Guilt by Association (52 page)

In addition, much of the media—not an institution known for maintaining its neutrality one minute longer than was deemed absolutely necessary—had flocked to the side of the senator, screaming outrage and crying “dirty tricks” in chorus with the majority of the public. Every night, it seemed, another prominent commentator was coming forth to proclaim the candidate and denounce the alleged victim.

“It’s probably best that you don’t watch,” Tess agreed.

Karen picked up the morning newspaper. “Unfortunately,” she said with a sigh, “I haven’t stopped reading.”

The three-inch headline read: “Volunteer Accuses Senator of Rape—Trial Begins Tomorrow.” The accompanying article contained just about everything but her weight and bra size.

“I’m sorry about that,” Tess apologized, “and about the mob scene out front. But I assure you, the leak didn’t come from our office.”

“I know that,” Karen replied, recalling the personnel files that were kept at the Willmont campaign headquarters. “It was bound to get out, sooner or later. Actually, I’m surprised they waited as long as they did.”

The stunned, skeptical, supportive telephone calls had begun well before seven o’clock California time.

Laura called from Boston. “It was all over the news this morning,” she confirmed. “Your name and everything. I couldn’t believe it. It’s so weird, having them talk that way about my own sister. Is there anything I can do?”

* * *

“We’ve been following the story for weeks, of course,” Jill Hartman proclaimed from her summer home on Shelter Island, “and we were all positive it was a political setup. We never dreamed it was you.”

“It’s incomprehensible,” Arlene Minniken Slarsky, the Scarsdale psychologist, ex-Floridian, ex-roommate drawled. “Let’s face it—on the surface, Robert Willmont is an absolute dreamboat who could probably have any woman in the world he wants just by snapping his fingers. It makes you wonder why someone like that had to resort to rape.”

“A private detective came snooping around here, looking for dirt,” Peter Bauer told her. He had taken his father’s company beyond every expectation and now sat at the forefront of computer electronics. He and his wife had five children and four grandchildren. “I sent him packing.”

“Thank you for calling,” Karen said. “It means a lot.”

“Look,” he added awkwardly, “I have three daughters. Each in her own special way has helped me realize how badly I behaved back then. I know I can’t ever make it up to you, but if there’s anything I can do, please, let me know.”

“Why did they have to say it was you?” Gwen exclaimed indignantly the moment the twins had gone down for their naps. “They had no right to say it was you right out in the open like that.”

“I guess they thought they did,” her stepmother sighed.

“I’ll be there tonight,” Jessica declared during a coffee break from her summer job as a hematology intern at a Denver hospital.
“I’ve got everything all arranged, so don’t argue.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come out?” Nancy pressed. “I can at least answer the telephone and the door and keep the press off your back.”

“We’re with you, dear,” Ione assured her.

“Hang in there, girl,” Demelza instructed.

Then the call came from Palm Beach.

“Are you satisfied now?” Beverly Kern demanded. “Your father’s had a heart attack.”

Leo had had two small coronaries in the past five years. The doctors recommended bypass surgery, but the seventy-eight-year-old retired dentist didn’t trust their judgment. He was trying, instead, to get his wife to cut cholesterol out of their diet.

“How is he?” Karen asked.

“Well, I suppose he’ll live,” her mother conceded, “no thanks to you.”

“Tell him I’m pulling for him.”

“Why are you doing this?” Beverly moaned. “At your age, for heaven’s sake, you should know better. You were always a good girl. How could you even think of doing such a dreadful thing to us?”

“I’m not doing anything to you, Mother,” Karen replied. “I’m doing what I have to do for me.”

“But what will people say?”

“Is that really what’s most important—what the neighbors will think?”

“You may not realize it, but we live in a very small community down here,” Beverly said. “I can’t go anywhere without meeting someone I know. The phone’s been ringing off the hook all morning.”

“About me?”

“Well, they ask about your father, of course, but I know that’s not why they’re
really
calling.”

“Give Daddy my love.”

“You’re ruining this family and that’s all you have to say?”

“Tell him I’ll call him soon.”

The line went dead.

“She was just upset,” Ted said reassuringly. “She was probably worried about your father.”

