by John Saul
“But Jeff is innocent!” Heather flared. “Daddy, you must know he’s not capable of what he’s accused of doing!”
Perry Randall’s left eyebrow arched. “No, Heather, I really don’t know him.”
Heather felt she was choking on the stream of furious words rising in her throat, but held them in. What was the point of arguing with her father now? His mind was made up—had been made up since the moment she’d called him after Jeff’s arrest.
She had called him in the hope—no, in the certainty—that he’d be able to talk to someone and straighten everything out. Now she realized she should have known better. Hadn’t it been her father’s cool, analytical responses to nearly every emotional issue that ever came up that had finally driven her mother away? Still, she hadn’t been prepared for his response to her request for help:
“I want you to come home immediately,” he’d told her. “The last thing I need right now—”
“You need?” she’d retorted. “Daddy, Jeff’s in jail!”
“Which in my experience means he’s undoubtedly done something to get himself there,” her father replied. Then, in the face of her anguish, he’d softened. “I’ll look into it in the morning. It’s going to take some time for the precinct to book him, but there should be something in the office by tomorrow morning. I’ll take a look—see what people are thinking. Then I’ll see what I can do.”
So Heather had come home.
Except the big apartment overlooking Central Park didn’t feel like home anymore—hadn’t felt like home since her mother had left a dozen years ago, when she was eleven.
“Left.”
There was a nice euphemism. Now that she was twenty-three, Heather knew that “taken away” would better describe what had happened. She hadn’t seen it herself, but over the years, she’d gotten a pretty good idea about what had happened. All she’d known at the time was that she’d come home from school as on any typical day and found her mother gone. “She just needs a good rest,” they told her.
It turned out her mother was “resting” in a hospital.
Not a regular hospital, like Lenox Hill, over near Lexington, or the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital down on Sixty-fourth.
The one her mother was in looked more like a resort than a hospital and was out in the country. But it wasn’t a resort. It was where her father had sent Charlotte Randall to stop her from drinking and taking pills.
At first her mother promised she’d come home soon. “It’ll only be a little while, sweetheart,” she said the first time Heather visited. But her mother never came home again. “I just can’t,” she explained. “When you’re older, you’ll understand.”
The divorce was quiet—her father had seen to that.
And her mother had left New York—her father had seen to that, too.
Charlotte was living in San Francisco now. When Heather turned eighteen, she’d flown out to see her, over her father’s objections. Her mother was sober when Heather arrived that morning, but she had a glass of white wine with lunch. “Don’t look at me that way, darling,” she said as she took the first sip, her voice brittle, her smile too bright. “It’s only one glass. It’s not as if I’m an alcoholic.” But it hadn’t been only one glass; that had been merely the first. By dinner her mother didn’t even try to deny it. “Why shouldn’t I drink? I may live in San Francisco, but your father still controls my life.”
“Why do you let him?” she’d asked.
Her mother only shook her head. “It’s not that easy—when you’re older, you’ll understand.” But all the trip to San Francisco accomplished was to destroy the illusions about her mother that Heather had nurtured during the years they’d been apart.
Now she did understand, as her mother had said she would. In some ways, her father controlled her just as much as he had controlled Charlotte. Heather was still living in the rambling apartment on Fifth Avenue, still going to school at Columbia.
Still being supported by her father, still living in his house. But she knew it would end when Jeff finished architecture school and they got married.
Then that terrible night had come when she’d waited for Jeff at his apartment but he hadn’t returned. Finally, certain something must have happened to him, she’d started calling.
First the hospitals. St. Luke’s, the clinic on Columbus, the Westside Medical Center.
And then the precinct station on West One hundredth Street.
“We got a Jeffrey Converse here,” the desk sergeant told her, but refused to give her any of the details over the phone.
Heather thought it must be some terrible mistake, until she went down to the precinct house. Jeff, his face scratched, his clothes covered with blood, had looked at her helplessly through the bars of the single cell in the detectives’ squad room. “I was trying to help a woman,” he said. “I was just trying to help her.”
And the nightmare had begun.
The nightmare that her father, the Assistant District Attorney, had done nothing to end. “There’s nothing I can do,” he told her the next day. “I’ve looked at the case, and the victim has made a positive identification. She’s sure it was Jeff.”
“There must be something—” Heather began, but was interrupted.
“My job is to prosecute people like Jeff Converse, not defend them. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do.”
But Heather knew it was more than that. Her father didn’t want to do anything for Jeff.
He’d never wanted her to date Jeff.
He certainly didn’t want her to marry Jeff.
He did, however, want to be District Attorney, an ambition that might very well be satisfied in the next election. Unless, of course, something embarrassing happened—something like being on the wrong side of a much publicized case.
And because of the violence that had been committed against Cynthia Allen, Jeff’s case had become very high-profile indeed. To Perry Randall, it was bad enough that his daughter had been dating Jeffrey Converse. To appear to be defending him was unthinkable.
