Eyes of a Child

by Richard North Patterson

  Velez grimaced. ‘Yes. On a new cotton skirt.’

  Caroline smiled in sympathy. ‘How was it to get out?’

  ‘I couldn’t,’ Velez said, and then nodded. ‘Wine – that’s hard to get out too.’

  ‘I’ve always thought so,’ Caroline told her. ‘Thank you, Ms Velez.’

  ‘It was all I could do,’ Caroline said at last.

  They were in Caroline’s car, driving Paget home. She had not asked where he wished to go but simply started driving; the atmosphere in the car was close and tense, and Caroline’s voice was flat with withheld anger.

  ‘I know that,’ Paget answered.

  Caroline stopped in front of the house. The only light came from streetlamps. But there was a yellow glow inside the house; Carlo was already home.

  Caroline stared ahead. ‘I set Victor up,’ she said, ‘and then walked right into my own cross on Keller. All that stuff I did about the man leaving Richie’s apartment and Keller looking at his sleeve instead of his face. Pure suicide.’

  ‘You didn’t know.’

  Caroline shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Chris. But you really fucked this up.’

  Her tone was factual but not unkind. Suddenly Caroline sounded tired. They were quiet for a while.

  ‘This changes everything,’ she said.

  ‘It can’t.’

  She turned to him. ‘Spell it out for me, then.’

  His own voice was tight now. ‘I can’t testify, Caroline. How much clearer do I have to be?’

  She stared at him. ‘You don’t,’ she said finally.

  Paget felt a burst of anger. ‘If you think this has been easy for me, you try it. Compared to my role, yours is light work.’

  Caroline’s eyes narrowed. ‘So you want me to stick to this –no defense. Even after today.’

  ‘Yes.’ Paget paused. ‘I have no choice.’

  Caroline turned away.

  Perhaps, Paget thought, she had wanted him to be innocent. Perhaps she did not know with whom she was angry – Paget or herself. After a moment, she leaned back in the seat. ‘Then it’s closing argument tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I suppose I’d better go, then.’

  Paget’s own anger had died. He touched her shoulder, then opened the car door and got out. It was a while before Caroline pulled away from the curb.

  Carlo was in the library.

  The television was on, a film clip of Anna Velez leaving the courtroom. When Carlo turned, there were tears in his eyes. But what Paget saw was worse; for the first time, his son believed him a murderer.

  Awkwardly, Paget hugged him; stiffly, Carlo returned it.

  There was nothing either could say.

  Chapter 17

  When Salinas rose to give his closing argument, Terri and Carlo were together in the courtroom.

  The idea was Terri’s. She had called the night before, Paget told her of Anna Velez and that he still would offer no witnesses of his own. Terri did not argue; days before, she had stopped asking questions. After a moment’s silence, she said that it was important that the jury, before cloistering to reach a verdict, remember the people who loved Paget most; if the case was over, she added, there was nothing to keep her or Carlo from the courtroom. Terri had called Carlo herself; almost defiantly, Carlo had insisted to his father that he come. Now they sat behind his father, her lover, where the jury could see them.

  The symbolism was effective: not only did these people need Paget in their lives, their presence said, but Terri did not believe Richie’s charges against Carlo. Only Paget would realize how little they spoke to each other, compared to a half year ago, or how tired Carlo looked. As for Terri, she had waited until the jury filed in to learn forward and squeeze his hand; even when she smiled, a part of her seemed elsewhere.

  ‘You’ll be all right,’ she had whispered.

  But he did not believe that, nor did Caroline seem to. This morning she was unusually quiet; the professional élan had been replaced by a certain inwardness. On the day before what perhaps would be her most important closing argument, she had been dealt a surprise that unsettled her equilibrium and made her task far more difficult. It left no time for chatter.

  As for Paget, he felt alone. What made it worse was that this was no one’s fault but his; from the first time Monk had come to his home, he had begun stumbling blindly down a path that now, abruptly, had closed behind him. He could not talk to anyone, no matter how deeply he wished to, and he did not know if he ever could. All that he had left was the jury.

  They seemed more alert, perhaps a little surprised to be awaiting closing arguments instead of Paget’s witnesses. It was a bad sign that so few looked in his direction; even Marian Celler, whom Caroline had wanted so much, kept her gaze straight ahead. Joseph Duarte was reviewing the notes that, Paget well knew, ended with the damage done by Anna Velez. Only Victor Salinas appeared at ease.

