Читать книгу: «Suspect», страница 2

“As I informed you earlier this morning, Mrs. Hamilton, you should make an appointment to see Bill Schuller. I can assure you that Bill will provide outstanding counsel.”

“I tried to hire Mr. Schuller. It can’t be done. He’s fishing in the Alaskan wilderness. Nobody can reach him until he gets back to the base camp on the Alagnak River, and that’s going to be another forty-eight hours at least. I can’t wait forty-eight hours, Mr. Raven. I need a lawyer now. This minute.”

“Why the urgency?”

“Because I think the police will arrest me as soon as I go back to either my home or the official mayoral residence. My sister called me a few minutes ago. The cops have even been out to her house to see if she knew where I was.”

Liam looked at her assessingly. If Chloe was right, she definitely needed immediate legal help. “I can give you fifteen minutes,” he said, although he wasn’t sure why he made the concession. He gestured for her to take a chair.

“Do you want me to take notes?” Jenny asked hopefully.

Liam inclined his head. “Yes, thank you.”

“No,” Chloe said abruptly. “I prefer to speak to you alone, Mr. Raven. No notes.”

Jenny looked at him inquiringly, and Liam shrugged, then nodded to indicate that she should leave. As soon as they were alone, Chloe sat down, although she perched on the edge of her seat as if she might take flight at the slightest provocation.

“Tell me why you think the police are going to arrest you,” Liam said. Since he only had a narrow time window before his next client arrived, he figured they might as well cut to the chase.

Chloe’s hand fluttered, then she clenched her fists and shoved both hands into her lap as if despising the helpless gesture. “They have a witness who claims to have seen me stab Jason.”

“Who’s the witness?”

“Sophie’s nanny.”

“Does the nanny dislike you?”

“I don’t think so. Trudi’s from Finland and came over here to improve her English. She’s reliable and honest and she’s never given the slightest sign of having a grudge against me. I like her and thought she liked me. Or that she used to, until this morning. Now I daresay she thinks I’m a vicious killer.”

“Is she right?” Liam asked mildly. “Did you stab your husband?”

She looked straight at him. “No, Mr. Raven, I didn’t stab Jason. I didn’t harm him in any way. When Trudi saw me, I was trying to unbutton Jason’s shirt and look at his injuries. I know it was a crazy thing to do, but when you see somebody you love lying in a pool of blood, you don’t think, you just react. I thought that if I could only get the knife out and pad the wound, then maybe I could give him CPR and he’d start breathing again.”

Her explanation was ridiculous coming from a woman as smart as Chloe Hamilton, especially in view of the knowledge she must have of human anatomy after her years of intensive athletic training. However, that didn’t mean her account was a lie. Liam’s training and professional instincts all suggested to him that Chloe was the most likely murderer, but he also knew that innocent people occasionally ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time—and not only on TV crime shows.

Jenny buzzed the intercom. He picked up the phone, so that Chloe wouldn’t hear whatever Jenny had to say. “Liam, Terry Robbins has arrived.”

“Thanks, Jenny. I’ll be right with him.”

Liam glanced at his watch. Terry Robbins was ten minutes early, but he was a man with a high regard for his own importance—not a good client to keep waiting. Terry couldn’t be shunted aside for a preliminary meeting with Helen, Liam’s highly competent paralegal; his self-importance meter would explode from righteous indignation at the prospect of discussing his failed marriage with a mere paralegal.

Liam started scribbling a list of names onto the notepad on his desk. “Mrs. Hamilton, I’m sorry but my next client has already arrived.” He tore off the sheet and handed it to her. “These are for you. In my opinion, those are the half dozen best criminal attorneys currently practicing in the Denver area. As I mentioned earlier, Bill Schuller is the best, but any of these six would be more than competent. I’ve also included Robyn Johnson’s name on the list. She’s outstanding, but she’s approaching sixty and these days she spends most of her time on pro bono work for people who’ve already been convicted.”

Chloe ripped the list in two and tossed the crumpled pieces onto Liam’s desk. “I don’t want Bill Schuller or the great Robyn Johnson, who probably isn’t available anyway. I don’t want any of these other attorneys. I want you.”

