Eyes of a Child

by Richard North Patterson

  ‘Did you discuss that with your mother – the fact that he was missing?’

  ‘Yes. A few days later. I told her not to call.’

  Monk let the answer hang there for a while. His eyes did not leave her face now. ‘Had he ever done that before? Not show up?’

  Terri gave him a level gaze. ‘I was in a custody fight,’ she said at length. ‘If Richie didn’t show, I wasn’t going to force him to. I never thought he’d killed himself.’

  Monk raised his head a little. ‘When,’ he asked slowly, ‘was the last time you spoke with him?’

  Terri glanced quickly at Paget. ‘The night before I left for Italy. By telephone.’

  Paget was surprised; Terri had not told him this. He wanted to stop the interview. But he could not, and now Terri would not look at him.

  ‘That reminds me,’ he said to Monk. ‘Did you check his answering machine? When Terri tried to call from Italy, it wasn’t on.’

  Monk turned, annoyed at the interruption. ‘Someone turned it off,’ he said tersely. ‘Seems like he erased the tape.’

  He faced Terri again. ‘What time did you call him? The night before you left, that is.’

  Terri was regarding Paget; she seemed to catch herself and then gave a small shrug. ‘I don’t know. Maybe nine or so. It wasn’t for long.’

  Paget felt himself tense. ‘What did you talk about?’ Monk asked.

  Terri stared at the tape recorder. ‘I’d been packing. Somehow, it made me think of my honeymoon, how much hope I’d had and how sad things were now.’ She looked up. ‘So I called to ask if I could see him.’

  Paget felt a surge of anger: this man had threatened to destroy Carlo and smear them all. Even now, that Terri had called him felt like a betrayal.

  ‘Why did you want to see him?’ Monk asked.

  Terri looked at Paget again. ‘To beg him,’ she said softly. ‘To ask him for Elena. To see if there was something I could give him in return.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Money.’ She shook her head, as if at her own foolishness. ‘I knew it was hopeless, even then. People like Richie never stay bought.’

  Why, Paget asked her silently, didn’t you tell me?

  ‘What did he say?’ Monk asked.

  Terri turned from Paget. ‘That he had an “appointment” that night.’

  Paget watched her, edgy. ‘Did he say who with?’ Monk asked.

  Terri’s expression was one of distaste. ‘No. But I thought it must be a woman – “appointment” had a sniggering sound.’ Terri shrugged again. ‘Maybe there was no one. That would be like him: trying to impress me, or to string me out till I got desperate.’

  Monk folded his hands. ‘Did he sound like someone about to kill himself?’

  ‘No.’ Once more, Terri seemed to stop herself. ‘But I’m not sure, really. Bravado was something he was good at – Richie needed people to think he was on top.’

  Monk was still for a time. ‘What,’ he asked then, ‘did you do after you hung up?’

  ‘Packed. Then I went to bed.’

  ‘Alone?’

  Terri nodded. ‘Alone.’

  ‘Did anyone see you that evening?’

  Terri glanced at Paget. ‘Only my mother and Elena, when I dropped her off. That was around seven.’

  ‘Did you talk to anyone else?’

  Now Terri focused on Monk. ‘Just Chris.’

  Monk inclined his head. ‘Do you mean Christopher Paget?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And when was that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Terri hesitated. ‘Before I called Richie.’

  ‘And did Mr Paget call your or did you call him?’

  ‘He called me.’

  ‘Concerning what?’

  Terri paused again. ‘Our arrangements. We decided he’d pick me up the next morning.’

  ‘And that was all?’

  Terri glanced at Paget’s hand. He raised it slightly, the bruise and swelling had vanished. ‘That’s all I remember,’ she said.

  Monk touched his chin. ‘Your flight,’ he said. ‘When did it leave?’

  ‘Very early. Eight o’clock, I think.’

  ‘You didn’t go to Mr Paget’s the night before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or to see Mr Arias?’

  Terri stared at him. ‘No,’ she answered finally.

  Monk stood, stretching himself, taking in the art on the walls with a slow sweep of the head. Paget found the gesture oddly territorial, as if Monk had appropriated his library. ‘Did you ever visit Mr Arias’s apartment?’

  Terri nodded. ‘I found it for him.’

  ‘Were you there often?’

  ‘Not often. Sometimes. When I dropped off Elena.’

