by Jodi Picoult
Jack turned his head away, silent.
Charlie nodded; this wasn’t a shock. “Got a lawyer you want phoned?”
The last lawyer Jack had trusted with his life had landed him in jail for eight months. His jaw tightened at the thought of putting himself at the mercy of another leech who couldn’t care less about winning the case, as long as there was a retainer.
“Okay,” Charlie said on a sigh. He beckoned to another officer, who came into the interrogation room to lead Jack back to the holding cell. They were nearly out the door when Charlie’s voice made Jack stop. “Is there anyone you want me to call?”
Addie.
Jack stared straight ahead, and kept walking.
“Did you know,” Matt said, watching his wife sprinkle nutmeg onto cottage cheese for her own breakfast, “that if you inject that stuff intravenously it can kill you?”
“Cottage cheese? I would think so.”
“No, nutmeg.” Matt dipped the rubber-coated spoon into the jar of peaches again and held it to their daughter’s lips. Predictably, Molly spit it back at him.
Sydney slid into the seat beside Matt’s. “Do I want to know where you picked up such an esoteric knowledge of spices?”
He shrugged. “I put away a woman who killed her diabetic husband by mixing some in his insulin.”
“I’ll have to file that one away,” Sydney said, smiling. “Just in case you start getting on my nerves.”
Matt passed a washcloth over Molly’s face, and for good measure, rubbed it over his cheek as well. “I feel like I ought to invest in a haz mat suit.”
“Oh, I have great faith that by the time she marches down the aisle, she’ll be able to use a spoon with finesse.”
Molly, on cue, burst into a peal of giggles. “You’re not gonna walk down any aisle, are you, muffin?” Matt cooed. “Not until Daddy’s done background checks—”
They were interrupted by the telephone. Molly’s head swiveled toward the sound, her eyes wide and curious. “It’s for you,” Sydney said a moment later. “Charlie Saxton.”
He had last worked with Charlie over a year ago, on a grand theft auto charge that was pleaded down. Truth was, not too many cases came out of Salem Falls. “Charlie,” Matt said, taking the receiver. “What can I do for you?”
“We’ve got a rape case. A guy who just got out on an eight-month sentence for misdemeanor sexual assault attacked a teenage girl here last night.”
Matt immediately sobered. “The victim wants us to prosecute?” Too often, women who had been raped would suffer through the collection of evidence . . . and then decide they couldn’t go through with it.
“Yeah. Her dad is Amos Duncan.”
“Duncan, as in the drug company?” Matt whistled. “Holy cow.”
“Exactly.”
“So,” Matt repeated, “what can I do for you?”
“Meet me at the crime scene?” Charlie asked. “Nine o’clock?”
He took down directions. For a long moment after Charlie hung up, Matt absently listened to the dial tone while stroking the soft, vulnerable crown of his daughter’s head.
Meg, Whitney and Chelsea arrived at Gillian’s house shortly after 8 A.M. “Girls,” Amos said soberly, greeting them at the door. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”
They were too polite to comment on his bloodshot eyes, his rumpled clothing. “Our parents said we should stay home.” Whitney spoke for the three of them.
“We wanted to make sure that Gilly was doing okay,” Chelsea added, her voice nearly a whisper, as if speaking of what had happened would only make it worse.
“I don’t know if she’s up to seeing . . .” Amos’s words trailed off as the girls shifted their attention to something over his shoulder. Gilly stood behind him, looking as fragile as a milkweed pod, a big quilt wrapped around her shoulders. Her feet were bare like a child’s, and this made Amos’s stomach knot.
“No, Daddy,” Gilly said. “I want to talk to them.”
The girls surrounded her, a princess’s court. They moved as a single unit up to Gillian’s bedroom and closed the door. As soon as they did, Whitney flew toward Gilly with a small cry, hugging her close. “Are you okay?”
Gillian nodded against her shoulder. Now that it was morning, it seemed impossible that last night had really happened.
“What did they make you do?” Chelsea asked, wide-eyed.
