Jodie Picoult - Salem Falls

But Gillian Duncan, who had always gotten what she wanted and then some, grabbed at him. “I cast a spell,” she insisted. “You came to me.”

“You came to me,” Jack corrected. “And I’m leaving.” With a shove, he sent Gillian sprawling, and he ran down the path so far and so fast that for the first time in months, he managed to outstrip his past.

“Jack,” Jordan asked. “Did you rape Gillian Duncan on the night of April thirtieth?”

“No.”

“How did your skin get under her fingernails?”

“She was trying to keep me there, when I kept trying to get away. Her hands kept grabbing at me. And when she . . . kissed me, she had her fingers raking into my scalp.”

“How did you get the scratch on your face?”

“From a branch, when I was running. I had it before I ever saw her that night.”

“How did your blood get on her clothes?”

“She used her shirt to dab at my cheek.”

Jordan crossed his arms. “Do you have any idea how difficult it’s going to be for these twelve people to believe your story?”

“Yes.” His eyes swept the jury members, compelling them to listen. “I could lie to you and tell you a version of that night that’s easier to digest . . . like that we were getting intimate and then she changed her mind at the last minute . . . but that isn’t what happened. The truth is just like I told it. The truth is I didn’t rape her.”

“Then why would Gillian make up a story like this?”

“I don’t know. I don’t really know her at all, in spite of what she’s said. But if I were seventeen and I was discovered in the woods doing something I didn’t want my father to know about . . . I guess I’d spin a different story, too. And if I were really smart, I’d dream up a tale that would ruin the credibility of the person who’d intruded . . . so that no one would believe him, even if he told the truth.”

Jack met his attorney’s eyes. That, Jordan communicated silently, is the best we can do. “Your witness,” he said, and offered Jack up for sacrifice.

It was all Matt could do to not laugh out loud. That had to have been the absolute worst defense he’d ever heard in his life, and he truly believed he could get up and speak Swahili and still manage to win this case. “Ribbons, candles, naked girls . . . are you sure, Mr. St. Bride, that you didn’t leave out any pink elephants?”

“I’m sure I would have had no trouble remembering those,” Jack answered dryly.

“But you yourself say it’s hard to believe.”

“Just being honest.”

“Honest.” Matt snorted, to let Jack know what he thought of that assessment. “You testified that you were very drunk. How can you be sure this recollection is accurate?”

“I just know it is, Mr. Houlihan.”

“Isn’t it possible that in your . . . drunken stupor . . . you raped Ms. Duncan and then blacked it out of your mind?”

“If I was drunk enough to suffer a blackout,” Jack countered, “surely I was too drunk to be physically capable of sexual intercourse.”

Matt turned, surprised by the gauntlet the defendant had thrown. “So your theory of why Gillian Duncan became hysterical, sobbing, claimed you raped her, went to the hospital to undergo an invasive physical exam and have a sexual assault kit done, reported the rape to the police, and now has come to tell a panel of strangers the intimate details of how you sexually assaulted her . . . is because she was scared of her father?”

“I don’t know. I’m just telling you what happened.”

“All right,” Matt said. “You’ve given us your explanation for why your skin was found beneath Ms. Duncan’s fingernails . . . because she was grabbing at you to get you to stay, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Ms. Duncan didn’t give you the scratch on your cheek-the injury was sustained in the woods, on a branch?”

“Yes.”

“Your blood was on her clothes because she was trying to clean up that scratch by dabbing it with her shirt?”

“Yes.”

Matt frowned. “Then what’s your explanation for why semen matching yours was found on her thigh?”

“Objection!” Jordan leaped up, furious. “Approach!”

The judge waved the attorneys closer. “The semen wasn’t a match,” Jordan said angrily. “The state’s expert even deemed the results inconclusive.”

Matt scowled. “She said this defendant was seven hundred forty thousand times more likely to have been the donor of the semen than anyone else. Those are still pretty damn good odds.”

“However,” the judge said, “it’s too prejudicial. The jury has the information about the semen; they can do with it what they will. I’m sorry, Mr. Houlihan, but I’m not going to allow you to pursue that line of questioning.” She turned to the jury as the lawyers returned to their corners. “You’ll disregard that last question,” Judge Justice instructed, although Matt’s words still hung in the air, as sharp and as precarious as a guillotine’s blade.

“Mr. St. Bride,” Matt said, “you find yourself in the woods with a quartet of teenage girls who are not only perhaps interested in having sex . . . but are naked . . . yet you don’t turn around and run as fast as humanly possible away from there?”

“I said I needed to get away, over and over.”

“Actually, you said you jumped over a fire hand in hand with one of them. And that you looked around closely enough to see there were things hanging from the trees.”

“I also said that Gillian Duncan was the one who came on to me,” Jack said, trying very hard to keep his voice from rising.

“Was anyone else around when she attacked you?”

“No.”

“Where were the other girls?”

“I don’t know.”

“How convenient. Was she still naked?”

Jack shook his head. “She had gotten dressed.”

“And then she proceeded to throw herself at you?”

“Yes.”

Matt crossed his arms. “This five-foot-four, one hundred ten-pound girl forcibly held you there?”

“I got away as quickly as I could. I said no, shoved her off me, and ran. Period.”

“So . . . this is the second time in a space of two years that a teenage girl has falsely accused you of sexual assault?”

“That’s correct.” Heat climbed the ladder of Jack’s neck.

Matt raised his brows. “Aren’t you asking the jury to believe you’re the unluckiest man on the face of this earth?”

Jack took a deep breath. “I’m asking the jury to believe me.”

“Believe you,” Matt repeated. “Believe you. Huh. Mr. St. Bride, you heard the expert who testified that soil from your boots matches the soil in the clearing of the woods?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And you heard the DNA expert who showed that your blood was on Ms. Duncan’s clothing and your skin was underneath her fingernails?”

“Yes.”

“You heard Ms. Duncan testify that you were with her that night?”

“Yes.”

“And you heard Ms. Abrams and Ms. O’Neill corroborate that?”

“Yes, I did.”

“You’ve seen numerous amounts of evidence that place you at the crime scene, isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

Matt tilted his head, questioning. “Then how come when the police came to arrest you, the very first thing you did was lie about being there?”

Jack’s mouth opened and closed, no words rising to the surface. “I-I don’t know,” he finally managed to say. “It was an instinctive response.”

“Lying is an instinctive response for you?”

“That’s not what I meant-”

“But,” Matt argued, “it’s what you said. Did you or did you not already lie once about your whereabouts that night?”