Degree of Guilt

by Unknown

  ‘Isn’t it true that your story changed after you heard Dr Shelton’s account?’

  ‘As a matter of the sequence of events, yes. But that’s not why I testified as I have.’ Mary paused, turning to Masters. ‘Again, it’s a matter of piecing together what happened.’

  ‘But you already acknowledged omitting any mention of the tape.’

  Slowly, Mary faced Sharpe again. ‘As I explained, the contents of the tape were painful.’

  ‘So painful that you hid the tape’s existence until we found it.’

  Mary leaned forward. ‘That’s a way of putting it,’ she said coolly. ‘But I wasn’t just hiding from you. I was hiding from everyone but Dr Steinhardt, the man I chose to trust with my own guilt and shame. What I did with Inspector Monk, in my confusion and shock, was follow the habit of years.’

  ‘Lying, you mean.’

  Mary flushed, faltered for a moment; Paget could feel her trapped awareness that Caroline Masters knew of her perjury. Then, very softly, ‘That’s not what I meant, Ms Sharpe. And you know that.’

  Sharpe slowly shook her head. ‘What I meant,’ she said with equal quiet, ‘is that you adjust your story not because your memory revives but to accommodate the testimony of other witnesses. And you know that.’

  Caroline Masters turned to Mary; to Paget, her expression was an odd combination of skepticism and regret. ‘That’s not true,’ Mary told Sharpe. ‘What I do know is never to expect compassion. Not from you.’

  Sharpe stared at her for a moment. Then she shrugged, as if anything Mary said to her now was too self-serving to require a response. Despite himself, Paget admired that: by some effort of will, Sharpe was mastering her own sensitivity to attack, making herself cooler and more controlled.

  ‘Speaking of compassion,’ she said, ‘you claim to have been wandering in the hallway – at which point Mr Tench saw you – in contemplation of seeking help for Mr Ransom. But you didn’t get help, did you?’

  Mary lowered her gaze. ‘Not then, no. As I said, it hadn’t become real to me.’

  ‘Hadn’t it? Isn’t the real reason you were in the hallway to determine whether anyone had heard a gunshot, so you wouldn’t be caught falsifying evidence?’

  ‘No.’ Mary half rose in the witness stand. ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Really. Isn’t that also why you closed the blinds – so you wouldn’t be caught fabricating evidence?’

  Mary seemed to brace herself. ‘According to your witness Mr Hassler, I must have been fabricating evidence in the nude. But that struck me as so senseless I’ve decided not to “adjust my story” to accommodate nudity.’

  There was a murmur from those watching; a bark of laughter. Paget saw Sharpe stiffen with anger. ‘No,’ Sharpe retorted, ‘what happened is that you undressed to disarm Mr Ransom, and then shot him. After that, you closed the blinds. That is what happened, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is not.’ Mary’s face was ashen, but her voice was edged with contempt. ‘Except in your own fantasies. And, perhaps, Mark Ransom’s.’

  ‘Mr Ransom has no fantasies. Tell me, Ms Carelli, did you begin to wander about the room, determining the “reality” of certain pieces of furniture, after you closed the blinds?’

  Mary stared at her. ‘I honestly don’t remember.’

  ‘You don’t recall when you touched both end tables, the bookshelf, and the desk.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or why your fingerprints appear on the handle of the desk drawer.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What was she doing?’ Terri whispered to Paget.

  Tense, Paget kept his eyes on Mary. ‘I have no idea.’

  Sharpe paused. ‘Weren’t you, in fact, looking for tapes of your session with Dr Steinhardt?’

  Mary’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘I was not,’ she said finally, ‘looking for tapes.’

  ‘Didn’t you find one tape? And then destroy it?’

  ‘When?’ Mary’s voice was shot through with incredulity. ‘How? Flush it down the toilet? As you must know, I never even entered the bathroom.’ Mary seemed overcome with anger. ‘Mr Paget’s opening statement was right. The prosecution’s case is like a satire of conspiracy theories, written by a lunatic. But then it requires so much more imagination to convict someone who is innocent. Unless, of course, you’re fabricating evidence.’

  By instinct, Sharpe moved forward. The sound from those watching was muted; Paget could almost feel them squirm with tension. Masters’s gavel cracked.