“A lot of tests at the hospital. And I had to talk to Mr. Saxton.” She looked from one girl to the other. “If I’m the one who went through it, why do you all look so awful?”
No one answered at first, embarrassed to have been caught thinking selfishly when Gillian had suffered the most. Whitney began toying with a stray fiber on the braided rug. “They’re going to find out about us now, aren’t they?”
“None of our fathers found out last night, did they?” Gilly said.
“But they’ll go back today. They’ll have to, after what you said.”
Meg, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, shook her head. “I took care of it.”
Gilly turned. “Took care of it?”
“I got rid of . . . everything. I went early this morning.”
At that, Gillian kissed Meg on the forehead. “You,” she pronounced, “are amazing.”
Meg blushed. Being the object of Gillian’s direct praise was a little like being a cat stretching itself in front of a sunny window—it felt so good, to the marrow of the bones, that it was impossible to turn away.
Gillian reached beneath her mattress and pulled out their Book of Shadows. “Keep this at your house,” she told Chelsea. “It’s too risky for me to have it here right now.”
Chelsea skimmed the pages—including the last entry, where Gillian had written a detailed account of the Beltane ceremony. For the first time since she’d been practicing Wicca, she felt empty inside. “Gilly,” she said quietly, “last night . . .”
“Who do you think everyone is going to believe?” Gillian’s gaze turned inward, until it seemed that she was very far away from the rest of them. “After what he did to me,” she said so quietly that the others had to strain to hear, “he deserves this.”
An entourage of men—Amos, Charlie, Matt, and a team of cops skilled at securing crime scenes and collecting evidence—followed Gillian up the path that led from the cemetery into the woods. She was pale and withdrawn, although they had done their best to handle her with kid gloves. Suddenly, she stopped. “This is where it happened.”
The marker was a huge flowering dogwood, its petals carpeting the floor of the forest like an artificial snow. Under Charlie’s direction, an officer roped off the area with yellow crime scene tape, using the trunks of the trees as stakes. Others knelt to take soil samples and to scour for anything else that might help in the prosecution of Jack St. Bride.
Charlie headed toward Amos and his daughter. Gillian’s eyes looked as big as dinner plates, and she was shaking uncontrollably. “Honey,” Charlie said. “do you remember where he held you down?”
Her gaze swept the small clearing. “There,” she pointed. It was a spot free of leaves, a spot that looked no different from any other spot nearby, but Charlie knew that experts could turn up treasures that weren’t visible to the naked eye.
He sent two of his men to check it. “Why don’t you take her home?” Charlie suggested to Amos. “She looks like she’s about to fall apart.”
“Gillian’s strong. She—”
“—doesn’t need to be here. I know you want to help us. And right now, the best way to do that is to give her a little TLC, so that when we need her to step up to the plate, she’s ready.”
“TLC,” Amos repeated woodenly. “I can do that.”
“Good. The minute I know anything . . .” he promised, and went to rejoin his colleagues.
Two men were working at the site of the rape. “Anything?” Charlie asked.
“No smoking gun. Or spurting, as the case may be.”
“Spare me,” Charlie mutte
red. “You find the condom yet? Or a wrapper?”
“Nope. But we got footprints. Looks like a struggle, too. Then again, a lot of people might just have walked over the same spot. We’re taking pictures.”
Matt Houlihan tapped Charlie on the shoulder. “Check this out.” He led the way across the clearing and pointed to the dark soil. “See that? Ashes.”
“So?”
“There was a fire here.”
Charlie shrugged. “Gillian said that, in her statement. I told you that already.”
“Yes, but it’s nice to have some corroboration.”
“Did you doubt her?”
“You know how hard sexual assault cases are to win . . . even when the perp has a prior. I need everything I can get that corroborates what the girl said.”
“She said she scratched the guy,” Charlie pointed out. “And I’ve got the proof of it on Kodak paper.”
“Mug shots alone aren’t going to get him convicted. She needs to be more precise.” Matt glanced up. “You couldn’t get her to pin down the length of the assault?”
