Nineteen Minutes

by Jodie Picoult

  Diana glanced up over the papers. “Lovely.”

  “Yeah. Well, you know cops. What’s the point of putting the gun in a locked cabinet when you have to get at it quickly? Anyway, Gun A is the one that was fired around most of the school-the striations on the bullets we recovered match it. Gun B was fired-ballistics told us that-but there hasn’t been a bullet recovered that matches its barrel. That gun was found jammed, on the floor of the locker room. Houghton was still holding Gun A when he was apprehended.”

  Diana leaned back in her chair, her fingers steepled in front of her chest. “McAfee’s going to ask you why Houghton would have pulled out Gun B at all in the locker room, if Gun A had worked so splendidly up till that point.”

  Patrick shrugged. “He might have used it to shoot Royston in the belly, and then when it jammed, switched back to Gun A. Or then again, it might be even simpler than that. Since the bullet from Gun B wasn’t recovered, it’s possible it was the very first shot fired. The slug could be lodged in the fiberglass insulation in the cafeteria, for all we know. It jammed, the kid switched to Gun A and stuffed the jammed gun in his pocket…and then at the end of his killing spree, he either discarded it or dropped it by accident.”

  “Or. I hate that word. It’s two letters long and stuffed to the gills with reasonable doubt-”

  She broke off as there was a knock at the door, and her secretary stuck her head inside. “Your two o’clock’s here.”

  Diana turned to him. “I’m preparing Drew Girard for testifying. Why don’t you stay for this one?”

  Patrick moved to a chair on the side of the room to give Drew the spot across from the prosecutor. The boy entered with a soft knock. “Ms. Leven?”

  Diana came around her desk. “Drew. Thanks for coming in.” She gestured at Patrick. “You remember Detective Ducharme?”

  Drew nodded at him. Patrick surveyed the boy’s pressed pants, his collared shirt, his manners on display. This was not the cocky, big-man-on-campus hockey star, as he had been painted by students during Patrick’s investigations, but then again, Drew had watched his best friend get killed; he’d been shot himself in the shoulder. Whatever world he had lorded over was gone now.

  “Drew,” Diana said, “we brought you in here because you got a subpoena, and that means you’re going to be testifying sometime next week. We’ll let you know when, for sure, as we get closer…but for now, I wanted to make sure you weren’t nervous about going to court. Today, we’ll go over some of the things you’ll be asked, and how the procedure works. If you have any questions, we can cover those as well. Okay?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Patrick leaned forward. “How’s the shoulder?”

  Drew swiveled to face him, unconsciously flexing that body part. “I still have to do physical therapy and stuff, but it’s a lot better. Except…” His voice trailed off.

  “Except what?” Diana asked.

  “I’ll miss hockey season this whole year.”

  Diana met Patrick’s eye; this was sympathy for a witness. “Do you think you’ll be able to play again, eventually?”

  Drew flushed. “The doctors say no, but I think they’re wrong.” He hesitated. “I’m a senior this year, and I was sort of counting on an athletic scholarship for college.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence, as no one acknowledged either Drew’s courage or the truth. “So, Drew,” Diana said. “When we get into court, I’ll start by asking your name, where you live, if you were in school that day.”

  “Okay.”

  “Let’s try it out a bit, all right? When you got to school that morning, what was your first class?”

  Drew sat up a little straighter. “American History.”

  “And second period?”

  “English.”

  “Where did you go after English class?”

  “I had third period free, and most people with free periods hang out in the caf.”

  “Is that where you went?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was anyone with you?” Diana continued.

  “I went down by myself, but when I got there, I hung out with a bunch of people.” He looked at Patrick. “Friends.”

  “How long were you in the cafeteria?”

  “I don’t know, a half hour, maybe?”

  Diana nodded. “What happened then?”

  Drew looked down at his pants and drew his thumb along the crease. Patrick noticed that his hand was shaking. “We were all just, you know, talking…and then I heard this really big boom.”

