Degree of Guilt Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Copyright

  About the Author

  Praise for Degree Of Guilt

  Also by Richard North Patterson

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Degree of Guilt

  Part One: The Killing

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Part Two: The Investigation

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part Three: The Witness

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part Four: The Prosecution

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Part Five: The Defense

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Part Six:: The Court

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Epub ISBN: 9781407059297

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  Published in the United Kingdom in 1994 by

  Arrow Books

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  Copyright © Richard North Patterson, 1993

  The right of Richard North Patterson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  First published in the United Kingdom in 1993 by Hutchinson

  Arrow Books

  The Random House Group Ltd,

  20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SWIV 2SA

  www.rbooks.co.uk

  Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm

  The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9780099296911

  The Random House Group Limited makes every effort to ensure that the papers used in its books are made from trees that have been legally sourced from well-managed and credibly certified forests. Out paper procurement policy can be found at: www.rbooks.co.uk/environment

  Typeset in Ehrhardt by Deltatype Ltd, Birkenhead, Merseyside Printed in the UK by CPI Bookmarque, Croydon, CR0 4TD

  About the Autohr

  Richard North Patterson’s novels include the international bestsellers Eyes of a Child, The Final Judgement, Silent Witness, No Safe Place, Dark Lady and Protect and Defend. His novels have won the Edgar Allan Poe Award and the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière. A graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University and the Case Western Reserve School of Law, he studied creative writing with Jesse Hill Ford at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He and his wife, Laurie, live with their family in San Francisco and on Martha’s Vineyard.

  Praise for DEGREE OF GUILT

  ‘More gripping than Grisham’ – Today

  ‘This novel defies any attempt to put it down’ – Daily Telegraph

  ‘Exceptionally skilful, high tension, full of surprises’ – The Times

  ‘Anyone who enjoyed Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent will be gripped by DEGREE OF GUILT . . . a roller-coaster of surprise twists and turns with a profound moral debate at its heart’ – Time Out

  ‘Patterson has his finger on the pulse of contemporary America, and this intricate, nail-biting labyrinth of a book teems with references to a recent sexual causes celebres’ – KATE SAUNDERS, Cosmopolitan

  ‘Ingenious’ – Sunday Times

  ‘One intense courtroom clash after another. An intelligent and gripping thriller’ – The Washington Post

  ‘Absorbing’ – Publishers’ Weekly

  ‘The pleasure in reading a book as mesmeric as this without skipping a page defies the desire to pick a single hole’ – FRANCES FYFIELD, Daily Telegraph

  ‘Walk, don’t wait . . . Get hold of Richard North Patterson’s new novel DEGREE OF GUILT . . . There is a murder right from the git-go and a courtroom drama that is hair-raising. Hot, hot, hot’ – USA Today

  ‘The most compulsively readable courtroom thriller since Presumed Innocence’ – People

  Also by Richard North Patterson

  No Safe Place

  Silent Witness

  The Final Judgement

  Eyes of a Child

  Private Screening

  Escape the Night

  The Outside Man

  The Lasko Tangent

  Dark Lady

  Protect and Defend

  Balance of Power

  Conviction

  For Laurie

  For Everything

  Acknowledgments

  There are a number of people to whom I owe a great deal. Those who contributed important background information include Bill Fazio and Frank Pasaglia of the District Attorney’s Office in San Francisco; Homicide Inspector Napoleon Hendricks; County Medical Examiner Dr Boyd Stephens; defense attorney Jim Collins; and my colleague, Randy Knox. Dr Norman Mages was a valuable sounding board when I applied my lay psychology to several of the characters. And Al Giannini, also of the District Attorney’s Office, not only provided me with stimulating advice before I began writing but gave me important guidance once the manuscript was done. They deserve a goodly share of the credit for verisimilitude on matters such as medical and criminal procedure; any errors or omissions are my own.

