by Unknown
‘There were no lights. When I rang the doorbell, no one answered – no Laura, no maid. The door was locked.
‘I was relieved.’ Caldwell shifted slightly, turning away from Terri. ‘I thought Laura had gone out. Then I remembered the guesthouse.
‘There was a moon. I found a path around the house, through the flowers and shrubbery, which came out by the pool.
‘The pool was dark. I stared into it for a moment, looking for something, hoping not to find anything. Then I noticed that the lights were on in the guesthouse.
‘When I reached the door, it was ajar.
‘I stood there, suddenly afraid. And then I knew why I had come.’
Caldwell paused, gazing down. In Terri’s imagination, her posture mimed that of a nineteen-year-old girl, twenty years before, deciding whether to step through a half-open door. And then Caldwell said, ‘I went in.
‘The bedroom door was open.
‘Inside, the light was pale yellow. The first thing I saw was the telephone by the bed. It was off the hook, dangling by the cord, which stretched to the floor until it disappeared in shadows. The receiver made a throbbing sound that seemed to echo in the room.
‘Laura was on the bed.
‘She was naked, her hair was wet, she was lying on a bath towel. For a second, I thought she’d just passed out after going for a swim. Then I saw the revolver in her hand, blood and hair scattered across the pillow. The back of her head was gone.’
Terri flinched. ‘I turned away,’ Caldwell said softly. ‘After that, I never looked at Laura again. Except on film.’
Terri wanted to reach out to her, then felt that this would be pointless. ‘What did you do?’ she asked.
‘I was in a trance. I stood there, my back to Laura, as if I’d been anesthetized. What penetrated, finally, was the relentless screeching of the telephone.’ Caldwell’s voice had steadied. Each word was precise and clear, as if she were describing a picture she had memorized years before. ‘It kept beeping until I couldn’t stand it anymore. All I could think of was to stop the sound. When I hung it up, and the sound stopped, it was like my brain reconnected to some sort of reality.
‘Someone had to know.’ Caldwell paused. ‘It was foolish and empty, but I couldn’t leave her alone like that.
‘I picked up the telephone. When the Emergency operator came on, I said, “Laura Chase has killed herself.”
‘There was this long silence – I’m sure she thought I was some sort of crank. Finally, she asked who I was. I realized that I didn’t want to say. So I answered, “Just a friend.”’ Caldwell shook her head. ‘It sounded so miserable.
‘She kept asking who I was. Somehow, it made me angry. “Damn you,” I snapped. “She’s put a fucking bullet through her brain,” and slammed down the telephone.
‘After that, I just walked out.
‘I didn’t look back and didn’t run. It was like turning away from Laura had taken all the energy I had. I walked to the car like a robot, switched on the ignition, and started down the driveway.
‘When I got to the end, I had to stop for a moment, to remember where I was going, which way to turn. Then I started home.’ Caldwell paused. ‘I’d gone perhaps a quarter mile when I saw the ambulance, lights flashing, coming toward me in the other lane.’
Caldwell looked at Terri. ‘That’s when I knew for sure that the whole thing had been real.
‘I just kept driving.
‘That night, I couldn’t sleep. The next day, when I could finally stand to open my door, Laura looked up at me from the morning paper.’
Remembering, Caldwell’s eyes seemed uncomprehending. ‘I kept waiting for them to come. They never did. No one had taped my call. They didn’t have my fingerprints. No one knew about me and Laura.’ Caldwell looked away. ‘No one knew I was even there.’
Terri said nothing. There was a long silence, and then Caldwell raised her head. She looked determined, almost defiant. ‘For years,’ she said, ‘I’ve read articles about the mysterious caller, about “Who Killed Laura Chase.” But I’m the only one who ever knew the answer.’ Turning back to Terri, she finished in a steady voice. ‘I killed Laura Chase.’
‘No,’ Terri answered. ‘You didn’t.’
Caldwell looked at her. ‘Oh, I know all the right answers. I’ve had years of therapy to master them. Laura killed Laura. Or society, or Hollywood, or her father or Senator Colt or a thousand men in between. Even swine like Ransom, who built their fantasies on an idea of Laura which has damaged countless other women almost as badly as it damaged her. I know all that. But there’s still one question for which those answers don’t work at all.
