Eyes of a Child

by Richard North Patterson

  Caroline studied him. ‘She did well for you in court. Remarkably well, if what you say is right.’

  In Caroline’s voice was an unspoken question: had Terri lied for him? Now it was Paget who did not wish to look at Caroline.

  ‘When the trial’s over,’ he said at length, ‘perhaps this will all make sense to me. Perhaps my life will make sense. But it doesn’t now.’

  Caroline waited for a moment. ‘There’s a bit to do between here and there. You wanted to talk about it?’

  Paget nodded. ‘I did,’ he said, and then realized – a glancing thought – that Caroline had once more avoided talking about herself.

  ‘All right.’ Caroline finished her wine. ‘Tomorrow is Victor’s last witness – the woman who claims to have seen you leaving Richie’s apartment. As of now, where do you think we stand?’

  Since leaving court, Paget realized, he had thought of little else. ‘You have to take this a piece at a time,’ he said. ‘And our first defense is that Richie killed himself.

  ‘Salinas has done well there. Liz Shelton was strong on the medical evidence of murder, and no one Victor put on – whatever damage they did to Richie’s posthumous reputation – believes that he was suicidal. Neither, in truth, do I.’ Paget paused. ‘We should still make use of suicide as a defense. But if you asked the jury what they believe, odds on they pick murder.’

  ‘I agree,’ Caroline said with dispassion. ‘Which would leave us with reasonable doubt.’

  Paget nodded. ‘That breaks down on several parts. The first is whether I had a motive. That’s kind of a wash. On the one hand, if I were homicidal I certainly had reason enough to kill him. But so did Terri, she made clear – whether I wanted her to or not. And you’ve done a very good job of making the case that I would never kill this guy, if only because of Carlo.’

  Caroline considered this. ‘Also,’ she said then, ‘you’ve never owned a gun. Not unless your family passed it down – which would explain the age of the bullets and gun. But they’ve found no proof of that.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘So let’s take the evidence they do have,’ Caroline went on. ‘They thought they might have you with fibers in the house, but Terri explained those. Ditto the fibers in the car.’ She looked at him intently. ‘And of course, there are the fingerprints on the answering machine, which Terri neutralized so neatly.’

  When Paget did not comment, Caroline continued as if she had not paused. ‘In terms of your whereabouts, you’re weak on the night before you left for Italy. If anything, Carlo hurt you there – the fact that it looked like he was lying underscores the fact that no one can say you were home.’ She looked at him sharply. ‘Except, of course, you.’

  It was a probe, Paget knew. Again, he chose to ignore it. ‘On the other hand,’ he countered, ‘you’ve parlayed Richie’s ten-thousand-dollar payoff from Colt into murderous drug dealers and homicidal politicians, who have gone undetected because of the meddling of a biased D.A. and a self-promoting reporter. Whose source, we both agree, is far more useful as a phantom suspect than as a witness.’ Paget sat back in his chair, stretching his legs in front of him. ‘If my whereabouts are a loose end, so are the implications of Richie’s cash. As even Monk admitted.

  ‘Finally, you’ve taken Richie from a struggling Hispanic underdog to the kind of slimy con man who sometimes lives a very short life.’ Suddenly restless, Paget stood. ‘I doubt that anyone on the jury is lusting to avenge him. And it may well have occurred to them that Richie is someone whom people routinely imagine murdering.’

  Caroline smiled a little. ‘Suppose,’ she said after a time, ‘the jury were to vote tomorrow.’

  Paget had an answer, although it made him apprehensive to speak it aloud. ‘I’ve been wrong before,’ he said finally. ‘But on this evidence, I think they acquit me. Lerner might even direct a verdict.’

  ‘Agreed.’ Caroline spoke more quietly now. ‘What if tomorrow’s eyewitness swears beyond doubt that she saw you leave Richie’s apartment. And I can’t shake her?’

  Paget began pacing. ‘Then everything changes.’

  ‘Then,’ Caroline said behind him, ‘you have to think about testifying. Or whether you take Mac’s deal and plead to voluntary manslaughter. Because you’ll be in real trouble.’

  Paget felt the words in the pit of his stomach. He did not turn. ‘Suppose,’ he said finally, ‘that you can shake this lady. What kind of a defense do I put on then?’