“But he didn’t do it,” Heather whispered now. “I know he didn’t do it.” She might as well have said nothing at all, for her father had already turned his attention back to the newspaper.
Keith Converse reached for the knob of his truck’s radio, but changed his mind before his fingers touched it. If he turned it on, he knew what would happen: his wife would pause in her prayers just long enough to give him a reproachful look, and even though she wouldn’t say anything, her message would be loud and clear.
Don’t you even care what happens to Jeff? the look would say as clearly as if she’d spoken aloud.
It wouldn’t do any good to try to tell her how much he cared about their son. She’d made up her mind, and he had given up trying to argue with her months ago.
“It’s God’s will,” she’d sighed when he first told her that Jeff had been arrested.
God’s will.
Keith no longer knew how many times he’d heard that phrase in the last few years. It had become Mary’s rationale for refusing to discuss every problem that came up between them.
He knew its origin, knew as well as she did where it had started. After all, they’d both gone to St. Mary’s School, both grown up dutifully going to mass every Sunday at St. Barnabas Church.
When they were young, Mary had seemed just as relaxed about the Church as he was. But that began to change after the first night they made love, when Jeff was conceived. A thick blanket of Catholic guilt had fallen over Mary the moment she found out she was pregnant.
Keith assumed it would ease off as soon as they got married, and he’d seen to it that they did so right away. Eight months later, when Jeff was born, they told everyone he was premature, and since he’d been a small baby anyway, everyone accepted the lie.
Except Mary.
When she was withdrawn after Jeff was born, Keith hadn’t been concerned. He thought it was because she was busy with the baby. But then Jeff wa
s a toddler, and her withdrawn attitude only got worse. By the time Jeff was in school, they were making love no more than once a month, if you could even call it making love. Then it was more like once a year, and when Jeff was in high school, Keith had almost forgotten what sleeping with Mary was like. Still, in other ways she’d been a good wife to him. She’d kept their house immaculate, and taken good care of all of them. Yet every year, she seemed to withdraw even further into herself, spending more and more time praying.
And every time something bad happened, she said it was God’s will.
Said they were being punished for having sinned.
That had hurt—hurt a lot. It was like saying they shouldn’t have had Jeff.
Keith had wondered if he should have insisted they go to some kind of counseling. But the one time he suggested it, the only person Mary had been willing to talk to was their priest, and Keith hadn’t seen how that would help. So he’d kept silent, concentrated on building up his contracting business, and hoped things would get better. When Jeff went off to college, Mary announced that she was leaving him.
“It’s God’s will,” she’d told him. “We committed a terrible sin, but I’ve done my penance and God has forgiven me.”
As usual, there hadn’t been any discussion. Keith knew he might be able to argue with his suppliers, his subcontractors, and his customers, but he couldn’t argue with Mary.
He couldn’t argue with God’s will.
So she moved out, and he rattled around in the little house in Bridgehampton that suddenly seemed way too big and way too empty, and tried to get used to having both his son and his wife gone.
It wasn’t easy, but he got through it. Since Jeff had been arrested, though, it had gotten much worse.
When Jeff had first called him, Keith was certain it had to be a terrible mistake. Jeff had been a good kid—never even gotten into the kind of trouble most kids did. And then they’d arrested him, and charged him with things Keith knew his son couldn’t possibly have done.
All through the fall, Keith’s faith in Jeff had never wavered, even as he and Mary listened to the victim’s testimony. He would pick Mary up and they’d go to the trial together. Keith knew the woman had to be mistaken, even though she sounded absolutely certain about what had happened.
Even though the victim pointed to Jeff in the courtroom and said, “That’s the man who attacked me. I’ll never forget that face as long as I live.”
When the jury convicted Jeff, Keith had still been certain it was a mistake. He’d been sure it would be all right—the case would be appealed and Jeff would be released, and they would all go on with their lives.
But Jeff hadn’t been released.
And Keith, despite himself, had started blaming Mary for what had happened.
Now, as the traffic on the Long Island Expressway came to a complete halt, he glanced at her.
“We’re going to be late.”
Mary sighed. “I suppose that’s my fault, too.”
Keith’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “I didn’t say it was your fault. Why do you have to take everything so personal?”
“Personally,” Mary corrected.
Don’t say anything, Keith told himself. It won’t matter if we’re late anyway. It won’t change anything. But it would matter to Jeff. “I should’ve come in last night,” he muttered. “I should have been there all along.”
Mary Converse saw no point in responding to her husband’s words. Indeed, she was weary of trying to talk to Keith at all. If he only had the same strength that she had—
She cut her thought short, knowing that Keith didn’t share her faith, and never would. At first, like Keith, she assumed that her son was innocent, too. But since then, she’d come to grips with what had happened to Jeff. For a while she’d blamed herself, believing that if she and Keith hadn’t sinned all those years ago, none of this would have happened.
