Contents
Cover
About the Author
By the Same Author
Eyes of a Child
Copyright
Dedication
The Nightmare
Chapter 1
The Escape
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
The Inquiry
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
The Jury
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
The Trial
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Eyes of a Child
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
The Family
Chapter 1
Acknowledgments
About the Author
RICHARD NORTH PATTERSON studied fiction writing at the University of Alabama with Jesse Hill Ford; his first short story was published in The Atlantic Monthly, his first novel, The Lasko Tangent, won an Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1979 and his last novel, Degree of Guilt was an international bestseller. Until recently a trial lawyer, Patterson lives with his wife, Laurie, and their family in San Francisco and on Martha’s Vineyard.
‘Patterson is a fluid prose writer clearly at his best in the taut courtroom scenes . . . Eyes of a Child is a gripping story . . . a well crafted book that deserves to do well and almost certainly will.’ The Times
‘Utterly compulsive’ Publishing News
‘Destined for celebrity status alongside Scott Turow and John Grisham . . . he belongs among the elite.’
Los Angeles Times Book Review
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Degree of Guilt
The Lasko Tangent
The Outside Man
Private Screening
Escape the Night
Richard North Patterson
EYES OF A CHILD
London
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Epub ISBN: 9781407059976
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Published by Arrow Books in 1995
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© Richard North Patterson 1994
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First published in the United Kingdom by Hutchinson 1995
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FOR FRED HILL
AND SONNY MEHTA
The Nightmare
OCTOBER 16
Chapter 1
Ricardo Arias’s face filled with fear and disbelief.
‘If you’re going to kill yourself,’ the intruder repeated softly, ‘you must leave a note.’
Richie’s eyes would not move from the gun. Pulled from damp and darkness, it had not been fired for years; the intruder wondered if it would fire now. But Richie Arias did not know this.
Sitting at his desk, Richie began groping for a pen.
His movements were sluggish, like those of a man struggling under water. Fixated on the gun, he seemed blind to the darkened living room: the worn couch and armchair, the cheap coffee table, the computer on the desk, the answering machine he used to screen creditors, the faded posters. A chrome standing lamp cast a pall on his skin.
His face was thin, with black eyes that shifted from softness to anger, as suited his needs, and yet never quite lost the alert, almost fevered expression of a bright graduate student running on too much coffee and too little sleep. Blood had begun to trickle from one nostril.
‘I never write.’ His head twitched toward the computer. ‘Everyone knows I use that.’
‘Suicide is different.’ The intruder’s voice was strained now. ‘The handwriting must be yours.’
Richie’s face looked drawn. Slowly, he picked up the pen, holding it gingerly.
‘“I am ending my life”’ – the intruder spoke for him – ‘“because I have faced what I am.”’
An instant’s pause, the instinct to resist. Then Richie’s pen began to inch across the paper. The effort was awkward and hesitant, that of a child learning to write, pausing in the middle of letters. Heavier on some than others, spidery at the end.
‘“What I am,”’ the voice instructed him, ‘“is selfish and pathetic.”’
Richie stopped writing. His eyes filled with resentment. ‘Do it,’ the intruder ordered.
Wiping the blood from his
nose, Richie stared at the paper. It was a moment before his hand moved, and when it did, there was a red smear on the back of his fingers. The word ‘pathetic’ took too long to write.
‘“My only business is extortion. I have used my wife and child, out of greed and shamelessness, because I myself am nothing.”’
Richie flushed with anger. He stopped, staring at the words he had already written. His hand would not move.
The intruder hesitated, irresolute. Then saw, on the bookshelf next to Richie, a photograph.
Gun aimed at Richie, the intruder retrieved the picture and placed it carefully on the desk. A dark-haired girl, her solemn brown eyes gazing at Richie Arias.
It was far better than a note, the intruder realized: a last expression of cheap sentiment would seem so very like him. A shrine to his own suicide.
Turning from the picture, Richie’s face showed that he understood the rest.
‘You see,’ the intruder said softly, ‘I know who you are.’
As if by instinct, Richie stood, backing from his chair. ‘Wait,’ he cried out. ‘No one commits suicide from across a room.’