  ’What do you think?’

  He turned to her. ‘None. That’s how you’ve been figuring it, all along.’

  Caroline raised an eyebrows. ‘Have I?’

  Paget nodded. ‘The whole pattern of your cross-examination has been to put our case on through Victor’s witnesses. Pretty much the way we’d do it if I choose not to testify.

  ‘First, we’d consider calling a forensic expert to quarrel with Liz Shelton. But we can’t find a good one who doesn’t agree with her on the essentials, and you’ve already done the best you can on cross. For the jury, Shelton was a long time ago, and a bad expert of our own might only remind them of how persuasive she was. So in the end, we wouldn’t call one.

  ‘What we would do is try to damage Richie. Which, of course, you’ve already done.’

  Caroline, Paget saw, had begun smiling again. ‘Finally,’ he concluded, ‘we’d consider calling character witnesses to say that I’m a kind and gentle person, incapable of murder. But the two best witnesses for that are Terri and Carlo. You not only got them on during Victor’s case, but you’ve even sneaked in that film today, my outburst about guns.’ Paget paused, adding quietly, ‘And calling more witnesses to say I’m wonderful would only serve to remind the jury that I’m not speaking for myself, wouldn’t it?’

  Still smiling faintly, Caroline poured herself a second glass of wine, lids lowered, carefully measuring the amount. ‘What about putting Mac on the stand?’

  Now it was Paget’s turn to smile. ‘You never intended to do that, Caroline. Not for a second.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because Mac’s more useful as a sinister puppeteer than as someone the jury can see – an amiable-looking politician fully capable of sounding righteous and aggrieved.’ His voice softened again. ‘You only threatened him to get a man-slaughter deal. In case I needed it.’

  Caroline gave him along, considering look. ‘So,’ she said at length, ‘if I can break this woman down tomorrow, we’re agreed?’

  ‘Of course,’ Paget said with a trace of irony. ‘You’ve already written your summation, haven’t you? “Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Salinas has indeed made out a case – for Mr Paget.”’

  Caroline was not smiling now. ‘And if I can’t break her?’

  Paget was quiet for a moment. ‘But you will,’ he answered. ‘As I said, you’re among the best.’

  Driving home, Paget knew that he would not sleep tonight. He hoped that Caroline could.

  His house was dark and had a curious quiet. Usually, he could feel the presence of Carlo, imagine him studying or talking to a friend or watching sports highlights on ESPN. But tonight their home felt hermetic and airless, as if its life had crawled into a corner.

  Paget climbed the stairs. Although it was only ten-thirty and Carlo was a night owl, no crack of light came from beneath his door.

  Paget stopped in the hallway. Before he had left for Caroline’s, Carlo had seemed withdrawn, uninterested in where his father was going, happy enough to see him leave. He had mentioned no plans to go out himself.

  Paget knocked softly on his son’s door.

  There was no answer. Cautiously, as if expecting to find a body, Paget opened the door.

  Carlo lay on his bed, in a T-shirt and jeans. His upward stare at Paget was both defensive and profoundly uncurious. It took only an instant for Paget to smell dope.

  ‘Since when,’ he said to Carlo, ‘have you been smoking this stuff?’

  ‘And you didn’t?’ Carlo sounded lucid enough, but his voic
e was slowed down, as if he were listening to its echo. ‘Or does it bug you that I’m doing it at home?’

  It was like hearing the taped replay of the baby-boomer parent’s nightmare argument, a son or daughter confronting a parent’s hypocrisy: ‘Do you mind that I’m living with Johnny, Mom and Dad, or do you just want me to pretend not to fuck him while we’re visiting?’ All at once. Paget knew what was wrong.

  It was plain enough. The relationship of a parent with a teenager is shot through with ambiguities and hypocrisies, large and small – the child’s dependence and resentment, the parent’s self-indulgences and prohibitions. But somewhere within this uneasy mix, in the best of families – his and Carlo’s – both parent and child know which lines should not be crossed: the child’s sense of privacy, the parent’s sense of propriety. A delicate balance preserved until, as adults, both sides can either laugh about it or forget it.

  Quite deliberately, Carlo had crossed the line.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Paget asked.

