I would have felt back then,” he said slowly.
“But I don’t think it would have been much different than I feel right now, which is appalled and devastated and outraged—but not at you. Never at you.”

“Really?” she breathed.

“Despite what the police or your parents or Peter might have thought, I know you well enough to know that you could never have been to blame for what that man did to you.”

She blinked as though she hadn’t heard properly. “You honestly mean that?”

He put his arm around her and drew her against him. “Of course I do. I guess, on some level, I always knew there was more to it than an automobile accident, because the scars on the inside always seemed so much deeper than the ones on the outside.”

“You could see that?”

He nodded. “You shouldn’t have had to live with this all alone for so long,” he said. “But at least you won’t have to anymore.
You’ve got Natalie to help you now, and I trust her. And you’ve got me to support you in any way I can. If you want, I’ll even go out and kill the bastard for you.”

“No,” she murmured with a little smile. “I don’t want that.”

“Whatever it takes for you to work through all this, just
know that I’m right here with a shoulder to lean on or cry on, or anything else you need or want.”

They made their way upstairs, into the peach-and-aqua master suite, where they undressed in the dark and got into Karen’s bed and held each other as tight as they could.

“You’re safe now,” he murmured into her sweet-smelling hair. “I’ll never let anyone hurt you again.”

J
anice Evans hurried down Front Street in the November sunshine, on her way to the Willmont campaign head quarters.

The newly announced presidential candidate and his entourage had been in town for little more than a week and already they had everything organized. Mary Catherine had telephoned her at eight-thirty.

“The senator has agreed to an interview,” she said. “But he wants to make it very clear that he intends to choose the topics.”

“Agreed,” Janice replied. “I can be there in an hour.”

“The senator can see you at eleven,” Mary Catherine informed her.

The pretty blond reporter had come a long way since the day when, as a fledgling staff member of a local television station,
she had stuck her microphone in the face of a congressman at San Francisco Airport, and much of her success was directly attributable to the exposure she had received from covering his subsequent campaign.

During his numerous forays up and down the state, Robert had used her as his official press-pool representative—and
his unofficial bed companion. He would feed her information that she would then dutifully share with the rest of the media.

The networks got to see a lot of the attractive, well-spoken, well-informed journalist, and liked what they saw. When the campaign ended, Janice was brought to New York as a background reporter for one of the major television news-talk programs.
Today, she was one of a quartet of rotating hosts on the show and had earned the respect of her colleagues.

She had kept her figure, but her blond hair now received a lemon rinse every month to hold its highlights. The laugh lines around her mouth and eyes, which used to come and go, now came and stayed, and she found herself using heavier makeup to keep her complexion looking fresh and clean. She was thirty-six years old.

“When I’m elected President,” the newly elected senator promised, “the job of press secretary is yours, if you want it.”

“I want it,” she said.

Janice Evans had developed into more than just a pretty, if somewhat hardened, face. She was also articulate and single-mindedly dedicated. She would eventually have risen to the top of her profession even had she not gone to bed with Robert Willmont,
but the shortcut certainly hadn’t hurt. They were two of a kind, the journalist and the politician, and they used each other,
with total understanding, at every opportunity.

“Janice Evans to see the senator,” she said when she reached the twelfth floor.