She really was beginning to sound somewhere close to obsessive. What the hell was her problem? There was something going on here that he was missing, Liam decided.

“I’m a good lawyer, Mrs. Hamilton, but I’m not that good and it certainly isn’t to your advantage right now to have a lawyer whose courtroom skills have been rusting for almost three years. You ought to be begging Robyn Johnson to put aside her pro bono work and take you on, if you want truly brilliant representation. Why are you so determined to hire me?”

She looked at him in silence and for a moment he was sure she wouldn’t answer. Then she gave a tiny shrug, as if clearing some final mental hurdle.

“Because you’re Sophie’s father,” she said. “I thought that might give you a vested interest in keeping me out of prison.”

Two

Right up until the moment she spoke, Chloe hadn’t been sure she was going to tell Liam the truth. She’d imagined this scene a thousand times, but it seemed despite all the practice, she’d never envisioned Liam’s reaction correctly. He didn’t shout, he didn’t protest, he didn’t appear angry. He didn’t even look surprised. Disconcertingly, his face displayed no expression at all. She’d decided back in April that he was one of the most self-controlled human beings she’d ever met, but his calm right now was unnerving. He simply fixed his gaze on her, his expression shuttered and his amazing hazel eyes bereft of emotion.

“Sophie is your daughter, isn’t that right, Mrs. Hamilton?” Liam’s question was polite, but distant.

“Yes.”

“How old is Sophie?”

His coolness set Chloe’s jangled nerves on edge. “She’s three and a half. A little more. She’ll be four on the first of October.”

“I see. I thought she was somewhere around that age.” Liam opened a gilt-embossed, leather-bound appointment diary on his desk and flipped quickly through a few pages. Chloe was too emotionally battered even to wonder what he was doing.

He apparently found what he was looking for. Swinging the diary around on his desk, he pushed it toward her so that she could read the entries and pointed to a line in the middle of the left-hand page. Her name—Chloe Hamilton (Mrs. Jason Hamilton)—was written in the space for 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday, April 5 of the current year.

Liam spoke soothingly, as though to a lunatic, or an overexcited child on the verge of pre-Christmas meltdown. “As you can see, Mrs. Hamilton, we met for the first time almost exactly three months ago. In April this year, to be precise. Quite apart from the fact that there has never been any form of sexual contact between the two of us, you’ll understand why I’m quite sure that you’re wrong about the paternity of your daughter. Sophie can’t possibly be my child. She was already three years old the first time you and I met.”

Chloe wished that she had an elegant leather-bound diary in her purse with a notation showing the night when they’d really met for the first time. It would have been eminently satisfying to pull it out of her purse and shove it under Liam’s patronizing nose.

She’d wondered for years if he had recognized her the night Sophie was conceived. In April, when she approached him about the divorce, she’d been almost sure that he had no recollection of their previous encounter. Now, unfortunately, she was convinced he didn’t remember the time they’d spent together. Liam wasn’t trying to evade the fact that he’d fathered a child by denying the fact that they’d been lovers; he was simply humoring a woman he believed to be mentally unbalanced. Presumably he was afraid she would start frothing at the mouth or throwing wild punches if he showed surprise or anger.

“I’m perfectly well aware of the fact that we met on April 5 to discuss the possibility of my filing for a divorce from Jason.” Chloe repeated the exact date of their meeting in an effort to sound as sane and in control as possible. “But that wasn’t our first encounter. We’d met before. To be precise, we met at the Grovelands’ New Year’s Eve party four years ago.”

Liam’s expression remained controlled but she saw a faint flicker of emotion in his eyes before he once again retreated behind his mask of impassivity. “You’re claiming that your daughter was conceived at the Grovelands’ party?”

“She was conceived in a motel on Hampden Avenue, but we met at the Grovelands’ house in Cherry Creek. Do you remember the occasion? It was the year the Grovelands threw a fancy dress party.”

Liam’s eyes narrowed and the faintest trace of color flared along his cheekbones. The color vanished almost as soon as it appeared. “I remember the party,” he admitted.

“You came as John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the United States.” And he’d damn near taken her breath away in the velvet coat and ruffled cravat of an eighteenth century gentleman.

Liam said nothing.

“I came dressed as Cleopatra,” she added.