  ‘Mr Salinas,’ Jared Lerner said gravely, ‘you may begin.’

  Gazing at the jury, Salinas looked solemn and self-contained, a serious man doing a necessary job. There was no trace of showmanship.

  ‘This,’ he began, ‘was a murder. And from the moment that he killed Ricardo Arias to the final and devastating moments of this trial, Christopher Paget has been trying to get away with it.’

  He paused, letting that sink in. The jury watched with open faces, ready to believe him.

  ‘The mantra Ms Masters will repeat to you, I am sure, is that you must believe that we have proven Christopher Paget guilty of murder beyond a reasonable doubt, or you must find him innocent. So let us talk – right now – about what we’re not required to show.

  ‘We don’t need a witness who saw Mr Paget shoot Ricardo Arias. That hardly ever happens.

  ‘Nor does every witness have to be sure about every scrap of testimony.’

  This was clever, Paget thought with apprehension: it would be Caroline’s strategy to slice and dice the case into a thousand facts and then to cast doubt where she could. ‘No,’ Salinas continued, ‘our job here is to present sufficient proof, accumulated in the form of circumstantial evidence, to satisfy men and women of common sense – the same common sense that Ms Masters asked you to bring to this courtroom – that Mr Paget is guilty. Guilty,’ Salinas repeated, ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.

  ‘Is there a reasonable doubt that Ricardo Arias was murdered? There is not.

  ‘The medical examiner spelled out for us the medical evidence.’

  Holding up his hand, Salinas ticked off his points one by one: ‘The absence of blood spatters on Mr Arias’s hands.

  ‘The absence of gunpowder on his hands.

  ‘The strange position of the body.

  ‘The curious angle of the bullet.

  ‘And all those things Mr Arias plainly did not do to himself – the abrasion on his leg, the gash on his head, the bloody nose.

  ‘Mr Arias did not beat himself up.’ Pausing, Salinas gave a first grim smile. ‘Nor did he pirouette around the living room, taking pratfall after pratfall, and then shoot himself in the mouth from the most uncomfortable position he could imagine after wiping his nose to make himself presentable.

  ‘He did not make a coffee date to tell Elena’s teacher that he had decided not to kill himself.

  ‘Or make an appointment with Dr Gates just to keep his options open.

  ‘Or take five shirts to the laundry to provide a choice of fresh clothes for the funeral.’

  Pausing, Salinas slowly shook his head. ‘No, ladies and gentlemen – this was a man who expected to live until the moment that he died, and no one who knows him believes otherwise.

  ‘Not Elena’s teacher.

  ‘Not his own mother.

  ‘Not the psychologist he saw perhaps forty times.

  ‘Not even, it is obvious, his wife. Christopher Paget’s lover.’

  Turning, Paget glanced at Terri. Her gaze at Salinas was a silent challenge. But the jury did not see her; they were wired to t
he prosecutor. Even Caroline seemed absorbed, her ultimate compliment.

  ‘Which brings us,’ Salinas went on, ‘to the defendant. Christopher Paget.

  ‘As Judge Lerner will instruct you, motive is not an element of the crime. But does anyone doubt that Mr Paget had several motives? The only “reasonable doubt” is which one was the strongest – political ruin, personal exposure, the loss of his relationship to his lover, or public knowledge that his son, Carlo, was charged with molesting Mrs Peralta’s daughter.’

  Carlo Paget stared stonily at the prosecutor. But Terri appeared as if her thoughts were elsewhere. Neither Terri nor Carlo looked at each other.

  Salinas spoke to Joseph Duarte now; like Caroline, Paget guessed, Salinas must be expecting Duarte to become the foreman. ‘Ms Masters,’ he said, ‘tells us that Mr Paget loved his son far too much to murder Mr Arias.

  ‘It is equally fair to ask whether he loves his son too much to see him publicly labeled as the molester of a five-year-old child.

  ‘Ms Masters tells us that Mr Paget loves Ms Peralta far too much to leave her.

  ‘Perhaps, instead, he wanted her too much to lose her.

  ‘And then there are those far less worthy motives – ambition and self-protection – which Mr Paget had in such abundance. Just as surely,’ Salinas said with sudden harshness, ‘as he had abundant opportunity for murder.

