Eyes of a Child (21 page)

‘I know.' Chris's gaze was steady. ‘But that's another reason to face down Richie.'

‘In public? What a burden that would place on Carlo.'

‘So would cowardice.'

Looking up at him, she shook her head. ‘I don't think that's a decision you can make for him.'

Chris sat across from her again. ‘It's a decision
Carlo
made. Before we came to Italy.'

Terri imagined them together, father and son. Saw Carlo decide to do this because he wished his father to be happy. ‘You'd let Carlo do that?' she asked. ‘For us?'

‘For us, and for himself.' Chris paused. ‘Elena never said that Carlo molested her – she simply refused to talk about it. Somehow, Richie floated across the idea to her that absolving Carlo was a betrayal of
him.
But for her to say what isn't true would be a betrayal of Carlo. So Elena resolved it the only way a child could: by going mute. It's sad, really.' Chris's voice grew firmer. ‘For
both
their sakes, Elena and Carlo have to be relieved of this. If we don't stand up to Richie, that will never happen.'

Terri touched her temples. ‘Richie thinks Scatena is his friend. If I force him to court, he'll go. And take all of us with him. Along with your hopes for the Senate.'

‘Will he, I wonder? Because this time, I'll be your lawyer.'

Terri looked at him in astonishment. ‘You're joking . . .'

‘Hardly. Scatena runs the family court like a satrap because he thinks no one's really watching. The day I walk into his courtroom, and put Ricardo Arias on the stand,
everyone
will be watching. And by the time I'm finished, unless Richie backs off, there won't be enough left of him for even Scatena to scrape up. Nor,' Chris finished softly, ‘will Scatena want to.'

Terri's mind felt sluggish. ‘First,' she parried, ‘he'll give Richie his turn with Carlo and Elena.'

‘I doubt that seriously. Before we left, I drafted a motion asking Scatena to defer any testimony by Carlo and Elena until
after
this psychologist has reported on her evaluation of Elena and the rest of us. Under the circumstances, not even an idiot like Scatena will want to be the judge who – in front of God and everyone – subjected a teenager and a six-year-old to questioning that anyone but Richie would know is better handled in private and by a professional.'

Terri studied him. ‘You've thought it all through, haven't you? Well before we came.'

‘Whatever made you think,' Chris answered, ‘that I'd just wring my hands and let Richie do whatever he wanted.' He smiled a little. ‘I love you dearly, Teresa Peralta. But a saint I'm not. Or, for that matter, a victim.' Chris's smile vanished. ‘The evaluation's
your
job, Terri. You have to make this psychologist see Richie for who he is.'

Terri shook her head. ‘You're forgetting how good he can be. Even if there's no sign at all that Carlo abused Elena, Harris may believe that Richie's the better parent: each step of the way, he's come out ahead. I'm going to have to take her through every neglect of Elena's interests, every lie, every manipulation, every attempt to extort money. Right down to the night I found him in my apartment.' Terri paused for emphasis. ‘Richie's been very careful to ensure that there are no witnesses to
any
of that. Harris may not believe me.'

‘Maybe not. But consider the
Inquisitor
article and Richie's threat to put Elena through a hearing. He did all that to keep Harris from
ever
looking at Elena.' Chris's eyes narrowed. ‘He doesn't want this evaluation, and not just because Carlo's innocent. On some level, Richie knows there's something wrong with
him.
He's afraid he'll flunk the Rorschach test, Terri. He's right to be. Because the man you married is mentally ill.'

Even now, Terri found that the label startled her.

Chris took her face in his hands. ‘Your mother's wrong,' he said. ‘Not about Richie – I think she gets him well enough. It's just that Rosa can see Richie far more clearly than she can imagine anything better.' His gaze was intense. ‘Don't let her life become yours, Terri. It's enough that your mother lived it.'

Terri met his eyes. ‘But if I'm to be with you,' she said after a time, ‘I need to be able to love you with a whole heart. Even if I lose Elena.'

For once, Chris had no answer.

Terri turned from the look on his face. ‘Please. I just need to think awhile.'