  The two women froze, looking up at Masters. Her face was angry and closed. ‘That’s enough,’ she snapped. ‘I appreciate, Ms Carelli, that Ms Sharpe’s cross-examination is intense. But your comment is unacceptable. To me.’ Her voice grew quiet. ‘I’m out of patience. The next outburst will be followed by a contempt citation.’

  Mary turned to her. ‘Forgive me, Your Honor. But those accusations are very difficult for me to accept. It’s very hard for me to summon the one-way deference Ms Sharpe seems to require while she tries to destroy my life.’

  From the public section, someone clapped abruptly. Masters’s tone was cool. ‘The deference I require is to the court, from and among all participants. As for whether you receive justice here, that’s on my head, not Ms Sharpe’s. You may find it reassuring that mere charges – hers or yours – impress me not at all.’ Masters paused. ‘The sole question before this court is whether there is sufficient evidence of probable cause. And I will decide that question as wisely and fairly as I know how.’

  Mary’s face softened. When she nodded, it seemed less an acceptance of Masters’s power than of her desire to be fair. ‘I apologize,’ she said quietly.

  The judge gazed at her a moment and then said, ‘Please continue, Ms Sharpe.’

  Sharpe moved in again. ‘Let us return, Ms Carelli, to the tapes. Did Mr Ransom describe what was on them?’

  ‘Yes. He did.’

  ‘Did he suggest to you, in words or substance, that the tapes reflected on your honesty and veracity?’

  Mary looked from Paget to Sharpe. ‘He did not suggest that. No.’

  Sharpe moved closer. ‘Do the tapes reflect on your honesty and veracity?’

  ‘Objection.’ Paget stood. ‘I’d like a bench conference, Your Honor. Immediately.’

  Masters nodded. ‘I would expect you do.’

  Sharpe and Paget walked briskly to the bench. They kept their voices low. ‘What’s the next question?’ Paget demanded of Sharpe. ‘“Bigger than a bread basket,” or “Does it start with a vowel or a consonant?”’ He turned to Masters. ‘If Mary has to answer questions like those, there is no privilege. And if Ms Sharpe throws out any more hints – like “Did the tapes concern your service as a government lawyer?” – there’ll be investigative reporters crawling all over Mary’s life.’

  Sharpe shook her head. ‘That was not the question I asked, Your Honor. The question I asked was whether the embarrassment and pain to which Ms Carelli already testified relates to a failure of veracity.’

  Masters leaned forward. ‘We three know what the tape relates to. But that tape, and its contents, are not properly part of the record. And those questions aren’t proper, either. Unless Ms Carelli raises the contents of the tape themselves, I’m instructing you not to ask about them. Or, more devious, what Ransom said about them. Understood?’

  Sharpe nodded. ‘Yes, Your Honor.’

  The two lawyers left the bench. ‘What was that?’ Paget murmured.

  Sharpe gave him a fleeting sideways glance, then shrugged. ‘Never up, never in,’ she said, and turned to face Mary Carelli.

  In an even tone, Sharpe said, ‘Our next subject, Ms Carelli, is the moment you shot Mr Ransom.’

  ‘All right,’ Mary answered. ‘But for the record, I don’t remember it as the “moment I shot Mr Ransom.” I remember it as the end of a struggle, when the gun went off.’ She turned back to Masters. ‘You see, I don’t recall shooting him. And I didn’t plan to shoot him. I just wanted him
to stop.’

  Good, Paget thought; it was another step back from murder, and one they had worked on together.

  ‘Semantics aside,’ Sharpe said, ‘he let you reach into the purse unimpeded. Is that your testimony?’

  ‘I told him that I was reaching for a condom, Ms Sharpe. I’m sure he wasn’t expecting a gun.’

  ‘How did you ever reach the gun? Hadn’t he pinned you to the floor?’

  Mary hesitated. ‘That’s true,’ she said in a patient tone. ‘But when I told him about the condom, he took his weight off me.’

  ‘How did he do that?’

  ‘I don’t know, really.’ Her voice became weary. ‘But the hand he’d slapped me with was free, obviously. Perhaps he leaned on that.’

  Sharpe’s brow furrowed. ‘But when you pulled the gun, he was essentially on top of you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Too close to extend your arms in front of you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Sharpe walked back to the prosecution table. She returned holding Mary’s gun.