‘I keep asking myself, What would have happened to Laura if she’d just gotten through that night? For that there is no answer.’
Terri shook her head. ‘But that was twenty years ago. You have a whole life to look at now. Not just the senseless thing that Laura did when you were nineteen and even your own life made no sense.’
‘My own life,’ Caldwell echoed. ‘I’m still sorting out how much of that I owe to Laura. After that night, I hardly drank again. I didn’t go out for almost a year, and when I did, the sport fucking was over. Laura’s death was like a fault line. Did she make me a feminist? Or a mother? Or a filmmaker? Or a wife? Or some or all of them? I’ll never know that, either.’
Terri waited, then asked quietly. ‘What is it that you thought Mark Ransom might tell you?’
‘Part of it was what he might tell my husband, or my children. But there was more.’ Caldwell frowned, as if struggling to articulate something too enormous to be captured in a few words. ‘All this time, I’ve talked to Laura in my head, asking why she did it, what I meant to her. But when she answers, it’s in my voice.’ She paused. ‘I wanted to hear her again, talking about me but not to me. I thought I might learn the truth.’
‘Do you think Laura really knew the truth, whatever it is?’
‘Perhaps not.’ Caldwell turned to Terri, as if in search of understanding. ‘But how could I know the tape existed and run away from it?’
Terri studied her face. ‘So Ransom promised to bring a tape. Where Laura talks about you.’
Caldwell nodded. ‘I suppose the police must have it now.’
‘No.’ Terri hesitated. ‘When he died, Ransom only had one tape. The one he played for Mary, about James Colt. The second tape he described to you, he didn’t have.’
Caldwell looked surprised, and then her eyes went cold.
‘That bastard,’ she said.
Chapter 8
‘So far,’ Moore said to Christopher Paget, ‘it would appear that Ransom was either celibate or had taken up the “solitary sin,” as my old priest used to call it. At least for the last two years.’
They sat on a bench at the foot of California Street. To their right, the cable car line swept up California to the top of Nob Hill, where Ransom had died; ahead and to their left, Market Street ended at an open plaza, behind which stood the Ferry Building, its venerable clock tower showing a little past 2:30. Behind them were the four adjacent towers of Embarcadero Center, each housing about thirty floors of offices; the crowd around them seemed equal parts tourists and professionals, with a scattering of street people and three or four strutting pigeons, looking for food. On a nearby bench, a harmless lunatic, dressed in the jeans and seaman’s jacket he had worn every day for years, shouted his usual mix-and-match fragments about conspiracies: today’s special seemed to feature the CIA, Mary Lou Retton, and the New York Museum of Modern Art. Moore, who could not stand to lunch indoors, consumed the last bit of his salami sandwich.
Paget looked at him. ‘Nothing?’
‘Nothing. And I don’t just mean a laudable absence of attempted rapes. I mean the virtual absence of attempted dates.’ Moore made a short, choppy gesture of emphasis. ‘Nothing in the columns. No trips with women. Not a single female person, so far, who will admit to screwing Ransom anytime this decade. Either the act was so dreadful they’ve r
epressed it, so forgettable they thought dear Mark was merely sneezing, or sex just wasn’t on his agenda for the nineties.’
‘That simply can’t be. Not after his call to Lindsay Caldwell.’
‘I know, I know.’ Moore’s eyes narrowed. ‘Poor woman. I always liked her.’
‘I still do.’
Moore nodded. After a time, he said. ‘Our little girl’s done well.’
‘Terri, I assume you mean. My only question about Terri is whether she knows how good she is.’
Moore became quiet for a moment. ‘There’s something sad about her, don’t you think?’
‘I think, yes. But I honestly don’t know what, or why – it’s more a sense, like quicksilver, which comes and goes in an instant. Terri’s very private, and she holds on tight.’
‘Unlike you,’ Moore said sardonically. ‘The Mr Rogers of white-collar law, so warm and fuzzy. It goes without saying that you’ve not met the husband.’
‘No.’ Paget found himself squinting at the sunlight. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Just a sense of my own. Something she said in passing.’