  “Could you tell where the sound was coming from?”

  “No. I didn’t know what it was.”

  “Did you see anything?”

  “No.”

  “So,” Diana asked, “what did you do when you heard it?”

  “I made a joke,” Drew said. “I said it was probably the school lunch, igniting or something. Oh, finally, that radioactive mac and cheese.”

  “Did you stay in the cafeteria after the boom?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And then?”

  Drew looked down at his hands. “There was this sound like firecrackers. Before anyone could figure out what it was, Peter came into the cafeteria. He was carrying a knapsack and holding a gun, and he started shooting.”

  Diana held up her hand. “I’m going to stop you there for a moment, Drew…. When you’re on the stand, and you say that, I’ll ask you to look at the defendant and identify him for the record. Got it?”

  “Yes.”

  Patrick realized that he was not just seeing the shooting the way he’d have seen any other crime. He wasn’t even visualizing it playing out as a prequel to the chilling cafeteria videotape he’d watched. He was imagining Josie-one of Drew’s friends-sitting at a long table, hearing those firecrackers, not imagining in the least what came next.

  “How long have you known Peter?” Diana asked.

  “We both grew up in Sterling. We’ve been in the same school, like, forever.”

  “Were you friends?” Drew shook his head. “Enemies?”

  “No,” he said. “Not really enemies.”

  “Ever have any problems with him?”

  Drew glanced up. “No.”

  “Did you ever bully him?”

  “No, ma’am,” he said.

  Patrick felt his hands curl into fists. He knew, from interviewing hundreds of kids, that Drew Girard had stuffed Peter Houghton into lockers; had tripped him while he was walking down the stairs; had thrown spitballs into his hair. None of that condoned what Peter had done…but still. There was a kid rotting in jail; there were ten people decomposing in graves; there were dozens in rehab and corrective surgery; there were hundreds-like Josie-who still could not get through the day without bursting into tears; there were parents-like Alex-who trusted Diana to get justice done on their behalf. And this little asshole was lying through his teeth.

  Diana looked up from her notes and stared at Drew. “So if you get asked under oath whether you’ve ever picked on Peter, what’s your answer going to be?”

  Drew looked up at her, the bravado fading just enough for Patrick to realize he was scared to death that they knew something more than they were admitting to him. Diana glanced at Patrick and threw down her pen. That was all the invitation he needed-he was out of his chair in an instant, his hand grabbing Drew Girard’s throat. “Listen, you little fuck,” Patrick said, “don’t screw this up. We know what you did to Peter Houghton. We know you were sitting front and center. There are ten dead victims, and eighteen more who are never going to have the lives they thought they would, and there are so many families in this community that are never going to stop grieving that I can’t even count them. I don’t know what your game plan is here-if you want to play the choirboy to protect your reputation, or if you’re just scared to tell the truth-but believe me, if you get on that witness stand and you lie about your actions in the past, I will make sure you wind up in jail for obstruction of justice.”

  He
let go of Drew and turned away, staring out the window in Diana’s office. He had no authority to arrest Drew for anything-even if the kid did perjure himself-much less send him to jail, but Drew would never know that. And maybe it was enough to scare him into behaving. Taking a deep breath, Patrick bent down and picked up the pen Diana had dropped and handed it to her.

  “Let me ask you again, Drew,” she said smoothly. “Did you ever bully Peter Houghton?”

  Drew glanced at Patrick and swallowed. Then he opened his mouth and started to speak.

  “It’s barbecued lasagna,” Alex announced after Patrick and Josie had each taken their first bite. “What do you think?”

  “I didn’t know you could barbecue lasagna,” Josie said slowly. She began to peel the noodles back from the cheese, as if she were scalping it.

  “How’s that work, exactly?” Patrick asked, reaching for the pitcher of water to refill his glass.

  “It was regular lasagna. But some of the insides spilled out into the oven, and there was all this smoke…and I was going to start over, but then I sort of realized that I was only adding an extra, charcoal sort of flavor into the mix.” She beamed. “Ingenious, right? I mean, I looked in all the cookbooks, Josie, and it’s never been done before, as far as I can tell.”