“Don’t make excuses for her,” Karen replied as she hung up the phone. “She’s been that way her whole life.”

“Everyone’s been really terrific,” she murmured now as she poured a cup of tea for Tess. “Well, almost everyone.”

The two women were seated at the table in the breakfast room, at the back of the house, away from prying eyes.

“Don’t let it get you down,” the seasoned ADA told her. “We’ve still got a long way to go.”

“What about the jury?”

“About average, I’d say. One Asian, two blacks, two Hispanics, two Jews, one born-again Christian, one Irish Catholic, two WASPs and an atheist. Four Republicans, eight Democrats, and they’re split right down the middle as far as blue collar/white collar. I think it’s a good enough mix not to make for bias on either side.”

“So then,” Karen said with a big sigh, “tomorrow’s the day.”

“Not to worry,” the ADA replied. “We have a strong case.”

“I just hope I don’t let you down,” Karen murmured.

Tess smiled in spite of herself. Oddly matched though they were, the two had become close. It amused the ADA that Karen had begun their relationship by fearing the system would let her down, and now she worried that she might fail the system.

“If you tell it like you told it to Lamar and to me,” Tess reassured her, “you’ll do just fine.”

Karen sighed and her gaze slid out the window. Ted had taken the afternoon off and he and Amy were out working in the garden,
a small walled space at the back of the house, protected by a locked gate from the prying eyes and insensitivity of the press.

“Have you ever been married, Tess?” she asked.

“Once,” the ADA replied, “for about forty-eight hours.”

‘
Two days?
”

Tess half-shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”

“How long?”

The attorney sighed. “We met in college. It was one of
those cases of instant magic. You know, bells ringing, feet never touching the ground. His name was Eddie—Edward Parker Hilliard.
I was there on full scholarship. He was there on full parentship. For three years, neither of us dated anybody else, and the day after graduation, we eloped. It was foolish, I suppose, but so romantic. We dreamed of having a little apartment and going to law school together. Then we came back and told our parents the glorious news.”

Karen listened intently. Other than an occasional story about her family’s stoop-labor life, Tess never talked about her past.

“My parents were thrilled,” she went on. “They really liked Eddie. But the Hilliards—well, that was a different story. They were furious. You see, they had no intention of allowing their son to contaminate the bloodline. They tried to buy me off,
but I wouldn’t hear of it. Next they tried to buy my father off, with more money than he would earn in his entire lifetime.
To his credit, he told them to go to hell. Then they threatened to pull strings and have my scholarship to law school revoked,
and finally, they swore they would disinherit Eddie and see to it that he never went to law school, either.”

Here, she paused for a chuckle, but it held no humor. “I was feisty even back then. I said we didn’t need their dirty money,
that we loved each other and we could make it on our own. But I guess Eddie wanted to be a rich lawyer more than he wanted to be a poor husband. Anyway, the next day, his parents began the annulment process and I never saw him again. End of story.”

“And since?”

Tess tossed her head. “Too busy to look, I guess.”

“I was almost forty when I married,” Karen reflected. “I liked my husband but I wasn’t in love with him. He just happened to be the one who was there when I realized it would probably be my last chance. We had a pretty bad time of it, you know,
a lot of conflicting expectations, but now—now I don’t know what I’d do without him.”

Tess leaned forward and pressed Karen’s hand.

“It’s going to be okay,” she promised.

The doorbell at St. Francis Wood rang at eight o’clock that evening. Karen was in the kitchen with Amy and Jessica, finishing up the dinner dishes. She heard Ted open the door and then there was a flurry of muffled conversation before the door slammed shut. Drying her hands, Karen started out of the kitchen and bumped into Ted coming to get her.

“There are some people who’d like to say a few words to you,” he said, unable to conceal the big grin on his face. “I didn’t think you’d mind.”

Ever since the press had descended on them, Ted had been her shield, letting no one but Tess, Lamar, and the Shaffers through the door. Curious, Karen took several steps past him and looked down the hall.

“Hi, kiddo,” Mitch Rankin greeted her. He was still a bear of a man at fifty-nine. “If we’d known how popular this address was, we’d have come a lot sooner.”

