Presumed Guilty

Miranda stared down at her hands, knotted together on the table. The table itself was a typically ugly piece of institutional furniture. She noticed that someone had carved the initials JMK onto the surface. She wondered who JMK was, if he or she had sat there under similar circumstances, if he or she had been similarly innocent. She felt a sudden bond with this unknown predecessor, the one who had sat in the same hot seat, fighting for dear life.

“Ms. Wood? Please answer my question.”

She looked up at Lieutenant Merrifield. The smiling destroyer. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t listening.”

“About Mr. Tremain. How did you meet him?”

“At the Herald. I was hired about a year ago. We got to know each other in the course of business.”

“And?”

“And…” She took a deep breath. “We got involved.”

“Who initiated it?”

“He did. He started asking me out to lunch. Purely business, he said. To talk about the Herald. About changes in the format.”

“Isn’t it unusual for a publisher to deal so closely with the copy editor?”

“Maybe on a big city paper it is. But the Herald’s a small-town paper. Everyone on the staff does a little of everything.”

“So, in the course of business, you got to know Mr. Tremain.”

“Yes.”

“When did you start sleeping with him?”

The question was like a slap in the face. She sat up straight. “It wasn’t like that!”

“You didn’t sleep with him?”

“I didn’t — I mean, yes, I did, but it happened over the course of months. It wasn’t as if we — we went out to lunch and then fell into bed together!”

“I see. So it was a more, uh, romantic thing. Is that what you’re trying to say?”

She swallowed. In silence she nodded. It all sounded so stupid, the way he’d phrased it. A more romantic thing. Now, hearing those words said aloud in that cold, bare room, it struck her how foolish it all had been. The whole disastrous affair.

“I thought I loved him,” Miranda whispered.

“What was that, Ms. Wood?”

She said, louder, “I thought I loved him. I wouldn’t have slept with him if I didn’t. I don’t do one-night stands. I don’t even do affairs.”

“You did this one.”

“Richard was different.”

“Different than what?”

“Than other men! He wasn’t just — just cars and football. He cared about the same things I cared about. This island, for instance. Look at the articles he wrote — you could see how much he loved this place. We used to talk for hours about it! And it just seemed the most natural thing in the world to…” She gave a little shudder of grief and looked down. Softly she said, “I thought he was different. At least, he seemed to be….”

“He was also married. But you knew that.”

She felt her shoulders droop. “Yes.”

“And did you know he had two children?”

She nodded.

“Yet you had an affair with him. Did it mean so little to you, Ms. Wood, that three innocent people—”

“Don’t you think I thought about that, every waking moment?” Her chin shot up in rage. “Don’t you think I hated myself? I never stopped thinking about his family! About Evelyn and the twins. I felt evil, dirty. I felt — I don’t know.” She gave a sigh of helplessness. “Trapped.”

“By what?”

“By my love for him. Or what I thought was love.” She hesitated. “But maybe — maybe I never really did love him. At least, not the real Richard.”

“And what led to this amazing revelation?”

“Things I learned about him.”

“What things?”

“The way he used people. His employees, for instance. The way he treated them.”

“So you saw the real Richard Tremain and you fell out of love.”

“Yes. And I broke it off.” She let out a deep breath, as though relieved that the most painful part of her confession was finished. “That was a month ago.”

“Were you angry at him?”

“I felt more…betrayed. By all those false images.”

“So you must have been angry.”

“I guess I was.”

“So for a month you walked around mad at Mr. Tremain.”

“Sometimes. Mostly I felt stupid. And then he wouldn’t leave me alone. He kept calling, wanting to get back together.”

“And that made you angry, as well.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Angry enough to kill him?”

She looked up sharply. “No.”

“Angry enough to grab a knife from your kitchen drawer?”

“No!”

“Angry enough to go into the bedroom — your bedroom, where he was lying naked — and stab him in the chest?”

“No! No, no, no.” She was sobbing now, screaming out her denials. The sound of her own voice echoed like some alien cry in that stark box of a room. She dropped her head into her hands and leaned forward on the table. “No,” she whispered. She had to get away from this terrible man with his terrible questions. She started to rise from the chair.

“Sit down, Ms. Wood. We’re not finished.”

Obediently she sank back into the chair. “I didn’t kill him,” she cried. “I told you, I found him on my bed. I came home and he was lying there….”

“Ms. Wood—”

“I was on the beach when it happened. Sitting on the beach. That’s what I keep telling all of you! But no one listens. No one believes me….”

“Ms. Wood, I have more questions.”

She was crying, not answering, not able to answer. The sound of her sobs was all that could be heard.

At last Merrifield flicked off the recorder. “All right, then. We’ll take a break. One hour, then we’ll resume.”

Miranda didn’t move. She heard the man’s chair scrape back, heard Merrifield leave the room, then the door shut. A few moments later the door opened again.

“Ms. Wood? I’ll take you back to your cell.”

Slowly Miranda rose to her feet and turned to the door. A young cop stood waiting, nice face, friendly smile. His name tag said Officer Snipe. Vaguely she remembered him from some other time, from her life before jail. Oh, yes. Once, on a Christmas Eve, he’d torn up her parking ticket. It had been a kind gesture, gallantry offered to a lady. She wondered what he thought of the lady now, whether he saw murderer stamped on her face.

She let him lead her into the hall. At one end she saw Lieutenant Merrifield, huddled in conference with Chief Tibbetts. The polite Officer Snipe guided her in the opposite direction, away from the pair. Miranda had gone only a short distance when her footsteps faltered, stopped.