Eyes of a Child (53 page)

Troubled, Harris turned back to Elena.

The child sat on the rug with crayons and drawing paper. Elena was almost through with her drawing; working alone seemed to make her feel peaceful, and beneath her air of listlessness, she had surprising powers of concentration. But when Elena handed Harris the picture, watching for her reaction, it was another drawing of a lone girl, this time in what looked like a desert beneath a red-orange sun.

Examining the picture, Harris tried to sound brightly curious. ‘What's she doing, Elena?'

Elena's shoulders gave a miniature shrug. ‘She's lost,' the child answerd in matter-of-fact tones.

‘Why?'

‘Because she was bad. So they left her there.'

‘Who's they?'

But Elena's face had closed, the opaque expression of a child who had suddenly tired of a subject. ‘No one.'

Harris did not question this. Instead she went to a shelf, got out a box full of plastic figures, and sat down with Elena. Silently, Harris began to create a world without people: a plastic fence across a river, which led to a wood full of trees, with a couple of hills and a log cabin in the middle. Elena watched with interest; neither spoke.

At length, Harris said to Elena. ‘Your turn.'

Elena studied the plastic landscape. ‘You're already finished,' she objected.

Harris shook her head. ‘There's no people in it,' she said, and pointed to the box of plastic figures. ‘You get to decide who lives here and what kind of things they do.'

Elena studied the landscape, eyes averted from Harris. She was an intuitive little girl, Harris sensed; on some level, Elena understood that to play with Harris was to reveal herself. Suddenly Elena turned to her.

‘Why does Mommy bring me here?'

Harris smiled. ‘Because she loves you and knows things may be hard for you right now. She thought you might want a friend to spend time with.'

‘I don't need a friend.'

‘
I
do.' Harris paused a moment, adding another tree to the woods. ‘Why don't
you
need a friend?'

Elena shrugged. ‘They're boring. All they want to do is play.'

What was so disturbing, Harris thought, was that Elena had learned to scorn her own childhood. One explanation could be the trauma of her father's death. But there was a more troubling possibility. Elena's detachment from other children was common among children who had been sexually abused.

‘Sometimes
I
like to play,' Harris said, and started to build another fence.

It might go on like this, Harris thought, for weeks, or even months. Then, without saying a word, Elena placed a plastic figure in the middle of the woods.

She had chosen the black-haired girl, Harris noticed, from a box full of blonds and brunettes, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers and dogs. ‘Does she live in the cabin?' Harris asked.

Elena shook her head. ‘No. In the woods, where it's dark.'

‘Who lives with her?'

‘Nobody.'

Harris busied herself with another fence. ‘Does she
want
anyone to live with her?' she asked.

Elena fell quiet, studying the woods. Silently, she placed the figure of the little girl next to a tree.

‘What's she doing?' Harris asked.

‘Nothing.' Elena looked away. ‘The robbers have tied her to a tree.'

‘Where are they?'

Elena folded her arms. ‘She can't see them,' she answered in a thin, flat voice. ‘It's too dark in the woods.'

‘Can someone help her?'

Slowly, Elena shook her head. ‘It's a nightmare, and she's all alone. The robbers have a black dog.'

At the word ‘nightmare,' Harris felt the smallest change in herself, a pricking of nerve ends. Time seemed to slow down. Carefully, she asked, ‘What does the black dog do?'

‘Watch the little girl,' Elena's voice was small now. ‘She can hear him in the dark.'

For a moment, the child seemed transfixed by her imaginings. ‘What's going to happen to her?' Harris probed.

Again, Elena shook her head. Harris waited for an answer that never came.

‘Can't she call 911, Elena?'

‘There's no telephone.'

The child's certainty was frightening, Harris thought; her vision of isolation was too vivid and complete. For a moment, quiet, she considered Elena. Then she reached into the box and brought out a plastic alligator.

The creature was fearsome-looking, with pointed teeth and black eyes painted on its dark green face. Without comment, Harris placed the alligator beside the little girl, facing the darkness Elena had described.

Pointing to the alligator, Elena asked, ‘What's
that
?'

Harris smiled. ‘The little girl's secret friend. She looks scary, but she's very nice. She's come to protect the little girl.'

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?'