  There is no greater favor a writer can ask of a friend than to be an objective and critical reader. A book in progress can feel quite fragile; it is of immeasurable assistance to have readers who are supportive but honest. Because my fiance, Laurie Anderson, my close friend and partner, Philip Rotner, and my great pal and literary agent, Fred Hill, were discerning judges of the strengths and weaknesses of my first draft, Degree of Guilt is a far better novel. And there is no finer editor than Sonny Mehta – incisive, patient, and devoted to bringing out the best values of the manuscript from the day that he first read it.

  Finally, this book would not have happened the way it did without Alison Porter Thomas. That she typed the manuscript was the least of it: page to page and scene to scene, she was a gifted critic of language, characterization, and dialogue. I cannot ever thank her enough.

  PART ONE

  The Killing

  January 13

  Chapter 1

  The woman froze in t
he hallway, staring at the numbered door-plate.

  For a moment, she felt uncertain that this was the same suite she had left perhaps a minute before. Then she turned the knob slowly, wincing at its metallic click.

  The door cracked ajar, a pallid sliver of light coming from inside. She paused, looking over her shoulder, less from fear of being seen than the desire to stay suspended in time, outside the room.

  Time. She glanced at her gold wristwatch. When had it happened? she wondered. No way of telling now. Thirty minutes, she decided arbitrarily. Thirty minutes, and she had not decided what to do. Her mind was sluggish, numb with disbelief. She felt drugged.

  Her fingertips were damp, she realized. With every thought, her choices seemed to narrow. She fought the impulse to stop thinking, to run. It took all her will to do nothing.

  The chime of an elevator rang.

  She flinched. Quickly, she tried to remember arriving in the elevator, how far it was down the hallway. Afraid to turn, unable to recall the corridor right behind her.

  She straightened, squaring her shoulders, and pushed open the door.

  The rectangle of light from within captured her like a photograph, a slender woman with long black hair, standing motionless in the door frame. The elevator opened. A second chime penetrated her shock.

  She stepped inside and shut the door behind her.

  Closing, it sounded heavy. Final, she corrected herself. It sounded final.

  She turned to face the room.

  Her eyes sought out details. Drawn blinds. Her black leather purse on the floor. The gold neck of an empty champagne bottle, above the rim of a silver ice bucket on a glass coffee table. The two crystal glasses. The heavy oil painting of San Francisco Bay she had remarked on, slightingly, when she first entered. Her panty hose on the carpet, ripped in one leg.

  She touched her throat, feeling for scratches. She had broken a nail; it was that, oddly, which made her remember her own fragility.

  Finally, she looked at him There was blood on the carpet now, beneath his chest. His pants were pulled below his knees.

  A sudden jumble of images: Legs splayed at crazy angles. Blue argyle socks. A curly shock of red hair. Thin craggy face, turned to chalk. Eyes open as if to stare at the black handgun, lying near his head where she had left it.

  For an instant, she was paralyzed.

  She breathed in deeply, once, and exhaled. Then she took three steps, standing over him, and stared down at his bare buttocks.

  The wave of revulsion hit her again, rose to her throat. She felt sure she would vomit; some cold, distant part of her brain wondered how that would look to them. Perhaps they would see her fear, see how afraid he had made her. Then the hatred ran through her again, hard and deep and raw.

  She shut her eyes, remembering. What he had done. What he had wanted to do.

  When they opened again, she felt stronger, more ready. More like the woman who had come here. More like the woman she had always been.

  The nausea had passed. She sat beside him on the carpet.

  There was no hole in his back, she saw; the bullet had not gone through. The flabby skin of his buttocks was turning gray. She could hardly see the scratches she had left there.

  In her new resolve, she tried to summon a clinical dispassion. Perhaps forty minutes before, she realized, his heart had stopped pumping blood. The great man, bottom in the air, pale as a fish. It was almost comic.

  The smile, small and involuntary, hurt her bruised mouth. The dark mirth vanished.

  The rest of her life, she resolved, would not be about him. She would not let him do that to her. She would leave this day behind her.

  Staring now.

  She looked down at her watch. Too much time had passed. She must think quickly.

  She stood with a kind of awkward dignity, preparing herself.

  Walking carefully around the dead man, she knelt again on the other side, to pick up her panty hose. She left the gun where it was.