“She said it was between five and ten minutes.”
“That’s the difference between a world record run and a high school track meet, Charlie.”
“Well, shit, Houlihan. I think she was a little too preoccupied at the time to take out her stopwatch.”
Sighing, Matt looked down. “She seeing a rape crisis counselor?”
“She’s seeing someone. A Dr. Horowitz, a shrink her dad knows.”
Matt nodded, then picked up a charred stick and began to toy with it, until a cop took it out of his hands with a scowl and stuck it into an evidence bag. “What did you get from the perp, besides his pictures?”
“Oh, well,” Charlie said. “Naturally, he wasn’t here.”
“He told you this after you mirandized him?”
Charlie shook his head. “He wouldn’t even look at me after I mirandized him. He said this about two seconds after I told him he was under arrest. A total knee-jerk response.”
Matt mulled this over. There would be a fight to get that statement admitted. Then again, he’d done it before.
“Lieutenant Saxton,” a cop called. “Come see this.”
Matt and Charlie ambled over to a spot beneath the dogwood tree. Almost perfectly delineated in the damp soil was a bootprint—one considerably larger than the foot of a teenage girl. The policeman who’d beckoned turned over the man’s boot he was holding, the same one Charlie had taken from Addie’s house. “I’m not saying it’s a match till the expert looks at the plaster cast,” the cop said, “but this looks pretty damn close to me.”
It was, right down to the crags in the pattern of the sole. Held up alongside, it was exactly the same size as St. Bride’s boot. And St. Bride had insisted he was nowhere near Gillian Duncan last night.
Matt smiled his wide, gap-toothed grin. “Now this,” he said, “is an excellent start.”
The judge was a man. In some corner of his mind, Jack breathed a sigh of relief. A man would surely know when another guy was being railroaded. He fixed his gaze on the Honorable Lucius Freeley, as if it were possible to sear his story right into the judge’s mind.
But the judge didn’t seem to notice him much at all. He glanced dispassionately at the cameras in the rear of the courtroom, and then at the prosecution’s table, where a tall redheaded guy who looked like the kid on Happy Days was leafing through some notes. Then he turned his attention to Jack and frowned. “We’re here today in connection with the State of New Hampshire versus Jack St. Bride. Mr. St. Bride, you’ve been charged with aggravated felonious sexual assault. That’s a class A felony, and you have the right to an attorney in connection with this offense. If you can’t afford one, one will be appointed.” The judge glanced meaningfully at the empty seat beside Jack, managing to convey in a single look that he thought Jack was a moron for not taking advantage of this quirk of the law.
Jack thought of Melton Sprigg and set his jaw. “Your Honor, I would prefer not—”
He broke off, feeling the cold green eyes of the prosecutor on him. “I can’t afford one,” he said, sealing his fate.
Bernie Davidson, the clerk of court, phoned the public defender’s office thirty minutes later, when Judge Freeley—who needed prostate surgery, and badly—called for his fourth bathroom break of the morning. “I need one of your guys,” he said, after faxing over the complaint.
“I got your stuff . . . but we can’t help you,” the coordinator said. “One of our attorneys defended the victim three years ago in a misdemeanor shoplifting charge, back before he joined the PD’s office. And you know we’re too tiny, Bernie, to build a Chinese wall around whoever takes St. Bride on.”
Bernie sighed. For a Friday, it was feeling a hell of a lot like a Monday morning. “Okay. I’ll go to my backup list. Thanks.”
He hung up and shuffled through a rubber-banded sheaf of cards he kept in the front compartment of his desk, a group of attorneys in private practice whom he called on, now and then, when the public defender’s office had a conflict. Finally, his eye caught on one name. “Here we go,” Bernie said, smiling slowly, and he picked up the phone.
The third time he heard a crash, Jordan put down his cup of coffee and went to investigate. He moved through the hallway like a bloodhound on a scent, until he found the source of the noise—behind Thomas’s closed bedroom door. Which was exceptionally strange, since Thomas had left for school nearly two hours earlier.
