Dark Lady

by Richard North Patterson

  The sound again. A gurgling, Brett thought suddenly. Like the sound of a man whose lungs had filled with water. James, she thought with horror, was drowning in his own vomit. With quick, instinctive movements, Brett knelt beside him. As moonlight caught his face, she started CPR. She felt wetness on his lips, heard her own breath rattle in his throat. Her eyes shut tight. Like a delayed image on the retina, Brett saw his face in the instant before she had placed her mouth to his. As Brett recoiled, a warm spray rose from his lips, fleek-ing her face and throat and breasts. His body shivered beneath her in a twitching spasm. His face was speckled, eyes staring at nothing. The last soft spray of blood rose from his severed windpipe. A knife stuck from his ribs. Brett made no sound. She stood, trembling, straining to comprehend. Saw the blood on her fingers. Only then did she realize that she had pulled the knife from his chest. As her shriek carried across the water, Brett the reasoning human ceased to exist. All was a nightmare collage: Her hand clutching the knife. His wallet where it had fallen as he undressed. The dark slash through his throat. She whirled, staring wildly at the woods. The wind, moaning now, was the sound of James dying. Blindly, Brett ran toward the darkness. It enveloped her. Branches beat her face and body as she flailed at the darkness with both hands, hacking the leaves from her face. Now the darkness seemed to enter her mind. The flailing became a dream, no moment distinct from the other, the glade behind her no more real than the moon she could not see. Time had no end. And then, in sudden moonlight, the outline of a Jeep appeared. Brett slowed to a walk. Emerging naked from the trees, she was uncertain of what to believe. Tentative, she rested her hand on the Jeep.

  It was real. The keys were still inside. Brett opened the door, throwing what she had carded on the passenger seat, and turned the ignition. It worked. Brett locked herself in. She did not know how long she sat there, naked, listening to the low hum of the motor. She switched on the headlights. When she spun the Jeep around, their beams cut a path between the trunks of trees. Just as before. Shifting gears, Brett began to drive.

  Brett awoke in darkness. She tasted blood in her mouth, then vomit. Her lip felt swollen. She was slumped, naked, across the steering wheel. The stench of sickness filled the Jeep. Her stomach felt hollow. Brett felt a pounding in her head. Stiff-necked, she leaned back in the seat and looked around her. A wooded roadside. She did not know where she was, how she had gotten there, how long she had been unconscious. She was not sure why she was crying. A light came toward her. Brett winced, turning her head. The light filled her windshield. Behind the flashlight was the shape of a man. The light circled the hood of her car, moving toward the driver’s side. Brett curled sideways, face pressed against the door, arms folded across her chest, eyes and mouth clamped tight. There was a tap on the window. No, she thought. Don’t hurt me. Fingers digging into her skin, Brett forced her eyes open. The tap of the flashlight stopped. A beam of light crossed her body, captured her hips, a shadow of pubic hair. As Brett gazed at her own nakedness, a tremor ran through her. “Open up,” a voice demanded.

  A young man’s voice, Brett thought. She swallowed. “Open up,” he said again. “Police.” Police. By instinct, she reached for the window crank, one arm covering her breasts, and lowered the glass between her and the voice. He was young, with short dark hair and a pale face. Though he wore the jacket of the local police, she did not know him. He looked startled, embarrassed. “What happened?” Brett shook her head. Words did not seem to come. “Sick …” He thrust the flashlight into the car, jabbing the beam here and there. In a taut voice, he asked, “Is someone hurt?” Sudden images. Sraddling James in the night. His staring eyes. A knife in her hand. “Miss?” A nightmare. She must be stoned, the terrible pictures a dream. James was home in bed. Her voice was weak. “Please, take me home” His flashlight !it the passenger seat.

  A heap of clothes, a wallet. A bloody knife.

  “I’m taking you in, miss.”

  A convulsive sob tipped from Brett’s throat. “Why … ?” A moment’s pause. “For driving while intoxicated.”

  The beam moved back to her. Brett saw blood on her hands, speckles of blood on her torso.

  She curled, elbows on knees, and vomited.

  He gave her his jacket.