Their eyes met. The intruder did not speak.
‘You can just leave.’ Richie’s tone became a shrill wheedle. ‘I won’t tell anyone. We just let it go, okay?’
All at once, staging a suicide did not matter. ‘Only you,’ the intruder said quietly, ‘would think that I could “let it go.” Only you.’
Richie’s gaze darted to the gun. Slowly, the intruder started toward him.
Five feet, then four.
Richie’s face was taut with fear and calculation. Backing toward the coffee table, he seemed to have forgotten it was there: his eyes flickered toward the bedroom hallway, searching for a way out. His throat worked. ‘Shoot me now, and it’s murder.’
The intruder stopped, raising the gun.
Richie’s eyes changed. In that moment, he seemed to accept – despite his deepest instincts – that one person could truly love another.
‘I’ll give her up,’ he whispered.
In silent answer, the intruder’s head moved from side to side.
Richie turned to run.
The gun jerked up at his first panicky step. As he stretched forward, straining for the hallway, Richie’s leg slammed into the coffee table.
There was a sharp sudden scream of pain.
The next few seconds were like freeze-frames. Richie snapping at the waist, arms flailing. Sprawling forward in a face-first dive, head bobbing like a rag doll. Temple hitting the corner of the table. Another sound: a sickening crack. And then Ricardo Arias rolled sideways, flopping onto the carpet, and was still. He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. The lamp bathed him in a circle of light.
Gun hand trembling, the intruder knelt beside him.
There was a red gash on his temple. Blood dribbled from his nose. The luminous wristwatch on his arm read 10:36.
Tentatively, almost gently, the intruder pushed open Richie’s lips with the barrel of the gun.
It did not require much room. As the barrel slipped into his throat, Richie’s mouth clamped down, the reflex of choking. The only sounds were Richie’s shallow breathing, the whir of air-conditioning.
Eyes shut, the intruder took one breath and pulled the trigger.
A metallic snap. It was only an instant later that the intruder, forced to look at Richie’s face, knew the ancient gun had not discharged.
Richie blinked, the first tremor of consciousness. Watching him taste the black metal, then discover it in some state of half awakening, the intruder prayed that the gun would fire.
Four more bullets.
Richie’s eyes widened in terrible comprehension. His head rose, twisting feebly. His mouth opened around the barrel to form a single word.
‘Please . . .’
The child shuddered.
It was dark. She was damp from the struggle to escape: her legs could not move, and her voice could not cry out. Knees drawn up tight against her stomach, she lay there, waiting.
The banging on her door grew louder.
As the door burst open, the little girl awakened with a soundless scream, torn from her nightmare.
She did not know where she was. But in her dream, she had imagined what would break down the door: a savage dog, with bright teeth and black curly hair, eyes searching the room for her.
A shadow moved toward her.
The girl shivered, stifling her scream, hugging herself so tightly that her fingers dug into her skin. And then her grandmother spoke softly, in Spanish, and Elena Arias stopped trembling.
‘It was only your dream,’ her grandmother repeated, and swept Elena into her arms. ‘You’re safe now.’
Elena held her tight, tears of relief springing to her eyes, face buried in her grandmother’s neck. She would know the smell of Grandma Rosa anywhere, sweet skin and perfume, the scent of cut flowers. As her grandmother gently lowered her head onto the pillow, Elena shut her eyes.
Elena felt Rosa’s fingertips gently touch her forehead: in her mind, she saw her grandmother’s jet-black hair, the slender face still almost as pretty as that of Elena’s own mother, Teresa, whose room this once had been. The sounds of Dolores Street came to her then: Latin voices on the sidewalk; the squeal of cars at a stop sign. Outside, the streets were not safe, and Dolores Park, where Elena could not play, was filled with men who sold drugs at night. The window that her mother once could open wide was nailed to the frame. But here, with her grandmother, there was no black dog.
‘Where is Mommy?’ Elena asked.
Tonight, before bedtime, her grandmother had taken her mother’s old world globe and traced a line with her finger from San Francisco, showing the route that her mother would fly tomorrow. But now Rosa repeated the words like a favorite story.
