Tess Gerritsen: Presumed Guilty

At nine o’clock Richard had left the house to do some work at the office — or so he’d said. And Evelyn?

“I went upstairs to bed,” she said.

“What about Cassie and Phillip?”

“They went out. To a movie, I think.”

“So everyone went their separate ways.”

“Yes.” Evelyn looked down at her lap. “And that’s it. Until twelve-thirty, when I got the call….”

“Let’s go back to that dinner conversation.”

The account went into replay. A few extra details here and there, but essentially the same story. Chase, his last reserves of alertness wearing thin, began to drift into a state of semiconsciousness. Already his legs were going numb, sinking into a sleep that his brain longed to join. The floor began to look pretty good. At least it was horizontal. He felt himself sliding….

Suddenly he jerked awake and saw that everyone was looking at him.

“Are you all right, Chase?” asked Evelyn.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “I guess I’m just more tired than I thought.” He gave his head a shake. “Could I, uh, get a cup of coffee somewhere?”

“Down the hall,” said Tibbetts. “There’s a full pot on, plus a couch if you need it. Why don’t you wait there?”

“Go ahead,” said Evelyn. “I’ll be done soon.”

With a sense of relief Chase fled the office and went in search of the blessed coffeepot. Moving back down the hall, he poked his head into the first doorway and discovered a washroom. The next door was locked. He moved on and glanced into the third room. It was unlit. Through the shadows he saw a couch, a few chairs, a jumble of furniture off in a corner. In the sidewall there was a window. It was that window that drew his attention because, unlike a normal window, it didn’t face the outside; it faced an adjoining room. Through the pane of glass he spied a woman, sitting alone at a small table.

She was oblivious to him. Her gaze was focused downward, on the table before her. Something drew him closer, something about her utter silence, her stillness. He felt like a hunter who has quite unexpectedly come upon a doe poised in the forest.

Quietly Chase slipped into the darkness and let the door close behind him. He moved to the window. A one-way mirror — that’s what it was, of course. He was on the observing side, she on the blind side. She had no idea he was standing here, separated from her by only a half inch of glass. It made him feel somehow contemptible to be standing there, spying on her, but he couldn’t help himself. He was drawn in by that old fantasy of invisibility, of being the fly on the wall, the unseen observer.

And it was the woman.

She was not particularly beautiful, and neither her clothes nor her hairstyle enhanced the assets she did have. She was wearing faded blue jeans and a Boston Red Sox T-shirt a few sizes too big. Her hair, a chestnut brown, was gathered into a careless braid. A few strands had escaped and drooped rebelliously about her temples. She wore little or no makeup, but she had the sort of face that needed none, the sort of face you saw on those Patagonia catalog models, the ones raking leaves or hugging lambs. Wholesome, with just a hint of sunburn. Her eyes, a light color, gray or blue, didn’t quite fit the rest of the picture. He could see by the puffiness around the lids that she’d been crying. Even now, she reached up and swiped a tear from her cheek. She glanced around the table in search of something. Then, with a look of frustration, she tugged at the edge of her T-shirt and wiped her face with it. It seemed a helpless gesture, the sort of thing a child would do. It made her look all the more vulnerable. He wondered why she was in that room, sitting all alone, looking for all the world like an abandoned soul. A witness? A victim?

She looked straight ahead, right at him. He instinctively drew away from the window, but he knew she couldn’t see him. All she saw was a reflection of herself staring back. She seemed to take in her own image with passive weariness. Indifference. As though she was thinking, There I am, looking like hell. And I couldn’t care less.

A key grated in the lock. Suddenly the woman sat up straight, her whole body snapping to alertness. She wiped her face once more, raised her chin to a pugnacious angle. Her eyes might be swollen, her T-shirt damp with tears, but she had determinedly thrown off that cloak of vulnerability. She reminded Chase of a soldier girded for battle, but scared out of her wits.

The door opened. A man walked in — gray suit, no tie, all business. He took a chair. Chase was startled by the loud sound of the chair legs scraping the floor. He realized there must be a microphone in the next room, and that the sound was coming through a small speaker by the window.

“Ms. Wood?” asked the man. “Sorry to keep you waiting. I’m Lieutenant Merrifield, state police.” He held out his hand and smiled. It said a lot, that smile. It said I’m your buddy. Your best friend. I’m here to make everything right.

The woman hesitated, then shook the offered hand.

Lieutenant Merrifield settled into the chair and gave the woman a long, sympathetic look. “You must be exhausted,” he said, maintaining that best-friend voice. “Are you comfortable? Feel ready to proceed?”

She nodded.

“They’ve read you your rights?”

Again, a nod.

“I understand you’ve waived the right to have an attorney present.”

“I don’t have an attorney,” she said.

Her voice was not what Chase expected. It was soft, husky. A bedroom voice with a heartbreaking quaver of grief.

“We can arrange for one, if you want,” said Merrifield. “It may take some time, which means you’ll have to be patient.”

“Please. I just want to tell you what happened….”

A smile touched Lieutenant Merrifield’s lips. It had the curve of triumph. “All right, then,” he said. “Let’s begin.” He placed a cassette recorder on the table and pressed the button. “Tell me your name, your address, your occupation.”

The woman sighed deeply, a breath for courage. “My name is Miranda Wood. I live at 18 Willow Street. I work as a copy editor for the Island Herald. ”

“That’s Mr. Tremain’s newspaper?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s go straight to last night. Tell me what happened. All the events leading up to the death of Mr. Richard Tremain.”

Chase felt his whole body suddenly go numb. The death of Mr. Richard Tremain. He found himself pressing forward, against that cold glass, his gaze fixed on the face of Miranda Wood. Innocence. Softness. That’s what he saw when he looked at her. What a lovely mask she wore, what a pure and perfect disguise.

My brother’s mistress, he thought with sudden comprehension.

My brother’s murderer.

In terrible fascination he listened to her confession.

“Let’s go back a few months, Ms. Wood. To when you first met Mr. Tremain. Tell me about your relationship.”

Miranda stared down at her hands, knotted together on the table. The table itself was a typically ugly piece of institutional furniture. She noticed that someone had carved the initials JMK onto the surface. She wondered who JMK was, if he or she had sat there under similar circumstances, if he or she had been similarly innocent. She felt a sudden bond with this unknown predecessor, the one who had sat in the same hot seat, fighting for dear life.

“Ms. Wood? Please answer my question.”

She looked up at Lieutenant Merrifield. The smiling destroyer. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t listening.”

“About Mr. Tremain. How did you meet him?”

“At the Herald. I was hired about a year ago. We got to know each other in the course of business.”