  Their drive to the station was lost to her. The shotgun in his car, the crackle of a radio, nothing else. When she found herself sitting hunched against the wall of a cinder-block cell, it was like awakening from a blackout. The policeman stood over her.

  Looking away from him, she pulled his jacket to midthigh, saw specks of vomit on her legs.

  In his hand was James’s wallet, opened to his driver’s license. Staring from the picture on the laminated card, James looked stiff and frightened.

  With terrible vividness, Brett saw the gash in his throat. The cop’s voice was strangely gentle. “I think there’s someone hurt out there, needing our help. If we can’t find him …”

  Brett’s eyes filled with tears. “Look by the lake,” she said dully. “Maybe he’s there.”

  “Heron Lake?” Swallowing, Brett nodded. The cop hurried away. Brett heard footsteps on file, his voice on the telephone. She waited, drained, until the cop returned.

  “I’ll drive you to the hospital,” he said.

  A blond, bird-faced woman in a state trooper’s uniform was waiting by the emergency entrance.

  The cop holding one arm, the trooper the other, Brett was led through the bleak corridors. She passed beneath the fluorescent lights as if sleepwalking.

  At the end of a corridor was an empty room.

  The trooper took Brett inside. Brett stood there, staring at the room—an examining table, two chairs, a metal cabinet and sink and mirror.

  She felt the young cop pause in the doorway. “Is this all right?” he asked.

  The trooper nodded. “For waiting, yes. Until they find something.”

  The cop hesitated, glancing at Brett, and left.

  The trooper closed the door behind them, stood facing Brett. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I need to take that jacket off.”

  Brett clasped it tighten “Why?”

  “Procedures.” Without waiting for an answer, she unzipped the jacket and slid it from Brett’s shoulders. Brett shivered again. “Can I clean up?” she asked.

  “No. Not yet.”

  Brett stared at her. Taking the handcuffs from her belt, the trooper turned one chair to face the cabinet and in the crisp manner of a schoolteacher said, “Sit here, please. I have to cuff you.” Suddenly, Brett was angry. “Tell me why, danm it.” The trooper shot her a level glance. “So that you don’t touch yourself.” For that instant, Brett wanted to call her parents, her grandfather. Then the mirror caught her reflection. Her face was flecked with blood. Brett walked forward, as if drawn to her image. Dried blood speckled her lips, her throat, her breasts. Brett sat in the chair. As she held out her hands; there was blood on her fingertips. Pulling Brett’s arms behind her, the trooper cuffed her to the metal chair. A plump nurse came. Silent, she took out a needle and punctured Brett’s arm. With an odd detachment, Brett watched the plastic tube fill with her own blood. She hardly felt the needle. The nurse left her with the trooper. “How long will I be here?” Brett asked. No answer. Time passed. Perhaps minutes, perhaps hours. There was a knock on the door. Brett turned. The trooper opened the door slightly, speaking through the crack to shield Brett’s nakedness. “What is it?” she asked. A male voice, new to Brett. “They found him. At Heron Lake.”

  “Is he all right?” Brett asked. Whispers now. Closing the door,’ the trooper handed her some papers. “This is a search warrant,” she said. “For you.”

  “For what?” A long, slow look. “He’s dead.”

  Brett began shaking.

  Everything changed. Brett stood there, mute, a magnet for strangers. Another female trooper entered, with a Polaroid, took pictures of Brett’s face, her throat and torso, her fingertips. A knife in her hand … A nurse in a scrub suit snipped a piece of
Brett’s hair and then, kneeling, clipped from her pubic hair. The images came quicker now. A shadow, turning … The nurse scraped flecks of blood from Brett’s skin onto a piece of plastic. A soft spray rising from his throat … She turned to the trooper. “I need to see someone.” A quick careful look. “Who?”