  Carlo shrugged lazily. ‘You’ve got martinis.’

  Carlo’s eyes seemed fixed, his pupils a little wider. ‘That’s pretty puerile,’ Paget answered. ‘But I’m not sure you’d get that right now. This is about you, not me.’

  Carlo shrugged again. ‘This isn’t hurting anything.’

  ‘It isn’t helping, either. For example, what about the basketball team?’

  Carlo’s eyes widened, as if he had just been given a glimpse of the surreal, and then he began to laugh. ‘What about the basketball team,’ he echoed with amazed derision. ‘What about your trial, Dad?’

  Paget sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Okay,’ he said at length. ‘That was truly dumb. What I should have said is that I love you and I want to know what’s happening.’

  ‘What’s happening?’ Carlo’s voice was still amazed but a little less hostile. ‘Give me a break, Dad. I’m getting used to things here as they’re going to be. You know, when you’re not around anymore.’

  Paget’s nerves seemed to go dead. ‘I’ll be around.’

  ‘Sure. And they weren’t going to indict you. Then, when they did, you were going to take care of it all. And then I saw you can’t.’ His son’s voice rose. ‘What do you think I was trying to do the other day? You’ve been bullshitting me, Dad. Don’t you think I know by now when you’re feeding me a crock of shit? Do you think it’s only you who sees things about me?’

  The words jarred Paget; the time had passed when he could lull his son, and he had been too preoccupied to face that. ‘All right,’ he said as last. ‘I’m in trouble. But not because I killed Richie.’ He shook his head in despair. ‘God, Carlo, I don’t want you to be any part of this.’

  ‘I am part of it.’ His son sat up on his elbows. ‘I’m tired of pretending for you. Just how much do you think I can take?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Carlo’s voice hardened. ‘There are a lot of things you’re not telling me.’

  Slowly, Paget nodded. ‘There are some things I’m not telling anyone, Carlo. Because I can’t.’

  Carlo studied him. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because, in the end, they don’t have to do with me. And because it would do me no good to say them.’ He paused. ‘You’re the only person, son, to whom I’ve even said this much.’

  Carlo gave him a look of doubt. ‘Including Terri?’

  In the tangle of events, Paget wondered, had Carlo come to believe Terri was more important to him? ‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘Including Terri.’

  Carlo was quiet. ‘You’re going to break up, aren’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Paget felt a wave of sadness. But even the future they could have had, he realized, was not as real as this boy in front of him. ‘Maybe whatever role we were supposed to play in each other’s lives was also supposed to end. But you and I aren’t supposed to end. Ever.’

  Carlo stared down at the bed. ‘It’s like we’ve been so distant.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I did something careless and haven’t known how to get out of it. If I could tell you about it, I would. But as I said, it’s about someone else.’

  Carlo looked up at him. ‘Do you know who killed Richie?’

  Paget watched his son’s expression as Carlo hoped for an answer that would exculpate his father. ‘I’d only be guessing,’ he said finally. ‘I’m not even sure that Richie didn’t kill himself.’ Pausing, Paget finished with emphasis. ‘But about this trial, I’m doing everything I can. If you believe nothing else, believe that I’m a smart lawyer and know what’s best to do. I haven’t lost that.’

  Carlo shook his head. ‘This is hard, Dad. I can’t sleep anymore. I can’t even talk to you.’

  ‘You can. About everything but this. And even about this, you’ve at least told me how things are.’ He clasped Carlo’s shoulder. ‘In a week, maybe two, this really will be over. One way or the other.’

  Carlo simply watched him, taking this in. It was so strange, Paget thought, that this talk had begun with his son smoking marijuana. ‘About the dope,’ Paget said finally. ‘I smoked it for a while, and then I stopped. There wasn’t that much point to it, and for the most part, it makes you slow and kind of dumb.’

  ‘There’s a point,’ Carlo said flatly.

  ‘Reality avoidance? That’s just a problem.’

  Carlo rubbed his temples. ‘You’re never going to testify, are you?’

  ‘No. I’m not.’

  Carlo appeared to reflect for a time. And then he reached beneath his bed and pulled out a sandwich bag full of grass. He cupped it in his hand for an instant, then tossed it in his father’s lap. ‘You can throw this out, Dad. It wasn’t that good, anyhow.’

