Eyes of a Child (57 page)

Oh my God, Caroline thought. With equal quiet, she asked, ‘And did he take you up on that?'

‘No.' Gates paused. ‘Even after I assured him that
no one
but me would ever know the results.'

Joseph Duarte, Caroline saw, was very still. ‘Had you,' Caroline asked slowly, ‘formed an opinion as to what the tests would show?'

Gates leaned back, pulling herself more tightly together: it seemed clear to Caroline that what she was about to do violated her deepest professional beliefs. ‘My sessions with Mr Arias,' she said at length, ‘indicated intense self-absorption; a profound lack of empathy for others; a disrespect for social norms and accepted rules of behavior; a tendency to project his own faults on other people; a lack of interest in anyone's else's feelings or beliefs; a high degree of dishonesty and manipulation in interpersonal dealings; a distrust of other people's motives; and, paradoxically, a tendency to see others strictly in terms of his own needs.'

Gates paused, frowning, as if deciding whether to explain the man himself. ‘This kind of personality,' she said at length, ‘
can
be very charming. Indeed, charm helps such a person get what he wants, and as long as people give it to him, he can be quite pleasant, even cheerful.
But
if someone opposes him, the result can be extreme anger and a series of actions – often outside accepted behavior – to strike back at the offending party. So it was with Mr Arias.'

Caroline gazed at her a moment. ‘That's an impressive cluster of symptoms, Dr Gates. Does it happen to have a name?'

‘Sociopath.' Gates smiled with one corner of her mouth. ‘I could have told you
that
much without ever giving a test.'

‘And did you offer this analysis to Mr Arias?'

Gates's smile vanished. ‘What I told him,' she said softly, ‘is that psychological testing might damage his case.'

Caroline raised an eyebrow. ‘And how did Mr Arias react?'

‘Predictably, on one level. He said that tests like that were bullshit, quote unquote, and became quite angry with me.' Gates sounded somewhat chastened. ‘In truth, I
should
have predicted his more considered reaction. Instead of trying to compose his differences with Ms Peralta, he redoubled his efforts to keep the evaluation from ever happening.'

‘How did he do that, if you know?'

Gates frowned. ‘By putting his charges about Elena in a legal pleading and filing it in court.' She paused again. ‘At one of our sessions, he described at great length how he had served the papers on Ms Peralta by waiting inside her apartment at night. He also thought the charges against Carlo Paget might drive her and Mr Paget apart.' She looked at Paget, finishing directly. ‘If Ms Peralta was alone again, he seemed confident that he could break her down.'

Caroline stopped for a moment, caught between fascination and the horrified realization that she had just helped Salinas develop Paget's motive for murder. ‘Did you respond to any of this?'

‘Yes. I implored him not to do it, for Elena's sake, and to let the evaluation take its course.' Gates shook her head. ‘He absolutely refused, of course; his rationale was that Ms Peralta had given
him
no choice. Also predictable, I'm afraid.'

‘What about his concern for Elena?'

Gates gave the same ironic smile. ‘Mr Arias could not seem to separate Elena's needs from whatever he wanted. It was somewhat akin to Mr Arias's relationship with his own mother.'

‘Did he say what he would do
if
an evaluation actually occurred?'

‘Yes. He didn't want one, he said. But he told me he'd been working overtime on Elena's teacher, trying to make the right impression, and thought he was looking pretty good.' Her tone was dry. ‘As I said to Mr Salinas, Mr Arias tended to look ahead.'

It was time, Caroline thought, to resurrect the idea of suicide. ‘Isn't it possible, Dr Gates, that – faced with real scrutiny by a trained psychologist – Mr Arias would contemplate suicide in order to avoid exposure?'

Gates's eyes narrowed in thought. ‘Possible? In some remote way, I suppose I can imagine it. But Mr Arias wasn't anywhere near that point. Although Ms Peralta's trip to Italy unsettled him, the last day I saw him he seemed quite hopeful that she and Mr Paget might back down. In
fact
, he was intent on confirming his Monday appointment to discuss that further.'

