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  Impulse

  Catherine Coulter

  A SIGNET BOOK

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents

  are either the product of the author’s

  imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to

  actual persons, living or dead, business

  establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  IMPULSE

  A SIGNET Book / published by arrangement with the author

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2001 by Catherine Coulter

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.

  Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

  For information address:

  The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is

  http://www.penguinputnam.com

  ISBN: 978-1-101-20936-3

  A SIGNET BOOK®

  SIGNET Books first published by New American Library,

  a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  SIGNET and the “S” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  First edition (electronic): July 2001

  To Beth Zamichow

  Trainer, dancer, friend

  —CC

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Margaret’s Journal

  Boston, Massachusetts

  26 years ago

  He was a wonderful liar. The best. If I’d been thirty rather than just barely turned twenty, I still don’t think it would have mattered. He was so good, you see. At the beginning, of course. Not at the end. At the end there’d been no need for lies. Uncle Ralph and Aunt Josie had taken me to the only French restaurant in New Milford and they’d tried to make things normal and fun for me and there’d been a birthday cake and champagne. And I smiled and thanked them because I knew how hard they were trying. I didn’t cry because I knew if I did, Aunt Josie would cry too, because my mother had been her only sister. And two nights later on a hot Friday evening in June, I first saw him at the McGills’ party.

  His name was Dominick Giovanni, a very rich businessman, according to the hostess, Rhonda McGill, and even though he was a full Italian, he didn’t really look all that dark, did he? Probably, she whispered to everyone, he was northern Italian. The way Rhonda was looking at him, I guessed he could have been full-blooded anything and it wouldn’t have mattered. He was very polite in a cool, aloof way to the men, charming to the women, indeed gracious to everyone, as though he, not Paul McGill, were the host. Then he saw me, and that started it all. He was the most incredibly sensual man I’d ever met.

  I’ve never kept a diary before, or a journal or whatever one calls it. I like the sound of “journal” better. It sounds more thoughtful, somehow, perhaps more profound.

  Which is quite silly, of course. My actions have proved to me my own depths. But no matter. Today, the fourteenth of March, you are eleven months old, my darling; and we’re living on old and stolid Charles Street near Louisburg Square in my parents’ brownstone. Now mine. Ours.

  They’re dead, killed instantly I was told—some comfort, I suppose—but how does one really know how long it takes someone to die? They were very rich, and their pilot, August, had drunk too much whiskey and plowed the Cessna into a vineyard in the south of France. That happened in May. Dominick happened in June.

  It’s a good thing there’s no law against a very stupid girl writing about her stupidity. But I mustn’t forget that I’m writing this for myself, not for you, Rafaella, even though it may appear that way. No, I’m merely writing at you. But you will never read this. It seems easier this way, I guess. I’m writing everything down so I don’t keep choking on my own fury, my hatred of myself, my hatred of him. I believe it’s called catharsis, this getting things out of one and bringing them out in the open.

  Perhaps I’m not quite so stupid after all. But I can’t, I won’t, allow my hatred for him to come between us or to touch you in any way. You’re innocent; you don’t deserve it. Maybe I don’t either.

  But then there was Dominick, and I fell in love with him on the spot.

  How absurd that sounds—to fall in love, a condition in which a female suspends all rational thought and becomes willingly besotted, a victim, really, with not much of a separate identity from that perfect man. Actually, in defense of my stupidity, I was more lonely than you can imagine. I was grieving for my parents. I loved them, more dutifully than emotionally perhaps, but when people die so violently and so suddenly, you don’t really care exactly how it was that you loved them.

  So I came to New Milford to stay for a while with my Aunt Josie and Uncle Ralph. They’re nice people but they have their own interests. Obsession, rather. They’d probably up and fly to Cuba for a bridge tournament if they could. I was lonely, sad, and didn’t have any friends in New Milford. These all sound like weak excuses, don’t they? But they come so naturally. I can’t help it. It was June 14 and I met Dominick Giovanni and fell in love.

  Rafaella, I can’t tell you how very different he was from all the college boys I’d dated at Wellesley. He was thirty-one years old. He dressed with sophistication and style, he was exquisitely polite, so handsome you just wanted to watch him—nothing more, just to look at him. You have his eyes—pale blue and clear as a cloudless day. And his hair was black as midnight, unlike yours, my darling, which is a lovely titian color from your grandmother Lucy. He admired me, he focused all his attention on me. He wooed me and I would have done anything for him. Anything at all.