  ‘When was the last time you were there?’

  Terri seemed to think. ‘The Sunday before I left. Again, taking Elena back.’

  ‘Did you go inside?’

  Terri’s eyes narrowed. ‘I really can’t remember. But I think so.’

  Monk shoved his hands into his pockets. ‘Mr Arias had a computer, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her tone was flat again. ‘I’m still paying for it.’

  ‘What did he use it for?’

  ‘Everything – addresses, recipes, checkbook, business plans. You name it.’

  ‘Letters?’

  Terri looked askance at him. ‘Letters too, I think. Sure.’

  Monk began pacing, two or three steps, then back again. He stopped abruptly. ‘When did you last have intercourse with Mr Arias?’

  Terri stared at him. Paget stood at once. ‘Why is that important?’ he demanded.

  Monk was unruffled. He continued to look at Terri. ‘Because you were living with him, Ms Peralta, and then you weren’t. I’d like some sense of your relationship.’

  Terri glanced at Paget. She looked pale now. ‘The night before the Carelli trial started,’ she answered.

  ‘And what,’ Monk prodded in the same monotone, ‘is your relationship with Mr Paget?’

  ‘Just that.’ Her voice was terse. ‘We have one.’

  ‘A romantic relationship?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Monk turned to Paget and back again. ‘And when did that part – the romantic part – begin? Before, during, or after the Carelli trial? Or all of the above?’

  Paget stepped forward. ‘That’s enough –’

  ‘After,’ Terri interjected. ‘And after I left Richie. Is that what you wanted?’

  Monk gazed at Paget and then turned to her. ‘Yes,’ he said with surprising courtesy. ‘And only because it’s my job. The man’s dead, after all, and we have to ask questions to find out why.’ His voice grew softer. ‘For all I know, he killed himself over you and Mr Paget.’

  Paget watched Terri lean back on the couch, tired and drained of anger. But the last thing Monk did before moving on to Paget was to take out an ink pad and, with surprising gentleness, help Terri put her prints on a white card with boxes for each finger. She sat there, silent, gazing at the black tips of her fingers; to Paget, the moment was more humiliating than any questions Monk had asked.

  Monk turned to him. ‘Mind answering a few questions?’

  Paget glanced up from the card. ‘If you don’t mind my asking a few,’ he said coolly.

  The only change in Monk’s expression was a deliberate widening of the eyes, to convey the message that Paget must be joking. But his silence suggested that he might grant a moment’s sufferance to his involuntary host.

  ‘Exactly how,’ Paget demanded, ‘did Arias die?’

  Monk shrugged. ‘Gunshot wound.’

  ‘I meant where?’

  Monk seemed to watch him. ‘The bullet lodged in the brain stem.’

  Paget’s eyes narrowed. ‘What was the point of entry?’

  Monk turned briefly to Lynch, who grimaced slightly: the expression suggested that Paget would find out anyway. In the same flat voice, Monk said to Paget, ‘It looked like he ate his gun.’

&
nbsp; Paget saw Terri wince: the laconic phrase was police argot for a not uncommon suicide – a cop who shot himself through the mouth with his own weapon. The image that lingered was not pretty.

  Paget folded his arms. ‘You find gunshot residue on the roof of his mouth?’

  Monk nodded. ‘There was powder on his tongue and palate, a little on the back of his throat.’ His tone was indifferent. ‘The gun got in his mouth, sure enough.’

  Terri stood and walked to the window. ‘Did he leave some sort of note?’ Paget asked.

  Monk paused a moment. ‘There was a note,’ he said tersely, and inclined his head toward the tape machine. ‘Mind sitting over there, so we can get this done with.’

  Terri turned to watch them. Her face was still pale; it made the green in her eyes seem brighter. When Paget sat, she walked to the edge of the sofa and rested her hand near his shoulder. To Paget, the gesture felt instinctive, the reflex of a lover. His partner, Teresa Peralta.

  Chris’s gaze at Monk was that of a lawyer, Terri thought, not a witness anxious to ingratiate himself.

  ‘So,’ Monk said to him, ‘the night before you left for Italy, you didn’t see Ms Peralta. Is that right?’

  Chris took his time answering. ‘That’s right. I spoke to her by phone.’

  ‘About what time was that?’