They ate together, quiet. But an hour later, when they had cruised back to Portofino, Terri asked to be alone.

She walked in the garden, thinking of Elena and Carlo and Rosa, Judge Scatena and Alec Keene, and how they would react should she decide to be with Chris. Then of the man she had married and the man whom she now loved and the way that, by also loving a child, Terri had set one upon the other.

A little after four, she found Chris on the patio.

As she approached, he tried to keep his face impassive, concealing his apprehension. But Terri knew him now; it no longer quite worked. It was the knowledge, she thought to her surprise, that a wife might have of a husband she knew too well, and loved too deeply, ever to share with him.

She sat across from him at a small round table. ‘Hi,' he said casually. As if the moment were nothing special.

Terri touched his hand. ‘You're precious to me, Chris. I'm still learning, I'm afraid, how much a part of me you've become.'

Chris started to reach for her, then stopped himself: he did not know where she was going. She gathered her thoughts, began again.

‘I don't know, really, what this trip was supposed to tell us. If it was that we can escape our problems because we love each other so much, it didn't work. It's been too hard for both of us.' She looked down. ‘What it taught me is something different. That as bad as things are, and as much as we thrash around, you and I keep trying. And that in the end, life is better than before.' She took his hands now, gazing directly at him. ‘I believe in you, Chris. We have to solve this terrible thing with Carlo and Elena. But if we can, I'll live with you, and have our child. Because that baby, and our life, will be something no one can ever take from us. Not even Richie.'

Chris's eyes shut; it was only then that Terri saw, beyond anything he could say or do, how deeply Christopher Paget loved her. And then he raised his head, and gave her a smile that seemed to stop her heart: this was the man Terri would spend her life with, she was suddenly certain, and what that meant to him was what it meant to her. ‘We have so much,' he said. ‘And there's so much more we can do.'

Terri grinned. ‘You mean like sleeping through the night?'

Chris laughed at that; it seemed to Terri that he might laugh at anything. And then his smile vanished.

The elderly concierge was approaching their table, grave and tentative, sensing his interruption. ‘I apologize,' he said. ‘But I have a message for Ms Peralta.' Turning to Terri, he added, ‘We've been looking for you since this morning.'

It startled her. Terri thanked him and read the slip of paper.

‘What is it?' Chris asked.

She looked up at him. ‘My mother.' Her voice felt thin. ‘The message says it's urgent.'

All at once, Chris seemed edgy. ‘Maybe Richie's popped up,' he said at last. ‘You asked her to call.'

But Terri was hurrying to find a telephone before she knew she had not answered him. ‘It's all right,' she remembered Rosa saying. ‘I'll make sure Elena's safe.'

Slowly, Terri put down the phone.

It was a while before she stood. The miniworld of the hotel lobby went on around her, unnoticed; walking past the lush Italian gardens, to Chris, she saw nothing but his face.

He watched her with a look of unease. Terri thought this strange, and then remembered hurrying from their table, fearful, in the moments before everything would change for them.

Terri found that she could not sit.

‘What is it?' Chris asked.

She brushed the hair back from her face. ‘Richie's dead.'

His eyes did not change. Perhaps widened slightly, that was all.

Terri watched him, taut. ‘
Say
something, Chris.
Please
.'

He stood wordlessly, walking slowly to the iron railing at the edge of the patio. He seemed to watch the bay.

Terri clutched his arm. ‘What
is
it?' she asked.

‘Would you care for me to put it into words? All right. I'm glad he's dead, and I hope that it was slow and painful.' He turned at last, eyebrows raised in an expression of mild curiosity. ‘How
did
he die, by the way?'

Terri kept her voice steady. ‘He shot himself. Apparently. My mother called the police last night, and they found him.' Pausing, Terri realized that she had not let go of his arm. ‘That's not like him, Chris.'

He gazed down at the bay. ‘Is killing oneself “like” anyone? I'm just surprised he had the discernment to do it.' He expelled a deep breath, the first hint of suppressed emotion. Then he turned again, his face newly gentle. ‘You're in shock, Terri. But Richie can't hurt you anymore, or Carlo. Most important, you have Elena now.'