  Silently, she placed it on the front rail of the witness box. ‘Could you show me,’ she asked, ‘how you held the gun and how close it was to your body?’

  For a moment, Mary simply stared at the gun. Then she squared her shoulders, took it in both hands, and pointed it at Sharpe with her wrists bent to her chest. ‘Like this,’ she said coolly. ‘As best I remember.’

  Sharpe eyed the gun. ‘He was still on top of you, correct?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But he permitted you to pull a gun from your purse, clamp it in both hands, and assume the rather awkward position you’re demonstrating now.’

  Mary held the gun steady. ‘He didn’t permit me to do anything,’ she answered. ‘As I said, he grabbed my wrists.’

  ‘While he was still on top of you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Sharpe cocked her head. ‘Could you describe your relative positions?’

  Mary placed the gun on her lap. ‘It happened so fast,’ she said.

  ‘Just your best memory.’

  Mary’s eyes narrowed. ‘He was kneeling between my legs, leaning forward. Both hands were on my wrists.’ She gave a melancholy shrug. ‘That’s what I remember.’

  ‘And as he grasped your wrists, the “gun went off,” as you put it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Sharpe looked puzzled. ‘Didn’t we just skip a step?’

  ‘Skip a step?’ Mary asked carefully. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘I mean the step where Mark Ransom obligingly released your wrists and catapulted backward so that you could shoot him from at least three feet.’

  The question was delivered with subversive innocence, in a tone so bland that it underscored the absurdity Sharpe meant to suggest. The buzz from the spectators was like a delayed reaction.

  ‘Jesus,’ Terri whispered.

  Paget kept watching. ‘No. I think it’s all right.’

  Mary stared at Sharpe, face quite composed, her perfect stillness commanding silence in the courtroom. ‘As I told you,’ she said calmly, ‘I don’t remember everything. But Mr Ransom was a very tall man, and I expect his arms were three feet long. And I think they were extended, pinning my wrists to my chest.’ She clasped the gun between her breasts, aiming at Sharpe again. ‘Like this. So you see, the bullet could have travelled close to three feet if he’d never even flinched.’

  There were muted exclamations. Sharpe looked stunned.

  ‘She walked right into that one,’ Paget whispered. ‘Wonder why she believed that Mary and I wouldn’t think of it?’

  Terri turned to him. ‘I wonder if it’s true.’

  Looking up, Paget saw Masters’s faint smile at Mary. ‘All that matters,’ he said, ‘is that Caroline wonder.’

  But Sharpe had recovered. ‘He was leaning forward, you said. Not backward.’

  Mary put down the gun. ‘I don’t know, Ms Sharpe. Somehow the gun went off, and somehow the bullet traveled two to three feet. All that I know for certain is that I didn’t mean for it to happen.’ She shook her head. ‘I only meant to scare him. To make him stop.’

  Sharpe placed her hands on her hips. ‘Isn’t what happened that you bought this gun planning to shoot Mark Ransom, came to the Flood and killed him from a safe distance – after which you closed the blinds, scratched yourself, tore your own panty hose, and scratched Mark Ransom’s buttocks, in an effort to claim rape? Isn’t that what happened?’

  ‘It’s nearly over,’ Paget whispered to Terri.

  ‘Pardon me,’ Mary said politely. ‘But didn’t you skip a step? The part where I slap myself?’

  Another, deeper sound. Terri murmured, ‘You know, I’ve never seen anyone quite like her.’

  Neither, it was clear, had Marnie Sharpe. ‘I didn’t,’ Sharpe finally said. ‘Because when you pulled the gun, Mark Ransom swung at you by instinct. And then you shot him, just as you intended. That’s what happened, isn’t it?’

  Once more, Caroline Masters turned to Mary. Pausing, Mary folded her hands. ‘No,’ she said calmly. ‘That is not what happened. Mark Ransom tried to rape me, and I defended myself.’ Mary’s voice grew quiet. ‘A gun went off. But as tragic as that is, I’d defend myself again.’

  Slowly, Sharpe shook her head in silent disbelief. Then, in a tone of dismissal and contempt, she said, ‘No further questions, Your Honor.’

  ‘She survived,’ Terri murmured to Paget.

  Paget nodded. ‘Yes. She did.’

  It took a moment for Masters to turn from Mary. ‘Redirect, Mr Paget?’