  She held the hose dangling in one hand, reflecting. Then she hitched up her skirt, examining her legs. The scratch on her left thigh traced the tear in her panty hose.

  They would ask to see her legs, she was certain.

  Long, slender from twenty years of exercise since college – running in the morning, gyms at night. Twenty years of willpower: like everything else in her life, her body was as nearly perfect as she could make it. But today, it had seemed, not perfect enough.

  Struggling into the hose, she realized that her shoes were still under the coffee table.

  What mattered? she wondered. It was hard to know.

  She walked to the coffee table, staring down at the tape recorder.

  Small and black, it stood upright near the glasses. Through its plastic window she saw that the tape had played until it stopped. And, with it, the woman’s voice. Low and smoky, damning in a monotone a man whom she had never met and yet had believed in. Until now.

  It was a moment before she realized that her fists had clenched. Another before she could move again.

  As if in her sleep, she staightened her dress, put on her shoes. Looking around the suite, she saw that the bedroom door was shut. Strange, she thought, that he had not shown it to her.

  She looked back toward the room.

  The desk drawer was still open. She walked across the room, past the body, and closed it.

  As she turned, the mirror above the couch caught her face.

  It stopped her. With an odd detachment, she realized that the cameras would magnify the bruise beneath her eye.

  She found nothing else. Neither the years since Washington, nor the past hour, had changed her much. No matter what he had said or done, or could not do.

  She studied her reflection.

  A face that photographed well, filmed well. A strong face, high cheekbones, clear brown eyes. It had always helped her, whether or not she had wanted that kind of help. She did not know whether it could help her now.

  Turning, she took one final look at him, then at the room around her. To remember. Simply to remember. It would be a long day, she knew, a long night without sleep. Perhaps many nights until she slept. But she would need to remember, not forget.

  Briefly, she thought again of the boy, and was ready.

  The telephone was on an end table, next to the couch. She picked it up, standing stiffly, listening to the dial tone. Then her gaze caught the tape recorder.

  They would record her, she knew. Listen to her words over and over. Listen to her tone of voice.

  She swallowed once, clearing her throat. Her mouth tasted bitter.

  Willfully, she stabbed the numbers.

  The dial tone broke, became a ringing on the other end. She listened, steeling herself for the answering voice. But the man’s brusque tone startled her. How foolish, she thought, to have wished for a woman.

  ‘San Francisco Emergency,’ the male voice snapped again.

  She found herself staring at the man on the floor, fixated on the black gun by his head. A foreign object, she thought. Foreign in her life. Foreign in her hand.

  ‘There’s been an accident,’ she said simply.

  Teresa Peralta glanced at her watch. It was close to five, and he still had not sprung the trap.

  The deposition had been going for seven hours. It was like watching a cat-and-mouse game where the cat had his eyes on a second mouse; what lent the game its fascination was the smugness of the second mouse, who sat watching the cat toy with the first mouse, secure in his delusion that the cat had not seen him.

  ‘Perhaps I can refresh your memory,’ Christopher Paget said pleasantly, and handed the first mouse a document. ‘Can you identify Defendant’s Exhibit 13?’

  This particular cat wore a navy double-breasted pinstripe of soft Italian wool. With that came a silk floral tie; a white cotton shirt; square gold cufflinks. As with other things about Christopher Paget, Terri wondered whether the careful dress was a form of camouflage, meant to deflect attention from who he
really was.

  They sat in a large conference room with a view of San Francisco Bay. Two lawyers on each side of the table, a witness and a court reporter. Terri was next to Paget, watching. The document – which seemed to have transfixed the witness – was his last.

  ‘Please take your time,’ Paget suggested calmly.

  Time, Terri thought again. Through the window, dusk was falling across the bay; lights were beginning to glimmer from the city and across the gray swath of water, from Marin County. Five o’clock; the day care center would close at six. It was on the other side of the Bay Bridge, for Richie’s convenience, near where they lived because Richie liked Berkeley better than the city. Next to her was a message, brought in at four-thirty. Richie was having dinner with some ‘business associates,’ to work on his new software ‘deal’; Terri must pick up Elena.