Guilt by Association (47 page)

It was evening. Ted had sent Amy off to spend the night with DeeDee because Karen didn’t want her stepdaughter to see her the way she looked. Then he called Natalie.

“She won’t admit it but I know she’s in pain,” he said after a brief explanation. “I need to go out and pick up a prescription the doctor ordered, but I don’t want to leave her alone. Can you sit with her until I get back?”

“Of course I can.”

“I won’t be long.”

Natalie knew her own remedy for pain. She took a full glass of brandy up to the bedroom.

“Drink,” she instructed.

Karen sipped the fiery liquid but it had little effect.

“Did Ted tell you?” she asked through swollen lips.

Natalie nodded. “I can’t believe it,” she lamented. “I feel like this is all my fault. I didn’t argue when you said you were going to join his campaign. I realize now I should have. I guess, way down deep, I wanted to believe he had changed. It just never occurred to me that this could happen twice.”

“Or me,” Karen said. “That’s why I got into the car with him. I thought, well, he’s an important person now, he’s certainly older, and he should be wiser, and besides this is 1992 and he’s got so much to lose, he’d be crazy to try anything— so why should I be afraid?”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m not going to do anything. It’s up to the police to decide what they’re going to do.”

“Talk about a bombshell,” Natalie murmured. “Nobody’s going to want to come within a hundred miles of this.”

“You and Ted and the investigator are the only ones who know who it was. If the police don’t prosecute him, I don’t want it going any further.”

Natalie groaned. “I’m so sorry,” she repeated.

“Please don’t blame yourself,” Karen said. “It’s not your fault. I’m an adult. Whatever I did, I did all on my own.”

Ted held her all night long, rocking her, caressing her. With Natalie’s help, he had gotten some hot soup into her on top of the brandy, but she couldn’t seem to get warm.

“I didn’t tell them,” she said.

“You didn’t tell them what?”

“About… about the other time. They would have thought me so stupid to let it happen again.”

“But shouldn’t they know?”

Karen shrugged. It was so long ago, and it was my word against his. Besides, that was then and this is now, and it would only confuse things.”

He remembered the night, barely six months ago, when she had told him about her first encounter with Robert Willmont. He remembered holding her tight and promising her that he would never let anyone hurt her again.

He was sick inside because he hadn’t been able to keep his
promise. He couldn’t understand what kind of man would brutalize a woman, then not even remember it and turn around and do it again. He had not been thrilled when Karen said she wanted to work for the Willmont campaign, but he hadn’t argued all that strenuously against it, either. Not when she was sure it would be a positive step toward putting the past behind her.
But now he wished, with the impassioned accuracy of hindsight, that he had objected.

“Save America!” was rapidly becoming a powerful slogan throughout the country, a heady concept that was rallying thousands to the cause every day—and the man behind it all had turned out to be nothing but a brutal rapist.

Ted Doniger was a gentle, caring man, a true Libra, who believed that sufficient good existed in everyone to balance out almost any bad. It was just that, as his father used to say, you had to look a little harder to find it in some. As hard as he now looked, Ted was unable to find sufficient good in Robert Willmont.

He stared into the darkness, choking on an unfamiliar anger that burned so hot inside him that, had he owned a gun, he knew he would have gotten up in the night and used it.

I
t was a point with Lamar Pope that he never used elevators if he could help it. More a matter of innate impatience than any specific effort at exercise, he habitually walked up to the fourth floor of the Hall of Justice, the solid gray building that occupied a whole block of Bryant Street and looked so oddly out of place in the dismal neighborhood of warehouses, factories,
and body shops.

This morning was no exception. Lamar climbed the steps, taking two at a time, and lumbered down the corridor to Room 436,
where the Sexual Assault Division was located. Going directly to the rear of the shoulder-high partitioned space, he spent some minutes rummaging through the bottom drawer of his desk before making his way into the lieutenant’s cramped office and dropping heavily into a chair.

It was eight-thirty on Friday and he had been sitting on his bombshell for almost forty-eight hours. “You’re not going to believe this,” he said. Lieutenant Mike Perrone had been a policeman for twenty-three years and in charge of investigations for five. There wasn’t a whole lot he wouldn’t believe. Every day, as he got ready to leave for work, he told his wife he didn’t know how much longer he could stand to stay in the Sexual Assault
Division. Too many of the victims had begun to haunt his dreams.

