Degree of Guilt

by Unknown

  ‘That tape should be suppressed.’ Sharpe’s voice had an undertone of disgust. ‘It may be appalling, but it’s not relevant to anything.’

  Masters stared at the tape. ‘It’s relevant to some things,’ she said. ‘Why Laura Chase killed herself. Who James Colt really was. How he felt about women. If I were a historian, I would strongly argue that Colt is due a hard second look. But I’m merely a municipal court judge.’ She paused. ‘And, at the moment, I wish I weren’t even that.’

  ‘I may agree with you, as a matter of personal philosophy,’ Sharpe answered. ‘But that has nothing to do with any issue in this case – which, after all, is about the death of Mark Ransom.’ Sharpe glanced at Terri. ‘What the defense is trying to do is create a scandal which will deflect attention from Ms Carelli’s culpability. And, frankly, make this case expensive for the district attorney by alienating a family that still matters, a son who is running for governor, and all the people who believe that the country’s finest moment was cut short by a plane crash.’

  ‘The tape goes to who Mark Ransom was,’ Terri shot back. ‘Our defense is that Mark Ransom was a tangle of sexual pathology, at the heart of which was a need for physical and mental dominance of women as symbolized by his obsession with Laura Chase. Any political damage to District Attorney Brooks or Ms Sharpe is the incidental cost of a case they wanted to bring.’ Terri paused. ‘I don’t know how they can argue that the tape Mark Ransom played for Ms Carelli – one that sexually aroused him in the moments before he attacked her – isn’t relevant.’

  ‘In other words,’ Sharpe said to Masters, ‘make the victim so distasteful that it doesn’t matter if someone murdered him. It’s the world’s tiredest defense strategy, Your Honor, dressed up as a feminist cause.’

  Terri shook her head. ‘Our strategy is to show that this isn’t murder at all, Your Honor. We ask that you not rule on the tape until you’ve heard all of our witnesses. Including the three witnesses Ms Sharpe wants you to hear in chambers.’

  Masters looked at her. ‘But the only purpose of that is for me to rule on whether their testimony is admissible. And, therefore, can be part of the hearing on which the court determines probable cause.’

  ‘That’s why I suggest you wait to rule on this. We think that the testimony of our witnesses, and the Laura Chase tape, should be taken as a whole.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘The first is Melissa Rappaport, Mark Ransom’s ex-wife. The second is Marcy Linton, the writer.’

  Masters nodded. ‘I’ve read her stories. And the third?’

  Terri paused. ‘Lindsay Caldwell.’

  Masters raised an eyebrow. ‘What does Ms Rappaport have to offer us?’

  ‘A description of Mr Ransom’s obsession with Laura Chase, and with rape. Among other things.’

  ‘What about Ms Linton?’

  ‘Mark Ransom raped her,’ Terri said softly. ‘In Aspen, four years ago. He came to her cabin, under the pretense of a literary meeting, to commit rape.’

  ‘And she’s willing to say so?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Masters looked pensive. ‘And Lindsay Caldwell?’

  Terri tried to read her face. ‘Lindsay Caldwell,’ she answered quietly, ‘was the “her” Laura mentioned. On the tape that I just played.’

  From the side, Sharpe turned to stare at Terri. Masters’s eyes flickered. With equal quiet, she asked, ‘Can you explain the relevance of that?’

  ‘Yes. Ransom told Ms Caldwell that he had another, more explicit tape regarding her relationship with Laura Chase. He used it to arrange a “meeting.”’ Terri paused. ‘It was scheduled for the day after he met Ms Carelli.’

  For once, Sharpe looked openly surprised; Terri watched her try to calculate the impact of what she had just heard. From the corner of her eye, Terri saw Christopher Paget’s faint smile of approval, to assure her that she was doing well.

  ‘Ms Caldwell’s also willing to come forward?’ Masters asked.

  ‘Yes. If you decide to let her testify in court, she will. In the meanwhile, we ask that you take all steps possible to assure that any appearance in chambers remain private.’

  Masters nodded, somber. ‘Of course.’

  ‘I admire Lindsay Caldwell,’ Sharpe put in. ‘But blackmail still isn’t rape. Assuming that blackmail is what Ms Peralta’s implying.’

  ‘Attempted blackmail,’ Terri said. ‘And attempted rape.’

  Masters was gazing at the tape again. To Terri, she seemed unusually subdued.

