Presumed Guilty

by Tess Gerritsen

  “Down the hall,” said Tibbetts. “There’s a full pot on, plus a couch if you need it. Why don’t you wait there?”

  “Go ahead,” said Evelyn. “I’ll be done soon.”

  With a sense of relief Chase fled the office and went in search of the blessed coffeepot. Moving back down the hall, he poked his head into the first doorway and discovered a washroom. The next door was locked. He moved on and glanced into the third room. It was unlit. Through the shadows he saw a couch, a few chairs, a jumble of furniture off in a corner. In the sidewall there was a window. It was that window that drew his attention because, unlike a normal window, it didn’t face the outside; it faced an adjoining room. Through the pane of glass he spied a woman, sitting alone at a small table.

  She was oblivious to him. Her gaze was focused downward, on the table before her. Something drew him closer, something about her utter silence, her stillness. He felt like a hunter who has quite unexpectedly come upon a doe poised in the forest.

  Quietly Chase slipped into the darkness and let the door close behind him. He moved to the window. A one-way mirror—that’s what it was, of course. He was on the observing side, she on the blind side. She had no idea he was standing here, separated from her by only a half inch of glass. It made him feel somehow contemptible to be standing there, spying on her, but he couldn’t help himself. He was drawn in by that old fantasy of invisibility, of being the fly on the wall, the unseen observer.

  And it was the woman.

  She was not particularly beautiful, and neither her clothes nor her hairstyle enhanced the assets she did have. She was wearing faded blue jeans and a Boston Red Sox T-shirt a few sizes too big. Her hair, a chestnut brown, was gathered into a careless braid. A few strands had escaped and drooped rebelliously about her temples. She wore little or no makeup, but she had the sort of face that needed none, the sort of face you saw on those Patagonia catalog models, the ones raking leaves or hugging lambs. Wholesome, with just a hint of sunburn. Her eyes, a light color, gray or blue, didn’t quite fit the rest of the picture. He could see by the puffiness around the lids that she’d been crying. Even now, she reached up and swiped a tear from her cheek. She glanced around the table in search of something. Then, with a look of frustration, she tugged at the edge of her T-shirt and wiped her face with it. It seemed a helpless gesture, the sort of thing a child would do. It made her look all the more vulnerable. He wondered why she was in that room, sitting all alone, looking for all the world like an abandoned soul. A witness? A victim?

  She looked straight ahead, right at him. He instinctively drew away from the window, but he knew she couldn’t see him. All she saw was a reflection of herself staring back. She seemed to take in her own image with passive weariness. Indifference. As though she was thinking, There I am, looking like hell. And I couldn’t care less.

  A key grated in the lock. Suddenly the woman sat up straight, her whole body snapping to alertness. She wiped her face once more, raised her chin to a pugnacious angle. Her eyes might be swollen, her T-shirt damp with tears, but she had determinedly thrown off that cloak of vulnerability. She reminded Chase of a soldier girded for battle, but scared out of her wits.

  The door opened. A man walked in—gray suit, no tie, all business. He took a chair. Chase was startled by the loud sound of the chair legs scraping the floor. He realized there must be a microphone in the next room, and that the sound was coming through a small speaker by the window.

  “Ms. Wood?” asked the man. “Sorry to keep you waiting. I’m Lieutenant Merrifield, state police.” He held out his hand and smiled. It said a lot, that smile. It said I’m your buddy. Your best friend. I’m here to make everything right.

  The woman hesitated, then shook the offered hand.

  Lieutenant Merrifield settled into the chair and gave the woman a long, sympathetic look. “You must be exhausted,” he said, maintaining that best-friend voice. “Are you comfortable? Feel ready to proceed?”

  She nodded.

  “They’ve read you your rights?”

  Again, a nod.

  “I understand you’ve waived the right to have an attorney present.”

  “I don’t have an attorney,” she said.

  Her voice was not what Chase expected. It was soft, husky. A bedroom voice with a heartbreaking quaver of grief.