  “Go figure,” Patrick said, and he coughed into his napkin.

  “I actually like cooking,” Alex said. “I like taking a recipe and, you know, going off on a tangent to see what happens.”

  “Recipes are kind of like laws,” Patrick replied. “You might want to try to stick to them, before you commit a felony…”

  “I’m not hungry,” Josie said suddenly. She pushed her plate away, stood up, and ran upstairs.

  “The trial starts tomorrow,” Alex said, by way of explanation. She went after Josie, not even excusing herself first, because she knew Patrick would understand. Josie had slammed the door shut and turned up her music; it would do no good to knock. Alex turned the knob and stepped inside, reaching to the stereo to turn down the volume.

  Josie lay on her bed facedown, the pillow over her head. When Alex sat down on the mattress beside her, she didn’t move. “You want to talk about it?” Alex asked.

  “No,” Josie said, her voice muffled.

  Alex reached out and yanked the pillow off her head. “Try.”

  “It’s just-God, Mom-what’s wrong with me? It’s like the world’s started spinning again for everyone else, but I can’t even get back on the carousel. Even you two-you both must be thinking like crazy about the trial, too-but here you are, laughing and smiling like you can put what happened and what’s going to happen out of your head, when I can’t not think about it every waking second.” Josie looked up at Alex, her eyes filling with tears. “Everyone’s moved on. Everyone but me.”

  Alex put her hand on Josie’s arm and rubbed it. She could remember delighting in the sheer physical proof of Josie after she was born-that somehow, out of nothing, she’d created this tiny, warm, squirming, flawless creature. She’d spend hours on her bed with Josie beside her, touching her baby’s skin, her seed-pearl toes, the pulse of her fontanel. “Once,” Alex said, “when I was working as a public defender, a guy in the office threw a Fourth of July party for all the lawyers and their families. I took you, even though you were only about three years old. There were fireworks, and I looked away for a second to see them, and when I turned back you were gone. I started to scream, and someone noticed you-lying at the bottom of the pool.”

  Josie sat up, riveted by a story she had never heard before.

  “I dove in and dragged you out and gave you mouth-to-mouth, and you spit up. I couldn’t even speak, I was so scared. But you came back fighting and furious at me. You told me you’d been looking for mermaids, and I interrupted you.”

  Tucking her knees up under her chin, Josie smiled a little. “Really?”

  Alex nodded. “I said that next time, you had to take me with you.”

  “Was there a next time?”

  “Well, you tell me,” Alex said, and she hesitated. “You don’t need water to feel like you’re drowning, do you?”

  When Josie shook her head, the tears spilled over. She shifted, fitting herself into her mother’s arms.

  This, Patrick knew, was his downfall. For the second time in his life, he was growing so close to a woman and her child that he forgot he might not really be part of their family. He looked around the table at the detritus of Alex’s awful dinner and started clearing the untouched plates.

  The barbecued lasagna had congealed in its serving dish, a blackened brick. He piled the dishes in the sink and began to run warm water, then picked up a sponge and started to scrub.

  “Oh my gosh,” Alex said behind him. “You really are the perfect man.”

  Patrick turned, his hands still soapy. “Far from it.” He reached for a dish towel. “Is Josie-”

  “She’s fine. She’ll be fine. Or at least we’re both going to keep saying that until it’s true.”

  “I’m sorry, Alex.”

  “Who isn’t?” She straddled a kitchen chair and rested her cheek on its spine. “I’m going to the trial tomorrow.”

  “I wouldn’t have expected any less.”

  “Do you really think McAfee can get him acquitted?”

  Patrick folded the dish towel beside the sink and walked toward Alex. He knelt in front of her chair. “Alex,” he said, “that kid walked into the school like he was executing a battle plan. He started in the parking lot and set off a bomb to cause a distraction. He went around to the front of the school and took out a kid on the steps. He went into the cafeteria, shot at a bunch of kids, murdered some of them-and then he sat down and had a bowl of fucking cereal before he continued his killing spree. I don’t see how, presented with that kind of evidence, a jury could dismiss the charges.”