His head jerked up, but his face still gave away nothing.

He remembers, Chloe thought. Thank God. She was relieved that he had some recollection of their time together, even if the memory hadn’t been scalded into his soul.

Given how smooth Liam’s seduction techniques had been, Chloe suspected that sleeping with a woman he barely knew was his standard operating procedure. But from her perspective, their encounter had been infinitely memorable, and not just because Liam had been a fantastic lover, or even because of the epic fact that it had resulted in Sophie’s conception. It had also been her single foray into adultery. No point in telling him that, though. He certainly wouldn’t believe her.

“My costume explains why you didn’t recognize me,” she said. “I wore lots of eye makeup and a dark wig. Almost nobody recognized me that night.”

“Tell me something, Mrs. Hamilton.” She was sure Liam’s continued use of her married name was intended as an insult, not as a mark of professional courtesy. “Did you deliberately set out to get pregnant that night, or was I just the lucky son of a bitch who happened to be hanging around when you felt in the mood to get laid?”

“I didn’t plan to get pregnant. I swear I didn’t.” On her good days, Chloe was almost sure that was true. On her bad days, she considered that, mere hours before the party began, she’d discovered Jason was sterile. Not only that, but he’d known of his sterility for over two years and had chosen not to tell her, for fear that she would leave him. She’d gone to the Grovelands’ party in a volatile state somewhere between furious anger and extreme despair.

But surely even in that dangerous mood she’d been smart enough to realize that the solution to the multiple problems of her marriage was divorce? She couldn’t have been brainless enough to think that getting herself impregnated by a virtual stranger was a smart or correct thing to do.

“It’s highly unlikely you conceived your daughter that night we were together,” Liam said tersely. “I know I used a condom. I always use condoms.”

“Condoms aren’t fool proof. There’s something like a five percent failure rate.”

Liam’s gaze touched hers. “Well, hell, didn’t I get lucky?” He gave a short, hard laugh. “One chance in twenty and you’re claiming I hit the jackpot?”

Chloe drew in a shaky breath. “I’m quite sure you’re Sophie’s father but we can arrange for a DNA test if you want to be one hundred percent certain. There are plenty of labs that will make the identification without needing to know the names of the people being tested.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Whose identity are you trying to protect, Mrs. Hamilton? Mine or yours?”

“Everyone’s,” she said. “Especially Sophie’s. If there’s anything we can agree on, surely it’s the fact that she’s the one completely innocent person in all of this.”

“I’m feeling pretty innocent myself,” Liam said curtly. “I didn’t go to the party planning to have sex with a married woman. More to the point, I came away not knowing I had.”

“I didn’t plan to commit adultery, either. I’m not in the habit of sleeping around.”

“That’s hard to believe. You were married, Mrs. Hamilton, but you told me—more than once, in more ways than one—that you were single.”

She made the mistake of attempting to justify the inexcusable. “Jason and I had an argument right before we left for the Grovelands’ New Year’s Eve party. We both said some hurtful things and I was in a reckless mood by the time you and I met.”

Liam’s expression remained controlled but she realized that his anger was rapidly escalating toward the tipping point. “So I was your therapy for the night? A little bit of sex on the side to get back at your husband?”

The wretched truth was that her flirtation with Liam had started out pretty much as something that sordid and that unforgivable. She’d just never intended to let the situation progress beyond mild flirtation. “You’re sounding very self-righteous,” she said quietly. “But I seem to recall that you were the person who put the moves on me, not the other way around.”

It was absolutely the wrong thing to have said. Liam leaned across the desk, his hands gripping the edge until his knuckles gleamed white. Probably so that he didn’t give in to the temptation to bop her one, Chloe thought wryly.

“You’re forgetting one minor fact,” Liam said, teeth clenched. “I had every right to solicit sex with you because I wasn’t married! I wasn’t even dating seriously. You, on the other hand, had a husband.”

“It was wrong of me, I know—”

“Wrong? A little more than that, Mrs. Hamilton. Do you happen to remember that annoying bit in the marriage vows where you promised to remain faithful and hang in there when times got tough? As I recall, there’s absolutely nothing in the wedding ceremony that says adultery is okay if the spouses have had a spat before they leave for a party.”