  And he said he’d marry me. And I was twenty years old and I gave him my virginity, not all that precious a commodity, but I can remember so clearly that first time, how he spoke so sweetly to me and went so slowly because, he said, he didn’t want me to be frightened and he didn’t want to hurt me. He didn’t. It was wonderful. I remember he drove his white Thunderbird convertible north out of New Milford. He pulled me close and draped his hand over my shoulder. Then he slipped his fingers down the bodice of my sundress. Boys had done this before and I’d found it mildly diverting but embarrassing. And nothing had happened. But this time, with Dominick, my nipples got hard and it was because of his fingers, because of him. Then he smiled at me as he turned off the road onto a dirt stretch that led into a wooded area. He left me in the car and opened the trunk. He pulled out a blanket and told me to come with him. He spread the blanket out on a bed of daisies—white daisies—and there were shafts of sunlight spearing through the maple trees and I was on my back and he told me to lift my hips and I did and he pulled my panties off. Then he sat back on his heels and I saw he was looking at me. Then he stood up and took off his clothes, all of them. I’d never seen a nude man in real life before. His penis was huge and I thought: No, this is impossible. I’m making a horrible mistake.


  But he merely sat beside me and pulled my sundress over my head. Then he lay on his back and pulled me against him. He just talked to me and told me how sweet I was, how dear I was to him, and how he was going to teach me wonderful new things. And he did. It didn’t hurt when he came inside me, not really. I took every inch of his penis, and when he was as deep as he could go, he smiled and told me to lift my hips. I didn’t come that first time, but I didn’t care. But he did. He taught me quite a lot about myself that afternoon. I trusted him completely.

  No, I suppose I couldn’t have trusted him, not completely, because I didn’t ever tell him who I really was and that I was very rich. I was my parents’ only child, and upon their deaths I had so much money it was difficult for me to even comprehend it and the lawyer had told me that I should never volunteer who I was, never say I was Margaret Chamberlain Holland of Boston. What he meant too, of course, was that I should never volunteer what I was worth. Uncle Ralph and Aunt Josie had even introduced me using their name—Pennington, not Holland. I guess they were concerned because I was so young. I didn’t tell anyone the truth, not even Dominick. I wonder if that would have made a difference. I doubt it. Dominick was many things, but a fortune hunter he wasn’t.

  And at the close of that magic summer, I was pregnant with you, Rafaella.

  I was terrified but Dominick seemed pleased about it. Then he dropped the bomb. He was married, and couldn’t marry me—just yet. It turned out that he and his wife had been separated for years and years. And I told him that he didn’t have years and years and he laughed and told me how wonderful I was and how understanding and how I was so different from his wife. He left, to attend to business, he said, to get the divorce proceedings in motion, he said. He left me in New Milford, to face my aunt and uncle and the music. But he came back every couple of weeks to see me. He never came to the house. I always met him at a different hotel or motel in and around New Milford. And every time, he’d bring me to an orgasm and I’d forget my worry, my anxiety, until after he’d gone.

  All of this sounds so stupid. So boringly stupid and trite, but that’s how it happened. And then you were born and he returned again and visited me in the hospital in Hartford. He stood beside my bed and smiled down at me. And I’ll never forget his words for as long as I live. But I still want to write them down, just in case, one day, in the distant future, I’m tempted to look back at this and romanticize it.

  “You’re looking well, Margaret,” he said, and took my hand, kissing my fingers.

  I swelled with relief even though he’d said nothing important.

  “We have a daughter, Dominick.”

  “Yes, so I was told.”

  “You haven’t seen her?”

  “No, there’s no need.”

  “Perhaps not at this moment. Are you free now? Can we get married? I want my daughter to know her wonderful father.”

  “That’s not possible, Margaret.” He released my hand and took two steps away from the bed.

  “You’re not divorced yet?” Odd how I knew what was coming, despite my ignorance. Oh, yes, I knew. Perhaps motherhood brings a little insight, a little wisdom with it.

  He shook his head and he was still smiling down at me. “No,” he said, “I’m not divorced and I don’t intend to divorce my wife even though she bores me and tries to spend more money than even I make. You’re very young, Margaret. I’ve enjoyed you. Perhaps I would have married you if you’d birthed a boy, but you didn’t. My wife is pregnant now. Isn’t that strange timing? Perhaps she’ll give me a boy. I hope so.”

  “She’s your daughter!”

  He shrugged. He did nothing more, just shrugged. And then he said, that smile still on his mouth, “Daughters aren’t good for much, Margaret. You need boys to build dynasties, and that’s what I’ve always wanted. A girl is good for cementing certain deals and for leverage, but things have changed and you can’t be certain that you can control your daughters, make them do what you want them to. Who knows? Twenty years from now daughters might go against everything their fathers tell them. No, Margaret, a girl is worth less than nothing to me.”

  I just stared at him, frozen. “Who are you? What kind of man are you?”

  “A very smart man.” And he tossed a check for five thousand dollars on the bed. I watched it float down until it touched the stiff hospital sheet. “Good-bye, Margaret.” And he was gone.

  I didn’t cry, not then. I remember so clearly picking up that check and looking at it and then very slowly tearing it into tiny, tiny pieces. I was so happy that I hadn’t told him about my inheritance, so relieved I hadn’t told him who I really was. Perhaps I’d known all along what he would do. Perhaps I’d instinctively kept back my only valuable secret. Perhaps…

  One

  Boston, Massachusetts

  Boston Tribune Newsroom

  February 2001

  “Look, he told the police he did it because they treated him like…What’d he keep saying?”

