Salem Falls

by Jodi Picoult

  "Yes."

  "While you and your friends were together in the woods, you had no alcohol and no drugs, is that true?"

  "Yes."

  "Nothing to eat or drink for the entire hour you were there?"

  "I had a snack. Cookies. That's it."

  "Did your friends have anything to drink that night?"

  "Yes," Gilly said. "Iced tea."

  "Have you ever heard of the drug atropine?"

  "Yes."

  "What do you know about it?"

  "It's something my father's made in his lab," Gillian said.

  "Do you know how atropine is taken?"

  "No."

  "Did you have any atropine that night in the woods?"

  "No!" Gillian insisted.

  "Are you aware that traces of atropine were found in the thermos containing the iced tea your friends had brought?"

  "Yes. Mr. Houlihan told me."

  "Yet you are testifying under oath today that you didn't have any?"

  "I didn't. I don't do drugs."

  Jordan approached the witness stand. "Is it possible you could have been given some by accident?"

  "I didn't drink the iced tea."

  "Could the drug have been slipped into something else you drank that night?"

  "No," Gillian said firmly. "The only thing I had to drink was a soda, before I left my house. I didn't have any of that stuff, I swear it."

  Jordan turned away from her. "You know, Ms. Duncan, you've told us all quite a lot about what happened that night ... but you don't always tell the truth, do you?"

  Gillian's brows drew together. "Yes, I do."

  "Isn't it a fact that you have a long history of misrepresenting what really occurred? That shortly after your mother's death, you were taken to a psychiatrist because of repeated episodes of lying to your father?"

  "I was nine," Gillian said. "And I was really confused at the time. I'm a totally different person now, and my father and I are really close. I tell him everything."

  "Everything?" Jordan repeated.

  "Yes."

  "Then why didn't you tell him where you were really going that night?"

  Gillian's cheeks colored brightly. "I ... I ... "

  "That's all right, Ms. Duncan," Jordan said, sliding into place beside Jack. "We already know the answer."

  As soon as Judge Justice called for a fifteen-minute recess, Jack turned to his attorney. "I need to take a leak," he said. He glanced nervously over his shoulder, where reporters were streaming out of the courtroom to call in information about Gillian's testimony to the papers.

  Jordan called over the deputy. "Can you take my client down to--"

  "Nope," the man said. "It's backed up in the holding cell. Plumber's down there now."

  Jordan grimaced. He didn't want to take Jack out of the plastic bubble of the courtroom, where he would be a moving target for the media or anyone else who wanted a piece of him. But hell, a leak was a leak. "Come on," he muttered. "I'll take you."

  The moment they stepped outside, cameras exploded like a meteor shower, blinding Jordan temporarily. "No comment," he said, dragging Jack toward the men's room and shoving him inside. "Hey, guys, a little privacy?" he begged of the reporters, and held the door closed.

  Jack stepped up to the urinal. "How do you think it's going?"

  "I think it's early," Jordan said.

  Suddenly, a toilet flushed, and the door to one of the stalls swung open. "Mr. Duncan," Jordan said, anxious to avoid an incident before it started.

  But the man held up a hand. He stopped just inches away from Jack, who was furiously working to zip up his pants.

  "They should have cut it off," Duncan said, then walked out of the bathroom, leaving Jack to stare after him.

  "Dr. Paulson, did you have occasion to treat a patient by the name of Gillian Duncan on May first?" Matt asked.

  The ER doctor was comfortable on the stand. "Yes, I did."

  "At what time?"

  "Approximately one-thirty A.M."

  "Did you have any medical information about her when you approached her?"

  "Yes. An ER nurse had taken a history and physical. She had a BP of one twenty over eighty, and a rapid heart rate. She was alert and oriented and in no acute distress, although she was frightened. She'd come in alleging a forcible vaginal sexual assault."

  "How did you examine Gillian?"

  "First I had her undress over a sheet," Dr. Paulson said. "Then I did a basic general exam. Chest and cardiac exams were unremarkable. The abdomen was soft, nontender, and nondistended with normal bowel sounds. There was no rebound tenderness. Some significant bruising was present on the patient's right wrist; I took pictures of these."