Another crash. Then: “Goddamn!” Jordan pushed open the door to find Selena sprawled on the carpet, which had been covered with newspaper. She wore a tank top and a pair of his own boxer shorts. Her mahogany skin was dotted with blue freckles, and a paint roller lay several feet away, in a puddle of its own pigment.
“Whatever kind of look you were going for . . . you missed,” Jordan said.
Selena narrowed her eyes, “If I throw a stick, will you leave?”
He stepped into the room. “Not until I figure out why you’re painting Thomas’s ceiling . . .” He paused to read the label on the can a few feet away. “Woodsmoke blue.”
“Because you haven’t done it?” She waved a hand about. “For God’s sake, Jordan. The kid’s fifteen. You think Easter egg purple and bunny wallpaper work for him?”
Jordan glanced around, seeing Thomas’s room through new eyes. It had belonged to a little girl when they’d bought the house. For a year now, Jordan had been promising Thomas it was something they’d tackle together. He glanced down at his sweatpants and river driver’s shirt. Nothing that couldn’t get ruined, he supposed. Stepping closer, he picked up the paint roller. “At least I know how to climb a ladder. Christ—from the racket, it sounded like you were holding a WWF tournament.”
“For your information, I could stay on the ladder just fine.” Selena frowned. “It was the roller that kept losing its balance, every time I let go of the handle.”
Jordan rolled a smooth rectangle of blue paint onto the ceiling. “Didn’t think you’d even need a ladder, Amazon that you are.”
By now, Selena was standing. She automatically lifted the paint tray so that Jordan wouldn’t have to dismount to refresh the roller. “Very funny.”
“Sarcasm is just one more service we offer.” He squinted. “Why blue?”
“It’s calming. And you’re missing that whole section. See?”
Jordan scowled. “It looks perfectly fine to me.”
“That’s because you’re as good as blind.” Selena slapped her hands on the rungs of the ladder, encircling Jordan, and began to climb up behind him. He twisted to allow her access to duck beneath his arm, as she reached up and pointed to a spot that had not been covered thoroughly. “There,” she said.
But Jordan wasn’t listening. He was inhaling the scent of Selena’s skin, feeling the heat of her pressed behind and beside him. He closed his eyes and, moving just the slightest bit, inclined his head closer to hers. “I’m not blind, Selena,” he murmured.
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They remained tangled in a knot of possibility. And just as Jordan tipped forward to kiss Selena, she turned so that he grazed the nape of her neck, instead. “Jordan,” she whispered. “We know better.”
“This time, it could be different. I’m different.”
She smiled softly. “An erection doesn’t count as personal growth.”
He opened his mouth to contest that, but before he could, the telephone rang. Trying to extricate himself from his position on the ladder, he wound up knocking down both Selena and the paint roller once again. He leaped over her, ran down the hall, and grabbed the portable from the living room.
A moment later, he appeared at the threshold to Thomas’s bedroom. Selena stood on the ladder again, the muscles in her arms flexing as she stretched overhead to paint. When she turned, her gaze was positively blank, as if what had just passed between them had never happened. “Please tell me it’s that idiot mechanic telling me my car’s ready.”
“It was Bernie Davidson, at the courthouse,” Jordan said, still a little dazed. “Apparently, I’m back in practice.” He turned to Selena, a question in his eyes.
“Count me in,” she said, and stepped down beside him.
Like every other human over the age of eight in Salem Falls, Jordan knew that Jack St. Bride had been convicted once for sexual assault. That he was now on the receiving end of a rape charge didn’t bode particularly well, either. One thing was for certain: with a prior under his belt, St. Bride wouldn’t be getting bail. Which actually suited Jordan just fine, because a guy who was locked up couldn’t get himself into any more trouble.
His hair was still wet from his shower when he arrived at the county attorney’s office in Ossipee. As far as he was concerned, he had one job, and that was to get as much information as he could early in the game. Rape trials were always a bitch; the more Jordan knew, the better chance he’d have of landing on his feet.