  “The policeman who brought me here.” The trooper shook her head. “First we have to finish this. Then we’ll find him.” At the trooper’s signal, a mustached doctor approached from the side. Gently, he led Brett to the examining table, explained that he would take a swab from her vagina. Brett lay staring at the fluorescent lights. As she opened her legs, Brett remembered the feel of James’s tongue. “It’s all right.” The doctor’s voice was soothing, comfort for a patient. “We’re almost done.” Brett stood, unsteady. The trooper held out a jumpsuit. “You can dress now.” Brett did not try to clean herself. When she was dressed, the nurse took one hand, then the other, slipping a scalpel beneath each fingernail. James wincing as she, scraped his back … She had left him there. For minutes, perhaps hours, she had not told them. “Please,” she pressed, “I need to talk now.” They took her fingerprints and then drove her to the jail.

  The sky was purpling with the first thin streak of dawn. Now she recognized the police station. They led her to a cramped room with two metal desks.

  The young cop sat at one desk; somehow he had gotten back his jacket. A stranger sat at another, a tape recorder in front of him. He was stocky and red-faced, with pale-blue eyes and an air of calm authority. He understood she wished to talk. Hoped she wouldn’t mind the tape … “You have the right to remain silent …” Brett waited until he finished, and then she began to tell them all she could. When it was over, she searched their eyes, saw nothing. They led her to the cell again, and she was alone. Voices came from the next room. “Do you know who her grandfather is?” someone asked. Only after a time did she see the man standing in front of her cell. He was tall and almost gangly, his black hair flecked with gray. His work shirt and khakis were wrinkled, and he had not yet shaved. Twin creases elongated his face and made the large brown eyes knowing and a little sad. He seemed kind, somehow familiar. “Oh, Brett.” His voice was soft with melancholy. “What in God’s name have you done?”

  “Tell me,” the lawyer inquired. “Did the police ask anything else’?.” Brett hesitated. “I think they asked if James had other girlfriends .” The lawyer tilted her head. “To which you answered … ?”

  “No.” Brett’s voice was angry now. “No.”

  It was, Brett’s lawyer reflected, precisely the question she wished that she could ask. But she was a defense lawyer and could not. “Who was he?” Brett asked her. “The man at the jail.” The lawyer hesitated, caught in the scene as Brett was describing it, still wondering how much could be believed. But the tall man’s face was very real to her. “It was the prosecutor,” she told Brett. “Jackson Watts. Through college, we were friends.”

  “And now?”

  “I don’t know.” The lawyer paused, then finished. “The last time I saw him was before you were born.” For a moment, Brett looked at her curiously. But she said nothing.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Two days earlier, the Honorable Caroline Clark Masters had stretched her tan legs in front of her, wriggled some sand from between her toes, and gazed out at the white-capped blue of Nantucket Sound.

  It was summer, and afternoon. Sun glistened on the water; a northeast wind tousled the loose black ringlets of her hair. The ocean was dotted with boats, sailing across the northeast winds to Edgartown. Along the beach, stretching to a faraway point, waves broke onto the tawny sand until they seemed to meet a white mist in the distance, sitting lightly on the water. Caroline’s mind flooded with memories.

  Perhaps it was the boy. A college kid, really—a distant figure now, growing smaller as he walked the surf.

  He had looked, she thought, a little as she remembered David. Not the hair so much. Something about the eyes. Perhaps that was why Caroline, disposed to solitude, had

  spoken to him.

  “Hello.”

  He stopped on the sand, looking from Caroline to the sprawling house on the bluff behind her. Feeling a little guilty, perhaps, to be walking her private beach.

  “Hi.” He shifted from foot to foot, dressed only in cutoffs, lean and brown and not bad looking. With a certain awe, he asked, “Is this place yours?”

  Caroline smiled, shook her head. “Just renting. For a week.”

  He took that in, nodding. Yes, Caroline had thought, a

  certain pensiveness in the eyes, the same gray blue. But not the same quickness.

  “I’ve been wondering about this place,” he said. “They say the beach has changed totally, from erosion and storms.” He nodded to the rocks and railroad ties behind her, rising from the beach to the bluff. “A few years ago they nearly lost this house, someone told me.”

  Caroline smiled again. “Thirty years ago,” she said, “you and I would be standing on the lawn. The owner and his

  family played croquet there.”

  “You knew them?”

  Caroline nodded. “Yes. I knew them.”

