Degree of Guilt by Richard North Patterson Read Free Book Online Page A

at home. Before the interview, were there any more?’
    ‘He called again. To tell me where and when he could see me.’
    ‘He chose San Francisco.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Was that convenient for you?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Why did you do it?’
    Mary flushed. ‘He said he might play the tape for me,’ She said finally. ‘If I came alone.’
    Monk’s eyes widened, almost imperceptibly. ‘That was what persuaded you.’
    Mary sipped water, selecting her words. ‘I wasn’t interested in destroying James Colt’s memory – or in Laura Chase’s death, for that matter. I was interested in the ethics of it. Buying and selling people’s most intimate secrets, things they wouldn’t tell you.’
    ‘How did you feel about that?’
    ‘That he shouldn’t use the tape.’ Mary paused. ‘But I’m also a journalist. Ransom told me that truth was more important than privacy or sentiment, for the dead and for the living.’
    ‘Did you agree?’
    ‘No.’ Mary examined her broken nail. ‘But it was impossible not to see him.’
    ‘Did he say why he contacted you?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And why was that?’
    She felt herself stiffen. ‘That he liked watching me on television. And that the “subject matter” might interest me.’
    ‘Did he elaborate?’
    ‘No.’ Her voice cooled again. ‘Not until I saw him.’
    Monk sat down and contemplated her across the tape recorder, hand touching his chin. ‘What happened,’ he finally asked, ‘when you came to his suite?’
    Mary looked past him at the wall. Think about each detail, she told herself, one sentence at a time.
    ‘I got there at eleven-thirty.’ Her voice turned cool. ‘I expected him to have a publicist. But he was alone.’
    Monk sat back. ‘Instead of me asking questions, why don’t you just go through it. We can go back over any details later.’
    Mary found herself watching the tape recorder, mute.
    ‘Maybe,’ Monk prodded, ‘you can start with what he was like.’
    Mary raised her eyes, looking straight at Monk. ‘He was disgusting.’
    ‘In what way?’
    ‘ Every way.’ She exhaled. ‘To really understand, you would have to be a woman.’
    Monk seemed to smile without changing expression. ‘Try me,’ he said.
    Mary looked down. ‘To start,’ she said finally, ‘he was repellent physically. He was a tall man, and he tried to be so patrician – his Anglo-Irish accent, the way he would stand, as if posing for a portrait. But it was like watching a figure in a wax museum. Even his skin looked cold. He had this soft white stomach . . .’ She stopped herself. ‘That wasn’t until later.’
    Monk’s eyes narrowed. ‘Take it from the beginning.’
    Slowly, Mary nodded.
    ‘At the beginning, it was the way he looked at me. He was Irish, of course, but he had these ice-blue eyes and kind of Slavic features – a face with a lot of surfaces, and eyes that seemed to pull up at the ends, maybe from plastic surgery. And even when he smiled, his eyes never changed.’ She turned away. ‘I remember suddenly thinking that he looked less like an intellectual than like a Russian general at a May Day parade. One whose grandfather had raped his grandmother in some peasant uprising . . .’ Mary found that she was clasping her wrist. Quietly, she finished: ‘I thought that before I even sat down, and congratulated myself on what a clever observation it was.’
    Monk waited, letting her collect herself. ‘What did he say when you first got there?’
    ‘That I was a beautiful woman.’ Monk looked up again. ‘That the camera didn’t capture all of me.’
    ‘What did you say?’
    ‘I thanked him.’ Her voice was ironic. ‘Of course. Then I changed the subject.’
    ‘To what?’
    ‘To his writing. What else do you talk about to a writer who has already proposed his own obituary: “More than anyone, he saw and wrote the truth about his times” . . . ?’
    Monk said nothing. He was waiting her out, she realized; she was digressing, trying to avoid