  Matt asked permission to approach the witness, then handed Dr. Paulson the pictures. "Do you recognize these?"

  "Yes. They're the photographs I took of the patient."

  "Do they fairly and accurately represent the bruises on Gillian Duncan that night?"

  "Yes, they do."

  "I'd like to move them in as State's Exhibits Two and Three," Matt said. "Doctor, what other examinations did you perform that night?"

  "A pelvic exam. The external genitalia were unremarkable, and there were no visible signs of forced penetration. I used a colposcope, which is basically a large magnifying glass with a light on it, to see inside the vaginal canal."

  "What did you find?"

  "The vaginal vault was unremarkable, without lesions or semen. The cervix was closed and without cervical motion tenderness. The uterus was small, anteflexed and anteverted, and nontender, and the adnexa were nonpalpable and nontender. The patient didn't report anal penetration, so the rectovaginal exam was deferred." The doctor smiled at the jury. "It's a lot of medical jargon, but basically, she looked normal on the inside."

  "Is it unusual to find no lesions or bruising or abnormalities inside a patient who has reported a violent sexual assault?"

  "No," the doctor said. "Sometimes you get bruising; sometimes you don't. The vagina is made for sexual intercourse and, quite frankly, can withstand an awful lot. Often traumatic intercourse can occur without leaving behind any visible vaginal proof."

  "So how can you tell if someone's had intercourse?"

  "Only by the presence of semen. However, its absence doesn't rule out intercourse, either. A condom could have been involved. A man might have had a vasectomy."

  "Did you examine any other area, Doctor?"

  "Yes. I examined the patient's thighs and groin."

  "What did you find?"

  "With an ultraviolet lamp, I detected the presence of what appeared to be semen."

  "What did you do?"

  "I took a sterile swab from a sexual assault evidence recovery kit and swabbed the area."

  "What did you do with it?"

  "I put the swab in the paper envelope included in the kit. I wrote my name and the date and the patient's name on it, then sealed it and put my initials over the seal."

  "Did you take any other physical evidence from Gillian that night?"

  "Yes. I did a pubic hair combing and put the evidence in the kit. I clipped her fingernails and collected each one in a separate, sterile white paper envelope, which was also included in the kit. Finally, I drew blood from the patient for a known sample, marked it, and put it in the kit."

  "After you marked and sealed all these envelopes and swabs and vials, what did you do with the kit?"

  "I handed it to Detective Saxton, who had brought the patient in."

  "Between the time you collected all of this evidence and the time you turned it over to the detective, did anyone else have access to it?"

  "No."

  "Did you treat Gillian?"

  "Yes. We gave her a heavy dose of antibiotics to protect against venereal disease, and a pill to prevent pregnancy."

  Matt crossed to stand in front of the jury. "Dr. Paulson, when you first walked into the ER cubicle ... when you first saw Gillian ... what did she look like?"
r />   For the first time during her testimony, the doctor's professional demeanor slipped. "Very pale, and quiet. Lethargic. She was skittish, too, about having me touch her."

  "Is that behavior you've seen before in your line of work?"

  "Unfortunately, it is," Dr. Paulson admitted. "In victims of sexual abuse and sexual assault."

  "If there's no semen in the vagina, Doctor, you can't tell from a pelvic exam if someone has recently had intercourse ... right?"

  Dr. Paulson regarded Jordan coolly. "No, you can't."

  "And there wasn't any semen visible during Gillian's pelvic exam?"

  "No, there wasn't."

  "Isn't it also true that you didn't find any bruising inside Gillian's vagina?"

  "That's right."

  "You didn't find any bruising on her external genitalia?"

  "No."

  "Did you find bruises on her face?"

  "No."

  "Her neck?"

  "No."

  "How about her upper arm, or her thighs?"

  "No. Only on her right wrist, Mr. McAfee."

  Jordan crossed to the jury box. "You found semen on Ms. Duncan's inner thigh?"

  "Yes."

  "Did you know that this victim had reported to Detective Saxton that she was sexually active at the time this happened?"

  "That wasn't part of my exam," Dr. Paulson said. "So you have no way of knowing if that semen you swabbed from Gillian Duncan's thigh had anything to do with this alleged assault or with some other man she had sexual relations with recently."

