Jodie Picoult - Salem Falls

Jordan folded his hands on the table. “And somehow, in that charming exchange, you lost several drops of seminal fluid?”

“I never got undressed. I don’t know whose semen they found, but it isn’t mine.”

“Do you have any idea how unlikely that will seem to a jury? Especially once they hear the DNA scientist say it’s your blood and your skin in that rape kit?”

“I don’t care,” Jack said. “It happens to be the truth.”

“Ah, right. The truth.” Jordan grabbed the papers, stuffed them into his folder, and stood up. “For how long this time, Jack?” he said, and he strode from the conference room without glancing back.

The Honorable Althea Justice liked rare things. One-of-a-kind snuffboxes from Europe, Chinese silk, ink made from horse chestnuts. She lived in a glass home far more suited to the beach in L.A. than the woods of New England, drove a restored 1973 Pacer, and owned a puppy that had come thousands of miles from Belarus and was rumored to be one of thirty in existence in the world. She liked to stand out in a crowd, which was a good thing. As the only black female superior court judge, she really didn’t go unnoticed.

The law had been a self-fulfilling prophecy for a little girl named Justice, and although no one in her family had been to college, the pattern of her life was as true to Althea as the lines that crossed the palm of her hand. It would have been remarkable for her to ascend to the bench as either a woman or a person of color-but the fact that she was both made her New Hampshire’s answer to equal opportunity, and a bonafide wonder.

She was six-two in her stocking feet, which was the way she usually trekked through Carroll County Superior Court. Under all those black robes, who cared whether she was wearing shoes, and if anyone did, no one had the balls to bring it up to her. Attorneys who entered her courtroom did so knowing that they weren’t going to be able to put one by her. A woman didn’t get to where Althea had by falling for snow jobs.

Her new secretary was a young man who actually believed that kissing her ass was going to get him something . . . she didn’t quite know what. A good position in the county attorney’s office? A break, when it came his turn to try a case in front of her? He had a habit of running off at the mouth and citing little-known rulings that came from Bumfuck, Iowa, and other distant locales, as if Althea’s life on the bench could only be better served by knowing such minutiae. The only task she’d assigned him so far was to walk her monster of a puppy on days when she was stuck in trial for hours, something for which he didn’t really need a JD, but that he seemed to take as a windfall all the same.

It had been a rotten morning-her Belarussian ridgeback had peed in front of the kitchen sink, she’d been awake for over an hour and still hadn’t had anything caffeinated to speak of, and to top it all off, she had gotten her period, which meant that smack in the middle of her schedule today she was going to be good for nothing but a hot water bottle and an OD of Midol.

“In ten seconds or less, Mark, and by all means time yourself: What have you got for me?” Althea asked, folding her bare feet beneath her.

“Black,” her assistant said, handing her coffee. “Just the way you like it.” Then he blushed the a shade of pomegranate. “I didn’t mean that to be a racial comment.”

Althea regarded him over the lip of the mug. “It wasn’t until you just said so.”

“I’m sorry.” Mark colored again. These white boys, with their face a whole palette.

Althea decided to take him off the hook. That way, she could always bait him again. “Tell me what we have today.”

“Motions hearing in State of New Hampshire v. Jack St. Bride.”

She took the proffered file. “The rape case?”

“Yes.” Mark took a deep breath. “If you look in there, you’ll see the research I’ve done, and some of my opinions.”

“Well, matter of fact, I do want to know if any of the counsel has been snooping around you, trying to size me up.”

Again, that blush. “Well, Your Honor, there’ve been a few questions . . .”

“Prosecution or defense?”

Matt looked at his polished shoes. “Both, ma’am.”

When Althea Justice smiled, which wasn’t all that often, it transformed her face, like a valley being touched by the sun. She knew of this case; hell, with the reporters swarming on the steps of the courthouse like bees at a hive, it would be impossible not to know of it.

She thought of Matt Houlihan and Jordan McAfee, the counsel that would be standing in front of her a few hours from now, at the mercy of a big bad black bitch. “Mark,” Althea said, grinning, “this may turn out to be a fine day after all.”

An hour after the motions hearing in the St. Bride case, Jordan lay on his back in the woods, watching the sun leap from branch to branch like a iridescent squirrel. He could feel the moisture from the ground sinking into his skin, right through the shoulders of his dress shirt. The dirt smelled like dying things, but Jordan conceded that maybe his current state of mind was coloring his senses. He had a case that completely sucked, a dead end of a defense, and a client who wasn’t willing to budge in any of the directions that would lead to a plea. Jack St. Bride hadn’t had sex with Gillian Duncan in this very spot, in spite of the fact that his skin was under her nails and his blood was on her shirt. Maybe if Jordan stayed here long enough, the aliens that had apparently come down to rape Gillian would return to zap him with a death laser, so some other hapless attorney could be appointed to Jack’s case.

“I had a feeling I’d find you here.”

Jordan sat up, squinting. “Oh, it’s you,” he said dully.

“You think Lancelot got that kind of reception?” Selena muttered, grunting as she tried to haul Jordan to his feet.

“You’re my white knight?”

“Well, I’m trying to be. You’re not exactly making it easy.”

She had wrapped herself around him to get him upright. Jordan could smell the soap she used-honey, and some kind of flower, mixed together and sitting cozy next to his own bar of Ivory. “What are you saving me from?”

“Yourself,” Selena said. “Despair. Root rot. Take your pick.” She regarded Jordan thoughtfully. “I heard you had a lousy hearing.”

“Lousy?” Jordan laughed. “I wouldn’t say it was lousy. Downright abysmal. This judge has a chip on her shoulder the size of the whole goddamned courthouse. She ruled against my motion to suppress Jack’s statement about not being with the girl that night. But she granted Houlihan’s motion to admit Jack’s prior conviction for sexual assault.”

“I heard you won one.”

“Yeah,” Jordan snorted. “The rubber-stamp motion for a speedy trial, which I put in weeks ago. The one I wanted before I knew I’d be dealing with a client who changes his tune more often than a fucking jukebox.” He sighed. “Oh, and did I happen to mention the DNA test came back?”

“And?”

“Jack’s blood’s all over the girl’s shirt. His skin was under her nails. There was semen on her thigh, and although the results weren’t quite as conclusive, it could be his, too.”

“Maybe it’s not his.”

“Yeah, and maybe I’m Johnnie Fucking Cochrane.”

Selena smirked. “Trust me, you don’t have quite the same tan. Besides, Johnnie wouldn’t lay down and let a prosecutor steamroll him.”

“Johnnie didn’t sign Jack St. Bride as a client.”

Selena braced herself against the trunk of the dogwood. “Can’t win ’em all, Jordan.”

“Thanks for reminding me, because you know, that thought hadn’t entered my consciousness for at least a half a second.”