  ‘Explain your theory, Teresa. Step by step.’

  Terri nodded, organizing her thoughts. She was not as facile with words as Paget; what worked best for her was to be plainspoken. ‘In brief,’ she began, ‘Ransom’s call to Mary Carelli was to blackmail her into being alone with him. The Laura Chase tape was something that excited him; he meant to use Ms Carelli’s tape to force her to have sex.’ Terri paused, speaking more deliberately. ‘When she refused, Ransom was already aroused by the Laura Chase tape. So he tried to rape Ms Carelli, and she shot him in self-defense.’

  Masters looked from Terri to Paget. ‘How do you intend to acknowledge sexual blackmail without dealing with the existence and contents of Ms Carelli’s tape?’

  ‘We have some thoughts about that,’ Paget answered. ‘But for now, I’d prefer not to share them with Ms Sharpe.’

  ‘I think we’re entitled to know,’ Sharpe put in, ‘if Mr Paget intends some end run around the tape.’

  ‘What you’re entitled to,’ Paget rejoined, ‘is what Mary Carelli gives you on the stand. As Judge Masters has already ruled.’

  Masters nodded. ‘I’m not here to force Mr Paget’s hand, Ms Sharpe. You and I will find out together whatever it is she has to say. Then I’ll decide if you can use Ms Carelli’s tape.’

  ‘And this tape?’ Terri asked.

  ‘I’m going to reserve ruling, Ms Peralta, as you suggest.’ Masters gave her a thin smile. ‘Welcome to a speaking role, incidentally.’

  ‘Thank you, Your Honor.’

  Masters’s smile faded. ‘As to your witnesses, I agree with Ms Sharpe that Rappaport and Caldwell should be heard in chambers first.’ She turned to Sharpe. ‘Not so Ms Linton. I want her testimony in open court.’

  Sharpe looked surprised. ‘Really, Your Honor, I’d request Ms Linton also be heard in private. We need to explore whether her alleged experience was sufficiently similar to Ms Carelli’s supposed rape to qualify as evidence of a pattern on behalf of Mr Ransom.’ She paused. ‘If this were a rape prosecution, it seems certain that the testimony of Ms Linton would be excluded as too prejudicial to Mr Ransom. At the Willie Smith trial, you will recall, the prosecution had three women ready to testify. The court excluded all of them.’

  Masters nodded. ‘I recognize the irony,’ she responded. ‘If Mr Ransom had succeeded in staying alive, and you were prosecuting him for Ms Carelli’s rape, I would probably be forced to exclude Ms Linton altogether. As much as I disagree with the law as it now stands.’ Her voice grew quiet. ‘But I don’t have that problem, do I? Because Mark Ransom’s dead.’

  ‘That’s correct,’ Terri put in. ‘Under the Evidence Code, a victim’s prior acts of violence are relevant to the question of self-defense. Including rape.’

  ‘Truly,’ Masters said dryly, ‘the law is a wonderful thing.’ She turned back to Sharpe. ‘How many times, Marnie, have you asked a judge to help you prove rape by letting in testimony like Ms Linton’s?’

  ‘Often,’ Sharpe answered crisply. ‘And I’ve never won.’

  ‘If you ever have one in front of me, you might try again.’ With another brief smile, Masters turned back to Terri. ‘I’ll hear Ms Linton after Ms Carelli. And please bring on Ms Rappaport.’

  Melissa Rappaport wore a gray suit and an expression of birdlike alertness, which, for Terri, did not conceal her humiliation.

  She sat across from Caroline Masters, her back not touching the chair. Terri sat next to her, Sharpe a little fa
rther away; at Paget’s suggestion, he and Sharpe’s assistant had stepped outside. The stenographer sat in her usual corner. Rappaport had yet to speak.

  Caroline Masters had set aside her robe; suddenly her manner had none of the edge she reserved for lawyers. Her posture was relaxed, her tone businesslike but pleasant, her expression one of mild inquiry. She seemed less a judge than a caseworker unraveling a complex family problem. It was a side of Caroline that Terri had not seen.

  ‘I appreciate your coming,’ she told Rappaport. ‘The subject matter is inherently painful – human relations, and the turns they can take. Not to mention that this involves the death of a man to whom you were close, however complex those feelings might be.’ She nodded toward the stenographer. ‘I’m forced to make a record of what’s said here. But please be assured that unless I have you testify, that record will remain sealed.’