  As he looked at her more closely, Caroline sensed him calculating her age. Then he turned, pointing to a spit of sand some distance away. “I saw rocks out there, some pilings. Know what that was?”

  “A boathouse. But it belonged to the place next door.”

  “Know what they used it for?”

  “Storage, sometimes.” There was something else, Caroline saw, the way he tilted his head. “One year, a caretaker lived there.”

  “Hurricane got it, I guess.”

  Caroline made her tone dismissive. “I suppose. It was here the last time I was.”

  The boy was silent, as if reflecting on the transience of things. “I hope you haven’t minded my asking these questions.”

  “Not at all.”

  He tilted his head again. “Do I know you from somewhere?”

  Caroline realized, suddenly, that she was not quite ready to have him leave. Smiling, she decided to flatter him a little. “I think I’d remember you.”

  “I don’t mean it’s like we’ve met.” Vaguely flustered, he seemed to peer at her. “Didn’t you used to be in the movies or something?”

  This tacit reference to her age—which Caroline thought she more than deserved—made her laugh aloud at herself.

  The grin that came with it had a sardonic quality which was relieved by a dimple on one side of her mouth, a light in her green-flecked brown eyes. “Not that I remember.” The boy stepped closer. “No, really.” Caroline looked up at him, amusement still playing on her mouth. “No,” she said firmly. “Really.” Now she watched him, growing smaller, until he vanished. Forty-five, she thought, scraping the wounds of young womanhood. She did not quite understand this: the events that had defined her had made Caroline Masters a distinctly unsentimental woman. Yet she had come here. Sometimes it seemed to her that the central events in her life had not happened in New Hampshire, the home of her girlhood, But in this place, Martha’s Vineyard, near the water. She gazed out at the sound. She did not even know whether David was still alive—a man in his forties who thought of her little or, perhaps, with bitterness. She was past all hope of knowing. Perhaps it was the nomination that had jarred the past from dormancy. “Is there anything we should know,” the President’s counsel had asked her, “which might embarrass the White House?”

  “No,” Caroline had answered. “Nothing.” enty years of her life, with rising intensity and ambition, waiting to be asked this question. Perhaps it was inevitable, with the nomination so near her grasp, that she would think about the things that had made her as she was. The President was down to two choices, Caroline and a fine Hispanic lawyer. At five o’clock, the phone would ring, and Caroline Clark Masters would—or would not be appointed to the United States Court of Appeals. A step, though the thought made her superstitious, from the United States Supreme Court. A g
iant step, yet perhaps not much farther than the distance she had already come. Caroline had arrived in California at twenty-three, with no friends or family she spoke of. Had put herself through law school, then spent fifteen hard years at the public defender’s office, representing murderers and petty drug dealers with more success than the odds allowed; teaching and lecturing and writing articles on criminal justice to spread her reputation; widening her contacts through women’s groups and a little politics; yet careful, always, to keep a core of privacy. And then Caroline was appointed to a minor judgeship, the San Francisco Municipal Court. This much she had planned. But what followed—the CareIll case—was an accident. The charge was murder. The defendant, Mary Carelli, was a well-known network journalist; the victim was a celebrated novelist. They were alone in a hotel room when, if Carelli could be believed, she had killed him to prevent a rape. Caroline conducted the preliminary hearing. The medical examiner believed that Carelli’s claim of attempted rape did not square with the crime scene or the condition of the body. It was more than enough for a Municipal Court judge to find probable cause for a murder trial in the Superior Court, which—in any other case—would have been Caroline’s only job. But then Carelli’s lawyer decided to use the preliminary hearing to challenge probable cause, and demanded that the hearing be televised. For two weeks, Caroline ran the most watched hearing in memory with skill, wit, and, most observers agreed, impeccable fairness. By the end of the hearing Caroline was as much a celebrity as Mary Carelli herself. Caroline wasted no time. She appeared on television, gave interviews—long on charm and short on biography-to carefully selected journalists. Offers poured in: the one she took, a partnership in a large San Francisco firm, offered her corporate contacts and wider credentials. When the presidency changed hands and the Democrats began dispensing federal judgeships, the people who interested themselves in these things saw the virtue of putting