Paget examined him. ‘Ah, Johnny,’ he said lightly, ‘you’re not falling in love, are you? Not with my twenty-nine-year-old married associate.’
Moore shook his head. ‘Too old,’ he said. ‘There’s just too much sadness in the world, that’s all, and it’s far too late for either of us.’
Paget smiled. ‘Personally, I’ve pinned my hopes on Carlo. It keeps me from becoming maudlin when I start performing mental tricks like doubling my age or adding up how many years I’ve already lived past Mozart. When I turned forty-five, the results of either calculation were rather melancholy.’
‘Still,’ Moore said, ‘you at least owe Ms Peralta a pat on the back when she returns. This Lindsay Caldwell thing –’
‘This Lindsay Caldwell thing,’ Paget put in, ‘reeks of sexual blackmail. It’s a weird variant of what Mary says happened to her: trading tapes for sex, except that Ransom had tremendous leverage on Caldwell and none at all on Mary. Which, one assumes, is why he resorted to rape. And why Mary felt free – however inadvertently – to spare Lindsay Caldwell a private meeting with someone who no doubt had given considerable thought to her debasement.’
‘Except,’ Moore retorted, ‘that there was no second tape, and Mark Ransom has been living the life of Saint Augustine.’
‘Oh, there was a tape about Caldwell, all right – Ransom must have listened to it before he called her. Which leaves the question of where it is.’
‘I’ve no idea.’ Moore turned to him again. ‘If it comes to a trial, Chris, can you get Caldwell’s story into evidence?’
Paget shook his head. ‘In justice, I should. But I probably have even less chance than with Melissa Rappaport. Nothing happened: Ransom scheduled an interview and then died first. The only consequence to Lindsay Caldwell is that somewhere, perhaps in one of Ransom’s homes, exists a very nasty tape that will give Marnie Sharpe hours of listening pleasure.’
Moore considered that. ‘Jeanne-Marc Steinhardt,’ he finally said, ‘paid her dear old mum a real tribute. So meaningful to the dead, so helpful to the living.’
Paget was silent for a moment. ‘No price,’ he answered softly, ‘is too great for the truth.’
Moore looked at him. ‘If there’s any dirt on Ransom, Chris, I’ll find it.’
At seven-fifty, Paget found Terri in her office, looking drawn in the fluorescent light.
‘Why aren’t you home?’ he asked.
Terri brushed back her hair. ‘By the time I got in from Los Angeles, Richie had taken Elena out to dinner.’ She smiled faintly. ‘Father-daughter night, he called it. So I decided to take a little more time to process things.’
There was a hesitancy in her voice; except to see Elena, Paget guessed, some part of her was not eager to go home. ‘In the past six days,’ Paget said, ‘you’ve interviewed Melissa Rappaport, Jeanne Steinhardt, and Lindsay Caldwell. Processing that should take some time.’
Terri watched him. ‘I suppose, for me, it will.’
‘For you?’ Paget smiled. ‘As opposed to whom – the truly insensitive in general, or Johnny and me in particular? Or have your glaring personal inadequacies prevented you from noting that you’ve gotten three strangers to tell you things they’ve never told anyone else and perhaps never would have.’
‘That’s part of what bothers me.’ Terri’s shoulders drew in. ‘Knowing this stuff – it makes me feel responsible for them.’
‘You made them promises, Terri. I promise you I’ll keep them.’ Paget watched her face. ‘Somewhere along the line, I’ve started trying to notice the damage I’ll do before I do it. I do have a couple of questions, though.’
Some of the strain seemed to vanish from Terri’s face. ‘Sure.’
‘Are you hungry? Because I am. And have you ever eaten at Piano Zinc?’
Terri looked surprised. ‘What about Carlo?’
‘He had a game. So I fed him on the way back, to save homework time, and then watched him shuffle up the stairs toward his English paper like a prisoner on death row. Which is close to how I’m feeling about being here now.’
Terri smiled. ‘Then the answers are “yes,” “no,” and “I’d like to.”’
Le Piano Zinc was a crowded art deco café with mirrors on two sides, light-pink walls, framed Parisian posters. The slender, mustached maître d’ and Paget spoke briefly and amiably in French, and then Paget introduced Terri in English. The maître d’ smiled, shook her hand, and led them to a table in a quiet corner. The minute or two spent doing this reminded Terri of how little she knew about Paget’s life.