Terri tried to focus on that. ‘I need to be with her,' she said. ‘Oh, Chris, it will be so hard to tell her.'

In silent answer, Chris's arms came tight around her.

They stayed like that for a time, quiet and close, heedless of anything else. And then Chris murmured, ‘At least no one can blame us for
this.
Not even Elena.'

Terri leaned back, looking into his face again. ‘Only because it's suicide,' she answered slowly. ‘From what the police told my mother, Richie may have died the night before we left.'

In his eyes, Terri saw the flicker of some new emotion. But she could not identify what it was, perhaps only imagined it. ‘We'd better pack,' Chris said at last. ‘We can catch a plane in Milan.'

The Inquiry

Chapter
1

Christopher Paget was not surprised when, three nights after Ricardo Arias was found, two homicide inspectors came to his home. The technique was familiar: they appeared unannounced, armed with a tape machine to record whatever ‘Paget might say. In itself, this was not too worrisome – it was competent police work to check into an apparent suicide. But one of the inspectors was Charles Monk: the odds against coincidence were high, and Monk would not have forgotten the Carelli trial, where it had been Paget's role to ask the questions. Within an instant of opening the door, Paget found that he was thinking like a lawyer, alert beneath the surface.

‘Come on in,' he told Monk easily. ‘We're through with dinner.'

Monk said nothing. Ushering in Monk and his partner, a graying and taciturn Irishman named Dennis Lynch, Paget sensed Monk taking in the surroundings with the silent impassivity that suspects found unnerving: it was Monk's gift that he could reduce the normal range of human response to a stare and a voice that never changed. Monk's appearance was striking – a six-foot-four-inch black man with the grooved planes-and-angles face of an African mask and the goldrimmed glasses of a scholar – and off the job he had a certain laconic charm. But Paget thought of him as a monotone with eyes and a brain that forgot nothing; an hour with Monk and his machine had ensnared Mary Carelli – a frighteningly clever woman – in a trial for first-degree murder.

‘Why don't we sit in the library,' Paget said, and led them into a high-ceilinged room with a fireplace and two sofas.

Terri sat on one of them, drinking coffee. ‘You remember Terri Peralta,' Paget said to Monk.

Monk neither spoke nor shook hands, but his brief wary look gave Paget a moment's satisfaction: Terri was also a potential witness, and Monk would not want his witnesses to hear what each other said.

‘You can talk to us both,' Paget said pleasantly. ‘I'm sure that Terri is on your list.'

Monk paused. Paget could follow his calculations: neither Paget nor Terri was under arrest, and to insist that someone leave was beyond his power. ‘We were trying to find you,' Monk said to Terri.

She looked at him over her coffee cup. ‘I was out all day,' she said. ‘Trying to distract my daughter any way I could. It's been hard.'

Monk nodded. He did not ask how Elena was. But the child Terri had described to Paget had moved from tears to numbness, burrowing deep within herself. It was as if, Terri told him, Elena blamed herself for Richie's death. Paget hoped that Monk would let the child be.

‘Where is she now?' Monk asked.

‘With my mother.' Terri glanced at Paget but did not explain her presence here. To Paget, the fatigue etched in her face said enough; she looked like a woman who should be with a friend. Monk set the tape machine in front of her.

‘Can you answer a few questions?' he asked.

Terri nodded. Monk glanced at Paget: he wanted him to leave, Paget knew, as surely as Paget intended to stay. Smiling at Monk, he took a chair to the side of them.

Belatedly, Dennis Lynch introduced himself to Terri. A pose of diffidence came easily to Lynch, Paget sensed, which cast him as the good cop in any partnership with Monk. Lynch eased his slender frame onto the couch next to Monk, facing Terry with a half smile of sympathy, ignoring the tape machine on the coffee table between them. Paget found their presence invasive; he had dealt with the police for years, but never in his home.

Monk pushed a button. The tape seemed to have a mesmeric effect, Paget noticed; all four of them watched it spin. Then Monk began speaking.