  “We can arrange for one, if you want,” said Merrifield. “It may take some time, which means you’ll have to be patient.”

  “Please. I just want to tell you what happened....”

  A smile touched Lieutenant Merrifield’s lips. It had the curve of triumph. “All right, then,” he said. “Let’s begin.” He placed a cassette recorder on the table and pressed the button. “Tell me your name, your address, your occupation.”

  The woman sighed deeply, a breath for courage. “My name is Miranda Wood. I live at 18 Willow Street. I work as a copy editor for the Island Herald.”

  “That’s Mr. Tremain’s newspaper?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s go straight to last night. Tell me what happened. All the events leading up to the death of Mr. Richard Tremain.”

  Chase felt his whole body suddenly go numb. The death of Mr. Richard Tremain. He found himself pressing forward, against that cold glass, his gaze fixed on the face of Miranda Wood. Innocence. Softness. That’s what he saw when he looked at her. What a lovely mask she wore, what a pure and perfect disguise.

  My brother’s mistress, he thought with sudden comprehension.

  My brother’s murderer.

  In terrible fascination he listened to her confession.

  * * *

  “Let’s go back a few months, Ms. Wood. To when you first met Mr. Tremain. Tell me about your relationship.”

  Miranda stared down at her hands, knotted together on the table. The table itself was a typically ugly piece of institutional furniture. She noticed that someone had carved the initials JMK onto the surface. She wondered who JMK was, if he or she had sat there under similar circumstances, if he or she had been similarly innocent. She felt a sudden bond with this unknown predecessor, the one who had sat in the same hot seat, fighting for dear life.

  “Ms. Wood? Please answer my question.”

  She looked up at Lieutenant Merrifield. The smiling destroyer. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t listening.”

  “About Mr. Tremain. How did you meet him?”

  “At the Herald. I was hired about a year ago. We got to know each other in the course of business.”

  “And?”

  “And...” She took a deep breath. “We got involved.”

  “Who initiated it?”

  “He did. He started asking me out to lunch. Purely business, he said. To talk about the Herald. About changes in the format.”

  “Isn’t it unusual for a publisher to deal so closely with the copy editor?”

  “Maybe on a big city paper it is. But the Herald’s a small-town paper. Everyone on the staff does a little of everything.”

  “So, in the course of business, you got to know Mr. Tremain.”

  “Yes.”

  “When did you start sleeping with him?”

  The question was like a slap in the face. She sat up straight. “It wasn’t like that!”

  “You didn’t sleep with him?”

  “I didn’t—I mean, yes, I did, but it happened over the course of months. It wasn’t as if we—we went out to lunch and then fell into bed together!”

  “I see. So it was a more, uh, romantic thing. Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  She swallowed. In silence she nodded. It all sounded so stupid, the way he’d phrased it. A more romantic thing. Now, hearing those words said aloud in that cold, bare room, it struck her how foolish it all had been. The whole disastrous affair.

  “I though
t I loved him,” Miranda whispered.

  “What was that, Ms. Wood?”

  She said, louder, “I thought I loved him. I wouldn’t have slept with him if I didn’t. I don’t do one-night stands. I don’t even do affairs.”

  “You did this one.”

  “Richard was different.”

  “Different than what?”

  “Than other men! He wasn’t just—just cars and football. He cared about the same things I cared about. This island, for instance. Look at the articles he wrote—you could see how much he loved this place. We used to talk for hours about it! And it just seemed the most natural thing in the world to...” She gave a little shudder of grief and looked down. Softly she said, “I thought he was different. At least, he seemed to be....”

  “He was also married. But you knew that.”

  She felt her shoulders droop. “Yes.”

  “And did you know he had two children?”

  She nodded.

