Tess Gerritsen - Presumed Guilty

Her mouth twitched into a smile. “This is your own private investigation?”

“Call it my quest for the truth. Miranda Wood denies killing my brother. What do you think?”

Annie lit a cigarette. “You know, I used to cover the police beat in Boston.”

“So you’re familiar with murder.”

“In a manner of speaking.” Leaning back, she thoughtfully exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Miranda had the motive. Oh, we all knew about the affair. It’s hard to hide something like that in this newsroom. I tried to, well, advise her against it. But she follows her heart, you know? And it got her into trouble. That’s not to say she did it. Killed him.” Annie flicked off an ash. “I don’t think she did.”

“Then who did?”

Annie shrugged.

“You think it’s tied to the Tony Graffam story?”

Annie’s eyebrow shot up. “You dig stuff up fast. Must run in the family, that newsman’s nose.”

“Miranda Wood says Richard had a story about to break. True?”

“He said he did. I know he was writing it. He had a few more details to check before it went to print.”

“What details?”

“Financial data, about Stone Coast Trust. Richard had just got his hands on some account information.”

“Why didn’t the article get to print?”

“Honest opinion?” Annie snorted. “Because Jill Vickery didn’t want to risk a libel suit.”

Chase frowned. “But Jill says the article doesn’t exist. That Richard never wrote it.”

Annie blew out a last breath of smoke and stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray. “Here’s a piece of wisdom for you, Mr. T,” she said. She looked him in the eye. “Never trust your editor.”

Did the article exist or didn’t it?

Chase spent the next hour searching the files in Richard’s office. He found nothing under G for Graffam or S for Stone Coast Trust. He tried a few more headings, but none of them panned out. Did Richard keep the file at home?

It was late afternoon when he finally returned to the house. To his relief, Evelyn and the twins were out. He had the place to himself. He went straight into Richard’s home office and continued his search for the Graffam file.

He didn’t find it. Yet Miranda claimed it existed. So did Annie Berenger.

Something strange was going on, something that added to all his doubts about Miranda’s guilt. He mentally played back all the holes in the prosecution’s case. The lack of fingerprints on the murder weapon. The fact she had passed the polygraph test. And the woman herself — proud, unyielding in her protestations of innocence.

He gave up trying to talk himself out of his next move. There was no way around it. Not if he wanted to know more. Not if he wanted to shake these doubts.

He had to talk to Miranda Wood.

He pulled on his windbreaker and headed out into the dusk.

Five blocks later he turned onto Willow Street. It was just the way he’d remembered it, a tidy, middle-class neighborhood with inviting front porches and well-tended lawns. Through the fading light he could just make out the address numbers. A few more houses to go….

Farther up the street a screen door slammed shut. He saw a woman come down her porch steps and start toward him along the sidewalk. He recognized her silhouette, the thick cloud of hair, the slim figure clad in jeans. She’d taken only a few steps when she spotted him and stopped dead in her tracks.

“I have to talk to you,” he said.

“I made a promise, remember?” she answered. “Not to go near you or your family. Well, I’m keeping that promise.” She turned and started to walk away.

“This is different. I have to ask you about Richard.”

She kept walking.

“Will you listen to me?”

“That’s how I got into this mess!” she shot back over her shoulder. “Listening to a Tremain!”

He watched in frustration as she headed swiftly up the street. It was useless to pursue her. She was already a block away now, and by the set of her shoulders he could tell she wasn’t going to change her mind. In fact, she had just stepped off the sidewalk and was crossing the street, as though to put the width of the road between them.

Forget her, he thought. If she’s too stubborn to listen, let her go to jail.

Chase turned and had started in the opposite direction when a car drove past. He would scarcely have noticed it except for one detail: its headlights were off. A few paces was all it took for Chase to register that fact. He stopped, turned. Far ahead, Miranda’s slender figure was crossing the street.

By then the car had moved halfway down the block.

The driver’ll see her in time, he thought. He has to see her.

The car’s engine suddenly revved up in a threatening growl of power. Tires screeched. The car leaped forward in a massive blur of steel and smoke, and roared ahead through the shadows.

It was aiming straight for Miranda.

The headlights sprang on, trapping its insubstantial victim in a blaze of light.

“Look out!” Chase shouted.

Miranda whirled and found her eyes flooded with a terrible, blinding brightness. Even as the car shot closer and those lights threatened to engulf her, she was paralyzed by disbelief, by the detached sense of certainty that this was not really happening. She had no time to reason it out. An instant before that ton of steel could slam into her body, her reflexes took over. She flung herself sideways, out of the path of the onrushing headlights.

Suddenly she was flying, suspended for an eternity in the summer darkness as death rushed past her in a roar of wind and light.

And then she was lying on the grass.

She didn’t know how long she had been there. She knew only that the grass was damp, that her head hurt and that gentle hands were stroking her face. Someone called her name, again and again. It was a voice she knew, a voice she thought, in that confused moment, she must have known all her life. Its very timbre seemed to blanket her with the warmth of safety.

Again he called her name, and this time she heard panic in his voice. He’s afraid. Why?

She opened her eyes and dazedly focused on his face. That’s when she registered exactly who he was. All illusion of safety fell away.

“Don’t.” She brushed his hand aside. “Don’t touch me.”

“Lie still.”

“I don’t need you!” She struggled to sit up, but found herself unable to move under his restraining hands. He had her pinned by her shoulders to the grass.

“Look,” he said, his voice maddeningly reasonable. “You took a mean tumble. You might have broken something—”

“I said, don’t touch me!” Defiantly she shoved him away and sat up. Pure rage propelled her to her knees. Then, as the night wavered before her eyes, she found herself sinking back to the grass. There she sat and clutched her spinning head. “Oh, God,” she groaned. “Why can’t you just — just go away and leave me alone.”

“Not on your life,” came the answer, grim and resolute.

To her amazement she was suddenly, magically lifted up into the air. Through her anger she had to admit it felt good to be carried, good to be held, even if the man holding her was Chase Tremain. She was floating, borne like a featherweight through the darkness. Toward what? she wondered with sudden apprehension.

“That’s enough,” she protested. “Let me down.”

“Only a few more steps.”

“I hope you get a hernia.”

“Keep up the damn wiggling and I will.”

He swept her up the porch steps and in the front door. With unerring instinct he carried her straight to the bedroom and managed to flick on the wall switch. The room — the bed — sprang into view. The bed where she’d found Richard. Though the blood was gone, the mattress new and unstained, this room would always remind her of death. She hadn’t slept here since that night, would never sleep here again.