John Saul: The Manhattan Hunt Club

"Why do you two insist on watching every report about this awful thing?" she demanded when the newscast cut to a commercial. "It's over. You've got to let it go."

"It's not over," Heather replied without hesitation, her voice tinged with anger. "It won't be over until they let Jeff go."

" ‘They,' as you put it, are not going to let him go unless he's innocent," Perry Randall said in a condescending tone, which Heather recognized as one he ordinarily reserved for dim witnesses who were ignorant of the facts. "And since he is not innocent, I don't think that is going to happen."

"You don't know-" Heather began, but her father cut her off before she could finish.

"I know the facts of the case," he reminded her. "I saw the police report after Converse was arrested, and though I recused myself from the case for obvious reasons, that does not mean I didn't review it carefully." He saw in the way his daughter's jaw set that his arguments would be no more persuasive this morning than they had been on any other day since Jeff Converse had been apprehended at the scene of the assault on Cynthia Allen. His own stubborn streak now revealed itself. "I know how you feel, Heather, but if feelings were allowed to rule our courts, our prisons would be empty. There isn't a man on Rikers Island-or anywhere else, I suspect-who doesn't have a girlfriend who swears he's innocent."

"But Jeff is innocent!" Heather flared. "Daddy, you must know he's not capable of what he's accused of doing!"

Perry Randall's left eyebrow arched. "No, Heather, I really don't know him."

Heather felt she was choking on the stream of furious words rising in her throat, but held them in. What was the point of arguing with her father now? His mind was made up-had been made up since the moment she'd called him after Jeff's arrest.

She had called him in the hope-no, in the certainty -that he'd be able to talk to someone and straighten everything out. Now she realized she should have known better. Hadn't it been her father's cool, analytical responses to nearly every emotional issue that ever came up that had finally driven her mother away? Still, she hadn't been prepared for his response to her request for help:

"I want you to come home immediately," he'd told her. "The last thing I need right now-"

" You need?" she'd retorted. "Daddy, Jeff's in jail!"

"Which in my experience means he's undoubtedly done something to get himself there," her father replied. Then, in the face of her anguish, he'd softened. "I'll look into it in the morning. It's going to take some time for the precinct to book him, but there should be something in the office by tomorrow morning. I'll take a look-see what people are thinking. Then I'll see what I can do."

So Heather had come home.

Except the big apartment overlooking Central Park didn't feel like home anymore-hadn't felt like home since her mother had left a dozen years ago, when she was eleven.

"Left."

There was a nice euphemism. Now that she was twenty-three, Heather knew that "taken away" would better describe what had happened. She hadn't seen it herself, but over the years, she'd gotten a pretty good idea about what had happened. All she'd known at the time was that she'd come home from school as on any typical day and found her mother gone. "She just needs a good rest," they told her.

It turned out her mother was "resting" in a hospital.

Not a regular hospital, like Lenox Hill, over near Lexington, or the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital down on Sixty-fourth.

The one her mother was in looked more like a resort than a hospital and was out in the country. But it wasn't a resort. It was where her father had sent Charlotte Randall to stop her from drinking and taking pills.

At first her mother promised she'd come home soon. "It'll only be a little while, sweetheart," she said the first time

Heather visited. But her mother never came home again. "I just can't," she explained. "When you're older, you'll understand."

The divorce was quiet-her father had seen to that.

And her mother had left New York-her father had seen to that, too.

Charlotte was living in San Francisco now. When Heather turned eighteen, she'd flown out to see her, over her father's objections. Her mother was sober when Heather arrived that morning, but she had a glass of white wine with lunch. "Don't look at me that way, darling," she said as she took the first sip, her voice brittle, her smile too bright. "It's only one glass. It's not as if I'm an alcoholic." But it hadn't been only one glass; that had been merely the first. By dinner her mother didn't even try to deny it. "Why shouldn't I drink? I may live in San Francisco, but your father still controls my life."

"Why do you let him?" she'd asked.

Her mother only shook her head. "It's not that easy-when you're older, you'll understand." But all the trip to San Francisco accomplished was to destroy the illusions about her mother that Heather had nurtured during the years they'd been apart.

Now she did understand, as her mother had said she would. In some ways, her father controlled her just as much as he had controlled Charlotte. Heather was still living in the rambling apartment on Fifth Avenue, still going to school at Columbia.

Still being supported by her father, still living in his house. But she knew it would end when Jeff finished architecture school and they got married.

Then that terrible night had come when she'd waited for Jeff at his apartment but he hadn't returned. Finally, certain something must have happened to him, she'd started calling.

First the hospitals. St. Luke's, the clinic on Columbus, the Westside Medical Center.

And then the precinct station on West One hundredth Street.

"We got a Jeffrey Converse here," the desk sergeant told her, but refused to give her any of the details over the phone.

Heather thought it must be some terrible mistake, until she went down to the precinct house. Jeff, his face scratched, his clothes covered with blood, had looked at her helplessly through the bars of the single cell in the detectives' squad room. "I was trying to help a woman," he said. "I was just trying to help her."

And the nightmare had begun.

The nightmare that her father, the Assistant District Attorney, had done nothing to end. "There's nothing I can do," he told her the next day. "I've looked at the case, and the victim has made a positive identification. She's sure it was Jeff."

"There must be something-" Heather began, but was interrupted.

"My job is to prosecute people like Jeff Converse, not defend them. I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do."

But Heather knew it was more than that. Her father didn't want to do anything for Jeff.

He'd never wanted her to date Jeff.

He certainly didn't want her to marry Jeff.

He did, however, want to be District Attorney, an ambition that might very well be satisfied in the next election. Unless, of course, something embarrassing happened-something like being on the wrong side of a much publicized case.

And because of the violence that had been committed against Cynthia Allen, Jeff's case had become very high-profile indeed. To Perry Randall, it was bad enough that his daughter had been dating Jeffrey Converse. To appear to be defending him was unthinkable.

"But he didn't do it," Heather whispered now. "I know he didn't do it." She might as well have said nothing at all, for her father had already turned his attention back to the newspaper.

Keith Converse reached for the knob of his truck's radio, but changed his mind before his fingers touched it. If he turned it on, he knew what would happen: his wife would pause in her prayers just long enough to give him a reproachful look, and even though she wouldn't say anything, her message would be loud and clear.