“Now don’t be upset with us, dear,” Ione urged, a gray Peter Pan at fifty-eight. “We just had to come.”

“We figured you could use some friendly faces out here in West Hostile,” Demelza added. At sixty-nine, her once thick black hair was now thin and white and she kidded about how it had taken the ravages of colon cancer to trim her figure down to gaunt.

“The truth is,” Jenna said, her arm linked in John’s, “we needed a vacation.” Jenna had kept her carrot-colored hair and her baby fat, even into her forties, and John looked even more like Sherlock Holmes now that his face was creased from half a century of living.

“I think it’s nothing short of amazing that it never occurred to me to come to California before this,” Felicity declared,
still straight as a stick at fifty-two, still the dancer.

“We’re already camped out at Campton Place and we’re staying for the duration,” Mitch concluded, referring to one of
San Francisco’s finest hotels. “And we won’t hear another word about it.”

Ted came up behind Karen and squeezed her shoulders. “I think they mean it,” he whispered.

The pillars of her shaky past, she thought, the stalwart Sullivan Street set, who had always been there to defend her, protect her and support her, were still lining up behind her without question, without judgment. Tears crowded her eyes.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” she cried.

“We have it all planned,” Ione told her as they settled themselves on the pale-green sofas that faced each other across the living room. “We’re going to court every day and do our best to remember everything that happens. That way, when you put together what each of us saw and heard, we’re bound to come up with a pretty complete picture.”

“Not necessarily objective, mind you,” Demelza conceded, “but complete.”

“Then, after court, you’ll all come here for dinner,” Karen announced, glancing at Ted for confirmation. “It won’t be too much work and it’ll give
me something to do.”

“Amy and I will make sure it’s not too much for her,” Jessica put in. “She won’t let us go to court.”

“Certainly not,” Karen retorted. “I won’t have you being hounded by the media any more than you already are.”

The doorbell rang again at nine-fifteen.

“Now, don’t say a word,” Nancy Yanow ordered, pushing her way past the tactless mob of reporters and shutting the door firmly in their faces. “So I’m a month early—you won’t even know I’m here. I can bunk in the sunporch or on the sofa or anywhere there’s a horizontal space, and I’m not leaving. If you think for a moment I’d go back out there, you’re crazy.”

Karen hugged her sister-in-law and closest friend, who had grown even rounder with the passing of time.

“As long as you brought your camera,” she said, “it won’t be a total loss.”

“Of course I did.” Nancy grinned, her asymmetrical eyes
twinkling. “You didn’t think I’d come all this way just for you, did you?”

Ted disappeared into the kitchen, returning with a tray of glasses and two bottles of champagne.

“I was saving this for after the verdict,” he said. “But I think we should drink it now.” He popped the corks and poured.
When everyone had a glass, he raised his own. “To justice,” he said.

“To justice,” everyone else echoed. “To convicting the bastard.”

“Yes, indeed,” Karen murmured, taking a small sip. “To justice.”

The clock ticked past midnight. There was little more the defense could do. They had spent a thousand hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to find the answer, but no answer had been found, and they had run out of time.

The senator sat at his desk in a pool of lamplight, spinning a paper clip on the end of a pencil. Randy was slouched in a chair across from him. The campaign offices were dark and silent.

“Feels like a funeral in here,” Robert observed wryly.

“Oh, I wouldn’t dig the grave just yet,” Randy said buoyantly.

“I’m not.” The senator chuckled. “I just figured everyone else was.”

“Not quite,” Mary Catherine said from the doorway. She was holding three glasses and a bottle of champagne.

“What’s that for?” Robert asked.

“Two months ago, if you’d asked me,” she replied, “I’d have said that not only the campaign but your whole political career was over. But I must have been reading from the wrong script because, despite this whole mess, here you are, with practically the whole country rallying behind you, one step away from the nomination. All that’s standing between you and the White House is an acquittal.”

What a fickle world it was, Robert mused. Not that long ago, a politician had been crucified for a harmless little pec
cadillo in Bimini, and now here
he
was—being forgiven. He wanted to believe it was because he was a more important person, but he knew it had more to do with the sorry state of the nation.