Caroline studied her. ‘Why,' she finally asked, ‘did you keep on seeing this man?'

Gates frowned at her folded hands. ‘I asked
myself
that, continually. Fairly early on, I saw what his problems were. But I hoped that I could control his worst excesses, perhaps help him see things in a somewhat different light. That was why I gave him my opinion about what the test might show – to persuade him to stop using Elena as a pawn. At every step, there was
always
a reason for what I did.' She paused, finishing quietly: ‘And, step by step, it seems to have yielded one bad result after another. To the end of Mr Arias's life, and beyond.'

It was a terrible concession, Caroline thought, simply stated. ‘I take it,' she asked gently, ‘that you reached some conclusions about Mr Arias's fitness to raise a child?'

Slowly, Gates looked up. ‘I don't know Ms Peralta at all, Ms Masters. I don't know much about Elena's circumstances, or Elena herself. But it is very difficult to imagine the circumstances in which I would give Ricardo Arias custody of a child.'

Watching Caroline return to the table, Paget was buffeted by emotions in conflict. He felt a deep relief for Terri: however hard they had been for her to reach, her beliefs about Richie were right, and her decision to leave with Elena – and later to fight for her – had been vindicated. And closer to home, no one on the jury would convict Paget himself as an act of vengeance for a suffering father.

But Caroline had come no nearer to clearing Carlo. Furthermore, the Ricardo Arias who emerged from Gates's depiction – resourceful and pathologically vindictive – was a man worth killing. And the ultimate damage, which Victor Salinas was surely about to underscore, was that Gates seemed certain that Ricardo Arias had not decided to kill himself.

‘There goes Richie,' Paget whispered as Caroline sat next to him. But in her face he saw the same doubts he had.

Salinas was already on his feet. ‘As I understand it,' he said, ‘you saw no sign that this psychological testing, whatever the result, had driven Mr Arias to suicide?'

‘None.'

‘Did you see any indication that it
ever
would?'

Gates contemplated him, looking suddenly weary. ‘Again, no. Mr Arias was perfectly capable of weighing his self-interest and giving up if the price seemed too great. Including deciding to negotiate some new arrangement rather than face embarrassment.' Gates paused for a moment and then quietly finished her answer. ‘The clear picture I had, from over thirty sessions with Mr Arias, was of a man who'd harm another person before he'd
ever
harm himself.'

Abruptly, Salinas sat down. Paget was still staring at the words of Richie's note when Judge Lerner's gavel banged, and then he realized that the first week of his murder trial was over.

Chapter
7

Parking in front of Rosa Peralta's, Christopher Paget got out, looking around him.

It was close to nine on Friday night; Paget had arranged to meet Terri at Rosa's so that she could put Elena to bed upstairs and, oddly, because Rosa had requested this. Paget wondered why Rosa wished to see him now; after all that had happened, this was the first time he would meet Terri's mother, or enter the home where Terri had been raised.

It was a modest two-story stucco, neatly maintained, with concrete steps climbing to a covered porch. Paget stopped on the sidewalk, gazing down the slope of Dolores Street. After the entombment of the trial, it felt as though he were reopening his senses. The night was dark, the wind chill on his face; the tall palm trees running down the median strip of grass swayed and rustled in the shadow of streetlights; the night had the fresh smell that came with a cold breeze. On the other side of the street were two dark figures beneath a palm – homeless men, Paget thought, or drug dealers. But in another part of Paget's mind, he saw Ramon Peralta walking his daughters to school at Mission Dolores while Terri's mother lay battered on the second floor.

Gazing up, Paget saw a soft glow from an uptairs window, which must be Elena's night-light in the bedroom where Terri had once slept. He could feel the muted tragedy that had run through from mother to daughter to Elena. Yet it was Ramon Peralta and Ricardo Arias who had died, and Paget who might spend his life in prison; at whatever cost, only the women seemed to endure.

What would Terri and he say tonight, or do? And whatever it was, would it be any more than the reflex of a man facing prison and the lover too loyal to desert him until the trial was over? He could already feel the difference between his desperation to escape, if only for one night, and the small moments, unconsidered and serene, that create the heedless rhythm of a couple's settled life.