‘Your mother is still here, at her house. Tomorrow she’s flying to a place called Italy. But she’ll be back in ten more days. And in the morning, when you get up, we’ll find Italy on the map again.’
Elena was silent for a moment. ‘But Daddy’s not with her, is he? Mommy’s going with Chris.’
‘Yes.’ Her grandmother’s voice was quieter still. ‘Mommy’s going with Chris.’
Elena opened her eyes. In the faint glow of the night-light, her grandmother’s gaze looked tired and sad.
Turning to the window, Elena listened for the sounds of the world outside. ‘Will I see Daddy tomorrow?’ she asked in a tentative voice. ‘After Chris and Mommy leave?’
Her grandmother watched her, fingers still resting on her forehead. ‘No, Elena. Not tomorrow.’
Tomorrow was as far ahead as Elena wished to think. She turned back to Rosa. ‘Please, Grandma, sleep with me. I’m afraid of being alone.’
In the dim light, her grandmother started to shake her head and then stopped at the look in Elena’s eyes.
‘Remember what I told you, Grandma? About being scared?’
Her grandmother looked into her eyes. ‘Yes,’ she said gently. ‘I remember.’
Neither spoke again. Her grandmother rose slowly from the bed and then, pulling her dress over her head, slid into the bed next to Elena, wearing only her slip.
Nestled in her grandmother’s arms, Elena felt the rise and fall of Rosa’s wakeful breathing as the caress of love and safety, until she fell asleep.
THE ESCAPE
OCTOBER 19 – OCTOBER 24
Chapter 1
Three days later, seven months after they had first made love, Teresa Peralta found herself in Venice with Christopher Paget, astonished to be in Italy, fearful that their time together was coming to an end.
Chris stood on the balcony of what had once been a thirteenth-century palazzo. He was dressed only in shorts, the late-afternoon sun on his skin. From the living room of their suite at the Danieli, Terri watched him as she held the phone to her ear.
Halfway around the world, Richie’s telephone rang again.
Listening, Terri imagined its sound
filling his small apartment. It was her third call in an hour.
Ten rings later, Terri slowly put down the telephone.
She was fresh from the shower, a slim, dark-haired young woman who barely came to Chris’s shoulder, with olive skin and a sculpted face that he kept trying to persuade her was beautiful: a chiseled nose, too pronounced for her liking; high cheekbones; delicate chin; a quick smile that transformed her seriousness without ever quite changing her green-flecked brown eyes, watchful by habit. Pulling the towel around her, she studied Chris in silence.
Chris did not see her. He gazed out at the Grand Canal, standing in the posture Terri had come to know: hands in his pockets, head tilted slightly, taking something in.
She walked toward him, making no sound, until she could see what he watched so intently.
At another time, it would have enchanted her. A broad stone walk below, filled with people ambling among food and curio stands and the white-covered tables and umbrellas of outdoor restaurants, the edge of the walk lined with gaslights and gondolas and cigarette boats, their pilots chatting with each other as they waited for business. And, beyond them, the Grand Canal.
The azure sweep of water stretched in glistening wavelets through a city of stone and marble, grey and dusty rose, blue water, blue sky. Across the canal, perhaps a half mile, San Giorgio island appeared as an orange sphere, a white marble dome, a great hall with columns, Byzantium meeting the Renaissance in some gentle suspension of time. A faint sea smell came with a breeze that cooled Tern’s skin. There were no cars; save for the motorboats, there was little Terri saw through the iron frame of the balcony that was not as it had been five hundred years before.
‘It’s timeless,’ Chris said without turning. ‘I don’t know why, exactly, but I take comfort in that. As if we can survive Richie after all.’
Terri was quiet for a moment. ‘How did you know I was here?’
‘Because you’re wearing almost nothing. It’s a sixth sense I have.’
As Terri smiled, Chris turned to face her.
He looked ten years younger than he was: his face was barely lined, his coppery hair had no hint of grey, and spartan self-discipline kept him trim and well-muscled. The ridged nose, a certain angularity, lent his features strength. But what struck Terri now was the startling blueness of his eyes, and the concern for her she saw there.
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