“Lay it on me,” he invited.

“Okay,” Lamar nodded. “I’ve got a woman who claims she was raped by Robert Willmont.”

“Senator
Robert Willmont?”

“That’s the one.”

Perrone, a medium-sized man with a barrel chest and a thin mustache, threw back his head and guffawed.

“You’re right,” he cackled. “I don’t believe it.”

Lamar shrugged. “The trouble is,” he responded, chewing the end of an unlit cigarette, “it may just be true.”

The smile on the lieutenant’s face slowly faded. “The Prince of Pure? The squeaky-clean people’s advocate? The trumpeter of
‘Save America!’?”

“Yep.”

“Well, I’ll be damned. When? Where?”

“Tuesday night, Golden Gate Park.”

“Where’s the report? I haven’t seen anything about it come through. All hell hasn’t broken loose.”

“I buried it,” Lamar declared. “All things considered, I thought that was the smartest li’l ole thing to do until we knew where this was going.”

Perrone nodded. “Okay, what have you got?”

“I’ve got her statement,” Lamar told him. “I’ve got her physical condition. I’ve got all the stuff that the Rape Treatment Center collected, including fingernail scrapings—she says she scratched him pretty good. I’ve got a footprint at the scene.
And I’ve got her positive identification.”

“Hell, this smells like a setup to me,” the lieutenant muttered. “What is it—two months before the primary? Shit! That’s a pretty timely coincidence.”

“The thought did cross my mind,” Lamar agreed. “That’s why I’ve been playing it so close to the vest. But I have to lay it on the line. I’ve spent the last forty-two hours checking her out. If she’s got any political axes to grind, I can’t find them. On the contrary, everything I’ve learned about her so far leads
me to believe that she was honestly committed to Willmont’s philosophy.”

“Christ,” Perrone breathed. “You don’t really think it’s possible, do you?”

“Gut feeling?” Lamar asked.

“Yeah.”

“Anything’s possible.”

“What do you want to do with it?”

“I think we’ve got enough for a friendly chat.”

“Well, make sure you cover our asses first, but good,” Perrone said. “What have you done with the stuff?”

“I relabeled the RTC evidence. Now no one but me can find it. I listed the cast we made of a footprint at the scene under a John Doe. I took the report filed by the uniforms that answered the call and the medical report and the photographs that were taken at the hospital and lumped them all under an alias. I erased the mention of his name from my tape record. I guaran-damn-tee you this isn’t going to leak until we’re ready to make a move.”

“All right,” the lieutenant sighed. “Let me look at the report. If I agree with you, we’ll call him in.”

If there was one thing Mike Perrone had learned in the last five years, it was that Lamar Pope was never wrong.

“He won’t come in,” the investigator replied.

“Hell, I know he won’t,” Perrone snapped. “But we damn well gotta follow procedure.”

“I tell you, Hal, it’s absurd,” Robert Willmont raged at his attorney over the telephone. “The woman’s a goddamn liar. This whole thing is a frame, can’t you see that?”

“Then you have nothing to worry about,” Hal Sutton replied calmly. “Besides, they just want to talk to you.”

“The hell you say. They’re not going to haul me down there for one of their interrogations like I was some common criminal.”

“I’m sure we can arrange a compromise,” the son of the former senior partner of Sutton, Wells, Willmont and Spauld
ing said. “I’ll handle it. But first, you’d better tell me exactly where this is coming from.”

“She’s a volunteer who works at headquarters,” the senator explained. “Her car wouldn’t start, so I offered her a lift home.
We went across the street to a bar and had a few drinks and talked for a while. Then, on the way to her place, she got sick or something, asked me to pull over. She got out of the car and disappeared, so I got out, just to make sure she was okay,
and the next thing I know, she’s jumping me. I mean, she was worse than those crazy groupies who follow after rock stars.
She was all over me, scratching and biting. Hell, I couldn’t get away from her.”

“She was that strong, eh?” Sutton asked.

