Tess Gerritsen - Presumed Guilty

They stared at each other, caught in a binding fascination for each other’s transgressions, each other’s pain. Killer and victim, thought Miranda. That’s what I see in her eyes. Is that what you see in mine?

The telephone rang, shattering the silence.

The sound seemed to rattle Jill. At once she turned and reached for the door. There she stopped. “You think you’re the exception, Miranda. You think you’re untouchable. Just wait. In a few years, when you’re my age, you’ll know just how vulnerable you are. We all are.”

She walked out, closing the door behind her.

At once Miranda slid the bolt home.

The phone had stopped ringing. Miranda stared at it, wondering if it had been Chase, praying that he would call again.

The phone remained silent.

She began to pace the living room, hoping Chase, Annie, anyone would call. Starved for the sound of a human voice, she turned on the TV. Mindless entertainment, that’s what she needed. For a half hour she sat on the couch among Annie’s discarded socks and sweatshirts, flicking nervously between channels. Opera. Basketball. Game show. Opera again. In frustration she flicked it back to basketball.

Something clattered in the next room.

Startled, she left the couch and went into the kitchen. There she found herself staring down at a plastic saucer rolling around and around on its side across the linoleum floor. It collapsed, shuddered and fell still. Had it tumbled off the drainboard? She looked up at the sink and noticed, for the first time, that the window was wide open.

That’s not the way I left it.

Slowly she backed away. The gun — Annie’s gun. She had to get it.

In panic she turned to make a dash for the living room—

And found her head brutally trapped, her mouth covered by a wad of cloth. She flailed blindly against her captor, against the fumes burning her nose, her throat, but found her arms wouldn’t work right. Her legs seemed to slide away from her, dissolving into some bottomless hole. She felt herself falling, caught a glimpse of the light as it receded into an impossibly high place. She tried to reach out for it but found her arms had gone numb.

The light wavered, shrank.

And then it winked out, leaving only the darkness.

Phillip was banging away at the piano. Rachmaninoff, Chase thought wearily. Couldn’t the boy choose something a little more sedate? Mozart, for instance, or Haydn. Anything but this Russian thunder.

Chase headed out to the veranda, hoping to escape the racket, but the sound of the piano seemed to pound right through the walls. Resignedly he stood at the railing and stared toward the harbor. Already sunset. The sea had turned to red flame.

He wondered what Miranda was doing.

Wondered if he’d ever stop wondering.

This morning, when they’d driven off in their separate cars, their separate ways, he’d known their relationship had gone as far as it could. To go any further would require a level of trust he wasn’t ready to give her. Their amateur detective work had come to a dead end; for now they had no reason to see each other. It was time to let the pros take over. The police, at least, would be objective. They wouldn’t be swayed by emotions or hormones.

They still believed Miranda was guilty.

“Uncle Chase?” Cassie pushed through the screen door and came out to join him. “You can’t stand the music, either, I see.”

He smiled. “Don’t tell your brother.”

“It’s not that he’s a bad musician. He’s just…loud.” She leaned against one of the posts and looked up at the sky, at the first stars winking in the gathering darkness. “Think you could do me a favor?” she asked.

“What’s that?”

“When Mom gets home, will you talk to her? About the Herald. ”

“What about it?”

“Well, with all that’s come up — about Jill Vickery, I mean — it’s beginning to look like we’ll need a strong hand on the helm. We all know Dad groomed Phillip to be the designated heir. And he’s a bright kid — I’m not putting him down or anything. But the fact is, Phillip’s just not that interested.”

“He hasn’t said much about it, one way or the other.”

“Oh, he won’t say anything. He’ll never admit the truth. That he’s not crazy about the job.” She paused, then said with steel in her voice, “But I am.”

Chase frowned at his niece. Not yet twenty, and she had the look of a woman who knew exactly what she wanted in life. “You think you have what it takes?”

“It’s in my blood! I’ve been involved from the time I could put pen to paper. Or fingers to keyboard. I know how that office works. I can write, edit, lay out ads, drive the damn delivery truck. I can run that paper. Phillip can’t.”

Chase remembered Cassie’s term papers, the ones he’d glanced through at the cottage. They weren’t just the chewing up and spitting out of textbook facts, but thoughtful, critical analyses.

“I think you’d do a terrific job,” he said. “I’ll talk to your mother.”

“Thanks, Uncle Chase. I’ll remember to mention your name when I get my Pulitzer.” Grinning, she turned to go back into the house.

“Cassie?”

“Yes?”

“What do you think of Jill Vickery?”

Cassie frowned at the change of subject. “You mean as a managing editor? She was okay. Considering what she got paid, we were lucky to keep her.”

“I mean, on a personal level.”

“Well, that’s hard to say. You never really get to know Jill. She’s like a closed book. I never had any idea about that stuff in San Diego.”

“Do you think she had an affair with your father?”

Cassie shrugged. “Didn’t they all?”

“Do you think she was hurt by it?”

Cassie thought this over for a moment. “I think, if she was, she got over it. Jill’s a tough cookie. That’s the way I’d like to be.” She turned and went into the house.

Phillip was still playing Rachmaninoff.

Chase stood and watched the last glow of sunset fade from the sea. He thought about Jill Vickery, about Miranda, about all the women Richard had hurt, including his own wife, Evelyn.

We’re lousy, we Tremain men, he thought. We use women, then we hurt them.

Am I any different?

In frustration he slapped the porch railing. Yes, I am. I would be. If only I could trust her.

Phillip’s pounding on the piano had become unbearable.

Chase left the porch, walked down the steps and headed for his car.

He would talk to her one last time. He would look her in the eye and ask her if she was guilty. Tonight he would get his answer. Tonight he would decide, once and for all, if Miranda Wood was telling the truth.

No one answered Annie’s front door.

The lights were on inside, and Chase could hear the TV. He rang the bell, knocked, called out Miranda’s name. Still there was no answer. At last he tried the knob and found the door was unlocked. He poked his head inside.

“Miranda? Annie?”

The living room was deserted. A basketball game, unwatched, was playing out its last minute on the TV. A pair of Annie’s socks lay draped over the back of the sofa. Everything seemed perfectly normal, yet not quite right. He stood there for a moment, as though expecting the former occupants of the room to magically reappear and confront him.

The basketball game went into its fifteen-second countdown. A last-ditch throw, across the court. Basket. The crowd cheered.

Chase crossed the room, into the kitchen, and halted.

Here things were definitely not right. A chair lay toppled on its side. On the floor a saucer lay upside down. Though the kitchen window was wide open, an odor hung in the room, something vaguely sharp, medicinal.