Eyes of a Child

by Richard North Patterson

  Elena looked suddenly fearful, as if something dangerous would happen. She kept herself very still.

  Look for a neutral question, Harris thought. ‘What’s the little girl’s name?’

  Elena’s eyes did not move. Reluctantly, she answered, ‘Teresa.’

  It made an odd kind of sense, Harris thought. Elena could not admit that she was the little girl, and her mother was the person with whom she most identified. Harris made her voice soothing. ‘Then Teresa will be safe now.’

  With sudden vehemence, Elena shook her head. ‘The alligator can’t hear her. The dog will eat her up.’

  ‘Oh, this alligator has very good hearing. And she can see in the dark.’

  As she stared at the alligator, Elena’s voice rose. ‘If the alligator stays, there will be a fight.’

  Gently, Harris touched her shoulder. ‘It’s all right,’ she said softly. ‘The alligator’s not afraid of the dog. Or the robbers.’

  Almost frenziedly, Elena grabbed the alligator and thrust it at Harris; startled, Harris saw the terror in the child’s eyes. ‘No,’ she cried out. ‘Someone will get killed.’

  All at once, Harris put her arms around the slender trembling body. ‘It’s all right,’ she kept repeating. ‘No one will be hurt now.’

  Pressing again her, Elena Arias shook her head. She made no sound at all; it was a moment before Harris knew that she was crying.

  Chapter 5

  From the moment he first saw her, there was something about Sonia Arias that Paget found disturbing.

  It was more than the bright, almost birdlike look of malice she gave him as she took the stand. For Paget, there were too many hints of some inner dislocation: the overplucked eyebrows; the brightly hennaed hair, at odds with both her age and her skin color, sallow as parchment; the stalklike legs and desiccated face of an anorexic; the way her head snapped with the looks she darted around the courtroom, an uneasy meld of paranoia and the narcissism of a fashion model, striking poses for a camera. She did not seem a part of her surroundings: when Paget struggled for an association, the closest he came was Gloria Swanson’s frightening faded movie queen in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard. For those looking to explore the darker pools of Richie’s inner life, Paget sensed, Sonia Arias was a good place to start.

  ‘Ever see Sunset Boulevard?’ he whispered to Caroline.

  Caroline’s eyes narrowed in a half smile she could not show the jury, and then she made a quiet shivering sound. It captured his feelings perfectly.

  ‘This,’ Caroline murmured, ‘should be entertaining.’

  From his opening question, Salinas treated Sonia Arias carefully: although his supposed evidentiary purpose was to establish that Richie had been scheduled to call her on the Saturday after he last was seen, his real intent was to present the jury with a grieving mother. But there was something imperious about the way she held her head high, peering around the courtroom as if to demand that people watch and listen. When Salinas asked his first key question, she looked straight at Paget, pausing to answer until every eye was on her.

  ‘Ricardo,’ she said in a voice suddenly sharp with vengeance, ‘would never take his own life. He was taken from us. That’s why he didn’t call me.’

  Paget met her eyes with a calm expression. Her head snapped away, as if to snub him, and she stared fixedly at Salinas.

  Gently, Salinas asked, ‘Why do you say that?’

  She gave him a prideful look. ‘Ricardo was strongly Catholic – from his childhood, I saw to that. He knew that suicide was a sin.’

  By instinct, Paget glanced at Luisa Marin; her eyelids had dropped, as if she was drawn back into her own life. He wondered if she could ever accept his defense, so at odds with what she had made herself believe.

  ‘Are you going to let this go?’ he asked Caroline.

  Still watching Sonia Arias, she touched his arm. ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Victor’s giving us an opening. Just let him run with her for a while.’

  ‘Aside from Richie’s religious convictions,’ Salinas went on, ‘are there other aspects of his character which tell you he didn’t shoot himself?’

  ‘He never even touched a gun.’ Looking beyond Salinas at the jury, Sonia Arias seemed barely connected to the man who questioned her. ‘From childhood, he was a beautiful boy, with black curly hair a woman would die for. And always happy, an optimist, ready to make the best of things. There was a kind of magic about him: to meet Ricardo Arias was to fall in love with him.’ Sonia paused, her words becoming slow and authoritative. ‘People couldn’t do enough for Richie. And if he ever needed anything, he knew that I would give it to him. He would turn to me before he would ever consider suicide.’