Jeff wouldn’t have gotten himself into trouble.
After he’d been convicted, she felt so guilty, she almost wished she could just die. But she’d talked it over with Father Noonan, who had explained that she wasn’t responsible for anything Jeff had done, and that her role now was to let Jeff know she forgave him.
Forgave him, and loved him, just as God forgave and loved him.
In her faith, she’d been able to find peace and acceptance.
Keith, however, kept right on denying Jeff’s guilt, insisting it had to be a mistake, utterly refusing to accept that all things are God’s will. Deep in her heart, Mary knew better: Jeff had been conceived in sin, his soul corrupted from the very moment she had been weak enough to give in to Keith Converse’s basest desires. The sins of the father were now being visited upon the son, and there was nothing she could do but accept it and pray—not only for her own soul, but for Jeff’s as well.
Now, as the traffic jam evaporated as suddenly as it had started and they headed west on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, Mary’s fingers began to move over the beads of her rosary as she once more began to pray.
God’s will be done, she silently prayed. God’s will be done . . .
CHAPTER 2
For Jeff Converse, mornings had taken on a terrible sameness. Each dawn that had broken over the last several months had brought with it a fleeting hope that he was finally awakening from the terrible nightmare his life had become. But as the comforting fingers of sleep released him from their touch, the hope that he was waking up from a bad dream always slipped away. The knot of fear that formed in his stomach when he’d been arrested pulled steadily tighter as he pondered the horrors the new day might bring.
At first he’d assumed it would be over within a few minutes—maybe an hour or two at the outside. As they locked him in the cell in the detectives’ squad room at the police station on West One hundredth Street, he’d looked around with more curiosity than fear. After all, what had happened to him was obviously a mistake.
All he’d been trying to do was help the woman in the subway.
He had barely seen her at first—he’d been starting up the stairs from the platform when he heard something that made him pause.
If he’d just ignored it and kept going, if he’d paid no more attention to the muffled scream than he did to the car alarms that were always going off on the streets, he’d have been fine.
But a scream wasn’t a car alarm, and without thinking about it, he had turned away from the staircase and started toward the far end of the platform.
There’d been no mistaking what he saw in the shadowless glare of the fluorescent lights that filled the white-tiled subway station: a woman was sprawled out on the platform, facedown.
A man with his back to Jeff knelt next to her, tearing at the woman’s clothes.
The idea of turning away from the scene never occurred to Jeff. Instead, he began running toward the kneeling man, yelling at the top of his lungs. Startled by the noise, the man glanced over his shoulder, then stood up. But as Jeff charged toward him, the man didn’t turn to face him, made no move to defend himself. To Jeff’s surprise, he leaped off the platform onto the subway tracks, vanishing into the darkness of the tunnel. By the time Jeff reached the woman, her attacker was gone. In the distance, Jeff could hear the rumble of an approaching train, but he ignored the sound, all his attention focused on the woman.
She was still lying facedown, and Jeff picked up her wrist, feeling for a pulse. As the artery beneath his fingers throbbed, he gently turned the woman over.
Her nose was crushed, her jaw was swelling, and her face was covered with blood. As the train roared into the subway and slowed to a stop, the woman’s eyes opened. Her gaze fixed on him for a second, and then she suddenly seemed to come back to life. A scream erupted from her throat and the fingernails of one hand raked across his face. He grabbed her wrist, and her other hand came up, tearing at him. Jeff had no idea how long the struggle lasted—perhaps only a few seconds, maybe as much as half a minute. As he tried to pinion the thrashing
woman beneath him, hands closed on his shoulders and he was jerked away.
“She’s hurt,” Jeff began. “Someone—” But before he could finish he was manhandled away from the woman and slammed facedown onto the subway platform.
His arms were jerked behind his back.
And his nightmare began.
As the handcuffs tightened around his wrists he heard someone say something about his not having to say anything.
They took him to the precinct house on West One hundredth Street.
Once again he was told that he had the right to remain silent, but since he knew that he’d only tried to help the woman in the subway station, it didn’t occur to him to demand a lawyer before he recounted what had happened. He told them all of it—and kept telling them, even as he was processed into the system. By the time they’d taken away his watch, his class ring, his keys, and his wallet; by the time a computer had scanned his fingerprints and confirmed that he had no prior arrest record; by the time they finally sat him down in the detectives’ squad room and asked him to once more describe exactly what had happened, he’d already told his story three or four times.
Even when they locked him in the holding cage in the squad room, he was certain it would soon be over. As soon as the woman from the subway station calmed down, she’d remember what had happened.
She would tell the police.
And that would be the end of it.
When they asked him if he wanted to call someone, he thought of his parents first, then changed his mind—with both of them far out on Long Island, what could they do? Besides, it was all a mistake, and why have them worry all night when by morning he’d be back home? Finally, he settled on Heather Randall, certain she would still be waiting for him at his apartment. But before he could even make the call, she arrived at the precinct.