Enough, Paget told himself. His task for the next few minutes was to meet his lover's mother, and to do it with grace. No matter what she thought of him, or he thought of himself, he was intently interested in Rosa Peralta.

He turned and climbed the front steps to the house.

But when the door opened, Paget was speechless.

Even in the dim light, the woman he saw startled him. She returned his gaze with silent dignity, as if the moment did not require words.

‘I just found out,' Paget said finally, ‘how Terri will look someday. In that, at least, she's lucky.'

Rosa acknowledged the compliment. ‘Please come in,' she said, and Paget stepped into the living room.

It was small and dimly lit, with a mantel above a fireplace framed in baked enamel. Paget felt the absence of the crucifix and the stiffly posed family pictures Terri had described; what had replaced them were more recent photos of Terri and her sisters and, Paget realized, a copy of the same school portrait of Elena that the police had found near Richie's note.

The other surprise was less jarring but was interesting for its own sake: an unframed oil painting, in the style of a Haitian primitive, of a native woman with a child in her arms, staring out to sea. Something in the woman's expression, cool and impassive, reminded Paget of Rosa Peralta.

They were alone. ‘Teresa is upstairs with Elena,' Rosa explained, ‘and I wanted to see you. Please, sit down.'

Paget took a chair across from the sofa. As Rosa sat, her face came more fully into the light. There were shadows beneath her eyes, as if to mark the passage of joy. But she had reached the equipoise between beauty and time which, for moments in the lives of certain women, gives a face an interest and refinement that can be neither hurried nor preserved. Perhaps only Paget would know how to find the faint white line above her lip, the slight ridge in her nose, which was more crooked than the one she had once had and passed down to Terri. But then studying Rosa Peralta was important to him on several counts.

‘You're different from your pictures,' Rosa told him. ‘Golden, just as Teresa said.'

Paget smiled a little; he did not know the rules for this conversation. ‘Less golden by the day.'

Rosa nodded. ‘I'm sorry for what has happened to you. That is much of what I wished to say.'

Rosa's English, while lightly accented, had the formality of someone who had learned to speak it carefully. It lent their conversation a certain air of diplomacy, two ambassadors from different worlds, searching each other out.

‘It's been difficult,' Paget said simply.

Rosa gave him a considered look. ‘You love my daughter very much, I know. For a time, I was not sure.' She paused, arranging her skirt. ‘And she needed to be away from Ricardo, and to get
Elena
away. I understand that now.'

Paget found that he did not feel like mere politeness. ‘Was that so hard to understand before?'

Rosa seemed to stiffen: there was something withheld about her, as if tempered by time and hardship, and Paget sensed that she did not care to be questioned. ‘I was afraid of what Ricardo would do. Getting away did not seem easy.'

‘It still isn't.'

‘Yes,' Rosa answered in a level voice. ‘You are paying the price for us. I know that too.'

Paget did not choose to argue. ‘What Terri did took courage,' he said. ‘She broke away from Richie, against your advice and, whether or not you accept this, without my help. If nothing else, the trial has justified her.'

Rosa raised her head. ‘Perhaps. But now she has you.'

It was a probe, Paget sensed. ‘Perhaps,' he answered. ‘Perhaps not.'

Rosa appeared to study his face. ‘Do you think,' she asked at length, ‘they will accept that Ricardo killed himself?'

The question surprised him; it could be understood on different levels. ‘No,' he said finally. ‘In the end, they'll decide whether or not I killed him.'

Rosa's lids lowered, half covering her eyes. ‘Why do you say that?'

‘Because there is no one who believes that Richie committed suicide, and a medical examiner to say that the circumstances of his death add up to murder.'

Rosa sat back, and then something in her face became remote and almost hard. ‘It shouldn't matter how Ricardo died,' she said. ‘Only that he's dead.'

There was in Rosa's voice the tone of absolute dismissal; the idea of Richie's death held no more awe or mystery for her than the swatting of a fly.