He was quite right. There was no defense for what she’d done, and Chloe felt her face burn with shame for the lies she’d told when they first met—and since. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. Except that I can’t regret what happened that night because I have Sophie as a result.”

“Unfortunately, I can and do regret what happened that night, Mrs. Hamilton, precisely because you have Sophie.”

“If you’d ever met her, you’d know that she’s the most wonderful person—”

“But I haven’t met my own daughter, and that’s the point, isn’t it?” He looked at her with shriveling scorn. “Did your husband know that Sophie wasn’t his child? Come to think of it, why are you so sure Jason isn’t her father?”

There was no way to preserve Jason’s privacy at this point. “My husband is…he was sterile.”

“So how did you explain the fact of your pregnancy to him?”

“He was shocked when I told him, of course—”

“You have a gift for understatement, Mrs. Hamilton.”

She ignored his mockery and plowed on doggedly. “Jason was shocked and upset, but once Sophie was born, he fell in love with her. She is…she became Jason’s daughter in every way, except biologically. He loved her as much as I do.”

“As a divorce lawyer, I find that hard to believe. My experience strongly suggests that men have a difficult time accepting living proof of their wife’s infidelity.”

“Hard to believe or not, it’s the truth.” For once, the whole truth and nothing but. Jason had adored Sophie and been grateful for her existence.

“In case this hasn’t occurred to you, the cops are going to find your husband’s supposedly forgiving attitude impossibly hard to believe.” Liam sounded grim.

She stared at him, appalled. “Why do the police have to know Jason isn’t Sophie’s father? What on earth does my daughter’s biological background have to do with Jason’s murder?”

He shook his head, clearly impatient with her naiveté. “The cops have to know upfront. You’re setting yourself up for disaster if you let them discover this information for themselves.”

“Why would they find out?”

“The postmortem might easily reveal that Jason is sterile, depending on the cause of his sterility. Or the cops might subpoena his medical records and find out that way. Trust me on this, if you keep quiet and the truth comes out during the course of the investigation, the cops will interpret your silence as an admission that you consider Sophie’s paternity a dirty little secret. They’ll assume your husband was furious when he discovered Sophie wasn’t his biological child. They’ll imagine her existence caused bitter arguments between you and Jason. They’ll conclude the arguments escalated over the years and, after an especially violent disagreement, Jason ended up dead on your living room floor, with you wielding the murder weapon.”

His scenario sounded chillingly credible. “Is that what you think happened?” Chloe asked. “That I killed my husband because we were fighting about Sophie?”

“As a possible scenario, it matches all the known facts.” The complete lack of inflection in his voice somehow transformed his statement into an accusation.

“Nobody who’d ever seen Jason with Sophie would believe something so crazy.”

“But the cops haven’t seen your husband with Sophie,” Liam pointed out with infuriating calm. “Neither have the potential jurors if you end up being brought to trial. However, you were seen poised over Jason’s body with the murder weapon in your bloody hands. I can only hope for your sake that nobody heard you and Jason arguing last night?”

There was a definite question in his final words. Add one more person to the list of those who were already convinced she’d murdered her husband, Chloe thought wearily. She dropped her gaze. No doubt Liam would interpret her silence as an admission that she and Jason had been arguing last night. Unfortunately, his interpretation would be correct. Their disagreement had been about Jason’s political ambitions and how best to achieve them, certainly not about Sophie.

“Jason never regretted his decision to welcome Sophie as his daughter,” Chloe said finally. “She was a source of joy to both of us. I have no way to convince you of that, but it’s the simple truth.”

“Did Jason know I was the man who’d impregnated his wife?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t believe you. How come he never confronted me? Why didn’t he demand an explanation as to why I slept with his wife?”

Chloe met Liam’s derisory gaze head on and a ripple of anger floated across the surface of her despair. “The truth is he considered the precise identity of our daughter’s biological father somewhat irrelevant. As long as you didn’t know the truth, he had no interest in confronting you.”

Her barb found its target and Liam’s mouth tightened. “As the man trapped into impregnating you, I can’t say that I agree with your husband’s point of view. I consider the fact that I have a child to be extremely important and I’m furious that you kept the information hidden from me.”