  Alex stared at him. “Tell me something…why was Josie lucky?”

  “Because she’s alive.”

  “No, I mean, why is she alive? She was in the cafeteria and the locker room. She saw people die all around her. Why didn’t Peter shoot her?”

  “I don’t know. Things happen that I don’t understand all the time. Some of them-well, they’re like the shooting. And some of them…” He covered Alex’s hand with his own where it gripped the chair rail. “Some of them aren’t.”

  Alex looked up at him, and Patrick was reminded again of how finding her-being with her-was like that first crocus you saw in the snow. Just when you assumed winter would last forever, this unexpected beauty could take you by surprise-and if you did not take your eyes off it, if you kept your focus, the rest of the snow would somehow melt.

  “If I ask you something, will you be honest with me?” Alex asked.

  Patrick nodded.

  “My lasagna wasn’t very good, was it?”

  He smiled at her through the slats of the chair. “Don’t give up your day job,” he said.

  In the middle of the night, when Josie could still not get to sleep, she slipped outside and lay down on the front lawn. She stared up at the sky, which clung so low by this time of the night that she could feel stars pricking her face. Out here, without her bedroom closing in around her, it was almost possible to believe that whatever problems she had were tiny, in the grand scheme of the universe.

  Tomorrow, Peter Houghton was going to be tried for ten murders. Even the thought of it-of that last murder-made Josie sick to her stomach. She could not go watch the trial, as much as she wanted to, because she was on a stupid witness list. Instead, she was sequestered, which was a fancy word for being kept clueless.

  Josie took a deep breath and thought about a social studies class she’d taken in middle school where they’d learned that someone-Eskimos, maybe?-believed stars were holes in the sky where people who’d died could peek through at you. It was supposed to be comforting, but Josie had always found it a little creepy, as if it meant she was being spied on.

  It also made her think of a really dumb joke ab
out a guy walking past a mental institution with a high fence, who hears the patients chanting Ten! Ten! Ten! and goes to peek through a hole in the fence to see what’s going on…only to get poked in the eye with a stick and hear the patients chant Eleven! Eleven! Eleven!

  Matt had told her that joke.

  Maybe she’d even laughed.

  Here’s what the Eskimos don’t tell you: Those people on the other side, they have to go out of their way to watch you. But you can see them any old time. All you have to do is close your eyes.

  On the morning of her son’s murder trial, Lacy picked a black skirt out of her closet, along with a black blouse and black stockings. She dressed like she was headed to a funeral, but maybe that wasn’t so far off the mark. She ripped three pairs of hose because her hands were shaking, and finally decided to go without. By the end of the day her shoes would rub blisters on her feet, and Lacy thought maybe this was a good thing; maybe she could concentrate instead on a pain that made perfect sense.

  She did not know where Lewis was; if he was even going to the trial today. They hadn’t really spoken since the day she had tracked him to the graveyard, and he had taken to sleeping in Joey’s bedroom. Neither one of them went into Peter’s.

  But this morning, she forced herself to turn left instead of right at the landing, and she opened the door of Peter’s bedroom. After the police had come, she had put it back in some semblance of order, telling herself that she didn’t want Peter to come home to a place that had been ransacked. There were still gaping holes-the desk looked naked without its computer, the bookshelves half empty. She walked up to one and pulled down a paperback. The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde. Peter had been reading it for English class when he was arrested. She wondered if he’d had the time to finish.

  Dorian Gray had a portrait that grew old and evil while he remained young and innocent-looking. Maybe the quiet, reserved mother who would testify for her son had a portrait somewhere that was ravaged with guilt, twisted with pain. Maybe the woman in that picture was allowed to cry and scream, to break down, to grab her son’s shoulders and say What have you done?