  “They treated him like dirt.”

  “Yeah, dirt. Well, he’s also crazy dirt. Come on, Al, let it go.”

  “No way, Rafe. There’s more to it than that, I can smell it.” Al tapped the side of his nose. “I want you to go to the lockup and talk to the guy. You got the talent for it, kiddo. I can trust you to find out what’s going on. You’re the big talent here, aren’t you? Our twenty-five-year-old investigative reporter from Wallingford, Delaware? On the big-city paper for only two years and you’ve already got star fever? Runaway arrogance?”

  Rafaella ignored that gambit. “The TV people have gone into it more ways than Sunday. It stinks. It’s just exploitation and sensationalism now.”

  “Actually, the TV folk have screamed ‘psychopath’ and dredged up cases from all over the country for a fifty-year period.”

  “Longer. They also dredged up Lizzie Borden. Al, listen, it’s a crummy story. This guy isn’t bright. I’ve seen him on TV and I’ve read what he’s said. It’s pathetic but that’s all there is. It’s been overdone and I don’t want anything to do with any of it.” Hands over breasts, legs slightly spread, chin up. The art of intimidation—quite good, actually, but Al wasn’t moved. He’d taught Rafe some of his best tricks in the two years she’d been in his kingdom.

  “You ain’t got a choice, Rafe, so shut your chops and get with it. The man’s in jail. He’s harmless now. Talk to him, talk to his lawyer—a young squirt who looks like he just lost his pimples—and get the facts on this thing. I’m positive there’s something everyone’s missed.”

  “Come on, Al, he murdered, axed, three people—his father, mother, and uncle.”

  “But not his eleven-year-old half-brother. Don’t you find that just a bit intriguing? Puzzling?”

  “So the kid was lucky and wasn’t home. The kid’s still missing, right? We’ve already treated the story responsibly. Now you want sensationalism, and I don’t want any part of it. Call that goon over at the Herald, Maury Bates, if you want more gore.”

  “No, Maury’d scare the guy’s socks off.”

  Rafaella played her ace. “There’s no way the police would let me in to see Freddy Pithoe. No way his attorney would let me in to see him. No way the D.A. would let me in to see him. You know how touchy everyone is on a case like this, how scared they all are about anything prejudicial happening. Let a member of the press in to see the crazy guy charged? No way at all, Al, and you know the way I work—I’d be knocking on their door, bugging everybody so I could see him maybe a half-dozen times. Well, maybe if I had to, twice. Yes, twice would be enough.”

  He had her. She’d talked herself into it. But he decided to reel her in slowly. It was more fun that way. “No problem, if it were kept real quiet. Benny Masterson owes me, Rafe. I’ve already talked to him. You keep it low-key, real low-key, and he’ll look the other way. He’s cleared you.”

  “Lieutenant Masterson must owe you his life to allow a reporter in to see Freddy Pithoe. He could lose his pension, he could get
his tail chewed from here to Florida. He’d be taking a huge risk. Lord, everyone, including Freddy, would have to be sworn to silence.”

  Al Holbein, managing editor of the Boston Tribune, was more stubborn than Rafaella, and she knew it, plus he had twenty-five more years of practice.

  He waved his cigar toward the Tribune’s metro editor, Clive Oliver, seated in a sea of assistants and reporters in the middle of the huge, noisy newsroom. There was a near-fistfight at one end, between two sports reporters, and a can of Coke was flying through the air from a police reporter to the cooking editor. “I’ve talked to Clive. He bitched, but I told him I didn’t want him to dump any assignments on you until I told him it was okay.” Al reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a folded slip of paper. “Here’s your new personal password. Only you and I will be able to access anything you write on this story. Don’t show it to a soul—”

  “Come on, Al, you know I don’t.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t this time either. I want this thing kept under wraps. As far under wraps as possible.”

  “The only thing that will be under wraps is what I write. This assignment is probably all over the newsroom by now, probably even down in classified.” She opened the paper and stared, then laughed. “‘Ruffle’? That’s my password? Where’d you get that one?”

  Al gave her that smile that had seduced Milly Archer, a TV reporter, just six months before. “It’s my favorite potato chip. Now look, Rafe, just maybe there’s another Pulitzer in it for you. Who knows?”

  That made her laugh. “When was the last time a reporter on a big newspaper won a Pulitzer? No, don’t tell me. You’ve got examples all lined up, don’t you?”

  “Sure thing. Remember the reporters in Chicago who ran that sting operation with a bar they opened themselves without telling the cops? That was a real beauty, and…” He paused, a light of wistfulness in his eyes. “In any case, just maybe you’ll find something. Think about how good it’ll make you feel. Remember how you felt when you cracked that group of neo-Nazis for the Wallingford Daily News?”