  ‘For, as became so abundantly clear to us all, here is a man who cannot account for several critical hours on the last night that anyone saw or heard from Ricardo Arias.

  ‘Because, for those same hours, no one at all saw Christopher Paget. Not Ms Peralta and not his son – however hard he tried to hear things.

  ‘In truth, there was no one home for Carlo Paget to see or hear. Because someone else did see his father, leaving Ricardo Arias’s apartment.’ Salinas turned abruptly to Caroline Masters with an air of challenge. ‘Georgina Keller, who described Mr Paget perfectly – before she saw a single picture.’

  Salinas faced the jury again, speaking with quiet irony. ‘As one lawyer to another, I should pause here for a moment and pay tribute to the true sophistication that Caroline Masters has brought to Mr Paget’s defense. The way, for example, she suggested that Ms Peralta – somewhat like Typhoid Mary – might have tracked fibers from Mr Arias’s rug into Mr Paget’s home, ground them into the driver’s-side carpet of Mr Paget’s car, and, better yet, made Mr Arias a gift of Mr Paget’s fingerprints.

  ‘So that it was no surprise, at least to those of us who admire her, when Ms Masters suggested that Mrs Keller had summoned Mr Paget from her television set.’

  From Caroline, Paget saw, there was a brief, thin smile, the tip-off to how unamused she was: adroitly, Salinas was trying to lead the jury to view her with skepticism.

  ‘It’s a touchy point for the defense,’ Salinas continued, ‘because if Mr Paget was at Mr Arias’s apartment that night, he not only had every chance to kill Ricardo Arias but he lied to Inspector Monk about it – a telling admission of guilt. So it was doubly important that Ms Masters discredit this critical eyewitness. And she tried very hard; suggesting not only that Mrs Keller had confused a real man in a gray suit with an image on a screen but that Mrs Keller had spent far too much time watching this man examine an injured hand, and a stained sleeve, to truly take note of his face.

  ‘Here, I can only sympathize,’ Salinas said with the same irony. ‘For little did Ms Masters know that her very best work, transmitted through television, would summon Anna Velez into our midst. The woman to whom, shortly after the police began their inquiry, Mr Paget made a gift of a pair of shoes and a gray wool suit coat with a stained sleeve.’

  Salinas’s voice turned hard. ‘With that, there is no doubt anymore that Georgina Keller saw exactly what she said she saw – Christopher Paget leaving Ricardo Arias’s apartment, examining his injured hand and the stained sleeve of his gray suit coat.’

  Paget felt numb; in the eyes of the jurors, locked onto Salinas, he had a premonition of the verdict. Next to him, Caroline’s face was blank.

  ‘Like his lies to the police, ladies and gentlemen, this charitable “gift” is an admission of guilt. Part of a cover-up which began with Mr Paget’s trip to Italy and culminated in his defense.’ Salinas paused for an instant. ‘Such as it has been.’

  It was the nearest that, without reprimand, Salinas could come to reminding the jury that Paget had not testified. ‘An admission of guilt,’ Salinas repeated, ‘by a guilty man.

  ‘The man Ricardo Arias was waiting for, when he told Ms Peralta he had an appointment.

  ‘The man whose trip to Italy, like his trip to Goodwill, is the alibi available to a man who is as careless of money as he was careless of life.’

  Salinas spread his arms. ‘And yet after all this, ladies and gentlemen, Ms Masters will ask you to look at what isn’t there. She will ask you, for example, why we never tied Mr Paget to the gun that killed Ricardo Arias.’ His voice grew quiet. ‘But all you need is common sense. And with that, you can ask Ms Masters, “Are you seriously suggesting that Mr Paget would buy a revolver over the counter, register it in his name, then plant it with Mr Arias’s body as part of a fake suicide?” And then, armed with the same common sense she recommends to you, you will answer her, “No. It is Ricardo Arias who, if he meant to kill himself, would not bother to conceal the purchase of a gun.”

  ‘Common sense, ladies and gentlemen. It really is all you need to penetrate the smoke and mirrors which is Mr Paget’s defense. It is all you need to know that someone who lied to the police – let alone an experienced lawyer like Mr Paget – did so for a reason.’