  Chris seemed to think. ‘I don’t really know. Perhaps eight-thirty or so.’ He leaned forward. ‘There was one thing Terri’s forgotten. We had plans to go to dinner that night, and then to my house. The first part of our conversation was me calling to cancel.’

  Terri felt a moment’s surprise; it was not Chris’s nature to volunteer information. Then she saw that he had made it clear that Terri could not have planned to call Richie or to visit anyone but Chris himself. That Chris thought it important to protect her told Terri something more.

  Monk fixed Chris with the same impassive gaze. ‘Why did you cancel?’

  ‘I felt sick.’ Chris shrugged. ‘It was some twenty-four-hour thing. By morning, I was fine.’

  ‘Did you see anyone that night?’

  Chris rested an arm on his knee, propped his chin in one hand. ‘Carlo,’ he said after a time. ‘My son.’

  ‘Was Carlo home with you?’

  Chris shook his head. ‘He had a date. He came home around midnight. I waited up for him.’

  ‘Even though you were sick?’

  ‘Carlo’s a new driver.’ Chris cocked his head. ‘Do you have a teenager, Inspector?’

  Monk hesitated. ‘One daughter.’

  ‘How old?’

  Another pause. ‘Sixteen.’

  ‘Ever wait up for her?’

  Monk sat back and looked at Chris: the effect was of someone smiling without ever having changed expression. Terri had a sudden sure image of Monk lurking by the front door, checking his watch until his daughter came home. It seemed to drain a little tension from the room; for the first time, Monk himself seemed tired.

  ‘How,’ he asked Chris, ‘did you feel about Mr Arias?’

  Chris leaned back. ‘Based on my observations,’ he said after a time, ‘he was a completely undesirable human being. Terri had more patience than I ever could have managed.’

  ‘What do you base that on?’

  ‘Richie’s undesirability, or Terri’s patience? I base them both on the divorce proceedings. Richie’s devotion to using Elena as a meal ticket was matched only by Terri’s determination to keep that from Elena.’ He glanced up at Terri. ‘Truth to tell, that much forbearance amazes me.’

  It was, Terri saw, a clever response: in one answer, Chris had placed her in the most favorable light while avoiding his deepest reasons for despising Richie. Or, for that matter, Carlo’s.

  Lynch leaned toward Paget. ‘Can you think of any reason why Mr Arias would kill himself?’

  Chris shrugged. ‘I’m no mind reader, and I didn’t know the man. But his life was in a downhill spiral: divorce, financial problems, apparent difficulty finding or holding a job, perhaps some dawning appreciation that the world didn’t see him as he wished to be seen. Those are on anyone’s top ten reasons for suicide.’ He looked back to Monk. ‘What did his note say?’

  Monk ignored that. ‘So you stayed home that night, correct?’

  Chris nodded, silent, and then cocked his head. ‘Satisfy my curiousity for a moment. We’ve spent a fair amount of time talking about a single night, and yet you found Richie a week later. All that time at room temperature couldn’t have helped him much.’ Chris leaned back on the sofa, gazing at Monk with an expression of pleasant inquiry. ‘The last body I saw anything close to that old was a little Japanese woman who, by the time the police found her, looked something like a two-hundred-pound male Eskimo in green makeup, with claws for hands. You can imagine the rest – the poor lady had become part of the food chain. The medical examiner couldn’t have given you time of death if she’d had a Ouija board.’

  Terri half shut her eyes.

  Monk removed his glasses and began to wipe the lenses. ‘Mr Arias,’ he said slowly, ‘liked air-conditioning.’

  ‘At thirty degrees Fahrenheit?’ Chris raised his eyebrows. ‘When did Richie stop opening his mail? Not until Saturday, at least. That’s what you must be going on.’

  Monk did not answer. But the look on his face, or rather its absence, told Terri that Chris was right. Chris did not have to make his larger point: that Richie might have died the next morning, while Terri sat with Chris on an airplane to Milan. ‘Anyhow,’ Chris said carelessly, ‘It’s kind of an academic issue, however interesting. The man did leave a note.’

  Monk seemed to appraise him for a moment, and then spoke into his tape recorder. ‘We are terminating the interview,’ he said, ‘at approximately nine-oh-two.’ He switched off the machine and looked up at Terri. ‘We may have more questions.’