  Finishing, Sonia Arias peered around the courtroom, as if jealous of attention. ‘She’s just as Terri described her,’ Caroline said softly. ‘I doubt she knows where Richie ends and she begins.’

  Salinas, Paget saw, was regarding Sonia Arias with a certain wariness. ‘How would you describe Richie’s relationship to your granddaughter, Elena?’

  ‘Devoted,’ Sonia answered with suppressed bitterness. ‘Totally in love, as I was with him. That little girl doesn’t know how lucky she was to have a parent who held nothing back.’

  So even Elena was unworthy. Paget could not easily calculate the effect of this woman’s ‘love’ on Richie, but the thought that Elena had inherited both Sonia and her handiwork filled him with empathy and unease. ‘And did you and Richie discuss the effect of his divorce on Elena?’ Salinas asked.

  ‘It wasn’t his divorce,’ Sonia answered grimly. ‘I want to make that clear to everyone who’s listening. For the first time, millions of people are hearing about Ricardo Arias, and I won’t rest until they know who and what he was.’ Suddenly Sonia turned and pointed at Paget. ‘She left my son, to take up with this man. She was always too ambitious to give Richie the support he needed, and then she left him with their daughter.’ Her voice filled with an odd satisfaction. ‘I told him about her, from the beginning. But Richie was too good a person.’

  All at once, Paget felt the anger run through him. Through gritted teeth, he said to Caroline, ‘I’ve had about enough of this.’

  ‘Easy,’ she answered quietly, and was on her feet. ‘Your Honor, rather than move to strike, I wonder if I could make an observation. Mrs Arias is understandably upset. But her opinions regarding her late son’s marriage may not be fair or even accurate – let alone relevant. I wonder if Mr Salinas could help us hew more closely to objective fact.’

  Slowly, Lerner nodded, regarding Sonia Arias with a look of polite unease. ‘In responding to Mr Salinas’s questions, Mrs Arias, try to answer them directly. With respect, I believe that’s how you can be most helpful.’

  Turning, Sonia gave him a coquettish smile; it was so unlike her demeanor seconds before that it was eerie. ‘Of course,’ she said pertly. ‘I’d want Ricardo to be proud of me.’

  Lerner blinked. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

  Salinas cleared his throat. ‘I take it,’ he said, ‘that Richie’s principal concern was for Elena.’

  Sonia folded her hands. ‘Always.’ Abruptly, Sonia’s firm voice had returned. ‘I begged him to come to New York, take a rest from all the strain he was under. But he just couldn’t bring himself to leave her.’

  Salinas paused a moment. ‘Did there come a time,’ he asked softly, ‘when Richie told you he believed that Elena had been molested by Mr Paget’s son?’

  As the jury watched, suddenly intent, Sonia Arias folded her arms. ‘Yes, of course, I can remember when Richie was a baby, admiring how beautiful he was – always was, until the day he died. But I can’t imagine what a parent would have to do to turn his own son into a pervert.’

  Rising quickly, Caroline touched Paget’s arm. Her voice was stripped of charity now. ‘Your Honor, I move to strike everything after “yes.” And I ask this witness, if possible, to distinguish between fact and anger. Whoever may be its subject at the moment.’ />
  ‘Motion granted,’ Lerner said promptly. ‘Members of the jury, I am directing you to ignore Mrs Arias’s comments regarding Mr Paget and his son as speculative and unwarranted.’ He turned to Sonia Arias. ‘I understand,’ he said more gently, ‘that you wish to help the prosecution. Please understand that you are not.’

  Sonia Arias sat straighter in the witness chair, turning from Judge Lerner. She did not answer.

  Looking unhappy, Salinas asked, ‘What did Richie tell you about the alleged abuse by Carlo Paget?’

  ‘He was disgusted and sick at heart. What was worse, Elena’s mother had left him with no money for a lawyer, or to get a psychologist to help her own daughter.’ Sonia gave the jury another look of pride. ‘So I sent Ricardo a thousand dollars to hire one or the other. He was so appreciative and relieved.’

  Next to him, Paget saw Caroline look puzzled and then make a note. ‘To your knowledge,’ Salinas asked, ‘did he intend to fight for permanent custody of Elena?’