  “Yet you had an affair with him. Did it mean so little to you, Ms. Wood, that three innocent people—”

  “Don’t you think I thought about that, every waking moment?” Her chin shot up in rage. “Don’t you think I hated myself? I never stopped thinking about his family! About Evelyn and the twins. I felt evil, dirty. I felt—I don’t know.” She gave a sigh of helplessness. “Trapped.”

  “By what?”

  “By my love for him. Or what I thought was love.” She hesitated. “But maybe—maybe I never really did love him. At least, not the real Richard.”

  “And what led to this amazing revelation?”

  “Things I learned about him.”

  “What things?”

  “The way he used people. His employees, for instance. The way he treated them.”

  “So you saw the real Richard Tremain and you fell out of love.”

  “Yes. And I broke it off.” She let out a deep breath, as though relieved that the most painful part of her confession was finished. “That was a month ago.”

  “Were you angry at him?”

  “I felt more...betrayed. By all those false images.”

  “So you must have been angry.”

  “I guess I was.”

  “So for a month you walked around mad at Mr. Tremain.”

  “Sometimes. Mostly I felt stupid. And then he wouldn’t leave me alone. He kept calling, wanting to get back together.”

  “And that made you angry, as well.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Angry enough to kill him?”

  She looked up sharply. “No.”

  “Angry enough to grab a knife from your kitchen drawer?”

  “No!”

  “Angry enough to go into the bedroom—your bedroom, where he was lying naked—and stab him in the chest?”

  “No! No, no, no.” She was sobbing now, screaming out her denials. The sound of her own voice echoed like some alien cry in that stark box of a room. She dropped her head into her hands and leaned forward on the table. “No,” she whispered. She had to get away from this terrible man with his terrible questions. She started to rise from the chair.

  “Sit down, Ms. Wood. We’re not finished.”

  Obediently she sank back into the chair. “I didn’t kill him,” she cried. “I told you, I found him on my bed. I came home and he was lying there....”

  “Ms. Wood—”

  “I was on the beach when it happened. Sitting on the beach. That’s what I keep telling all of you! But no one listens. No one believes me....”

  “Ms. Wood, I have more questions.”

  She was crying, not answering, not able to answer. The sound of her sobs was all that could be heard.

  At last Merrifield flicked off the recorder. “All right, then. We’ll take a break. One hour, then we’ll resume.”

  Miranda didn’t move. She heard the man’s chair scrape back, heard Merrifield leave the room, then the door shut. A few moments later the door opened again.

  “Ms. Wood? I’ll take you back to your cell.”

  Slowly Miranda rose to her feet and turned to the door. A young cop stood waiting, nice face, friendly smile. His name tag said Officer Snipe. Vaguely she remembered him from some other time, from her life before jail. Oh, yes. Once, on a Christmas Eve, he’d torn up her parking ticket. It had been a kind gesture, gallantry offered to a lady. She wondered what he thought of the lady now, whether he saw murderer stamped on her face.

  She let him lead her into the hall. At one end she saw Lieutenant Merrifield, huddled in conference with Chief Tibbetts. The polite Officer Snipe guided her in the opposite direction, away from the pair. Miranda had gone only a short distance when her footsteps faltered, stopped.

  A man was standing at the far end of the hall, watching her. She had never seen him before. If she had, she certainly would have remembered him. He stood like some unbreachable barrier, his hands jammed in his pockets, his shoulders looming before her in the cramped corridor. He didn’t look like a cop. Cops had standards of appearance, and this man was on the far edge of rumpled—unshaven, dark hair uncombed, his shirt a map of wrinkles. What disturbed her the most was the way he looked at her. That wasn’t the passive curiosity of a bystander. No, it was something far more hostile. Those dark eyes were like judge and jury, weighing the facts, pronouncing her guilty.

  “Keep moving, Ms. Wood,” said Officer Snipe. “It’s right around the corner.”

  Miranda forced herself to move forward, toward that forbidding human barrier. The man moved aside to let her pass. As she did, she felt his gaze burning into her and heard his sharp intake of breath, as though he was trying not to breathe the same air she did, as if her very presence had somehow turned the atmosphere to poison.