  Rappaport merely nodded; despite Terri’s best efforts to reassure her, it was as if she did not trust herself to speak. Terri was accustomed to the diminishing effect of courts, where the layman’s every gesture bespoke some loss of self, but the difference between this woman in her own apartment and in Caroline’s chambers was pronounced; even the nervous quickness of her movements seemed repressed. Her thumb and forefingers twisted an imagined cigarette.

  ‘Your Honor,’ Terri asked, ‘would you mind if Ms Rappaport smoked?’

  The judge gave her a brief, quizzical look; she had always hated cigarette smoke, and Terri knew it. ‘Would you care to?’ she asked Rappaport.

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  Caroline reached into the drawer and produced a standard glass ashtray. ‘It’s Judge Brookings’s,’ she explained. ‘When I borrowed these chambers, I found this filled with nonfilter Camels. You don’t smoke those, do you?’

  ‘No. Menthol cigarettes.’ Rappaport’s voice took on a shade of irony. ‘The benevolent brand that sponsors women’s tennis.’

  Caroline nodded. ‘Yes. I can just imagine Martina wheezing menthol as she jumps the net. But you may live longer – every time I hear Judge Brookings cough, I think of anthracite.’

  With a half smile, Rappaport watched the judge push the ashtray toward her. ‘It’s an indefensible habit,’ she replied. ‘And, like so much of what we do, self-inflicted.’

  ‘“Man is the complicating animal,”’ Caroline said. ‘Do light up.’

  Rappaport put a cigarette in her mouth. Her fingers were stiff; it took several flicks of her lighter to summon a flame. Terri watched Caroline take this in, await Rappaport’s first drag. Quietly, the judge said, ‘I’d like to hear about Mark Ransom.’

  Above the cigarette, Rappaport’s eyes froze. Caroline went on: ‘Ms Peralta can help out, of course. But this isn’t a formal proceeding, so we can have a conversation without the artificiality of court. Essentially, I’d like to know what you’d say if you were in court, so that I can determine its relevance to Mr Ransom’s death. If there is any.’

  Rappaport hesitated. ‘I’m not sure what’s even potentially relevant to Mark’s death.’

  Caroline Masters appraised her. ‘According to the defense, his sexual profile. I understand generally from Ms Peralta that he had an interest in “male dominance,” to use her words.’

  Watching Rappaport, Terri felt as if she had betrayed this woman. ‘When we talked in New York,’ Terri said to her, ‘you suggested that, pretty much from the beginning, Mr Ransom had some unusual desires. I don’t think the judge is asking for every last detail – just a sense of what Mark Ransom’s needs were, including his interest in Laura Chase, and how he acted them out.’

  Slowly, Rappaport nodded. The way Terri had phrased it put the focus on Mark Ransom, not her. It seemed to give her a way to talk.

  ‘The first thing I noticed,’ she told the judge in a toneless voice, ‘was Mark’s obsession with Laura Chase.’

  She sounded like an anthropologist, describing the obscure rites of a tribe she had studied from a distance. But Terri could hear the resonance behind the words.

  ‘You call it an obsession,’ Caroline said.

  ‘Yes. He read everything that he could find.’ Rappaport paused. ‘But much of it was visual.’

  ‘Her movies?’

  ‘Not just those. Magazines, fold-outs. Old calendars from when she was a starlet. Anything.’ Her voice became flat. ‘Nudes, of course, were especially valued.’

  Sharpe gave an impatient shake of the head. ‘Your Honor, this trip through the backwaters of a dead man’s sexual thoughts is both ghoulish and irrelevant. The question is not whether Mark Ransom subscribed to Hustler but why Ms Carelli killed him in that hotel suite. Surely it wasn’t for looking at pictures.’

  It was a shrewd intervention, Terri thought, intended to embarrass Melissa Rappaport while disrupting any rapport between her and Caroline. Terri saw the same thought run through the judge’s mind. In unruffled tones, Caroline said, ‘I find this very helpful. And I assume that Mr Ransom’s obsession with “pictures” was focused on Laura Chase. Is that correct, Ms Rappaport?’

  Rappaport nodded. ‘Yes.’

  Caroline leaned forward. ‘Other than looking, did this interest in Laura Chase erotica take any particular form?’

  Rappaport took another drag on her cigarette; exhaling, she studied the cloud of smoke as if it held some interest. ‘Sometimes, he would take out pictures and lock the bedroom door.’ She shrugged. ‘I knew what he was doing – I’d had brothers, after all. But it seemed a bit arrested.’

