Transgressions

'Miss Van Lier?'

She stiffened at the sound of an unfamiliar voice but didn't look around. She was slight-boned in dowdy tan coveralls.

'Yes? Who is it?' Her tone said that she didn't care to know. 'You're trespassing.'

'My name is Peter O'Neill. New York City police department.'

Peter walked a few steps down a gravel path toward her. With a quick motion of her head she took him in and said, 'Stay where you are. Police?'

'I'd like to show you some identification.'

'What is this about?'

He held up his shield. 'John Leland Ransome.'

She dropped a three-pronged tool from her right hand onto the bench and leaned against it as if suddenly at a loss for breath. Her back was to Peter. A dry scuttle of leaves on the overhead glass cast a kaleidoscope of shadow in the greenhouse. He wiped mist from his forehead and continued toward her.

'You posed for Ransome.'

'What of it? Who told you that?'

'He did.'

She'd been rigidly still; now Anne Van Lier seemed pleasurably agitated.

'You know John? You've seen him?'

'Yes.'

'When?'

'A couple of months ago.' Peter had closed the distance between them. Anne darted another look his way, a gloved hand covering her profile as if she were a bashful child; but she no longer appeared to be concerned about him.

'How is John?' Her voice was suddenly rich with emotion. 'Did he—mention me?'

'That he did,' Peter said reassuringly, and dared to ask, 'Are you still in love with Ransome?'

She shuddered, protecting herself with the glove as if he'd thrown a stone, seeming to cower.

'What did John say about me? Please.'

Knowing he'd touched a nerve, Peter said soothingly, 'Told me the year he spent with you was one of the happiest of his life.'

Still it bothered him when, after a few moments, she began softly to weep. He moved closer to Anne, put a hand on her arm.

'Don't,' she pleaded. 'Just go.'

'How long since you seen him last, Anne?'

'Eighteen years,' she said despondently.

'He also said—it was his understanding that you were very happy.'

Anne Van Lier gasped. Then she began shaking with laughter, as if at the cruelest joke she'd ever heard.

She turned suddenly to Peter, knocking his hand away from her, snatching off her gardening hat as she stared up at him.

The shock she gave him was like the electric jolt from a hard jab to the solar plexus. Because her once-lovely face was a horror.

She had been brutally, deeply slashed. Attempts had been made to correct the damage, but plastic surgeons could do only so much. Repairing damage to severed nerves was beyond any surgeon's skill. Her mouth drooped on one side. She had lost the sight of her left eye, filled now with a bloom of suffering.

'Who did this to you? Was it Ransome?'

Jarred by the blurted question, she backed away from Peter.

'What? John? How dare you think that!'

Gloved fingers prowled the deep disfiguring lines on her face.

'I never saw my attacker. It happened on a street in the East Village. He could have been a mugger. I didn't resist him, so why, why?'

'The police—'

'Never found him.' She stared at Peter, and through him, at the past. 'Or is that what you've come to tell me?'

'No. I don't know anything about the case. I'm sorry.'

'Oh. Well.' Her fate was dead weight on her mind. 'So many years ago.'

She put her gardening hat back on, adjusted the brim, gave Peter a vague look. She was in the past again.

'You can tell John—I won't always look like this. Just one more operation, they promised. I've had ten so far. Then I'll—finally be ready for John.' She anticipated the question Peter wasn't about to ask. 'To pose again!' A vaguely flirtatious smile came and went. 'Otherwise I've kept myself up, you know. I do my exercises. Tell