Jodie Picoult - Salem Falls

“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 She was pale and withdrawn, although they had done their best to handle her with kid gloves.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 muttered. “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.