Degree of Guilt Read Online Free PDF Page B

was determined, find her desperate and without resources.
    What would help most was to trace what the police had done. To remember, moment by moment, the four hours that had passed since she stood staring at Ransom’s body, telephone in her hand.
    ‘What happened?’ Emergency had asked.
    She had envisioned the tape spinning, capturing her words and tone of voice. ‘There’s been an accident.’
    ‘What kind of accident?’
    She hesitated. ‘A gun went off.’
    ‘Someone’s been shot?’
    ‘Yes.’ The stain was spreading on the rug. ‘I think he’s dead.’
    It sounded so foolish that the tremor in her voice startled her. ‘Where are you?’ Emergency was demanding.
    ‘The Hotel Flood.’ She went blank. ‘I can’t remember the room.’
    ‘Who is this?’
    ‘Wait. . . . It’s registered to Mark Ransom. A suite.’
    ‘Who is that?’ the voice repeated.
    ‘Just come,’ she said.
    When the two police officers and three paramedics burst through the doorway, they found her sitting in front of the tape recorder, legs crossed, staring across his body at the drawn blinds of a window.
    The paramedics ran to the body. They flipped it on its back, opened the bloodstained shirt, placed pads on its chest. To her, their near frenzy seemed close to pantomime, like practice for a paramedic class. It was standard procedure, Mary supposed; only she knew how very dead he was.
    ‘It’s a coroner’s case,’ one of them said.
    The others nodded. Much more slowly, they turned Ransom on his stomach, as he had been before. When they rose, stepping back from the body, she saw that Ransom’s eyes were still open. With a rush of nausea and anger, she remembered how he had looked at her in the moments before he died. Once more, she hated him.
    ‘What happened?’ a policeman asked her.
    He was a big man, with a creased young-old face and light-blue eyes that looked immensely sad. He seemed to know who she was; for a moment she wanted to talk to him until she had nothing more to say. Then she caught herself; like the 911 tape, everything she said would be sifted by the police, the district attorney, the media.
    ‘He tried to rape me,’ she answered.
    The cop looked her up and down, pausing at the bruise on her cheek. She became aware that the second cop, a small, wiry man with glasses and a brown moustache and a notepad, was staring at the tape recorder. ‘Did he?’ the first cop asked.
    ‘Did he what?’
    ‘Penetrate you?’
    ‘No.’ She realized that she had folded her arms.
    ‘Do you need a doctor?’
    ‘No. Please. It’s the last thing I want – someone touching me.’
    Slowly, he nodded. ‘Could you tell us your name, ma’am?’
    The respectful ‘ma’am’ carried a certain irony: she did not date the loss of youth from her fortieth birthday but from the first time the salesgirl at the Saks cosmetics counter had called her ma’am.
    ‘Mary Carelli.’
    ‘I’ve seen you on TV.’ He hesitated. ‘And his name was Ransom?’
    ‘Yes.’ Her voice was flat. ‘Mark O’Malley Ransom.’
    He paused, perhaps in recognition of Ransom’s name, perhaps wondering how much he could ask without giving her Miranda warnings. He seemed to be feeling some new hesitancy, a concern about mistakes.
    ‘Whose handgun is that?’ he finally asked.
    ‘Mine.’
    Her interrogator looked briefly at the second cop. ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ he said.
    She nodded.
    He glanced back at the body. ‘We’ll need to keep you here for a while.’
    The second cop went to the door and stationed himself outside. The first went to the phone.
    The next hour was a jumble that Mary struggled to understand. Several men in plainclothes arrived. They videotaped the body, took pictures. Blinking at the flashbulbs, she watched as a slight blond woman she took to be from the coroner’s office glanced quickly at her and then bent over Ransom.
    The woman flexed Ransom’s arms, felt his forehead and beneath his armpits. Then she examined the