‘I didn’t know you spoke French,’ she said.
‘College French, and poor at that. I practice on Robert, who indulges me. It’s the last vestige of my first ambition.’
‘Which was?’
‘To live in Paris and be Hemingway. Problem was, there’d already been a Hemingway.’
‘Why didn’t you try someone else?’
Paget smiled. ‘That was the ultimate problem – I couldn’t “find my own voice,” as it were. When I didn’t sound like Hemingway without the machismo, I sounded like Faulkner without the genius. And too few people read the Faulkner who was a genius.’
Terri appraised him. ‘You know, sometimes I can’t tell when you’re serious.’
‘Believe me, it’s completely intentional.’ Paget smiled again. ‘Some of the things I’m serious about embarrass me.’
Somewhere in the flippant remark, Terri thought, was an element of truth. ‘You’re serious about Carlo,’ she said.
Paget nodded. ‘About Carlo I’m absolutely serious.’ He paused, then added lightly, ‘Poor kid.’
The throwaway line hung there for a moment. What was it about Christopher Paget, Terri wondered, that so often made her feel as though they were having a two-track conversation: the first level what Paget said, the second and much more obscure level what Paget might communicate if she ever got close enough.
‘How has it been,’ she asked, ‘raising him alone?’
Paget’s eyes narrowed; Terri could not tell whether this was in contemplation of the question itself, or of why she had asked it.
‘In a way,’ he said finally, ‘that’s like asking what it’s like to be me: it’s all I know, so I’ve got no perspective on it. I suppose raising Carlo makes me acutely aware of all my deficiencies; I’m sure that makes me much more anxious than I’d be if I were married, and much more a burden to Carlo.’ He paused. ‘Although, in my own childhood, I learned that a rotten marriage is also rotten for the kid, and in ways more subtle and insidious than Carlo’s teenage resentments of me.’
‘Is that why you never married?’
Paget looked surprised and then laughed. ‘I was married. Just not to Mary Carelli.’
‘To whom?’
The waitress, Terri realized, was hovering near their table. Paget turned to her with a wry expression, as
if in search of rescue.
‘Will you be having wine this evening?’ she asked.
Paget turned to Terri, ‘I will,’ he said, ‘if you insist on having this particular conversation.’
Terri hesitated and then saw that, in some small way, Paget’s remark was to signal his acceptance of her as something more than just a lawyer. ‘Sure,’ she said.
‘Do you care what we’re eating in terms of red or white?’
‘No.’ She smiled. ‘Richie and I drink from jugs, not bottles, and according to what’s already open.’
Paget turned to the waitress, said, ‘The Meursault, please,’ and then faced Terri again.
‘As I remember,’ she said, ‘I’d just asked who you were married to.’
‘Oh, that. Her name was Andrea Lo Bianco.’
Terri cocked her head. ‘Why does she sound so familiar?’
‘She was a principal dancer for the San Francisco Ballet.’ Paget smiled briefly. ‘After we divorced, she joined the ballet in Paris, funnily enough.’
‘Was it funny?’
‘Not terribly. But divorce rarely is.’
Terri hesitated. ‘Was that before Carlo came?’
Paget shook his head. ‘A year or so after. The two events were not unrelated.’
The last remark, delivered matter-of-factly, had an undertone of regret. ‘She didn’t want him?’ Terri asked.
Paget gazed at the tables around them, almost idly. ‘It was far less personal than that, and more complex. Andrea had never wanted children, because of her career and temperament, and I didn’t really care – I’d never thought that much of myself as a putative father. Her dancing was demanding, and when she was home, Andrea could pretty much count on having my attention.’ Paget paused. ‘She knew about Carlo, of course, but when he actually came to live with us, our marriage changed quite a lot. In fairness to her, Carlo required a good bit of attention then, although that was hardly his fault, either. And for my own part, I felt I had no choice at all.’
Buried somewhere in the last two sentences, Terri thought, was a piece of the puzzle that was Paget’s relationship to Mary Carelli. ‘Why was that?’ she asked.