  For the past twelve hours she’d been treated like a criminal, handcuffed, fingerprinted, intimately searched. She’d had questions fired at her, humiliations heaped upon her. But never, until this man had looked at her, had she felt like a creature worthy of such disgust, such loathing. Rage suddenly flared inside her, a rage so fierce it threatened to consume her in its flames.

  She halted and stared up at him. Their gazes locked. There, damn you! she thought. Whoever you are, take a look at me! Take a good, long look at the murderess. Satisfied?

  The eyes staring down at her were dark as night, stony with condemnation. But as they took each other in, Miranda saw something else flicker in those depths, a hint of uncertainty, almost confusion. As if the picture he saw was all wrong, as if image and caption were terribly mismatched.

  Just down the hall, a door swung open. Footsteps clicked out and stopped dead.

  “Dear God,” whispered a voice.

  Miranda turned.

  Evelyn Tremain stood frozen in the washroom doorway. “Chase,” she whispered. “It’s her....”

  At once the man went to Evelyn and offered her his steadying arm. Evelyn gripped it with both hands, as if holding on to her only lifeline. “Oh, please,” she murmured helplessly. “I can’t stand to look at her.”

  Miranda didn’t move. She felt paralyzed by guilt, by what she’d done to this woman, to the whole family. Though her crime might not be murder, still she had committed a sin against Evelyn Tremain and for that she would always be tormented.

  * * *

  “Mrs. Tremain,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry....”

  Evelyn buried her face against the man’s shoulder. “Chase, please. Get her out of here.”

  “He loved you,” said Miranda. “I want you to know that. I want you to know that he never stopped loving—”

  “Get her out of here!” cried Evelyn.

  “Officer,” said Chase quietly. “Please. Take her away.”

  Officer Snipe reached for Miranda’s arm. “Let’s go.”


  As she was led away Miranda called over her shoulder, “I didn’t kill him, Mrs. Tremain! You have to believe that—”

  “You tramp!” shouted Evelyn. “You filthy whore! You ruined my life.”

  Miranda glanced back and saw the other woman had pulled away from Chase and was now facing her like some avenging angel. Strands of blond hair had fallen free and her face, always pale, was now a stark white.

  “You ruined my life!” Evelyn screamed.

  That accusing shriek echoed in Miranda’s ears all the way down that long walk to the jail.

  Drained of resistance, she quietly entered the cell. She stood there, frozen, as the door clanged shut. Officer Snipe’s footsteps faded away. She was alone, trapped in this cage.

  Suddenly she felt as if she were suffocating, as if she would smother without fresh air. She scrambled over to the one small window and tried to pull herself up by the bars, but it was too high. She ran to the cot, dragged it across the cell and climbed on top. Even then she was barely tall enough to peek over the sill, to gulp in a tantalizing taste of freedom. Outside the sun was shining. She could see maple trees beyond the fenced yard, a few rooftops, a sea gull soaring in the sky. If she breathed in deeply, she could almost smell the sea. Oh, Lord, how sweet it all seemed! How unattainable! She gripped the window bars so tightly they dug into her palms. Pressing her face against the sill, she closed her eyes and willed herself to stay in control, to keep panic at bay.

  I am innocent. They have to believe me, she thought.

  And then, What if they don’t?

  No, damn it. Don’t think about that.

  She forced herself to concentrate on something else, anything else. She thought of the man in the hallway, the man with Evelyn Tremain. What had Evelyn called him? Chase. The name stirred a memory; Miranda had heard it before. She snatched desperately at that irrelevant strand of thought, concentrated hard on dredging up the memory, anything to crowd the fears from her mind. Chase. Chase. Someone had said it. She tried to bring back the voice, to match it to the utterance of that name.

  The memory hit her like a blow. It was Richard who’d said it. I haven’t seen my brother in years. We had a falling-out when my father died. But then, Chase was always the problem kid in the family....