  Paget stood. ‘No questions,’ he answered. ‘None at all.’

  Masters nodded. ‘You may step down, Ms Carelli.’

  Mary stood stiffly, seemingly unsure that it was over. She was still for a moment, as if preparing for the reporters outside, the cameras, the people who wished to cheer her, to revile her, or simply to collect her autograph. Then she walked across the courtroom, composed again, as she had been that day fifteen years before, leaving the Senate.

  Chapter 3

  Mary flashed on the screen, pointing the gun at Marnie Sharpe.

  Paget and Carlo watched in the library. ‘In a tense confrontation,’ the narrative began, ‘Mary Carelli held her own with Prosecutor Marnie Sharpe. Refusing to wither under repeated attacks, Ms Carelli fought back at the end of her testimony, dramatically affirming her innocence.’

  Carlo turned to Paget. ‘She was good,’ Carlo said.

  He seemed to need reassurance, as if doubting the evidence of his own senses. ‘Very good,’ Paget answered.

  He fell silent. He could not say to Carlo that Mary had needed to be good simply to survive; that drama was not innocence in the eyes of Caroline Masters; and that in the unsparing calculus of evidence – the relentless accretion of fact upon fact – Sharpe’s attack had been telling. Nor could Paget say that the secrets Caroline Masters already knew, and that he hoped Carlo would never know, might have damaged Mary beyond repair.

  ‘Do you think the judge believed her?’ Carlo asked.

  Carlo now seemed to have the caution of a lawyer, rather than the fierce loyalty of a son. It was painful to see. ‘Your mother gave her reason to,’ Paget answered. ‘Tomorrow morning, Terri puts on Marcy Linton. By this time tomorrow evening, Caroline Masters will know that Mark Ransom raped a defenseless young woman.’

  Carlo looked hopeful; it was as if he, too, would then be persuaded. ‘After that, the judge should know that my mother’s telling the truth, don’t you think?’

  ‘Caroline’s hard to read. But it will at least make Mary more credible, and much more sympathetic.’ Paget switched off the television. ‘This trial has been hard for you, hasn’t it?’

  Carlo shrugged. ‘In a way.’

  A glancing phrase, Paget thought, which held much more: children are meant to learn ambiguity and moral complexity in some other place than the trial of a parent, to never learn their parents’ secrets, or even that the
y have them. ‘Like most of us,’ Paget said, ‘your mother has done things that she’s ashamed of. But that doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t believe her. All the women who dealt with Mark Ransom seem to have suffered for it.’

  Carlo was quiet. ‘Do you think she’ll ever tell me what was on the tape?’

  Inwardly, Paget flinched; the conversation made him feel like a hypocrite, using Mary as a shield. ‘If she never did,’ he asked softly, ‘would you stop caring about her?’

  The question seemed to give Carlo pause. He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t have anything to do with me, really. Or her and me.’

  Perhaps, Paget thought, his son would never learn that the tape had everything to do with Mary and Paget, Mary and Carlo, and why Paget had raised him. ‘Then let it be. The hearing will be over soon.’ Paget paused. ‘Perhaps it will have taught you to be less like me – judgmental to a fault – and better able to separate the mistakes people make from their worth as people. As someone like Terri seems able to do.’

  Carlo gave him a curious look. ‘She talked you into letting me come, didn’t she?’

  ‘Terri?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Because you’ve never done a one-hundred-eighty-degree turnaround on any “no” I can remember.’

  Paget smiled. ‘I’ve always believed that consistency is a virtue. Of course it was Terri.’

  Carlo smiled back. ‘I know you, Dad. From me you’ve got no secrets.’

  Paget was quiet for a moment. ‘Just one or two,’ he said.

  Teresa Peralta sat on the couch in Mark Ransom’s suite, gazing at the bloodstained carpet.

  It was six-thirty; at seven, she was meeting Marcy Linton at a nearby hotel, to prepare for the most important day in court she might ever have. But an hour before, on impulse, she had called Marnie Sharpe for permission to visit the suite again. Sounding tired from her cross-examination of Mary, Sharpe did not question her, leaving Terri to question herself.

  Why was she here?

  The truth, Christopher Paget had told her, was something he wished never to know. All that mattered was that Sharpe never find the second tape.

  Where was it?

  Terri sat back, reflecting.