  Salinas’s face and voice had become commanding now. ‘Mr Paget’s reason,’ he concluded, ‘is that he killed Ricardo Arias. There is no reasonable doubt about it. And, for that, Christopher Paget must pay the price.

  ‘I implore you to return a verdict of guilty. Guilty of murder, in the first degree.’

  Finishing, Salinas gazed at Joseph Duarte. Instinctively, Paget turned to Terri and Carlo. Terri was still looking at Salinas. But Carlo saw his father; the way he tried to smile made Paget feel that much worse.

  When Caroline rose, she walked to the jury box and stood silent, gazing from one juror to the next.

  ‘Did you notice,’ she began, ‘how Mr Arias disappeared from Mr Salinas’s closing argument? Yet when his case opened, Mr Arias was the purehearted underdog, battling for the safety of his daughter against the rich and arrogant Chris Paget – wife stealer, protector of child molesters, and, of course, killer of the less fortunate.’

  Caroline paused, letting her startling first words make their own impression. ‘The banishment of Mr Arias, members of the jury, is the key to this case. For the one thing that Mr Salinas has proven beyond doubt – and these were his witnesses, remember – is that the one decent man in this case is the one he asks you to convict of murder.’

  She looked directly at Duarte now. ‘But let us consider why Mr Salinas has banished Mr Arias, and why that is so important to the decision you must make here.’

  It was a good opening, Paget thought; in less than a minute, Caroline had turned the tables on Salinas and reminded the jury of who Ricardo Arias really was. ‘The real Ricardo Arias,’ she went on. ‘A man who was twice accused of stealing.

  ‘Who was fired from at least four jobs.

  ‘Who exploited his own wife and cheated his own mother.

  ‘Who used his six-year-old daughter to collect ten thousand dollars from a tabloid.

  ‘Who, it is clear, engineered his custody fight as the paid hireling of Mr Paget’s political opponents to torpedo Chris’s candidacy for the Senate.

  ‘Who insisted on putting Elena through an unnecessary hearing, despite the fact that his own psychologist implored him not to do it.’ Duarte, Paget noticed, seemed to watch Caroline with interest. Her voice grew quiet. ‘A man who did that because the psychological evaluation – if Ms Peralta continued to insist on it – would expos
e him as a compulsive liar, cheat, and worse.

  ‘In sum, Ricardo Arias was a man who hid his motives and his fears from his mother, from his wife, and from everyone else he ever met.’

  Glancing at Terri, Paget sensed the pain beneath her unflinching gaze at Caroline. She had been married to Richie for six years, shared a child with him, and now he had been revealed as someone she had understood too little and too late.

  ‘And Ricardo Arias,’ Caroline went on softly, ‘had so very much to fear. A life at the margins, unemployed and unemployable. A future of financial desperation. Exposure as a sociopath.

  ‘And, almost certainly, the loss of his daughter – his only connection to the one person who could still take care of him and keep his life together. Teresa Peralta.’

  Caroline turned to Marian Cellar now, tone passionate and imploring. ‘Why is it so important that we focus on the real Ricardo Arias? First, because Mr Salinas is so certain that Ricardo Arias did not kill himself.

  ‘I say, who can know? But when someone is as troubled as Ricardo Arias, I defy anyone to say anything else beyond a reasonable doubt.

  ‘The medical examiner,’ Caroline went on, ‘cites the lack of blood spatter and gunshot residue on Mr Arias’s hands.’ Her voice rose suddenly. ‘But there were traces of blood and GSR on Mr Arias’s hands, if not enough to satisfy Dr Shelton. And there are also smears that suggest he wiped his nose – which, if true, shatters the notion that someone knocked Mr Arias to the ground, shoved a revolver in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.

  ‘I don’t know how Mr Arias got the abrasion on his leg and the gash on his head.’ Caroline paused for emphasis. ‘And neither does the medical examiner.

  ‘But I do know that the way she wrapped up the medical evidence, trying to explain everything, is just a little too neat. As neat,’ Caroline said with sudden quiet, ‘as believing that Ricardo Arias found someone sticking a gun in his mouth and decided to wipe his nose.’

  Caroline spun on Duarte again. ‘We don’t even know when he died, do we? But Mr Arias may well have died when Christopher Paget was on a plane to Italy. Think about that when you consider the prosecutor’s plea to convict him of murder.’