  "No."

  "Doctor, isn't it true that there is no physical evidence that conclusively supports Ms. Duncan's claim of being subjected to violent sexual intercourse that night? That all we really have is what Gillian said happened?"

  "That's correct."

  "Do you have any way of knowing whether she was lying?"

  Dr. Paulson shook her head. "I don't."

  Whitney O'Neill was a nervous wreck. She kept chewing her fingernails, to the point where Jordan expected them to bleed at any moment. It was a small miracle, in fact, that she'd even made it through the direct examination. "So ten seconds after you left the clearing with Meg and Chelsea, you called out to Gillian?" Jordan said, wanting clarification.

  Whitney bit her lower lip. "Yeah, but she didn't answer."

  "No one had suggested, prior to her departure, that she stay with you? Do some kind of buddy system?"

  "No," Whitney said.

  "How much longer after you called out to her did Gillian come running up to you?"

  "Um, maybe like another ten or fifteen minutes."

  Jordan walked up to the map Matt had brought. "Do you know how far it is from the edge of the cemetery to the point where you and your friends lit the bonfire?"

  "No."

  "Fifty-two yards, Ms. O'Neill. That's half the length of a football field." Jordan took a few steps forward. "Do you have any idea how incredibly slow you'd have to walk in order for it to take fifteen minutes to cover fifty yards of ground?"

  "I, um, it may--"

  "You could have been blindfolded, going backward in crab walk, and it would take you five minutes, at the most."

  "Objection," Matt sighed. "He's badgering my witness."

  "Have a care, Mr. McAfee," said the judge.

  "My apologies," Jordan told the girl, but anyone could see he wasn't all that sorry.

  "Maybe it didn't take fifteen minutes, exactly," Whitney whispered.

  "Are you telling me that you lied a minute ago? Under oath?" Whitney blanched. "No. I mean, it just felt like forever. Or about fifteen minutes."

  Jordan shrugged. "You know what? Let's compromise. Let's say it took ten. Does that seem fair?"

  The girl nodded vigorously.

  "While it was taking you ten minutes to walk the fifty-two yards, your friend was supposedly within fifty-two yards of you, being assaulted. Given that extremely brief distance, don't you think you might have heard something going on?"

  Whitney swallowed. "I didn't. It was too far away."

  "You didn't hear your friend calling out?"

  "No."

  "You didn't hear branches breaking? Or a scuffle?"

  "No."

  Jordan stared at her for a moment. Then he asked for permission to approach the bench. "Judge, I'd like a little leeway for a physical demonstration."

  Judge Justice narrowed her eyes. "Mental browbeating isn't enough?"

  "I'd like to make this particular point a little more realistic for the jury."

  "Your Honor," Matt said, "it's completely inappropriate for Mr. McAfee to re-create the scenario that night."

  The judge looked from one man to the other, then to the witness cowering on the stand. "You know, Mr. Houlihan, I'm gonna allow this. Go ahead, Mr. McAfee."

  Jordan took a yardstick from Selena in the gallery. "I'm just going to measure off fifty-two yards," he explained. He paced his way down the aisle of the courtroom, through the double doors, and into the lobby. Conversation stopped as he continued past the banks of blue chairs and the office of the clerk of the court and a few vending machines. Finally, he rapped the yardstick on the floor and peered down the straight course, to where the witness sat. "Ms. O'Neill," he called, "can you hear me?"

  He saw her nod her head, saw her lips form the word yes.

  Jordan strode back to the courtroom. "Thank you," he said. "That's all."

  Whitney started to rise, intent on getting off the witness stand as quickly as possible. But before she could, Matt rose, furious. "Redirect, Your Honor," he barked. "Ms. O'Neill, did you just hear Mr. McAfee call out to you from fifty-two yards away?"

  "Um, yes."

  Matt pointed to the rear of the courtroom. "If Mr. McAfee had been fifty-two yards away but pinned to the ground with someone else's hand over his mouth and fighting for his life against a rapist, do you think you would have been able to hear him call out?"

  "N-no," Whitney said.