  Sonia gave an emphatic nod. ‘To the bitter end, and I was going to help him. He didn’t want that woman, or her boyfriend or his son, to make a mess of Elena’s life.’ She paused for emphasis. ‘Nothing – and I mean nothing – was going to keep Ricardo Arias from having his daughter.’

  Once more, Paget thought, it was difficult to separate mother from son. He leaned closer to Caroline. ‘Remember when Lee Harvey Oswald’s mother decided to write a book about him? She was going to call it “A Mother’s Place in History.”’

  Caroline gave a soft laugh, all the while studying Sonia Arias with an air of intense reflection. But Salinas was utterly still now, drawing the jury to him.

  ‘When,’ he asked quietly, ‘did you last speak to Ricardo?’

  For a moment, Sonia Arias looked down. ‘That Friday. The last day anyone saw my son alive.’

  ‘And what did you talk about?’

  ‘That Elena’s mother was going to Italy with her boyfriend, despite all the worries about Elena and his son. Richie said it was the final proof that he needed to fight for Elena, any way he could.’

  Abruptly, the atmosphere in the room had changed. The jury leaned forward to listen. Marian Celler, who had been wiping her reading glasses, stared at Sonia with the glasses still in her hand. ‘Did you respond to that?’ Salinas asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Sonia still looked down. ‘I told him I’d come to help – that day if he wanted me. But he said he could take care of Elena, and said what would really help was if I could send him the money I would have spent on airfare. I told him I’d think about it and we could talk the next time he called.’ There was a wounded undertone in her voice, as if she was reluctant to believe that her nearness to Richie could be of less value than money. ‘He had powerful friends now, he told me. Other people who could help.’

  The last two sentences, Paget saw at once, were unrehearsed. For a split second, Salinas looked unsettled. ‘Colt’s people,’ Caroline whispered.

  Quickly Salinas asked, ‘Did you talk to Ricardo often?’

  The question seemed to revive Sonia’s pride. Looking directly at the jury, she said, ‘Every Saturday and Wednesday, since college. Ricardo always called me, and he never forgot. Not once in twelve years.’

  Salinas gave her a melancholy look. ‘But he didn’t call on Saturday, did he? Or ever again.’

  Sonia looked down again. ‘No.’

  ‘Did you try to call him?’

  ‘I wanted him to call me.’ Her mouth twisted. ‘I thought he might be upset about the money.’

  ‘Did you ever call?’

  Sonia folded her arms. ‘I was very angry with him,’ she said, and suddenly the tears welled in her eyes. ‘You see, I’d forgotten who Richie was.’

  What Caroline needed to do, she knew, would not be easy.

  Rising, she regarded Sonia Arias with a look of puzzlement. ‘When you said that Teresa Peralta didn’t support your son Ricardo, what precisely did you mean?’

  Sonia gave her a knowing smile. ‘I meant emotionally. She never appreciated how special he was – how imaginative, how attractive, how different he was than most men. I mean, how many fathers have that kind of commitment to their daughter?’

  Caroline’s gaze was a polite blank. ‘So when you said that Ms Peralta never supported Richie, you weren’t referring to financial support?’

  Sonia’s face seemed to tighten. ‘No.’

  ‘And in fact, she supported him through six years of marriage, did she not?’

  ‘Only after he quit the law. And just so he could start his business.’

  ‘How many law jobs did Richie “quit”?’

  ‘Three.’ Sonia looked angry. ‘But one was to go to business school. Richie wanted to become more entrepreneurial, he told me.’

  ‘And Teresa also sent him to graduate school, correct? For an M.B.A.’

  A curt nod. ‘She did that.’

  ‘And then gave him money to start his business.’

  Sonia stared at her. ‘She may have. But so did I.’

  ‘Do you know what happened to the money? Terri’s or yours?’

  ‘No.’ A slight pause. ‘Richie had some bad luck.’

  Caroline kept her face and voice bland, civility without warmth. ‘Before Teresa married him,’ she asked, ‘who supported Richie?’

  Sonia Arias hesitated. This part of the trial, Caroline thought, could be entitled ‘Who Was the Real Ricardo Arias?’ At the corner of her eye, Victor Salinas showed signs of restiveness. ‘We supported him,’ Sonia said finally. ‘And let me set the record straight again. I helped them get through the law school years, when Teresa had the baby. By getting a job.’

  Caroline angled her head. ‘Did Richie ever work?’