  She said it in disdainful tones, but then looked down; Terri imagined the humiliation of trying so hard to please Mark Ransom, at such loss of self, to be put aside for photos of another woman. As if she had the same thought, Caroline asked, ‘Did you ever discuss that with him?’

  ‘What was to discuss? You can fulfill your needs with photographs, or make love to your wife. But you can’t do both.’

  ‘How did you resolve that? Or did you?’

  Rappaport gave a thin smile. ‘Bondage. Of course.’

  The startling answer hung there a moment; beneath its deceptive casualness Terri felt a lacerating self-contempt. She looked away, as did Sharpe. Only Caroline Masters seemed unfazed; ten years at the P.D.’s office, she had once told Terri, broadened one’s sense of possibilities.

  ‘Is there some way in which you associate that with Laura Chase?’ Caroline asked.

  Rappaport looked past her. ‘Mark did. He told me that bondage freed a woman to find what was sexual inside herself, as Laura had. That Laura would have liked it.’ Her tone became bitter. ‘I tried to do what Laura would have liked.’

  Terri winced at Rappaport’s psychic dissonance – a woman of intellectual achievement, acting out her husband’s fantasies of a movie star who inspired feelings in her of both contempt and inadequacy. But Caroline seemed to sense that compassion required her to be clinical. In an even voice, she asked, ‘Did what Mr Ransom wanted follow any patterns?’

  ‘Yes.’ Rappaport’s voice was dry. ‘My subjugation, physically and emotionally. That was what excited him.’ She looked away. ‘Although afterwards he could hardly look at me.’

  ‘Do you know why?’

  ‘No.’ Her voice dropped. ‘Once I even suggested something to try to please him, to help him not be ashamed. He just became upset. Because I was the initiator, I think.’

  ‘Did this go on throughout your marriage?’

  ‘At some point, Mark lost interest. No matter what I did.’ Rappaport stubbed out her cigarette, grinding it to a nub. ‘So we went on to other things.’

  ‘The rape fantasy?’ Terri asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Rappaport looked directly at the judge. ‘I would come home, and Mark would pretend to rape me. I never knew when.’ She paused. ‘I think it was the surprise that he liked most.’

  ‘But this was consensual.’

  Rappaport’s eyes shut. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he ever hit you?’

  ‘No.’ Rappaport paused. ‘Not to hurt, and nev
er without my consent.’

  Terri watched Caroline Masters take that in. ‘Mr Ransom’s preoccupation with rape,’ Caroline ventured. ‘Do you also relate that to Laura Chase?’

  ‘Only at the end.’ Rappaport glanced at Terri. ‘But Ms Peralta seemed to think this important.’

  ‘What is it?’

  Rappaport paused, reached for her cigarettes. Terri remembered Rappaport’s face when she had first described this encounter, her own feelings when she had learned that it was Rappaport’s last with any man. But Rappaport’s response to Caroline suggested that it was something of marginal interest, thrown out to help Terri; only the tremor in her hand showed how much the memory still cost her.

  ‘It was the last time Mark and I had sexual relations of any kind.’ As if steadying herself, Rappaport took a leisurely drag. ‘As before, it seemed that he’d been losing interest in me – that the rape motif had played itself out, as it were. This time, however, he’d added a little something. When he threw me on the bed, there was a film of Laura Chase on the VCR.’ She shrugged. ‘Visually, it was of very poor quality.’

  For an instant, Terri flashed on Steinhardt, talking to Laura Chase. Did you buy up all the copies? Steinhardt had asked. I hope so, Laura had answered.

  ‘A stag film?’ Caroline asked. ‘With two men?’

  Rappaport stared at her for a moment. ‘What I remember most about it,’ she said quietly, ‘was Laura Chase crying as they did it. That stuck with me, for some odd reason.’ She paused. ‘That, and Mark’s renewed sexual vigor.’

  Caroline was quiet for a moment. ‘You said that was “the last time.” You and Mr Ransom separated after that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘As a result of this incident?’

  ‘That and another.’ Rappaport put down her cigarette. ‘After he did that, Mark went to a bar with some friends. They stayed out late. He told me, when he arrived home drunk, of having a “theoretical discussion” of certain sexual practices.’ She paused. ‘And then he wondered aloud if two of them could fuck me. While he watched.’