“Lucia,” Hadley Vanderwalk said without the slightest sign of stress, “you don’t need to deny this, you don’t need to make any comment at all.”
Lucia Vanderwalk was hardly breathing. “I will not permit this poison to be stirred up again.”
“Cordelia confessed,” Cardozo said. It was a wild shot.
“Never,” Hadley Vanderwalk said.
“Oh yes she did,” Cardozo said. “She confessed to that psychiatrist.”
Neither Vanderwalk answered. Lucia’s body appeared to be jerked by some invisible force into boardlike rigidity.
Cardozo kept putting it together. “Mrs. Banks helped you frame Scott Devens. He agreed to stay framed, but he held out for the plea bargain. You paid him and Mrs. Banks off and you had the record sealed. And just to be double sure, Ted Morgenstern had blank pages substituted.”
The air in the room congealed into a shining stillness. Lucia Vanderwalk seemed not even to be breathing.
Cardozo could imagine her instructing the cook in the morning, reading the mail before lunch, taking an afternoon walk around the garden, putting on a fresh dress, hammering out a deal with Ted Morgenstern over Ceylon tea and watercress sandwiches.
“You did this for yourself, Mama,” Babe said quietly. “Not for me, not for Cordelia.”
Lucia Vanderwalk had a voice like a terrorist’s captive reading a prepared statement. “Your father and I did it for the family. There are some ghosts that we keep at home.”
“I do remember something,” Babe said, “something about Cordelia. Only it’s foggy.” She had a numbed, desperate look, as though a puff of breath could have erased her. “Cordelia was standing by my bed. I wasn’t conscious, but I knew she was there, and I was trying to wake up, because something horrible was happening … and I knew I had to reach out my hand and stop her … but I couldn’t come to the surface.”
She was sitting in the big chair by her fireplace, taut, trying to appear calm, trying not to cry.
“It’s strange, I was afraid for her—not myself.”
Raindrops made a whispering sound against the windows.
“Your twelve-year-old daughter about to commit murder,” Cardozo said. “I’d be afraid for her too. It’s natural. You love the little monster.”
Her eyes held a stillness, an expectancy, as though a second blow were about to fall and there was nothing she could do but accept it.
“Look, this is me, Vince. You don’t have to impress me. Stop trying to be your mother. She’s a lousy role model. Go ahead, bawl. Your husband went to bed with your daughter and it looks like your daughter tried to kill you. Come on, cry, scream, curse.”
Tears were finally welling in her eyes, finally starting to roll down her cheeks. All she needed was a nudge.
“And they talk about Jewish mothers,” Cardozo said. “Your mother sacrificed you for your daughter, and she’s twisted that around to make you feel responsible for it.” He knelt beside her. “Your daughter’s a guilt-ridden zombie because one subject your mother has never allowed to be aired—never—is what Cordelia did and why. There’s no atonement, no forgiveness for her. Lucia Vanderwalk won’t allow atonement or forgiveness when a family reputation’s at stake. Imagine a child being alone with a secret like that. I’d say you have grounds for matricide or nervous breakdown or at least a few tears. You have Medea for a mother and an emotional paraplegic for a daughter and you haven’t had one moment of honest unmanipulating love in your whole life. Go ahead. Let me hear a few sobs. Loud and clear. I’m not going to tattle on you.”
Babe stared at him. Her body gulped in a breath and she dropped her head into her hands. She closed her eyes and started shaking as though a wave had hit her.
She was dismayingly beautiful in her tears. Her defenselessness called out every protective instinct in him. There was a sudden sweet tightness in the back of his throat. He became aware that what he felt for her was not a passing attraction nor even simply desire. An excitement and a tenderness that were far more than sexual moved him.
He took her hand and pulled her toward him and suddenly he took all of her and closed her tight into his arms. They embraced, their kiss growing in intensity, and he felt her breasts through the soft fabric of her blouse.
That was it. They were across the physical frontier peacefully and without effort. There was a long soft lingering moment of knowing that one day they were going to make love.
And then they pulled apart.
She looked at him. He wanted her to remember his eyes. He wanted her to see what was in them: that he was with her, that he cared.
“Vince,” she said, “isn’t there a drug that acts as a hypnotic—while people are under they recall buried memories?”
“Sodium pentothal.”
“The police use it, don’t they?”
“Sometimes.”
“If I saw Cordelia injecting me seven years ago and I’ve forgotten—wouldn’t sodium pentothal make me remember?”
“It might.”
Something nervous and uncertain played across her face. “Could a police doctor do it?”
He saw determination in her and he saw, too, that she was scared out of her skin. The last thing on earth she really wanted to know was who had held that syringe.
He nodded. “I’ll set it up.”
36
CARDOZO PUSHED THROUGH THE revolving doors of the Criminal Court Building into air conditioning and Muzak and the dimness of high vaulted ceilings. He was heading toward the elevator when a voice from the newsstand called “Vince!”
A suntanned man with black curly hair put down the change for a New York Times and strode forward, tall, smiling, moving with purposeful grace in his dark summer suit.
Cardozo shook the hand of Alfred Spaulding, D.A. The D.A. steered him into a waiting elevator. “The Beaux Arts handyman is willing to confess to killing Jodie Downs. Morgenstern wants to talk plea bargain.”
“Come on, Al. We have Loring without a confession.”
“But with a guilty plea we don’t have to go to trial. And there’s no chance of some crazy jury finding him innocent. We go straight to a hearing before a judge and Loring gets sentenced. Nice and neat.”
The elevator deposited them smoothly on the eighth floor. They made their way down the wide, bustling corridors. The D.A. stopped, his hand on the knob of the familiar frosted glass door. “Let’s just walk through the motions, hear Kane out.”
“Al, why am I here? What do you want from me?”
The D.A. twisted the knob and motioned Cardozo to go first. “Vince, you know Lucinda MacGill.”
Lucinda MacGill was wearing a gray linen suit and her body and carriage radiated presence and competence. Cardozo shook the hand she offered. Her eyes were intelligent and there was a warning in them. She flicked her head just a degree toward the inner office. Cardozo followed her glance.
It was an old-fashioned room of casement windows and leather chairs and oil portraits of dead justices. Lockwood and Meridee Downs were sitting at the conference table. Lockwood Downs got up from his chair as Cardozo came into the room.
“I didn’t know you were in town,” Cardozo said.
“We got in last night.” Lockwood Downs’s eyes were weary. “We were hoping you’d call.”
Wariness stirred in Cardozo and he didn’t know if it was for himself or for the Downses. His eyes went to the window, where Ted Morgenstern stood whispering with his chubby associate, Ray Kane. They were both wearing Armani summer suits and they emanated a lazy awareness of their own power, like Roman emperors on a picnic.
The D.A. waited till everyone had sat. “Counselor Morgenstern has an offer.”
“I’ll plead Loring guilty of manslaughter”—Morgenstern steepled his fingers together—“if the state will allow mitigating circumstances.”
“I’m sorry,” Lockwood Downs said. “I’m in real estate, not criminal law. Could someone explain why my son’s death would be manslaughter and not murder?”