  Matt turned on his heel. "Nothing further."

  At the breakfast table that morning, Thomas had asked if Jordan was going to cross-examine Chelsea Abrams. "Don't know for sure," he'd answered. "It depends on what she says on direct."

  Thomas's shoulders had rounded so much his face had nearly dipped into his cereal bowl. "Just do me one favor," Thomas had said. "Try not to be a dick."

  That, in a nutshell, was why Jordan was going to blast Chelsea Abrams's testimony to pieces. Because the pretty girl looking up at him with a tiny smile was seeing him as Thomas's dad when she should have been considering him an adversary.

  "Ms. Abrams," Jordan said, standing up to do his cross, "tell me again who was there that night in the woods."

  Confusion clouded Chelsea's eyes as she realized Jordan meant business. "Meg, Whitney, Gilly, and me."

  "And Jack, my client?"

  "Yeah."

  "And Jack left first."

  "Yes."

  "The rest of you, though, were standing together for a minute before you went home?"

  "Yes."

  "So if anyone said something before you left, the four of you would have heard it?"

  "Sure."

  "You testified that before you left, you asked Gillian whether she wanted you to walk her home."

  "Yes."

  "Where was Whitney standing when you asked this?"

  "Right next to me."

  "After you and Whitney and Meg left, did anyone say anything?"

  "No," Chelsea said. "We just walked down the path single file."

  He looked at the jurors, hoping to hell that every single one of them remembered that Whitney had said something different. "Isn't it true that April thirtieth, the night you all met in the woods, was Beltane?"

  He had to give her credit: Chelsea looked blankly at him. "What?"

  "Isn't Beltane a sabbat, according to the earth-based Wiccan religion?"

  "I haven't got a clue."

  "Objection," Matt said. "The witness obviously
can't answer this line of questioning."

  "Your Honor, if you'd just give me a moment--"

  "So this time you can measure your way to Kentucky?" Matt said under his breath.

  Jordan scowled. "This goes toward my argument, Your Honor."

  "I'm giving you one more question, Mr. McAfee," the judge warned.

  "Isn't it true, Ms. Abrams, that you and your friends had gone to the clearing that night to celebrate Beltane, just as witches all over the world were doing at that time?"

  At the prosecutor's table, Matt Houlihan was choking on something. Or maybe just trying to keep from laughing out loud. "Objection!"

  But before the judge could respond, Chelsea did. Her cheeks were bright with anger, and her expression was one only a teenager could manage, putting Jordan in a mental place she reserved for slugs and sewer refuse. "I don't know what you're talking about, or what all this Bel-whatever stuff is. My friends and I went to chill. Period."

  "Mr. McAfee," the judge said, "you will move on. Now."

  The jury was looking at Jordan with nearly the same scorn as Chelsea. Okay, so maybe he'd pushed a little hard ... and what he was driving at was, admittedly, nuts. He'd dismiss the witness. With luck, it would all work out in the end and Thomas would still be speaking to him.

  Thomas.

  Jordan silently winged an apology to his son. "Ms. Abrams, do you wear jewelry?"

  Again, that look. God, was it something they were teaching in public schools these days? "No," she said.

  "No earrings?"

  "Sometimes, I guess."

  "No bracelet or necklace or ring?"

  "No."

  "Isn't it true that you're actually wearing a necklace right now?"

  "Yes," she said tightly.

  "And isn't it true that you never take that necklace off your body?"

  "Well, I--"

  "Could you show it to us?"

  Chelsea looked to the prosecutor for permission. Then she slowly tugged a long chain from the neckline of her blouse, to reveal the five-pointed star.

  "What is that symbol, Ms. Abrams?"

  "I don't know. I just think it's pretty."

  "Are you aware that a five-pointed star is called a pentagram?"

  "No."

  "And that the pentagram is a symbol of pagan religions ... the same groups that would have been celebrating Beltane the night of April thirtieth?"

  Chelsea slipped the necklace beneath her collar again. "It's just a necklace."

  "Of course ... and you and your friends were just chilling that night."

  "Objection!"

  "Withdrawn," Jordan said. "Nothing further."

  Later that day

  Carroll County Courthouse