  ‘Objection,’ Salinas called out. ‘Mr Arias’s employment record is totally irrelevant.’

  ‘Really,’ Caroline shot back. ‘It was you who introduced the question of whether Mrs Arias believed her son to be suicidal. That places his personal circumstances squarely on the table.’

  Lerner nodded. ‘Agreed, Counselor. At least within limits. Move on.’

  Caroline turned to Sonia Arias. Frowning, the witness said, ‘I can’t remember what jobs Richie maybe had.’

  As if thinking of another question, Caroline paused. ‘What about when he lived at home?’ she asked casually. ‘During high school. Did he ever work then?’

  For what seemed too long, Sonia did not answer.

  For Caroline, the scene had a certain horrible fascination: Sonia stared at her, trying to see into her mind before deciding on an answer. ‘That was a long time ago,’ she said at last.

  ‘Let me help you,’ Caroline said pleasantly. ‘When he was seventeen, didn’t Richie have a summer job clerking at a sporting goods store near your neighborhood in the Bronx? Called Bernhard’s?’

  Sonia’s face turned to stone. Salinas half rose to his feet. ‘Yes,’ Sonia said coldly. ‘I remember that now.’

  ‘And didn’t Mr Bernhard call your husband and demand reimbursement? Because he’d caught Richie skimming from the cash register?’

  ‘Your Honor,’ Salinas called out. ‘The prosecution requests a bench conference.’

  ‘Of course,’ Lerner said, and motioned Caroline to the bench.

  She and Salinas stood face-to-face, with Lerner peering down at them. ‘What is this?’ Salinas demanded in a taut undertone. ‘I called this witness to make two simple points. One, that Ricardo Arias showed no sign of any suicidal impulse. Two, that his failure to call on Saturday, as anticipated, suggests time of death. Whether he stole the milk money in fifth grade is petty character assassination, completely irrelevant to any issue in this case.’

  It was here, Caroline knew, that she needed Jared Lerner to rule as she had hoped for since the moment when she planted the trial in his mind. She spoke to him directly. ‘As Mr Salinas will concede, he is attempting to show that Ricardo Arias was an emotionally stable man with no thought of suicide and, for that matter, no enemies in th
e world beyond my client and Richie’s former wife. That’s enough to justify these questions. But what Victor has also been trying to do, right from his opening statement, is to paint Ricardo Arias as the compendium of virtue.’ She turned on Salinas. ‘You’ve asked for this, Victor. My Ricardo Arias is a cheat, a liar, unable to hold an honest job, and, quite possibly, a textbook sociopath humbly disguised as a second-rate con man. Not only does that suggest emotional instability, but people like my Richie make other people mad – lots of them.’ She faced Lerner again. ‘This is a murder trial, Your Honor, not a memorial service for Richie’s family and friends, assuming that he had any beyond the unfortunate Ms Warner. Chris Paget is entitled to have me show anything suggestive of mental problems on behalf of Mr Arias. And, I will represent to you right now, we believe there’s plenty.’

  ‘That’s an excuse.’ Salinas looked up at Lerner with new intensity. ‘Petty theft, if that’s what we have, doesn’t translate to suicide. Suicide’s the loophole through which Ms Masters intends to squeeze every piece of innuendo she can find, until the jury forgets this trial isn’t about Ricardo Arias but about the man who killed him.’

  ‘There’s a new thought,’ Lerner interjected. ‘But it’s a little late, Victor. Next time you nominate someone for altar boy, you may want to screen him first.’ He looked down at Caroline. ‘I’m going to give you considerable latitude, Caroline. See that you don’t abuse it.’

  ‘Thank you, Your Honor.’ And thank you, Johnny Moore, she added silently.

  Salinas merely shrugged. On the way back to the prosecution table, he shot Caroline a sideways look, as if to remind her that the trial would be long and hard.

  Turning to face Sonia Arias, Caroline saw a brittle woman, tensely guarding her image of her own son. Caroline felt a moment’s pity, and then it was gone. Quietly, she said, ‘Do you remember the question?’

  Sonia Arias sat straighter. ‘This man Bernhard never caught Richie stealing anything. We paid him five hundred dollars because he threatened to call the police.’

  ‘Wasn’t there another reason you didn’t want trouble? A problem at Bronx Science, about three months earlier?’