“Well, all right,” Robert admitted, “maybe I didn’t try very hard. You know how it is, a little alcohol, the stress of the campaign, a woman throwing herself at you. So maybe my resistance was low—okay, she was a cold and I caught it. After all,
I’m only human, and Randy’s had me living in solitary confinement since December. But if she thinks she can get away with crying rape, she’s got another think coming!”

“Don’t worry,” Sutton assured him. “Acquaintance rape is a very muddy charge and the hardest kind to prove. If it’s not true,
believe me, she won’t get away with it.”

“But if it goes to trial, that alone will be enough to ruin me,” Robert argued, considering the big picture. “I haven’t come this far to be done in by some crazy person.”

“Well, you might consider pleading to a lesser charge.”

“Like what?”

“Maybe simple assault.”

“That’s still a felony, and a felon isn’t going to get elected President of the United States.”

“It’s better than rape.”

“What if I just denied everything?” Robert suggested. “Said I was never there and had an alibi to prove it?”

“I would never knowingly let you perjure yourself—or anyone else you may be thinking of involving in this,” the respected partner of Sutton, Wells, Willmont and Spaulding
replied tartly. He and Robert were not exactly friends, but they had known each other for over twenty-five years. “Besides,
they’re bound to have DNA evidence, at the very least, that can place you at the scene just as surely as an eyewitness from a foot away.”

“I’ve been in the inner circles long enough to know that evidence can … disappear,” Robert said casually. “All it takes is enough money and the right connections, and I’ve got both.”

“You’ve built your reputation on honesty,” his attorney reminded him. “My advice would be to stick to that.”

“It was just a thought.” Robert sighed, wondering what good an honest reputation was going to do him in the middle of a maelstrom.
“So now what?”

“Let me sort things out,” Sutton said, “and I’ll get back to you.”

Lamar trudged up the steps of the Jackson Street house just after three-thirty that afternoon and pressed the bell. A faint melody of chimes sounded from somewhere inside, and a moment later an elderly man in black livery opened the door and, without so much as a word, ushered him into a room off to the left of the entrance foyer.

Three men awaited him in a richly appointed library of the type that Lamar had heard about but had never been invited to enter.
He recognized Robert Willmont, of course. The second man was perhaps ten years older than the senator, not as tall but equally distinguished-looking, with a full head of silver hair. The third man was shorter, younger, thinner, with receding red hair and glasses.

“I’m Hal Sutton, Sergeant Pope, Senator Willmont’s attorney.” The silver-haired man stepped forward but did not offer his hand. “This is the senator’s aide, James Randall Neuburg. And, of course, you know the senator.”

“Gentlemen,” Lamar acknowledged.

“I appreciate your cooperation in allowing this meeting to be held here, instead of at Justice,” the lawyer continued
smoothly. “Discretion is vitally important in this instance for reasons you can readily understand.”

“I assure you that I would have preferred to meet the senator under very different circumstances,” Lamar responded in kind,
but he wasn’t one for social chitchat. “So, with your permission, I suggest we get right to the matter at hand and get it over with as quickly and painlessly as possible.”

“Certainly, Sergeant.”

They sat down on facing sofas. Lamar pulled out his tape recorder. “Do you mind, sir?” he asked with just the right note of deference. “It helps me to remember.”

“Not at all,” came the senator’s reply after a quick glance at his attorney.

“Thank you.”

“You know that I would be well within my rights not to make a statement at this time,” Robert declared.

“Oh, I know that, sir.”

“The only reason I’m doing so is because I want this whole thing to go away before it does some real damage.”

“I appreciate that.”

“All right, then, where do you want me to begin?”

It took less than twenty minutes for Lamar to obtain the senator’s account of the events of Tuesday evening.

“I’m sure you understand,” the senator concluded, “there could be any number of people out to get me. Someone in my position is always vulnerable. Was I foolish, under the circumstances, to succumb to a woman I hardly knew? Of course I was. But I assure you, foolishness is the only thing I’m guilty of. Now I hope this will be the end of it.”

“Well, sir, I can’t exactly promise you that,” Lamar replied. “Needless to say, your version conflicts somewhat with the lady’s,
and that means we’ll have to do a little more investigating.”