Jodie Picoult - Salem Falls

Jack was pictured with his team, his hair as bright as the gold that glinted off the trophy one of the girls held. His head was turned in profile, admiring these young women.

“Are you lost?”

The voice jolted Addie out of her reverie. “Sorry,” a teenage girl said, smiling. “I didn’t mean to scare you to death.”

“No . . . no, that’s all right.”

“Are you somebody’s mother?” the girl asked.

Addie was stunned by the personal question, until she realized that she was taking it the wrong way. This girl was not talking about Chloe at all; in fact, Addie was only being mistaken, once again, for someone she was not. Why wouldn’t a student invite her mother to join her after practice, maybe for a cup of tea?

“I’m a prospective mother,” Addie said.

The girl grinned, a dimple showing in her cheek. It was so guileless that Addie felt her stomach cramp; she was wishing that hard that this child might have been hers. “Oh. One of those,” the student teased.

“What does that mean?”

“That your daughter plays all-state and that you want to talk to the coach.”

Addie laughed. “Where is he, then?”

The girl’s eyes darted to the photo. “She should be here any minute now.”

“She?”

“We got a new coach this year. After our old one . . . had to leave.”

Addie cleared her throat. “Oh?”

The girl nodded and touched her hand to the glass. “It was some big horrible scandal, or it was supposed to be, anyway. But if you ask me, it was like Romeo and Juliet, a little. You know, falling in love with the person you’re not supposed to.” She frowned slightly. “Except they didn’t die at the end.”

“Romeo and Juliet?”

“No . . . Coach and Catherine.”

“Ladies! Why don’t I hear water running?” A strident voice boomed through the locker room as the new coach clapped her hands and scattered her team toward the showers.

“That’s her,” the girl said. “In case you didn’t figure it out.” With a tiny wave, she jogged toward the bathroom section of the locker room.

The coach approached with a smile. “Can I help you?” she asked.

“I was just looking around. If that’s all right.” Addie pointed toward the gleaming trophy. “That’s quite a Cracker Jack prize.”

“Yeah, they worked hard for it. Good group of kids.”

Addie leaned closer to the photo. But instead of looking at the girls, she scanned the calligraphy of the caption. L to R: Suzanne Wellander, Margery Cabot, Coach St. Bride, Catherine Marsh.

The girl next to Jack, holding the trophy. The girl who, Addie now realized, he was staring at.

“This is a copy of your statement,” Matt said, handing it across his desk to Gillian. “I want you to take it home and read it, so that you remember everything you said.”

Beside her, Amos glanced at the thin leaflet. “I damn well hope you’ve got more for your case than just that.”

“We do,” Matt answered smoothly. “But your daughter’s allegations are the foundation of our case.” He opened up another folder and gave Duncan a copy of Frankie’s forensic report. “These results all corroborate what Gillian said. His blood on her shirt, the skin beneath the fingernails, the semen.”

“Semen?” Gilly whispered.

“Yes.” Matt grinned. “I was delighted to hear that, too. I had my doubts, since you said he used a condom. Apparently, a swab of seminal fluid was taken from your thigh for DNA analysis. And that will go some distance toward establishing the burden of proof.”

“From your thigh,” Amos repeated, and squeezed his daughter’s hand.

The county attorney completely understood their astonishment. He’d told the Duncans, going into the process, that a rape conviction could be a long shot-and this dramatically altered the odds. Matt smiled broadly at Gillian and her father. “Sometimes,” he said, “we just get lucky.”

Thomas tossed the Airborne Express envelope onto his father’s lap. “For you.”

Jordan put down the joystick he was using to cream his son at Nintendo and slit open the package. “Must be the DNA,” he said, and quickly skimmed the brief note Matt Houlihan had written as a cover sheet-not saying much of anything, really, which was exactly what Jordan would have done if faced with the sort of results the forensic scientist must have turned up . . . namely, that Jack was nowhere near Gillian Duncan that night.

He leafed through the first page, then the second, and with a curse slapped the entire package down on the floor before getting to his feet. “I’ve got to go out,” he muttered.

On the screen, Thomas killed off one of his father’s players. “But you’re winning.”

“No,” Jordan said. “I’m not.”

Clients lie. It was the first thing you learned as a defense attorney, a rule Jordan had cut his teeth on. After all, a guy who shoots his mother in cold blood or robs a convenience store is going to be not a paragon of honor but rather someone who will do or say just about anything to save his own ass. Jordan was not surprised to find out Jack had been bullshitting him for weeks now. What did stun him was the fact that he’d been so gullible.

His mood was markedly different from the last time he’d been sitting in this conference room, filled with the righteous belief that he was saving a truly maligned soul from the channels of the court system. Jack noticed the change, too, the moment he came in. The smile fell off his face and fluttered to the floor like the old skin of a snake.

“You know,” Jordan began pleasantly, “it doesn’t particularly surprise me to find out that you lied.”

“But you . . . you said the other day-”

“In fact, I couldn’t care less. What does upset me is that you have completely fucked yourself over by telling Saxton you weren’t anywhere near Gillian Duncan that night.”

“I wasn’t.”

Jordan slammed his palms on the table. “Then what the hell is that soil doing in your boots, Jack? What the hell is your blood doing on her shirt, your skin under her nails? And your goddamned semen on her thigh? You want to explain that to me? Or perhaps you’d like to wait and explain it to the jury when you get up on the stand and Houlihan impeaches you with an inconsistent statement.”

Jack sank down into a chair, silent.

“First thing the prosecutor is going to do is ruin your credibility by dragging that up. If I were sitting on that jury and heard that a guy lied to the police . . . a guy whose DNA was found all over the place, I’d vote in an instant to hang you. Why lie . . . unless you had something to hide?”

Frustrated, Jordan tossed the forensic lab report toward his client and let Jack skim the results. “So,” he said briskly. “I assume we’re going with consent.”

“What?” Jack’s head swung up, slow as a bull’s.

“You were obviously in the woods that night with the girl.”

“I was,” Jack said evenly, “but we didn’t have sex.”

“Could we just stop with the Boy Scout act, Jack? Because frankly, I’m losing my patience.” Jordan frowned. “Or are you going to pull a Clinton and come up with a creative definition of intercourse?”

“I didn’t have intercourse with her, Jordan, not any kind. I was drunk, and I saw them all in the woods. And . . . she was naked. She came on to me.” Jack looked up, miserable. “Can you see why I didn’t want to tell this to you? Or to Saxton? Who’d believe me?”

“Seems to me it didn’t make much of a difference,” Jordan muttered.

“All I wanted to do was get away, and she kept trying to get me to stay.”

“How? What did she do? Say?” Jordan demanded.

“I can’t remember! Jesus, Jordan, I try. I try so hard I think my head is going to explode. So I was there-so what? It doesn’t mean I had sex with her. I pushed her away from me, and then I ran.”