  Chapter 15

  To Paget, all the energies of the courtroom flowed toward Salinas’s final witness: the jury, mute and attentive; Caroline Masters, watching with preternatural stillness; Salinas himself, asking his warm-up questions in a manner that seemed stiff and tense. Even Jared Lerner could not take his eyes off her.

  Georgina Keller was an ordinary woman: a widow in her seventies, a rail-thin former teacher with her thinning hair dyed black, a mottled face, and the slightly agitated manner of a hypochondriac. But the burden of her importance here showed in her dazed look at the jammed courtroom, the way she kept blinking, as if dragged from a dark place into a room filled with klieg lights. Even her voice, low and raspy, filled Paget with remembered alarm: it was that of the woman, coming from the darkness of the police auditorium, who had picked him from the lineup. Next to her, on an easel, was a black-and-white photograph of Paget himself.

  The questioning began in earnest. Caroline picked up a pen, poised it over her pad, still looking at Georgina Keller. In the jury box, Joseph Duarte did the same.

  ‘And where is your apartment,’ Salinas asked, ‘relative to Mr Arias’s?’

  Keller pursed her lips. ‘I’m at the end of the hall. Mr Arias is, or was, the apartment next to me. On the left-hand side, if you’re facing out.’

  ‘And how many feet, approximately, was Mr Arias’s door from yours?’

  ‘Perhaps twelve feet. Fifteen at the most.’

  ‘And did there come a time, on the night before you left on your vacation, that you became concerned about Mr Arias?’

  ‘There did.’ Pausing, Keller gave a blink of nervousness, touching the bridge of her nose as if to push up glasses that were not there. ‘I heard a noise in Mr Arias’s apartment – the walls aren’t very thick, and I could hear when he listened to music, or even sometimes when he talked to his little girl. But this time I heard voices and then a thud. Like something, or someone, hitting the floor.’

  ‘Did the noise worry you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Keller looked vaguely at the jury. ‘Because of the voices, you see. It was two men speaking like they were angry. They were muffled, of course. But one of them sounded like Mr Arias.’ Keller continued more quietly. ‘What disturbed me was what happened after I heard the thud. Suddenly I couldn’t
hear any voices at all. Just silence.’

  ‘And what did you do, if anything?’

  Keller looked apprehensive, as if her memory of the moment was colored by Richie’s death. ‘I went to the door,’ she said in a brittle tone, ‘and cracked it open. As far as the door chain would permit.’

  ‘And what did you see?’

  In the jury box, Marian Celler leaned forward to hear Keller’s answer. ‘Nothing, at first.’ Turning, Keller almost peered at Paget, and then her head snapped away. ‘A noise frightened me – a door opening in the hallway. I flinched so hard that the door chain rattled.’

  ‘And did you look out again?’

  Keller glanced quickly at Salinas, as if in a nervous pantomime of the action she described; Paget suddenly imagined her, peeking fretfully through the crack of a door. ‘Yes,’ she said slowly. ‘I did look again.’

  The courtroom was still. With her quirky mannerisms, Paget realized, Keller was an oddly effective witness: she seemed less to describe the scene than to inhabit it. As if sensing this, Salinas had begun nodding his encouragement. Quite gently, he asked, ‘And what did you see then?’

  ‘A man.’ Keller’s voice went soft with dread. ‘Coming out of Mr Arias’s apartment.’

  ‘And could you describe this man?’

  ‘Yes.’ There was a tremor in the words. ‘He was tall, in his mid to late thirties. He wore a gray suit, double-breasted, and his hair was kind of blond. Copper almost.’

  Keller held her head rigid now, as if straining to look not at Paget but into her memory. Watching her, Caroline’s face seemed quite calm; only her posture, rigid and unnatural, betrayed her tension.

  ‘Did this man do anything?’ Salinas asked.

  ‘He stopped – for a moment. I thought he saw me. But he hadn’t.’ Keller swallowed. ‘He was holding something, like a notebook or a journal. Then he put the journal in his left hand and began staring at his other hand. The next thing he did was odd.’

  Keller stopped abruptly.

  ‘What was that?’ Salinas prodded.