“I couldn’t tell you about Sophie,” she said, realizing there was almost no hope that Liam would understand why she’d felt compelled to remain silent. “If Jason was willing to accept Sophie as his daughter, I felt I owed him the courtesy of not telling anyone how she’d been conceived.”

“Not even the lucky father?” Liam’s voice vibrated with irony.

She shook her head. “Not even you. Perhaps especially not you.”

“I’m sure you agonized over the ethics of the situation.”

“Yes, I did,” she said, ignoring his sarcasm. “Especially when I decided to end the marriage and came to you for help with a divorce.”

“Let’s talk about that for a moment. Why did you choose—” The intercom buzzed again and Liam snatched the phone. “Yes?”

Chloe couldn’t hear the receptionist’s part of the conversation, but Liam responded by saying he’d be right there.

He hung up. “I have to end this conversation, Mrs. Hamilton. My client has been waiting for fifteen minutes—”

“For heaven’s sake, would you stop calling me Mrs. Hamilton!” she snapped. “My name, as you very well know, is Chloe. I think our acquaintance has reached a stage of intimacy where it’s okay for you to use it!”

“Nothing about our acquaintance has anything to do with intimacy,” he replied angrily.

“Whatever.” She lifted her shoulders, then let them fall, too exhausted to fight anymore. She stood up, struggling to regain at least a vestige of her old pride and determination. “I should leave. This has been a mistake and, as you keep reminding me, you have important clients waiting.” She turned to go, suddenly chilled by the air-conditioning. She wrapped her arms around herself to ward off the cold air and realized as she did so that she was still wearing the scruffy T-shirt that she’d grabbed first thing this morning when the police sergeant sent her upstairs to shower and change out of her blood-soaked robe. Apparently she’d been in such a state of mental turmoil when she prepared to leave the house that she’d changed into decent slacks but forgotten to put on the silk blouse that went with them. Good grief, she must look like a demented bag lady. Chloe felt a wave of embarrassment sweep over her.

With all that was going on right now, it was crazy to come unglued because her outfit was less than perfect, but somehow the knowledge that she was wearing a worn out T-shirt was the last straw. She hated the fact that she had been so overwhelmed by the police interrogation that she couldn’t even dress herself properly. She was annoyed by the fact that she wanted Liam’s approval, or at least his acceptance. Why did she care if he disapproved of her? He was an accidental sperm donor, nothing more. Still, if she’d looked a bit more elegant, maybe he’d have worked a bit harder to hide his contempt. Tears threatened to overflow, and she blinked them away, pride coming to her rescue when everything else failed. She wasn’t going to give in to self-pity, not in front of Liam, who so clearly had no interest in joining her sob party.

He walked around from behind his desk and came to stand between her and the door. She was relieved when he gave no sign that he realized how close she was to breaking down.

“Obviously there are a lot of things we still need to talk about,” he said. “I can’t spend any more time with you right now and I have to be in court right after lunch. Can you be back here at four?”

She hesitated for a moment. “If the police don’t arrest me, I’ll be here.”

“Go to the movies,” he said. “Pick a theater in a nice, family-oriented suburb. Movie theaters are great places to hide from cops.” He tapped briefly on a side door she hadn’t noticed before and a female voice responded.

He opened the door. “Hey, Helen, I have a client coming through if you don’t mind.” He turned back to Chloe. “This leads to my paralegal’s office. If you go out this way, you can access the main corridor directly. It’s probably better if you avoid exiting through the reception area. I think you and my next client probably know each other.”

“Thank you.” She walked towards Helen’s office, numb enough to follow his instructions without question.

“Chloe.”

She stopped and swung around to look at him, grateful for his small concession of using her name. “Yes?”

“Where is…your daughter…right now?”

“My sister came and picked her up early this morning. She took Sophie back to her house in Conifer.”

“How long can you leave…Sophie…there?”

“As far as my sister is concerned, forever. As far as Sophie is concerned—at least until bedtime. My sister has two preschoolers of her own, and Sophie loves to play with her cousins.”

He gave a quick nod to acknowledge her answer. “Then I’ll expect to see you here this afternoon at four. Try not to get arrested in the meantime, okay?”