  ‘That’s fine. But please come to my office, not my home. I don’t want Elena upset.’

  ‘Of course,’ Lynch said quickly. Monk did not say another word as Chris ushered them out. It occurred to Terri that he had not asked Chris for prints.

  When Chris returned, he crossed the room to take her in his arms. ‘Sorry,’ he murmured.

  Terri leaned back to look at him. She said, quietly, ‘They don’t think he killed himself, do they?’

  Chris tilted his head. ‘You were divorcing him, Terri. Plus we’re together. Monk’s going to ask the questions.’ He frowned. ‘After all, if he doesn’t, the press may get ahold of this and pillory him. Even without that, Sir Charles isn’t going to cut us any slack. Not after the Carelli case. This is his chance to remind us that we’re just citizens.’

  Terri shook her head. ‘You think it’s more than that, Chris. You were pretty careful to cover for me.’

  He shrugged. ‘It seemed like the thing to do. Besides, I was also pretty careful to cover for me. As were you.’

  Chris was, as usual, impassive. ‘Do you think there’s any chance he’ll miss the Inquisitor?’ Terri asked. ‘Or those court papers about you and Carlo?’

  ‘Oh, he’s already seen the Inquisitor. As for missing the stuff on Carlo, almost none. I just wasn’t going to trip over myself to help him on that.’ He shrugged once more. ‘At least the media have been quiet – no one in the press seems to have picked up on Richie’s death, although I suspect James Colt knows he’s dead. But one way or the other, Monk will come around again. Chances are he was holding back.’

  Terri studied him. ‘It bothers me, Chris. My mother says that they were particularly interested in where we were on the night before we left for Italy and when she had last seen me.’

  ‘Monk didn’t try to talk to Elena, did he?’

  ‘Elena? My mother didn’t let them near her.’ Terri was quiet. ‘I should get home to her now. She’s been having that dream again.’

  Chris watched her face. ‘And your dream?’ he asked softly.

  ‘It still comes. If that matters.’

  ‘It does to me.’ Chris
kissed her hair. ‘I wish there was something I could do. For both of you.’

  ‘The only thing you can do, for either of us, is to love me. Because Elena’s going to need all the patience I can give her.’ Terri looked up at him. ‘I’m starting her with Dr Harris. But what she can find out, and how long that will take, I just don’t know.’

  ‘It’s all right, Terri. Suddenly we have nothing but time.’

  Terri was quiet: she knew that Chris, like her, wished to start a life that must wait for Elena to be better and, with Harris’s help, to clear Carlo. ‘It seems that we’re always waiting, Chris.’

  ‘I’d rather wait for you than live with anyone else.’ He smiled a little. ‘Care to go dancing sometime?’

  It made her smile back, and then she looked into his face. ‘I won’t be in tomorrow,’ she said. ‘If that’s okay.’

  Chris gazed down at her ink-smudged hands. ‘Of course,’ he answered. ‘Spend the time with Elena.’

  They walked together to his door. Stepping onto the porch, Terri remembered that Richie was not spying on her and would never spy again. The night was cool and silent.

  She turned back to Chris. He stood inside the doorway watching her with the barest trace of a smile. ‘For what it’s worth,’ he said quietly, ‘I didn’t kill your husband. I could never work out the details.’

  Terri found herself speechless. And then Chris leaned forward, hand cradling her neck, and gently kissed her. ‘So don’t worry about me, all right?’

  Chapter 2

  Denise Harris had been a surprise to Terri. On the telephone, Harris was crisp, quick to ask questions. But in the flesh, the fortyish black psychologist was a person of much softer edges: quieter and slower to speak, with a welcoming manner and luminous brown eyes which suggested that nothing was more important than whatever Terri had to tell her.

  They sat in Harris’s office, in the second story of a brightly painted Victorian in Haight-Ashbury. The first floor served as her home, a mishmash of African art, art deco, and Victoriana, which Harris referred to as ‘cross-cultural confusion’ but to Terri implied a preference for favorite things over stylistic symmetry, an impression reinforced by several pictures of Harris’s twelve-year-old daughter at various ages. That Harris did not conceal her own life put Terri more at ease, and her office had the same suggestion of warmth, with its bright colors, upholstered chairs, shelves of toys for children, and sunlight streaming through a large bay window. No hard edges anywhere.